Increasingly Agitated

Video

Sun, 20 May 2012 18:52:00 -0700

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Ukulele #1: Lusitania (Taken with instagram) (1 of 7 first-batch...

Sun, 20 May 2012 17:42:00 -0700

Ukulele #1: Lusitania (Taken with instagram) (1 of 7 first-batch instruments)

Finally, one of them is done! It’s no Kala, but like Ira says: “It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.”

Round 2 will be happening in the fall!

What.

Sat, 19 May 2012 21:04:34 -0700

What.

People Gotta Lot of Nerve.

Sun, 06 May 2012 12:13:18 -0700

People Gotta Lot of Nerve.

“Larry the Cable Guy, Actual User”

Fri, 04 May 2012 15:21:13 -0700

“Larry the Cable Guy, Actual User”

After writing this, I realized it comes off a little negative, so let me preface: I’m a Guy...

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 14:48:00 -0700

After writing this, I realized it comes off a little negative, so let me preface: I’m a Guy Who Likes Sports. Sports are the best - I love the narrative of a season, the excitement of a game, the steamy laziness of a late afternoon baseball game in August.

—

There’s a particular type of sports fan that really fascinates me: The Playoff Theorist. The comments section of this article about “meaningful games” is full of people arguing about what are the fairest ways to increase meaningfulness, is that a good metric, how should we align incentives to improve the sport’s performance for fans.

If only we could stir up the same kind of theorizing and passion for reform about government: What are the best ways to select legislators? What does the structure of a good legislature or executive or judiciary look like? It’s amazing to me how much the structure of the US government is calcified - we must vote in a single round winner-takes-all two-candidate district process, we must have a bicameral legislature, we must use “states” as the avenue for most lawmaking. Where are our James Madisons and Thomas Jeffersons? Arguing on the internet about how David Stern should improve the playoff selection process.

Sports somehow makes people feel like they have a stake in the process - an arbitrary process dictated by millionaires in order to sell Budweiser commercials - while government doesn’t. I don’t understand that one yet, but I’m working on it.

Marking off fret distances - I had to buy a ruler graded in...

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 12:48:23 -0700

Marking off fret distances - I had to buy a ruler graded in 1/100 of an inch. (Taken with instagram)

Staining a few necks, putting polyurethane on all of them....

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 17:57:00 -0700

Staining a few necks, putting polyurethane on all of them. (Taken with instagram)

gifolas-cage: … [T]his tells you everything you need to...

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 17:33:22 -0700

gifolas-cage:

… [T]his tells you everything you need to know about it.

awesomepeoplehangingouttogether: Al Pacino and Christopher...

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 09:58:40 -0700

awesomepeoplehangingouttogether:

Al Pacino and Christopher Walken

Amazed.

It’s been about a minute since I talked about building...

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 15:19:00 -0700

It’s been about a minute since I talked about building instruments (if you want way too many updates, my Instagram uname is joeblubaugh). After sawing your neck blank to create the “head on” profile of a neck, the next thing to do is carve it, creating the curved shape that the thumb rests on. There are a number of ways to do this, and I took my pointers from this faceting method. Like the author, I used a belt sander to do the majority of my carving. The stationary belt sander is probably the most versatile woodworking power tool I know of. You can use a hand saw for most of the cuts you need or make a low-cost cross-cut jig and get a $30 circular saw before you mess with a table saw. There is some amount of finesse in this whole process - you just have to know what a good neck feels like.

merlin: The Complete Star Wars Storyboards — Binary...

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 23:02:32 -0700

merlin:

The Complete Star Wars Storyboards — Binary Bonsai

Important Information.

Happy Easter from a pair of goofballs.

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 21:29:27 -0700

Happy Easter from a pair of goofballs.

I love elder-statesman, people-boosting 40...

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 13:05:37 -0700

I love elder-statesman, people-boosting 40 Water.

jessethorn:

Fuck yeah.

E-40 f. Too Short & J-Banks “Just Be You”

HUG WHO YOU WANNA HUG!

“Came in the game / with a hope and a wish / with no bait on my hook / tryna catch a fish / tryna have meals / four courses / got hella ideals / but no resources / don’t let ‘em knock yo motivation, keep tryin’ / you’re probly just ahead of your time!/ LIKE ME!”

The Kodiak bear of kangaroos, and twice as...

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 11:44:00 -0700

The Kodiak bear of kangaroos, and twice as ugly!

dailyfossil:

Procoptodon - The giant short faced kangaroo

Mounted skeleton on display at Victoria Fossil Cave, Naracoorte Caves National Park, South Australia

Reconstruction by Peter Trusler.

When: Pleistocene (~ 2 million to 15,000 years ago)

Where: Throughout Australia

What: Procoptodon is a giant fossil kangaroo. Exactly how ‘giant’ it is has been a bit exaggerated, heights of up to 10 feet (~3 meters) have been reported, but this would have been its maximum height when it reared up fully on its hind legs, with its arms reaching up for high branches. Procoptodon was capable of this posture, but (like living kangaroos) it did not stand fully upright most of the time. In its normal feeding (and most everything else) poster it would have stood about 6.5 feet (~ 2 meters) tall; about the same height as the largest of the modern red kangaroos. Procoptodon was not the same size as these animals though, it was much more massive and would have been over twice the weight of a red kangaroo of equivalent height.

Band saws, you guys.

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 21:15:40 -0700

Band saws, you guys.

Neck Construction: The most frustrating thing about building...

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 18:41:00 -0700

Neck Construction:

The most frustrating thing about building something out of wood is that wood is unstable. It can start out straight but then bend, twist, swell, and shrink. If you’ve ever bought 2x4s from a hardware store, you’ve probably seen both bent and twisted boards all over the place.

The first way to make a stable board is to saw it properly, but that won’t solve all problems, especially for longer boards. Another thing you can do is construct pieces out of several boards, and that’s what I’ve chosen to do with the necks here. Pictured above are a banjo and ukulele neck blank. Smaller pieces of wood have less internal stress, so if you join them properly (without adding extra stress) you can get a larger, more stable piece of wood.

These necks are made by jointing (flattening) and then gluing together an oak board and a poplar board. I went for the sap wood poplar because it’s not as green, though sap wood is less stable than heart wood. For the smaller ukulele necks, I also split the boards down the middle and glued a thin strip of poplar between them. This is mostly for looks.

The fret boards have also been glued on top before rough cutting - some people prefer to do all the fretboard sawing and inlaying before they attach it to the neck. I may try that on the next set of necks to see which I prefer.

In addition to the added stability, using these differently-colored woods is going to create a contrast in the finished necks that I’m really looking forward to. This week I’ll be bandsawing the necks into a rough shape to get ready for carving them on the belt sander next week.

More Powerful Than Ever.

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 11:55:56 -0700

More Powerful Than Ever.

The Hunger Games

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 17:00:20 -0700

The Hunger Games

merlin: everythinginthesky: Google naming. THE GUY IN...

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 16:17:31 -0700

merlin:

everythinginthesky:

Google naming.

THE GUY IN OXFORDS: “Hey, just blue-skying here, gang, but, how about we try something exactly like this—except we have the shopping bag wear some really large headphones? Synergy in your ear viz. brand integration, right? How much do we love that?”

I always wear Oxfords when I Blue Sky.