Do It Yourself: Ambidexterity - Part III

Okay, ambidexterity is so last year. That was just a warm up to the mental decathlon this is quickly becoming. If you're just joining in, check out Part I and Part II to get all caught up.

Suffice it to say, I have now become a functionally ambidextrous person with respect to writing. But while teaching myself to write with my left hand, I became more and more enamored with the idea of training both hemispheres of the brain to do things far beyond "normal" by breaking down and reassembling the very way we naturally processes information.

When it comes down to it, what I really decided to do was to reinterpret the characters of the English alphabet as objects, not as symbols. Allow me to explain. If you see the letter "l" put on its side, it's a hyphen. If you see it at an angle, it becomes a backslash. The orientation of this symbol determines its meaning. But if you see a tree from the sky, or from the ground, from in front or from back, it will always be a tree. Written English demands that you read it with the proper orientation to give its 26 symbols the proper meaning. For whatever reason, I decided to train myself to learn to write independent of fixed orientation, and here are the results:


First came my right hand writing my control phrase. Then writing the same phrase upside down. Not to be outdone, I performed the same feat with my left hand. Then came the real brain twister. The circular writing test began with me starting in the center, and writing outwards in a spiral without altering my hand position in any way, and without rotating the paper. The test was to be able to write each letter correctly with a constantly shifting orientation (and while keeping the spiral reasonably circular). Give it a try for yourself, it's much more difficult than you'd imagine. The finale, of course, was in being able to reproduce the spiral with my non-dominant left hand... again without changing the relative angle of my wrist to the paper, and keeping the paper stationary (pun intended). Once you wrap your mind around what is essentially mental spatial rotation of the letters, you'll be surprised how easy it is to perform simple tasks like writing upside down. Next on the list of potential challenges, mirror cursive. That one could prove difficult...

DIY: Camera Holster

Anyone who ever uses two DSLR's at the same time knows that figuring out a good way to stow that second camera is a challenge. I've scoured the internet, and found a few good ideas, from actual gun style holsters, hip bags, body sling mounts, and special straps. Some kind of cool, some ridiculously goofy. After a bit of thinking though, I realized that I could probably just as easily buy a few parts and pave my own way, DIY style.

My epiphany came when i realized that there already existed the perfect connecting mechanism for camera bodies... tripod base plates. So after a little research, I was lead to the Manfrotto 323 RC2 Rapid Connect Adapter with 200PL-14 Quick Release Plate. This crazy invention has it all, a quick locking mechanism so that you can snap the camera onto the tripod quickly, and a safety latch to keep you from accidentally unhooking your camera.


The main problem to overcome, was how to adapt this to a vertically oriented belt attachment. My particular solution to this was pretty simple. I bought an old leather belt from the Goodwill Store down the street, cut it up and put a screw through the belt and into the base. There's already a screw hole there that you're supposed to use when attaching to a tripod, so the only real issue was finding a short screw that fit the threads. All done, I was left with my new holster with a leather loop for my belt.


Provided that the leather doesn't rip (it's pretty thick), there's very little chance of this thing falling apart. And it's not like the camera's going to rotate around the mount enough times to unscrew itself.

And some more pictures of my new holster in action.


Notice the latch next to my thumb. It's really easy to reach, and perfect for keeping me from dropping/breaking the camera.


In the end, this project was an exercise in compromise. The only way to fully protect a camera is to put in in a case, but cases are bulky. The setup allows a little bit more movement than I'd have liked, but again, anything that would stabilize the camera to my hip would also require a more elaborate rigid framework. All in all, this setup hit enough pros to outweigh the cons.


[UPDATED 09.23.09] So... after a bit of thought, I figured I didn't want to hang (potentially) $5000 worth of gear off this contraption without a bit more reinforcement. I just completed version 2.0 of the Camera Holster. The main addition: a steel plate on the inside. Seeing as it is now physically impossible for the screw head to rip out of the holes in the leather... the only way for everything to fall apart is if both leather straps rip through sideways. I consider the odds of that happening slim, and even if it does, I'll be able to see the rips in progress before things go south... literally. Here's the updated, sleeker, model:

Do It Yourself: Ambidexterity - Part II

Well, it's been seven months since I set out to teach myself to be ambidextrous. Check out the beginning of my experiment in Part I. During my months of mind and body hacking, I've endeavored to write with my left hand as much as I can remember to. Most of it ended up being during work while waiting for particularly large Photoshop Documents to save (30 minutes for a 4 gig file. Ouch).

But all my hard work has paid off. I can now write comfortably with my non-dominant hand, and legibly as well! At my current level of muscle memory, I can write with my left hand just as quickly with my right with only moderate legibility issues. But if I slow down to about 75% of my right hand's speed, I can make my left handwriting nearly indistinguishable from that of my right. Behold the fruits of my labor:


What you're looking at is one line written by my dominant right hand, and the following four written with my left. It may not look like much improvement compared with that of my first post, but there is a marked increase in the speed with which I can write. As an added bonus, I discovered that I can write with both hands at the same time... which gets trippy when your hands move together most of the time, but cross t's and f's in opposite directions. My brain asplode!

DIY: Life without iTunes

Or perhaps as an alternate title: Kicking iTunes in the iBalls. It's been a long time coming, but I've finally decided to take the plunge and rid myself of the tyranny of Apple software, and with it, the inherent cookie cutter consumerism (read: digital communism) and DRM (digital rights management) restrictions.


Longtime readers may already be aware of my attempts to de-fruitify my iPod shuffle in a previous DIY article. It finally came time to take the battle from hardware to software.

Lets get the facts out of the way. iTunes does a great job of consolidating just about everything music related into one program and interface. But if you want total control of your own music, iTunes becomes more of a brushed steel dungeon than anything else. Perhaps the most unforgivable flaw in the software is its inordinate use of a system's resources to operate (at least, for those of us in the Windows world). When my desktop can run Crysis flawlessly at the highest resolution settings, which, amazingly, looks like this:


...yet still hangs up when scrolling through an iTunes playlist, I know that there's something seriously wrong. My theory? Apple de-optimizes their code for the Windows versions of iTunes. Jerks.

Which brings me to my criteria for what I looked for in an alternative. What I needed was efficient, clean, and customizable software that was light on the system demands. And behold, after much testing and experimentation, here are my picks for anyone wanting to follow down the path of liberation:

Foobar2000 - The Alternative Player

Foobar is an incredibly lightweight and heavily customizable program. And a quick google image search will yield some some outrageously cool downloadable themes. All the internal windows are modular components... so you could, in theory, have a viewer composed of 6 album art screens and nothing else (not that I'd recommend it). Even on my laptop, the program loads up in less than a second. And unlike iTunes, scrolling through playlists happens in real time (on snap!). As an added bonus, you can set your library to mirror your actual directory structure, which means that if you're neurotic about organization (like I am), you can reap the benefits of your OCD-ness from within the program itself. Nice.

Go download Foobar2000 for yourself already.

Windows Media Player - The Alternative Ripper

Really, why mess with success? WMP works just fine at ripping music CD's. And it's a simple matter to set your preferences to automatically tag the files the way you want them tagged. You get this step right, and you'll almost never have to go back and manually tag a track again.

Windows Explorer - The Alternative Tagger

But if you do find it necessary to get under the hood and input or delete some tags, you can use windows explorer to get the job done. Explorer in Vista is a dream when it comes to tag organization, but you can achieve the same result in XP as well. Just right click on the file, go to properties, then the summary tag. Not only can you view the tags, you can edit them as well. If you're looking for a third option, just load up your library from within Foobar itself and right click the song to edit it properties. From there, you should be able to both view and edit your tags.

Amazon.com - The Alternative MP3 Store

People use the iTunes store because it's convenient. But even if you're mostly against buying DRMed content, you can slip up now and again and buy a few tracks here and there. And before you know it, you've salted your music library with tracks that can't be moved, shared, and sometimes, burned (yes, even the brute force burning of DRM files sometimes fails for no reason under iTunes). Really, you should be buying CD's in the first place and ripping them at a high quality, but if you're not much for the "going outside thing," shop at Amazon. DRM free content rocks (and all the cool kids are doing it).

SharePod - The Alternative iPod Loader

So now that you've got your player and library set up, the final program you need is SharePod (Windows only). This free and tiny program can actually be stored on your iPod. Just plug it in, load the program, and you've got a mobile solution for loading files to your iPod. As a bonus, you can actually pull songs off the iPod as well... (a huge limitation when using iTunes). SharePod and Foobar2000 are also fully compatible. You can have both open and just drag and drop from your playlist onto SharePod. You'll be loaded up and good to go in seconds. You should probably download SharePod immediately.

With the addition of these two programs and a bit of effort, I have created a more truly portable music library than I've had in years. I can literally copy both programs and my music onto a USB key, and set up shop on any computer, anywhere I go (in a legal way, of course). No DRM to worry about, and no completely wonky library on reload.


Breathe deep readers. That's the smell of digital freedom.

Do It Yourself: Ambidexterity - Part I

I don't believe that I was born truly ambidextrous. There was never a time when my left hand was more dominant than my right. But still, I've been mildly surprised by how quickly I've been able to train my non-dominant hand when necessary. Even if I'm not naturally ambidextrous, I think both-handed activities like playing guitar, typing (at past 100 wpm), and Ultimate Frisbee (though the left-handed hammer took a lot of work) have to indicate at least some potential aptitude for using my left hand..

So in the end, it may be only learned ambidexterity, but even at that, I'm more than willing to put in a little effort to achieve that goal... which is really how this particular DIY project got started. (I suppose this post could also be categorized more specifically under "Body Hacks," but I'm sticking it under the DIY heading for now)


As of September 19th, I started practicing writing with my left hand. Whenever I found myself with a free moment, I wrote the sentence, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" with my right hand as a point of comparison, then again with my left. The sentence is specific in that it contains every letter of the alphabet, thereby giving my left hand the full range of letters to practice on.

I set my rules to be open ended. I'm going to try and write the sentence at least once every day, but there is no upper limit to how many times I can practice it. From the rate of improvement I saw in just the first ten attempts, I'm hoping that my handwriting will indistinguishable between hands within a month or so. Stay tuned for an update in a week or so!

Random side note: Incidentally, one of the best parts of writing with both hands seems to be when I need to take notes on paper while working on a Wacom Tablet at work. Anyone who uses this setup (forgoing a mouse completely) will tell you that holding an ink pen and a Wacom pen in one hand and switching back and forth isn't the most fun thing to do (they seriously need to invent a Wacom pen that has an ink pen inside it and accessible via clicker). But I was having a blast taking notes with my left while using the Wacom pen in my right. Honestly, some of my co-workers thought I was insane. The ones who know me better, though, weren't really all that surprised.

DIY: Blog Design - Part II

As it turns out, after helping my buddy Stuart redesign his blog the other day, I found myself mightily depressed with the lackluster stock template I was still using on my own blog... as you can see here.


After browsing through all the other available templates, I declared: "I don't love these... seeya!" And resolutely set out to create something better for myself. I quickly realized that working on blog redesign was much more difficult without company. Partly due to the lack of feedback, and partly due to my general lack of HTML coding knowledge whatsoever, the task took much longer than I anticipated. You'd be amazed at how long it takes to filter out all the garbage and create a simple, minimalistic layout when you have little idea of what you're doing. Funny how that works.

The photo reference I used for the banner was from my archive of pictures. This one in particular was from when I was free diving in Bali, Indonesia with my Canon S80 and a Dicapac waterproof case. There were some scuba divers below me, so I dove down to about 25 feet, and one of them ascended to meet me halfway. We waved at each other in a somewhat goofy manner for a few seconds (what else can you do underwater?), before heading back to our original starting points. But on my way up, I snapped some pics of the air bubbles the scuba groups' tanks were giving off.


But back on point, you can see that I was finally able to wrangle the majority of my blog into it's current form. The whole thing definitely went kicking and screaming the whole way. But you know how it is. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

[Update I: The new animated favicon was a bit labor intensive. I had to create it in Photoshop with a very specific layer mask on the "wave" element, then I had to edit it in CS3's animation window, and once it was properly animated and timed stop-motion style, I exported it into a .gif. Then I had to upload it to my flickr account and direct link to that final url in the HTML of my blog. Yikes.

Update II: The animated favicon seems to only work in Firefox. And the question isn't why, but rather, why it should matter to anyone. If you're not already using Firefox, then you deserve to miss out on all this animated bliss.]

DIY: Blog Design

My friend and fellow blogger, Stuart Lock, was in desperate need of a redesign for his blog, Stuart's Train of Thought. His posts were great, but the layout was far too cluttered and visually confusing. In response, we found ourselves setting up his laptop at my home workstation and spending the better part of the day customizing and tweaking his site to create one more befitting his written content.

In line with my design ethic, we first tried to determine a particular mood before we settled on a color and layout schemes. But once we decided on his ideal, it became clear that we would need more than what was available through the standard blogger templates.


Thus began our DIY blogger day. I worked mainly in Photoshop, creating custom image content to fit the blog. At the same time, Stuart was working directly in HTML to modify the site to make space for the content I was creating for him (Though not crazy difficult, I will say, though, that the clean look of the final product involved far more work than you'd expect). Once our elements were placed, I took a screen capture of the new layout, brought it into Photoshop, and began color concepts.

Seeing as altering colors on the fly is much easier in Photoshop, we tested a number of color combinations in Photoshop before even attempting to implement them through the Blogger template controls. Once settled, we took the hex codes directly out of Photoshop's color picker and copied the values into the HTML to recreate the exact hues.

In the true spirit of DIY goodness, we disabled a number of undesirable layout elements on the base template we chose, and took photos from around my apartment to create the new header. The final step was to reorder the content to create a strong visual information hierarchy to subconsciously lead viewers to the primary content. Now, from the moment the blog loads up, it's clear what's important, what's new, and where to go to find old information.

All in all, I call it a very successful redesign. So... that's coming along.

DIY: Anzacs

I only recently realized that I there was one cookie (or biscuit, in this case) that I loved beyond all others: the Australian Anzac. I hadn't even thought of it in well over six years, due to living in a country where no one knows just what on earth it is. After searching high and low and in between for a retailer that sold them, it became clear that if I wanted to partake of Anzacs again, I would have to tackle it in true Do-It-Yourself fashion (which explains why a food entry, of all things, has been given the venerable DIY tag).

After much experimentation and internet research, along with helpful tips from my mate over in Perth, Australia, this is my alternate recipe. I say alternate because it's near impossible to find golden syrup here in the States.

Ingredients:

1/2 Cup of Flour
1/2 Cup of Sugar
1 Cup of Coconut Shavings
1 Cup of Rolled Oats (Quaker Oatmeal works just fine, just make sure it's not the instant kind)
3 Ounces of Butter
1/2 Tablespoon of Light Corn Syrup
1/2 Tablespoon of Honey
1/2 Teaspoon of Baking Soda
3 Tablespoons of Boiling Water


Instructions:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl (Flour, Sugar, Coconut Shavings, Rolled Oats)
2. Melt the butter, Light Corn Syrup, and Honey in a frying pan
3. Mix the Baking Soda into the Boiling water, then add that to the frying pan
4. Pour the contents of the pan into the bowl of dry ingredients and mix thoroughly
5. Divide the mix up into small balls and arrange them on a greased tray (I just used Pam non-stick spray)
6. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 10-15 minutes (individual ovens may vary)
7. After removing from oven, let cool, and eat
8. Start talking like an Australian for that authentic flair

DIY: Cell Phone & iPod Dock Version 2

I recently bought a new cell phone, an Asian market Samsung u100. It's thin, it's beautiful, and it doesn't do a whole lot more than make calls. It has to be the best phone for people who want to leave computing to their computers, and phone calls to their cell phones.


The best part about it? It's 5.9 millimeters thin (thinnest in the world currently) and so light that you forget its in your pocket. I think I'll love this phone forever... that is until they make one smaller. But there's a slight problem, what to do with my old DIY electronics dock? Well, it was a quiet Saturday, so I found myself sitting in my living room,tinkering around with the chest of Legos that I still have from early childhood.

The final result is a sleeker dock. It looks so happy.

From the side view, you can see the new hinge I added on the back. It swings closed to secure the phone charger plug when not in use for a much neater and organized look. It seems there's little you can't do with Legos. Except maybe eat them. And even there I'm not so sure

DIY: iPod Shuffle

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I have a serious problem with Apple products. As a general rule, I steer clear of them, and I advise most people I meet to do likewise. And don't even get me started on the actual reason why, that's another rant for another post.

Yet, in the face of my general disdain of all things Apple, I did break my own rule and buy an iPod Shuffle. My rationalization is that of all their products, it is the least Apple-y of all of them. There is no Mac OS to deal with, no Mac software interface, nothing. It's just the smallest, most stripped down portable music player I could find, and I was satisfied with the purchase because of my targeted consumer ethic: "know what you need... get what you need."

Still, even after all that, the Shuffle bothered me on a purely aesthetic level. What is it with Apple's dislike of anything black? I've noticed that Apple products only employ black as an absolute last resort... and if it's one thing I love, it's matching the look of all the things I buy. Call it electronic cross-accessorizing. Honestly, if you had the choice, wouldn't you want everything to match?

So began my quest. First I looked for a skin or case for my silver Shuffle. I didn't find anything that I liked. I had to take more drastic measures, so I set out to actually give my Shuffle a custom paint job. After looking up some how-to's online, I proceeded to take my Shuffle apart.



It took a bit of doing, but the side strips came off without a hitch. Those screws, though, they were ridiculously tiny. If you don't have a jeweler's screwdriver, you'll find the unscrewing part a little tricky.



I finally got the entire thing out of the casing, and I was ecstatic. It was then that I realized two things. Firstly, that it would be easier to spray paint the thing if it were all back together again... and secondly, that it still wasn't a total waste of time to have done it. You see, I learned that underneath the control ring is an elastic membrane that seals the buttons off from the actual circuit board underneath. That was crucial to know, because it would mean that any overspray into the cracks wouldn't drip onto any of the internal circuitry. Armed with that knowledge, I painstakingly put the whole thing back together.

Spray painting the darned thing was a trial and error process. If you try it yourself, here's a tip, spray the inside of the clip first. Anyway, after three coats of semi-gloss black and one coat of clear gloss enamel, I was ready to start customizing.

I toyed with different ways of transferring a floral motif onto the black, but considering the difficulties that come with the tiny scale, I decided to go with the most low tech approach: x-acto knife.


After hours of eye-straining detail work, I finally carved away enough of the spray paint to reveal the floral motif made of the original silver of the case. Since there was no way to use the pattern I had created in Photoshop, I had to eyeball and freehand it. Here's a shot of the finished product.



Once I was finished carving, I applied one last top coat of clear enamle to prevent any of the designs from scratching off. To top it off, I got a pair of noise-blocking V-Mode Vibe earbuds in gunmetal black, and now the entire package is customized exactly to my liking. The added perk: that pesky Apple logo is now effectively covered on the back of the clip.

The hardest part, really, is covering up the necessary faces as you spray. I also found that clipping the entire Shuffle to a chopstick was the easiest way to not touch the casing as it dried. Beyond that, all you really need are a couple cans of spray paint, a touch of OCD, and a moderate investment of time. I'd like to say that I'm going to keep customizing Apple products, but I seriously doubt that I'll ever purchase any more of them to begin with. The only reason I decided to go ahead with this case mod was because I was half okay with the idea of breaking it in the first place. But things turned out well enough, and now I've got a killer MP3 player/conversation piece.

DIY: Cell Phone & iPod Dock

I am a firm believer of order and structure. Add one part DIY and two parts Legos, and you get the DIY electronics dock. Really, this was just me sitting around one day thinking that it'd be nice to have an actual place to put my electronics when I get home from work. Ten minutes later, I had lugged out my chest of Legos (I keep telling myself that I'm going to give it to my kids one day, but who am I kidding... I need little goading to bust them out again), and two hours later, I had made this:


It's nothing particularly special, just a sleek designated area for my stuff to go. The left side is for my cell. It's actually very practical considering that when I plug it in, it's facing me like a clock (I don't have one in my room). The right side is just a glorified mount for my newly modded shuffle. Nothing to it! Never underestimate the power of Legos.

DIY: Monitor Stand

Back when I was in college, I was using a 17" MAG LCD as my primary display. It's crazy to think that I actually did design work on that thing, but I did. Once I started working outside of college, I upgraded to a 24" Widescreen Dell. Best monitor for the money I've ever worked on.

Not being one to waste anything, I tried to figure out how to best integrate my old monitor into my new work flow. Very quickly, I realized that the width of my 17" was just a tiny bit more than the height of my 24". If I could just turn my secondary monitor on its side, I'd increase my horizontal screen space significantly. There was just one problem, the MAG was so old as to not have wall mount brackets on the back panel.

The solution? Do it yourself. As always. Step one. Find some particle board. I got mine at Home Depot. You can see the whole piece here, barely fitting in the trunk of my car.


I drove it on over to a place with power tools, and proceeded to cut the shapes out. And the result:


After I sanded the pieces down, drilled some holes and fastened the two pieces together with butterfly hinges. Then, I took them out to my balcony for some painting. I used a matte finish black spray paint that worked beautifully on sanded particle board. The whole thing dried to touch in about ten minutes.



Once the paint was completely dry (I gave it another day for good measure), I brought it back in and set it up next to my primary monitor.


In actuality, the monitor stand is a very simple design. It's nothing more than a large picture frame holder... the kind that folds up into a basic "L" shape. The monitor itself rests against the inside of the bracing, and tilts backwards at about five degrees. The MAG is so back heavy that it's nearly impossible for it to fall forward out of its cradle. Firing it up for the first time warmed my heart considerably. The visual real estate was a sight to see. I ended up downloading UltraMon to help control both display orientations correctly, but the overall setup was relatively simple. Here's a look at my final setup.