You are weird.

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Make It Modern: DIY Copper Geometric Pendant Lamp

I’ve been swooning over all the copper fixtures I’ve seen recently, but each one I fall for ends up being out of my price range, so I decided to give it a go and make my own. It seemed simple at first, but like any good DIY, there was a whole lot of troubleshooting to get it looking clean and professional. Fortunately, I’ve worked out all the kinks for you! The end result was well worth it. It’s a relaxing touch of café style and warmth in my otherwise cool dining room – perfect for enjoying a quiet cup of coffee to start the day.

You’ll need:

Supplies + Tools:

- 8 x straight 2′ lengths of 1/4″ diameter soft cut copper pipe

- 2 x 1.5″ diameter metal O-ring (I used brass since I like a mixed-metal look, but if you can’t find the color you want, there’s always spray paint or enamel)

- 16 x 1¾” cotter pins

- a cord set like this one

- a pen

- C-clamp

- a ruler or T-square

- needlenose pliers

- a flathead screwdriver (optional, but helpful)

- a hot glue gun and glue (also optional, but helpful)

A quick note on working with soft-cut copper:

Soft-cut copper bends very easily, which means it’s probably not going to be super-straight when you get it. If you want it straightened out before beginning the project, roll the way you would a clay coil: Start with your hands at the center and slowly roll the copper pipe while moving your hands outward. When it’s mostly straight and even, line it up along a straight-edged ruler and carefully make any other minor adjustments.

Step 1: Firmly clamp one of the metal O-rings to a flat surface. On a length of copper pipe, use your pen to mark 9″. Rest the pipe on top of the O-ring, lining up the mark so it sits at the top of the ring. Starting at one end and working your way around, carefully form the copper around the ring until one end of the tube lines up with the other end, in a right triangle (see image below). Be careful to not to “bend” in any one area – it can kink the pipe.

Step 2: Repeat Step 1 with each length of copper. Use the first formed piece as a guide. You want to make sure they’re all the same size and shape. When you’ve bent every length of copper, measure and make any necessary adjustments.

Step 3: Open one end of a cotter pin, using a screwdriver as a wedge if you need. Push the metal ring into the cotter pin. To get it all the way on, I found it easiest to pull the ring with one hand while pulling the pin with the pliers. If the cotter pin stays open, just pinch it shut with your pliers. Repeat until each ring has 8 cotter pins.

Step 4: Insert the end of a cotter pin into the shorter end of the pipe. Make sure it’s as far in as it can go. Repeat with each pipe.

Step 5: Repeat Step 4 with the other metal ring and cotter pins, this time on the top end of the pipes. Space the pipes evenly. If things aren’t standing quite the way you want, a little hot glue in the loop of each cotter pin should hold them in place!

Step 6: Thread the lighting kit through the top ring, and hang.

I’m thinking about making another and hanging them as a set – they’d look great over a kitchen island. For a real statement, adding more copper pipes would throw bold, dramatic shadows through the room. Have fun and let us know what you try!

via Make It Modern: DIY Copper Geometric Pendant Lamp

Happy Bouguereau Birthday To David Tennant

Billy Piper and David Tennant in 10 and Rose Angel by Fran Glass. Click for full image.

Scottish actor David Tennant [wiki], born 18 April 1971 and 42 years old today, is probably best known for his role as the tenth incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who. In this show, the Doctor is a mysterious, humanoid alien who travels through time and space with his companions, one of whom is Rose Tyler. Tennant left the series in January 2010. The role of Rose Tyler was played by actress Billie Piper. The image above, created by Fran Glass, depicts 10 (which could stand for Doctor #10 or be the abbreviation of Tennant) and Rose as angels and lovers, forever inseparable.

The picture is based on Bouguereau’s famous 1895 work Le Ravissement de Psyche (The Rapture of Psyche). Below are the original painting and the one created by Fran Glass. Click the first to visit the gallery where you will find dozens more remastered versions of Bouguereau’s work. Click the second to visit the website where you will find several wallpaper-sized variations of the picture.

via Happy Bouguereau Birthday To David Tennant

Black Creek man charged in Koch cyberattack

A Wisconsin man accused of joining a cyberattack on Koch Industries has been prohibited from communicating with the computer hacker group Anonymous while out on bond.



via Black Creek man charged in Koch cyberattack

Authorization

via Authorization

Acts of kindness rarely make the news.

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Tax Day Repurposed To "Illuminate" Corporate Tax Evaders

via Tax Day Repurposed To "Illuminate" Corporate Tax Evaders

Bingham Landslide

[Image: Photo by Ravell Call, Deseret News, courtesy of KSL].



Utah's Bingham Canyon Mine, one of the largest active copper mines in the world, had a massive landslide last night, which makes for quite an extraordinary coppery blur against the orderly terraced geometry of the hole itself.



[Images: Photos by Ravell Call, Deseret News, courtesy of KSL].



"The copper-mining company [Kennecott] was aware of the impending slide ," local news station KSL reports, "and had warned residents near the mine Wednesday that a slide was possible any day."

Kennecott engineers had been detecting ground movement as far back as February. At the time, the movement amounted to just fractions of an inch, but it was enough for the company to close and relocate the mine's visitors center. "This is something that we had anticipated," [a company spokesperson] said of the slide. "We knew the slide was imminent. We had relocated machinery, we had rerouted roads, we had rerouted utilities, we had rerouted buildings."

But the ground had faster plans, and it rerouted the roads itself.



[Image: Photo by Ravell Call, Deseret News, courtesy of KSL].



Oddly enough, the Bingham Pit, as it's colloquially known, was the subject of one of the earliest posts on BLDGBLOG, as well as a recurring site of visual investigation in the work of photographer David Maisel. "These sites are the contemplative gardens of our time," Maisel writes, "places that offer the opportunity to reflect on who and what we are collectively, as a society."



It is an absolutely amazing landform perhaps made all the more otherworldly by the Herculean levels of terrestrial obliteration its creation required: planetary resurfacing performed on a jaw-dropping scale.



[Image: An aerial photo of the Bingham Canyon Mine, Utah, by David Maisel].



Last night's landslide only adds to its terrestrial interest, giving us hints of what fate might ultimately befall all the many mines, flattened mountains, hydroelectric dams, and other gigantic acts of human industry—open wounds, lasting far longer than cities—that currently surround us.



[Image: Photo by Ravell Call, Deseret News, courtesy of KSL].



After all, even our deepest mines will erase themselves, buried in flash floods of rock, carrying nearby architecture, roads, and all memories of themselves along with them.



(Bingham landslide photos originally spotted via Chris Rowan).



via Bingham Landslide

JPEGS: J Hooks with Handy Pegs

Leave it to Thabto to come up with a quirky name like Jpegs for these J-hooks.

Inspired by the classic wooden clothes peg, these hooks can manage just about anything from your keys to coats and bags and also wrangle your mail at the same time. Or, stick a love note in the clothes pin. Or lunch money!

Pop a photo of the hook’s owner to help keep your family’s things organized and separated.

Each Jpeg also come with powerful magnets so you can put them on your fridge to use for kids’ drawings or notes, and also hang a potholder or apron. There are tons of uses for these!

via JPEGS: J Hooks with Handy Pegs

All Adobe Updates

via fever.lobath.com’s Saved Items http://xkcd.com/1197/

Snowy Street

Snowy Street
Originally uploaded by durgis

First post with my new D3100!

Google Reader Pentadactyl Passkeys

To pass useful keyboard shortcuts to Google Reader through Pentadactyl.

The first command sets the passkeys property and takes a url, and list of keys.
The second command stores the options to your rc file, overwriting if necessary.

:set passkeys+='https://www\.google\.com/reader':nplmsSt
:mkp!

Properly Removing HTC News and Stocks

This article explains how to properly remove the HTC News and Stocks item from a HTC Desire without causing the Sync Accounts to be messed up. This is a fairly advanced topic, and should not be done without reading this entire article. No warranty of any kind is provided with these instructions, any consequences of you following these directions are yours to bear.

You will need the following tools:

1. A rooted HTC Desire, or maybe another HTC android device.
2. ADB, and some knowledge of a linux shell.
3. SQLite3, and some knowledge of SQL.
4. Text editor (vim, etc)

Shut down the phone and reboot into recovery mode.

Open a shell, and use ADB to pull the following files.

/data/system/accounts.db

/data/system/sync/accounts.xml

Open accounts.xml in a text editor and remove the News and Stocks entries.

...

Save the file and exit.

Open the sqlite database accounts.db and remove the News and Stocks entries from the accounts table.

sqlite> select * from accounts;
1|News|com.htc.newsreader|
2|Weather|com.htc.sync.provider.weather|
3|Stocks|com.htc.android.Stock|
sqlite> delete from accounts where _id = 1;
sqlite> delete from accounts where _id = 3;

You can also clear the authtokens, grants, and extras tables of related entries. The following is an example of clearing the authtokens table with the accounts_ids from above.

sqlite> delete from authtokens where accounts_id in (1,3);

Exit from SQLite.

Remove the following files from the /system/app directory.
Note: this list also includes the Footprints application.

DCSStock.apk
DCSStock.odex
Stock.apk
Stock.odex
com.htc.StockWidget.apk
com.htc.StockWidget.odex

NewsReader.apk
NewsReader.odex
com.htc.NewsReaderWidget.apk

com.htc.NewsReaderWidget.odex

HtcFootprints.apk
HtcFootprints.odex
HtcFootprintsWidget.apk
HtcFootprintsWidget.odex

Exit the ADB shell and click "reboot" on the phone.

DD

DD
Originally uploaded by durgis

Fishing Dart Weekend

Fishing Dart Weekend
Originally uploaded by durgis

Finally got the pictures from the fishing trip we went on during the extended weekend in the 'North Woods'.

Windows XP IIS SMTP Relay Setup

Install IIS from Windows component installer

Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Internet Information Services

(local computer) -> Default SMTP Virtual Server -> Domains

Right Click on Domains -> New -> Domain...

Select Remote, Next

Enter domain name (eg, google.com), Next

Right click on new domain name -> Properties

Check 'Allow incoming mail to be relayed to this domain'

Route Domain: Select 'Use DNS to route to this domain'

DD

DD
Originally uploaded by durgis