READIN

Thursday, October 16th, 2003

Patrick Farley's Electric Sheep, home of the IMO best comics on the web, celebrated its 5th birthday yesterday. Patrick marked the occasion by unveiling a new front page, the first step in his planned redesign of the site. Go check it out -- there is a poll where you can ask for the new comic you would most like to see. (Hint: vote for Apocamon 4!)

posted afternoon of October 16th, 2003: Respond
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🦋 The Light of Reason

I have linked several times over the past little while to Arthur Silber's blog and just wanted to mention that you should really be reading it. He is a fine writer and really good at finding interesting stuff in the chaos of the world. He is on my blogroll to the left under "Libertarians" of which he is one -- my blogroll is beseeching me for some reorganization but that is not going to happen just yet.

posted afternoon of October 16th, 2003: Respond

Wednesday, October 15th, 2003

🦋 Awkward, Abortive First Attempt

I want to write about the beauty which I hope one day to create. Beauty I believe is in one sense a quality infused into objects by an artisan by the application of his skill. (The obvious truth that there are many other valid meanings of beauty, many involving neither artisan nor object, should not detract from my examination of this particular one.)

An artisan -- the master of a craft -- this is what I hope to be. In particular I want to understand furniture-making fully enough to create pieces which possess the grandeur and solidity of 17th- and 18th-Century American furniture pieces; which can stand in a room and lend it firmness. To get to that point I will need to work enough with wood to get a real familiarity with the material; and to work enough with my tools that they become extensions of my body.

Update: Here, Mike Recchione says some of what I am trying to get at.

I don't care what kind of tools were used to make the things I have, or even whether they were made in a factory or somebody's basement. The thing that counts is how much of their divine spark the makers put into what they were doing.

posted evening of October 15th, 2003: Respond
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🦋 Statement of purpose

I want to write about the type of beauty which I think is essential to -- look, here is the problem: I have this idea to which I am trying to give voice; but I can't get sentence 1 out of my mouth, out of my keyboard -- "I want to write about", this is good, this is what I am trying to say; "the type of beauty", well, that's vague, I'm talking about an æsthetic judgement, so I say "beauty", and I say "type" because there are other possible judgements -- I want to denigrate them but I can't start right off as claiming the point I want to prove, and anyway what point is there in making earnest argument over æsthetic judgement? But ok, let's keep "the type of beauty" -- "which I think is essential" -- "essential"? "Essential to"? To what is this beauty essential? I want to say this judgement, this beauty, is at the root of my essence, it is an important aspect of my psyche, and I want to universalize my experience and say that such beauty is or should be an integral part of a person. But to say as my first sentence that this beauty is essential to my sanity, that does not seem meaningful; and to say that it is essential to our continuance as a psychic community, that sounds pretentious and in the end meaningless too; so what do I say? What do I mean?

Look, I want down the road somewhere to be saying "the problem with modern consumerist society is..." and then finish that statement with a clause describing how my special form of beauty is not sufficiently appreciated hereabouts; at least that is where I see this essay going, the one that is that I sat down to write before I realized I could not write even one sentence of it. But is that really an idea I want to spend my time developing? This question is rhetorical, so I realize as I ask it; the answer to it is "no"; I am sitting down to write the essay with the wrong goal in mind. The proper goal, and one which would bear having me spend some time and effort in attaining it, is to describe the judgement I have in mind and to point to admirable examples of such beauty, without complaining about the times it is not sufficiently in evidence. In this way I may be able to get my point across.

posted evening of October 15th, 2003: Respond
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I've been listening to a CD over and over again for the past few days; it is "Dark was the Night" by Blind Willie Johnson. Every time I listen to it I like it a little better -- and I did not dislike it to begin with! If anything could persuade me to believe, it would be good gospel music like this.

Last week I bought a portable CD player, which I had been meaning to do for a while now. My thinking is that I will listen to music on the train to and from work and that, with repetition, I will come to a deeper understanding of the songs. This is certainly happening with Johnson -- I had thought his songs were quite simple, with few lyrics and not much happening on guitar, and that his main attribute was his awesome voice; but in reality there is quite a bit of musical complexity under the surface, and the lyrics have some pretty insightful bits that you don't catch until the third or fourth repetition.

Jim came over last night and we played blues for a couple of hours. He is really into Leo Kottke and is showing me some neat stuff. We played a really long set of songs in D (I was using dropped-D tuning and he was using open-D), jamming from one into the next; I discovered that it is hugely confusing to jam from "C.C. Rider" into "Stagger Lee" (and probably vice versa) because the songs are quite similar in certain ways -- in mid-verse I will forget which one I am playing and slip into the other one.

posted morning of October 15th, 2003: Respond
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Tuesday, October 14th, 2003

🦋 Open tunings

I've been interested for a long time in learning to play blues using alternate tunings. I may finally have found my avenue into this; namely dropped-D tuning. It is standard tuning, but with the lowest string tuned a full step down. I liked the key of D a lot already and this makes it a lot more fun. Specifically, I'm using it for "Down on the Corner" by Creedence; "Stagger Lee" by John Hurt; and "C. C. Rider" by John Hurt. A nice side effect of using this tuning is that it's encouraging me to play up the neck rather than staying in first position all the time. You can play really nice stuff on the G chord by fingering G bass on the 5th fret with your thumb and fingering the treble strings on the 3rd through 5th frets. (And don't play the A string.)

Mike told me he was having a lot of fun with open-G tuning and I'm looking forward to experimenting with that some.

posted evening of October 14th, 2003: Respond
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Researching lumber sources for the past few days I came up with this idea: I want to make a page devoted to lumberyards and sawmills in the area. There are already a number of online resources (including the very useful Woodfinder) which I am not really trying to duplicate; what I want to make is a list of personal picks from ww'ers I know and trust -- i.e. the WoodCentral crowd, as well as CJWA members. I have posted requests for recommendations in a couple of places and will see what comes of it.

I will be using this post as a holding area for candidates as I work on the list. Candidates so far:

• Hutt Lumber, Newark
  I found this in the phone book while looking for soft maple for my upcoming bookcase project; I have not found anyone who has bought lumber there, but I think I will use it because they have the right price and are nearby. No weekend hours.
• Monteath Lumber, South Amboy
  Recommended by several people incl. Lee Alexander, Phil Vitale, Bob Sheppard. They offer a 10% discount to CJWA members.
• Rosenzweig Lumber, Bronx
  My primary source when I was in NY and they are still close enough by. No weekend hours.
• NJ Hardwoods, Plainfield
  Recommended by Joe Hurst and by Bob Sheppard.
• Wolbach Sawmill, Easton
• Agincourt, Belle Mead
• Bay Ridge Lumber, Bayonne
• Northeastern Lumber, Jamesburg
• US Mahogany, Matawan
  Recommended by Lee Alexander, Jack Feinstein, Philip Berman. 10% discount for CJWA members.
• Medford Cedar Products, Bordentown
  Recommended by Jack Feinstein.
• East Coast Log, Bloomsbury
  Recommended by Steve Antonucci. Wow â?? I just spoke to the owner of East Coast Log and he confirmed all lumber is $2/bf. He is around on Saturdays from 10-4. He has a lot of turnover so not all species will be in stock all the time.
  East Coast Log
  50 CR 639
  Bloomsbury, NJ 08804
  (908) 995-2902
• Casterline, Morristown
  Recommended by Mike R. -- the man who works there gave him a lot of help though he did not end up buying the lumber. Also by Philip Berman who says they are a bit expensive.
• Center Lumber, Paterson
  Recommended by Philip Berman.
• Jay Samuels, and Rich O'Connor of WoodFinder, both write to recommend a number of smallish sawmills in NJ and PA.
• John Aniano writes to recommend the unfortunately named Rippoff sawmill in Allentown, NJ; Mike Obertlick's sawmill in Howell, NJ; Willard Bros. in Trenton; and Josh Cavet's mill in NJ.
• Congden Lumber in West Orange: very close to me and they have hours on Saturday morning.

posted afternoon of October 14th, 2003: Respond
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Thursday, October 9th, 2003

🦋 My next project

My next woodworking project will be a built-in bookcase for Ellen's office. I am going to use this plan from American Woodworker as a starting point, but will make a few modifications. There will be three verticals instead of two, to double the amount of shelf space. A half-round table will come out of the middle of one side of the bookcase, to match the look of Ellen's desk (which is half-round on one end). I will be using mortise-and-tenons instead of biscuits to join the shelves to the verticals. The case will be built from soft maple; I hope to buy it at Rosenzweig's Lumber -- but only will if I can get a day off work soon, as they do not have weekend hours.

Update: Actually the place I will buy the lumber if I can get a day off work soon will be Hutt Lumber in Newark (sorry, no web presence; their phone number is (973) 242-7300 and their address is 301 Badger Avenue; they are open 8 to 3:30 Monday through Friday) -- they carry roughsawn 4/4 soft maple for $2.42/bf, as opposed to $2.92/bf at Rosenzweig's, and are closer. (Rosenzweig's soft maple is D2S but that does not make a difference for me as I will be reducing the thickness anyway.) Looks like I will need 100 bf for the project, but I think I will buy 120 and err on the side of caution.

posted evening of October 9th, 2003: Respond
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🦋 IDispatch

My policy of reading COM and .NET Interoperability straight through from the beginning, rather than skipping the stuff I am familiar with, paid off yesterday when I found out something about programming the IDispatch half of dual interfaces, which had eluded me until now.

IDispatch is an interface which allows you to support method and property calls on arbitrarily named members, meaning the client does not have to load type info. A common use for it is the "dual interface", in which type info is exposed but clients are given a choice whether to call methods directly or through IDispatch::Invoke. I always have supported it (in situations where I needed it and was not using a tool like ATL for the implementation) by hand-coding a lookup table in Invoke and GetIDsOfNames, and putting no code in the other two member functions. This is a big pain, primarily because of all the parameter translation you have to do in Invoke; and not supporting GetTypeInfo is a problem too, though it never made a difference in the situations where I did this. (Also I only support GetIDsOfNames halfway.)

But it turns out COM exports three functions which you can use to implement IDispatch using the type library generated by the compiler from your IDL code. They are LoadRegTypeLib, DispGetIDsOfNames, and DispInvoke. I have never done any work really with type libraries but it is nice to know I could. Chapter 4, which I am starting today, is all about COM Type Information.

posted morning of October 9th, 2003: Respond
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Wednesday, October 8th, 2003

🦋 About molding

More window seat stuff. (The seat is completed and primed; it will not be painted until sometime this coming spring when we repaint the room. Pictures coming soon.) I wrote before about building the baseboard, which came out very well and looks great in the context of the room; the second molding I build, which is an apron under the "sill" at the front of the seat, was less successful, and I want to examine why, and what remedial steps I can take.

First an explanation of what I was going for. Behind the seat are three windows, each with a sill and an apron molding beneath the sill. ("Apron" is the stepped molding which transitions from the sill to the wall.) I wanted to echo this by having the seat top jut out beyond the seat front, and have an apron beneath it. My plan was, to make it jut out by the same amount the window sills project from the wall, and duplicate the measurements of the existing aprons. (Note: this is quite different from the plans I originally posted here back in June.) The dimensions in place (roughly): Window sills come out 2 1/2" from the wall; aprons extend 7" below the sills and come out 1 1/2" from the wall at the top of the apron, 3/4" at the bottom.

What I ended up with below the top of the seat is about the same; but it does not look quite right. The reason it does not, as I realized over the course of the past few days, is that the shadows are wrong. The purpose of the apron molding is to make a visual transition from the window sill to the wall; how this is done is by shadows falling where the apron depth changes. The apron I built is located diffently with respect to the light sources, and the shadows are not right. (Well two of them are.) I am going to leave it be for the time being, but eventually I think this could be corrected by making it deeper -- adding pieces in front of it. If I ever actually get around to this I will lay it out beforehand with a diagram of light sources to see what the shadows would end up looking like, before I start cutting.

posted afternoon of October 8th, 2003: Respond
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