Don's Blog - On the Workbench

I'm traveling for work now and currently in Denmark. Since it's 3:42 AM local time (6:42 PM California time) I thought I might as well do something productive like update my blog :). Here are some pictures from the trip so far. Picture of the flight status screen showing me going into London. We flew into Heathrow from LAX and had a mostly uneventful flight. I watched " The Wrestler " movie with Mickey Rourke. Good movie, better than I thought. Also watched Master & Commander with Russell Crowe. OK movie, would have been better to see on something other than a washed out 5" LCD screen 37,000 feet up in the air :). I started reading The Last Lecture . I was reading it so fast that I had to stop so that I wouldn't finish it on the plane ride over. What a great book. I highly recommend it for anyone as a reality check about remembering what's important in life. It's a good reference about keeping "balance" in life. Yes, I will be recomme

Living with a 4.5 year old presents many challenges. One of these challenges is negotiating for television access for watching TV shows. Yes, we could force her off the TV, however our child would never leave us alone long enough to watch the show in peace (thank goodness for TiVo). We have one very old TV (as my co-workers remind me of on a seemingly daily basis). It's a Mitsubishi VS-5051; a vintage 50" rear-screen projection TV that is now 15 years old. There is a Picture-in-Picture capability. Our daughter typically watches TV "small" (in a small PIP window), while we watch a show on the, full size screen. It is a pain to setup, and we miss about an 1/8 of the show as the PIP takes up a sizable chunk of screen real-estate. It also "takes us out of the show," if, for example, an intense scene in Lost is being shown while an episode of Caillou is playing in the PIP window we often get distracted. Another issue is that often times we want to have a comp

Today I worked on a small garage project. The workbench area needed some task lighting; originally I had an old Luxo type of light, however the mount broke during the workbench replacement project. I found some very economical halogen lights, the Inreada model at IKEA a couple of weeks ago. These lights are meant to be used as bookcase/shelf lights. I spaced the 3 lights evenly across the workbench. The lights were mounted through the wire shelves to small wood blocks with regular 1-5/8" drywall screws. The three lights give a nice, even lighting across the entire work surface . I like having 3 separate lights so that a project can be effectively lit from 3 separate angles. The lights pivot slightly to the left and right if I need to focus more light on a particular area. Overall the lights aren't super heavy duty; it will be interesting to see how they hold up over time.

#5 Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age This book was recommended by Peter and I really enjoyed this from a history standpoint. Here is a book describing yet another unique collection of people and resources that produced technological advances that have formed the core of much of the computing technology we use each and every day. This book traces the establishment of PARC, through it's heyday, and ultimately the decline of this organization. This next set of books are a bit more technical, following along the lines of my interest in video/film production. #6 The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction Excellent book on techniques for color correcting video. Extensive practical examples and, as a supplement to the book on the enclosed DVD, a collection documents capturing sessions with professional colorists/graders who worked through how they would handle grading several of the examples in the book. Reading through these documents are, to

I'm a fairly avid reader and thought the blog would be a good place to discuss some of the more interesting books that I've read recently. My interest in books covers technology, history, film making. I was originally thinking of making a list of books that I've read and just leaving it at that, but then I thought it would be worthwhile to give my impressions of them too while I was at it. So here goes ... 1). Droidmaker : George Lucas and the Digital Revolution Droidmaker tells, in immense detail, the story of the George Lucas and his quest to modernize the film making process to keep up with his vision for storytelling. Beginning in the late 60's the book begins describing the collaboration and friendship with Francis Ford Coppola. It documents the tedious, labor intensive and manual process for assembling a film. The story follows the creation of the the computer graphics group at Lucasfilm which had three purposes: to advance the state of film editing, compositin

For a long time I've had one big plastic bin with a mish-mash of screws and bolts. I've been on the lookout for an inexpensive way of being able to store these fasteners. I've found the the Ziploc food storage containers fit the bill perfectly. I labeled both the cover and the container so that I can easily see what is in each one. I can now put screws of the same type in a separate container and when I need, for example 1-1/4" drywall screws and 2" gold screws, I can easily grab the 2 labeled bins for the project at hand. The containers fit well in the existing niches above the workbench. Simple and economical; and if one bin gets messed up, it is very easy to replace with a new one.