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On Design, Rebuilding and Audio-Surfing
Dieter Rams was director of design at Braun from 1962 to 1995. He designed watches, clock radios, cigarette lighters and countless other products, and all according to his own ten principles of design. Good design is innovative. Good design makes a product useful. Good design is aesthetic. Good design helps us to understand a product.…
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A Pan Is Not A Rack
Seriously, Homer … fix your site’s search engine. I mean, really.
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Where Is Hampton Bay?
There are two Hampton Bays. One is a lovely harbor in Virginia, nestled right up against the better-known Chesapeake Bay. Actually, it’s called Hampton Roads Bay, but two words out of three is close enough. Who needs “roads” in their bay, anyway? The other is a brandmark found on everything from ceiling fans to faucets,…
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Like A Man-Made Thing
Been working today. Each task depended largely on the one before it. I installed a new white counter in the upstairs bathroom, using silicone to secure it to the vanity. I affixed a shiny faucet and drain to a replacement porcelain sink, using instructions penned by someone who learned English through Babelfish. Then I placed…
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Weekend of Great Productivity
The was the most productive Memorial Day weekend ever. I will hear no argument to the contrary. Between Saturday morning and this afternoon, this is some of what we’ve done … The longer I live in this house, the better I become at carefully taking things apart. On Saturday, we disassembled the upstairs hallway bathroom.…
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A Secret Sharer of Home Improvement
We stood in the aisle for a few minutes longer. The item I knew we needed for one task was tucked under my arm, but what did we really need for the other task? I let my eye scan the top of the shelves. Kitchen. Sink. Shower. Too generic, all of them. My situation was…
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Behold the Glory
It took all day. It cost me much sanity. It tried my patience. It questioned my viability as a geek. But I have prevailed. The Specs: CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Motherboard: Chaintech VNF3-250 Memory: Mushkin DDR400 512MB Harddrive: Western Digital 160GB SATA Video: Chaintech NVidia GeForce FX5200 256MB (transplanted) CD1: Asus 36x CD-RW (transplanted)…
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Like a Big Blue Post-It
Pardon me. I just need to keep track of some links and this is the most convenient spot to put them. If you have any interest in installing Windows XP on a new Serial ATA drive, then feel free to click along and read. If not … well … look at this picture of a…