Resuming the Secretary Desk Project

About 9 or 10 years ago, I read The Anarchist’s Tool Chest, and built a miniature version of one. not long thereafter, I read Campaign Furniture and became very excited about the idea of building a campaign secretary desk.

Look how cool that is! It comes apart into two pieces, there’s a lid to hide your messy work messes, and when the lid is closed, it’s slanted so you can’t stack your junk on it. Genius! I needed one!

So, I set out to build one. I had only vague goals in mind. The most important that It would be able to have two computer monitors on the inside, and the fall front should be about 30″ from the floor. Other than that, I’d pretty much figure it out as I went along. I decided to use pine, because nicer wood is expensive, and I tend to make a lot of mistakes. Plus, this thing is going to be freaking huge and heavy enough as it is, and pine is pretty light.

Anyways, I built about half of the top cabinet, and then I quickly forgot all about the project. The half-made desk sat gathering dust and clogging up my workshop for like 7 years.

Google decided to remind me about it

Now, there are other projects I want to get into, but this gigantic half-done desk and its attendant pile of lumber is taking up half of my shop. So, last week, I dusted off my saws and chisels and started cutting dovetails again.

I’m planning to put a couple of hours a week in the shop getting this thing done. Maybe I’ll post pictures and whatnot.

I’m fat and technology is dumb

Time:
6/21/2023, 6:32:2
Duration:
51:36
Ascent/Descent:
192 ft 192 ft
Distance:
5.62 M

Lately, I've been debating different methods to log and track various things. Keeping a log of bike rides and food and whatnot is kind of nice. I use Strava and MyFitnessPal, Garmin Connect, FitBod, etc. All of these things are nice, but the integration between them is terrible. I briefly flirted with FitTrackee, which I still want to love, but I feel it's a bit early in the development process to use regularly.

I want things to be open source and federated / decentralized / use ActivityPub / resist Elon, etc. I'm not sure I care enough to write my own software for this. I'm tempted to ditch the tech altogether and just keep a paper journal.

In the meanwhile, I'm back to good old WordPress. Trusty, reliable LAMP stack with enough plugins to kind-of, sort-of make things work. The mobile experience is kind of trash, but I'm in front of a desktop enough that maybe I don't care.

I am interested to see how this post looks on Mastodon. BTW, you can find me in various places on the Fediverse, mostly @adamplaystrombone@skastodon.com. You can also follow this WP blog directly at @akillian

Blues Improv in F

A little improvisational solo over the 12 bar blues in F

I record some of my practice sessions because it’s really hard to critique my own playing while I’m playing. In this clip, I’m trying to use the F minor pentatonic scale to spontaneously compose a melody. In the second chorus, I am trying to adapt the head to “Eastern Standard Time” by Don Drummond before returning to minor penatonic noodling.