Thin Line Chair

Cardboard chair i'm working on...

sum mor 2to3 chares

2to3 Chairs

Below are three of the "2to3" chairs that the students designed and built for their second project in furniture design. These chairs are named "2to3" because they are designed for 2 to 3 year olds and because the program requires that the students build the chair out of a flat sheet of plywood - hence 2 dimension to three dimension.

WE DID IT!!!!!!!!!!

Let's Go OBAMA!!!!!!!

I voted today and LOVED filling in that oval! Tomorrow I will cry from sadness if John McCain wins, and cry with joy if Obama does. I am so ready for the idiot republicans to be shown the door.

Religulous

I saw 'Religulous' on Sunday night - was seeing this film on a sunday blasphemous - can a heathen be blasphemous? I thought it was interesting (and perhaps ironic?) that there were only 5 other people in my theater but there was a packed house for "Saw V (or IV or VI - couldn't tell you)", a horror film of some sort. This is not a scientific sampling of interest for these films but something that peeks my curiosity none the less - more people wanted to see blood and guts and sawing people into little pieces than wanted to listen to a skeptics documentary on religious faith. "Religulous" is definitely worth seeing - scary, but in a different way than "Saw V".

And speaking of angels - I went to Los Angeles last Thursday through Sunday. This is a strange place. Urban? This place redefines the term. You cannot go anywhere unless you are in a car - I really felt as though I had been transported into a Chips episode or an episode of Charlie's Angels (Emilie's been into these lately) but the scenery had simply aged thirty years. L.A. is a place that seems impossible to pin down - it really is an accumulation of everything, all sandwiched into one big sprawling mess - you're sort of forced to love it. It begins to fall into the 'so bad it's good' class of phenomenon.

We've finished up our "2to3" chairs for my furniture class. I'll show some pictures of those soon.

New York Times Endorsement

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/opinion/24fri1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Great article about the New York Times' endorsement of Barack Obama for president. I will be so sad and depressed if "the other one" gets elected.

12 days and counting...

Red and Blue Quartered Chairs

Big Ben in Blue

Quartered Chair Blue

And...Quartered Chair Blue says hello.

Quartered Chair Red

Presenting "Quartered Chair Red". QC Blue coming soon. And for those of you thinking "how long has he been working on this damn chair?" - good question, I think around 9 months, and yes - it took me to the brink of insanity. Next up - "Peel Chair no. 1".

National Debt

Interesting piece on the national debt and the growth during the years the 'neo-conservatives'have been in office. This is the chart if you don't feel like reading the article:


George Bush is the worst thing that could have happened to this country - what a boneheaded republican hack.

75

I shot a 75 today! with two birdies...I threatened a par round all day, was 1 over after nine and had a nice string of pars on the back. I feel like a par round is in my future...

79

I shot a 79 today with three birdies!! I'm pumped.

Tiny Houses

Check these out!

http://www.designboom.com/contemporary/tiny_houses.html

Napolean Dynamite

We were at a party the other night and met two people who are from Preston, Idaho (the home of Napolean Dynamite). After some discussion with them we found at that one of them grew up in the house that was used as Napolean's house (from the exterior - the interior is apparently a bit different).

Obama-Biden

A good Newsweek article about Joe Biden.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/154863/page/1

I've always liked Biden - though he does occasionally talk too much as has been written about in length. Obama is a smart cookie, makes wise decisions - I hope Americans don't blow this one.

One Good Chair (just not mine)

Found out today that the 'Quartered Chair' didn't get selected in the One Good Chair competition. The following is a link to the winning entries - some good stuff.

http://www.onegoodchair.com/competition/winners/

On a positive note I found out that an abstract that I submitted to the 'Material Matters' regional Fall conference was selected for presentation. I need at least two of these a year to be on par. The paper is about the evolution of cultural registers from the material to the immaterial.

Barack Obama

The following is a great op-ed piece written by Barack Obama.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/14/opinion/14obama.html

I hope the American people make a better, more informed, choice in the coming general election and don't fall for the 'McCain is more centrist than Bush' rhetoric.

Quartered Chair

Competition boards for the "Quartered Chair".

Procrastination

Well, it's almost 10pm here and I just installed a new flat-screen monitor for my laptop-turned desktop (LCD issues on the laptop made this a necessity). I can't be too angry at the laptop as it got me through graduate school. I have been battling with some programs on my school laptop because of Vista - I do believe my next computer is going to be a Mac.

Truthfully - I am procrastinating right now...am supposed to be working on a paper to be delivered (not by me) in Nancy, France and on a digital model of the Quartered Chair for a competition I am entering it in. I made the unfortunate mistake of overbooking myself this summer - but I would probably not know what to do if I had tried to take it easy.

I have gotten a little golf in over the past few weeks - I really stink these days - mid 90's with 100 not out of the question seems to be my new scoring average. I used to shoot in the mid to low 80's - I think.

Topher is playing baseball - about to be in two leagues simultaneously - that is what I call fun; I hope / think he feels the same way. Benny is adorable still - will be playing baseball later in the summer I believe.

I better get to work...can't avoid it any longer.

Summer News

I found out a couple of weeks ago that I won the "Outstanding Faculty Award" - I didn't even realize it existed until they called my name for it. What makes me the happiest is that it is voted on by the student body - i'm glad they like me at least a little bit.

I am teaching a summer course and working on summer research with two RAs that i've hired for the summer. I also found out that I was awarded a grant from the Sustainable Idaho Initiative - small but will help with some summer work and travel. I have somehow alotted myself as much or more summer work than what I had during the semester. Someday before I die I hope to have summers off again - it's only human.

This Fall should be fun, eventful, and somewhat intense. I will be teaching the Furniture Design class and a 4th year studio. The studio project will be a carbon-neutral living facility for the McCall Field Campus. If things go well and the project gets funded we will be building it during the summer of 2009. I am also doing a directed study for a project involving an analysis of the FEMA Trailer and its use after Hurricane Katrina - am working on this with one student.

Other than that a little golf and a lot of baseball and soccer with my boys.

Cardboard Furniture Publication

Just found out that some of our cardboard furniture from last semester's furniture class was published in "Treehugger.com" - check it out at http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/05/recycled-cardboard-chairs-student-designers.php

Other than that not much news - preparing for summer studio and summer research project.

Oh - and I played golf at the university course the other day; very beautiful course. I've been invited to play sunday in a scramble - fun!

Grant

A partner an I at the university found out recently that we got a 10k grant. That will pay for an RA for the summer and help with my summer salary.

Offspring

I'm still working on the "Quartered Chair" - am now on no. 2. No. 1 was a little too big for Benny and I couldn't find 4'X4' 3/8" Baltic Birch plywood anywhere. This new chair is smaller and allows me to build 4 chairs out of 1, 5'X5' sheet!! That saves money and makes more sense in terms of the minimization of waste. The wood for each chair costs $11 and the bolts are in the $10 range; so $21/Chair - not bad. I am trying to have this ready for the Idaho Chair Affair in mid-April, we'll see - I have so much else to do that I don't get many opportunities to work on it.

In other news, i've been playing pick-up basketball games at the gym every night and on wednesdays I play intramural basketball and ultimate frisbee with the architecture student group. I played ultimate frisbee for the first time last wednesday and had all kinds of fun. I have never been able to get into running or biking as a means of workout - I have to play a sport of some sort to stay in shape.

Quartered Chair

These are pictures of a scale model of the "Quartered Chair". It is a 'low back' kid's chair for Benny and Topher. The chair itself is constructed in a game like fashion with the following rules:
1. Must be able to be cut out of a flat sheet on the CNC machine
2. Must minimize waste on that flat sheet
3. Must minimize bolts used (no glue allowed)
4. Must be able to assemble in 15-20 minutes
The bottom picture shows how the design was dependent upon fitting all of the pieces into a flat sheet of baltic birch plywood. The cost per chair when it's all said and done is relatively low ($25 or so per chair). I am thinking of giving the 'chair game' mentioned above to my furniture students next fall for their first assignment.

Today I am developing an exam for my 'Architectural Programming' class - fun stuff. Maybe a movie tonight - I saw "There Will be Blood" a couple of weeks ago and loved it. Emilie and I are going through a Daniel Day Lewis NetFlix phase; we do that sort of thing.

Chair Exhibit

This is a poster showing the chairs that the students in my Furniture Design and Construction class designed and built. There is a show of the chairs currently (until the end of the semester) in the University Library. The original poster is in color but the upload was coming in with very blue tones so I posted in bw instead.