Tag Archives: tips & tricks

Origami as Survival Skill

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When I was quite young (elementary school, or before?) my grandmother gave us an Origami kit consisting of a small instruction book and various sheets of colored rice paper. I was never very interested in the flat designs, preferring the 3-D pieces, especially if they were functional in some way (e.g., paper airplanes).

One design in particular has stayed with me over the years, because it has repeatedly served me well in innumerable situations: the Origami Paper Cup!

There are few things more basic, yet more essential, than being able to transport water to your mouth or another location without dribbling. Yet how often do you find yourself in a place where water or other cool liquid is ostensibly available but lacking a drinking/carrying utensil?

The great thing about this skill is that it can be done with ANY piece of standard paper (I don’t suggest newsprint) – just drink quickly if forced to use one that is printed to avoid soaking off the ink! This week I was in dire need of a drink while at a bookstore reading where they had bottles of fruit drinks but were out of cups. A quick perusal of their free handouts/flyers shelf provided a suitable piece of paper for accessing the liquids.

Here’s how – whenever you are told to fold something, make a good sharp crease of the fold: Continue reading →

Standing Desk Ideas and Tips

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A few months ago I realized that despite setting alerts reminding me to get up from my desk periodically, I just wasn’t doing it. Having read several articles about standing desks, treadmill desks, etc. I set up an approximation of one using boxes on my desk and on top of my CPU case:

DYI standing desk using boxes

DYI standing desk using boxes

This worked fairly well, except that when I wanted to switch from standing to sitting or vice versa it was a pain moving the monitor off/onto the box, etc. I noticed a co-worker downstairs had obtained a WorkFit-S Stand-Sit Desk Attachment, and had my boss arrange to get me one as well. Here it is in the standing and sitting positions:

WorkFit-S Stand-Sit Desk Attachment

WorkFit-S Stand-Sit Desk Attachment

The WorkFit-S costs about $400 (note that the writing shelf above the keyboard tray is an optional extra item). Custom standing desks, some with treadmills, can cost considerably more.

If you don’t have room for a full desk and/or travel a lot, you’ll want to check out an upcoming Kickstarter project for the Ninja Standing Desk. It hangs from a door (with over-door hooks) or a wall (with drywall fasteners), and packs small enough to easily fit in a carry-on bag! Check out their video, and look for their Kickstarter launch on July 11th: [7/11/12 update: the Kickstarter is now live here]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b-ykMPmb-c

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Be Memorable When You Can’t Be There

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Life happens – you’re due at a gig, but your car/van dies, your flight gets canceled, or as just happened to my friends’ band, the border agents won’t allow you into Canada!

Last-minute disasters suck for everyone involved, but especially if it’s an out of town gig so you are missing a chance to connect with new fans.

What can you do to salvage some good will from this situation? Look for creative ways to reach out to the audience you are missing, e.g.:

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Some Things to Know When Changing Acoustic Guitar Strings

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I recently bought a used acoustic bass guitar. The strings on it were fine, but I wanted a different kind (flat-wound, coated, recommended as better for an acoustic). They duly arrived, and last weekend I decided to change to them.

I had never previously changed guitar strings, but had seen it done before (Pete in The Gobshites used to go through several a night at a 3-set gig). I looked at a few instruction pages on the web and it seemed pretty straightforward. I began by loosening the E string, removing it from the tuning machine, and…

could not get the corresponding bridge peg to come out!

I wrestled with it, looked up more info, found someone who had had the problem with my bass model, tried what they were told – loosen the next string in order to put a hand into the guitar and push the peg from underneath… still not going anywhere. Finally got it out with Joann pushing it from below while I worked on levering it carefully with a wrench. Did that again for the A string next to it. While I might have had better leverage if I’d had a string winder with a peg puller, these bass pegs were a lot thicker than 6-string guitar pegs, and I’d read that it may not have fit.

I moved on to putting on the new E string, but now the peg kept popping up as I tuned it up :-(

I went back to the web (I had shut down everything while a thunderstorm came through) and found a very helpful video, in which at 1:30 the presenter describes the correct way to mount the string with the bridge peg – basically put the string’s ball end into the hole, put the peg in loosely, then pull up on the string so that the ball is not under the end of the peg, but higher up on the side of the peg. The peg then keeps the ball from being able to exit the hole both are in, but the string ball is not pulling up on the peg itself.

And then my mind reversed this information: to remove the peg, I should not be trying to pull up the string… I should try to push the string down so that the peg is not running up against the ball as I try to pull it up!

Once I had this epiphany I was able to remove the remaining two strings’ pegs by myself with little difficulty!

Perhaps there are instructions somewhere that detail this trick, but none of the ones I found gave any time to removing the old strings – though I suspect that this is not as much of an issue for regular guitars, whose strings and pegs are both much thinner than those of my acoustic bass guitar.