Monthly Archives: May 2010

In todays words from the digital man cave, I’m talking about those hallowed aisles filled with just about everything a guy could ask for…

I’m talking about Home Depot.

Home Depot is to men who like working with their hands, what Nordstroms Rack is to women who like to shop. It’s awesome. And they have everything you didn’t know you wanted. I took a little trip to shop parts for my little project…

And I found that there were many more choices for materials than I previously thought. You’d be surprised how difficult it can be to find a box of tiny nails in a place with shelves higher than most ceilings. Well maybe you wouldn’t be surprised but by the time I build my real man cave the number of choices will probably be insane.

In any case my original thoughts were to purchase plywood for the first prototype. I have found out that plywood can be  composed of a variety of woods, and in a variety of ways. For the prototype, Pine or White Pine plywood that is 1in in width (thickness) will get the job done. It’ll be mostly for show and a little bit for demonstration. As for hinges, small cabinet hinges will do the trick. Something awesomely classy, and cheap  like a Venetian Bronze Self Closing Overlay Hinge. I don’t even know what that means but it has the classy yet durable look that all self-respecting man cave enthusiasts should go for.

All told there should be about 13 wooden pieces (3 are doors) to the construction, 6 hinges (for the doors), and 3 small knobs or finger hooks of some sort (to open… you get the idea). Assuming you have a saw of some sort and a place to cut wood, parts for this project prototype SHOULD cost under $50, not including wheels. Wheel decision making, cost, and placement come later. In fact it could cost under $30 depending on the wood purchased.

Stay tuned for more words from the digital man cave as I go further into the process.

Todays words from the digital man cave can be summed up with SLR.

It’s the abbreviation for a class of camera, the single-lens reflex. But I think of it as Sanity, Love, Reason. Three things that often do not belong in the same in the sentence, unless they’re following a very careful arrangement.

So what is love? A motivation to do more in life? A strong feeling? A complex chemical reaction? A justification for someone making a plan for insanity?

I know it’s many things. In fact it’s all of those things. It is the eye of an emotional storm that is capable of wiping sanity and reason right off the map. And it is often the delicious nougat at the center of life’s 3 Musketeers.

What do I know of love? I’m a young guy, who can only afford a digital man cave,  so you might be wondering if I’m at all qualified to speak on… well anything really. To me love is about taking big chances, doing some things on faith, and choosing the preservation of another over the preservation of self. If love is those things, then I know much about it. And absolutely nothing at all.

Of all the things man is capable of, I do not believe understanding love is one of them. There are some things that are just meant to keep us staring up into the sky.

So I say, to those caught up in love,
I salute you.

Stay tuned for more words from the digital man cave…

Todays words from the digical man cave are about the mind. Life… is peculiar. I find myself thinking about the things we put ourselves through and the lives we try to lead and I've come to a conclusion. It's no coincidence that we have so many cases of reported mental illness and sooooooooooo many more unreported cases. And it's no small wonder that we don't have more.

I think the stress we're putting ourselves under is slowly driving us insane. You see it in little bursts and flashes. Person in school studying so hard and for so long that the littlest thing sets them off into a mixed up combination of rage, tears and incoherence. Person tries to do everything under the sun because they believe that they'll be the one to do find a way to succeed where others have failed. Eventually they burn out in a gloriously bright blaze (If this does happen to me, I"ll be sure to chronicle the explosion here at the digital man cave).

Person ignores and subverts their own desires for so long that, the hold they thought they had on reality slips into a place where having a conversation with yourself in your head while you're having a conversation with a physical person outside of your head becomes commonplace. Person works so many hours in a week for so long, that they go to work from sun-up to sundown, they begin to see work in their few leisure hours, they dream of being at work, then they wake and go to work. There is no escape from it, because every waking, breathing moment is composed of it, until they mentally check out for the majority of their day. Every day.

These are the types of lives we choose to lead.

And it's seen as normal. *shrug*

(more…)

Todays words from the digital man cave are about a tragedy that fell on a friend of mine recently. It got me thinking again about some of the things no one thinks about when they should be thinking about them… Anyway, her spouse passed in a fatal car crash. He probably would be here if he was wearing a seatbelt. But he wasn’t. And now he isn’t.

So I’ve been thinking about how whether we acknowledge it or not, most of us live like we’re invincible. It is a byproduct of that lovely thing called free will. We believe that we’ll always have time to do exactly what we want to do. And once we get reminded that there is so much out of our control it’s not even funny, we wonder why there isn’t more permanence built into something as precarious as life. Well the two are tied closely together. Our belief in our own invincibility, and the shortness of our own lives.

As odd as it sounds, mortality is the greatest motivator on earth. More powerful than desire, more powerful than fear. Tell someone they have to swim 5 miles straight to get something they really want, and you will probably get a mix of people who are willing. Tell someone they need to act to keep someone close to them safe, but first they have to walk across a tight rope, you will probably get a few more people who are willing.

But tell someone they have 24hrs to live and get their affairs in order, but they can’t do so until they walk across hot coals. Watch how fast they get to moving.

Life isn’t and can’t be more permanent than it is because on the whole, we’d never get things done. There are soooo many ways to be distracted that everything would play out at a much slower pace. That sounds kind of nice, but imagine trying to do anything that involved another person if there was no sense of urgency behind their actions. Even economically speaking, part of the push to make progress and be the first at everything is because time is precious. Time is money, and time is always always short. But what if it wasn’t? Would we be as creative? Would we be as passionate? Would we be as remarkable as we can be? You can have the free will and ability to do anything, but you only have a limited amount of time to do it. It is Humanity’s Bargain. Beyond that, there is the more philosophical question/problem of things losing their meaning if urgency is removed from our lives. But that is another topic for another day.

I guess what I’m trying to say is… we feel the sting and cruelty of life cut short, to remind us to be our most passionate and brilliant selves every day. And even when we accomplish that, we must still be reminded that though we may feel invincible because we have the right to choose how we live our lives, we are only players on a cosmic chess board. Eventually, whether we’re done playing or not, the game must come to an end.

In spite of this sobering revelation, my hat goes off to a passionate, creative, brilliant individual who lived life on his own terms and generally said “f*ck off” to any system that tried to hold him back.

One part world class chef, one part musician, one part engineer, one part family man; all together a man who will be missed. He would have fit in great here at the digital man cave.

Stay tuned for more words from the digital man cave…

image courtesy of Wikivisual

Todays words from the digital man cave are about our little pet project…

So last time we talked a bit about what would go into an amazing piece of luggage like what I talk about here. Now for a few notes about the construction.

Choosing the right materials is kind of a big deal. Whatever is chosen will serve as not only the backbone of the equipment, but it will also help set the style and expectations of it’s use.

So I’ve got this image of fabrics over there, but mainly what I’m talking about is wood. An all wood frame to begin this luggage. Wood is sturdy, wood is cheap, wood is trusted, wood is light, and wood is something even an amateur can work with. A metal shell is expensive, requires additional tools and training, and a lot more difficult to correct errors in, in my humble opinion. A thin plastic frame wouldn’t be durable enough, and a set of thick plastic would not be easily customized. A purely nylon or cotton blend wouldn’t offer the structure necessary. It’d be like going back to the duffel bag days and I just can’t do that. This digital man cave is focused on moving forward.

Now as for the type of wood… that part is going to have to be determined by some experimentation. Right now the order of the day is plywood, possibly with a hardwood face for style. Metal cabinet hinges and latches. The idea s to have as many solid pieces as we can, as opposed to alot of smaller pieces held together by wood glue and tiny nails.

After the first prototype (which will be test run exclusively here) I’ll update my stance on the whether something sturdier like maple or oak should be used.

Stay tuned for more words from the digital man cave…

Makes New York look fun

Todays words from the digital man cave are on another good movie in disguise.

The title of this post might be a bit misleading. On it’s own Definitely, Maybe is a good movie by traditional standards. It did good things for Ryan Reynolds career, it made money in the theaters, made money on dvd, and people liked it.

What I’m talking about is the fact that this movie is billed as a romantic comedy when really it works better as a sort of look at modern life/character piece. If this were a low budget indie flick, I wouldn’t even be making this distinction because people would see what I mean right away. Regardless this style of movie has really gained popularity in the last decade. People relate to the characters and the situations of their lives because of the reality of the situation and more importantly, their response to the situation.

You’ve got your average guy stuck in the middle of a divorce, trying to keep life moving forward with as little upset for his child’s life as possible. He recognizes that he can’t sugar coat reality, but he’s not quite ready to have his daughter be a full part of the complex process of divorce. The daughter being the inquisitive youngster that she is, wants to know how her parents met, since she’s currently seeing how they’re splitting up.

This is the setup for the romantic comedy. During the course of playing out this comedy, we get to experience the character piece through the very real life situations that come up along the way.The Guy takes a leap of faith to pursue his dreams, trying to maintain a relationship along the way, ultimately losing that due to the insecurities that come up when people are not following the same path in life. The Guy finds himself wondering “where did my life take a turn to put me here? what am i even doing here?”. After a few unserious attempts at love and a few that crash and burn, The Guy really hits rock bottom losing the few valuable pieces of his life that he had left. He doesn’t quite come out of it for himself, but more to repair a bridge that had long since burned down. If anybody needed a space to recenter and refocus it was this guy. Sadly, square footage is precious in new york, making a man cave a low priority.

Ryan Reynold’s character relates all of this to his daughter through a series of flashback stories. With the exception of hitting rock bottom, all this time he’s got the face of a man who’s got it together but a truly honest conversation would find him saying that he only looks happy. All of this is acted with skill, credibility, and realism. When he hits rock bottom, he lands in a pool of alcohol,  when he burns those bridges he uses a flamethrower. When he loses faith in what was a HUGE part of his life, you feel his pain. And when he finally tries to come back from it, things don’t get initially get wrapped up nice and easy, because that is the reality of human interaction. It’s unpredictable.

That’s kind of the way this movie was for me. I didn’t expect to see what I did in it. I actually thought I’d see much more of the Ryan Reynold’s sarcastic swagger and comedy come through his role. It took me by surprise in being a good character story disguised as a good romantic comedy.

Stay tuned for more words from the digital man cave…