DorkMatter.net

Yesterday the guy came to put the “For Sale” sign up on our window. It’s weird. I can’t wait to get out of Dundee but I really love our flat and don’t like the idea of leaving it.

Anyway, for the benefit of a certain nosy friend (you know who you are!) I thought I would post some photos of the flat before it’s too late. In order right to left: kitchen (2 pics), my office (2 pics), bathroom, bedroom, living room (2 pics).

My office looks weird now it’s been tidied up and I’ve taken all my pictures and posters down. When I tidied it I realised it was huge.

I’m not sure how long I can live with being this tidy so let’s hope it sells quickly!

Recently I’ve found I spend more and more time each day reading blogs. It’s a great distraction from normal work and I can call it research (almost). A few months ago I found Vienna. It’s a great alternative to using the browser to read feeds. I don’t tend to use Safari much and reading feeds in Firefox is pretty ropy in my opinion.

Some blogs I prefer more than others but it’s good to see different writing styles and reading other people’s blogs inspires me to write in my own. I really admire blogs that stick to one topic and I think I should probably take Dork Matter in that direction… if only I could find a topic I could stick to!

If you’re not familiar with HairCrazy.info and HairCrazy.com these are my main source of income. It’s a very niche market but HairCrazy is one of the top sites within it. In contrast, Dork Matter is a bit of everything; whatever happens to be going on with me at that particular time. Recently I’ve been writing a lot about home decor and property because we’re selling our flat and moving to Edinburgh in the near future.
When I’m developing a new tool for the site I tend to write about Python and Django and spend a bit more time on graphics. When I haven’t much in particular going on you get the random posts like Sound Bites and whatever I’ve been doodling lately.

The problem is that I can’t seem to stick to anyone topic outside of hair dyeing and I already have a site about that. Perhaps when we move I’ll do a new blog about decorating the new place.

Until then here’s what I’m reading these days:

The blogs I tend to read first when I check my feeds in the morning are Five and a half, Kirin Notebook, Photojojo, Ikea Hacker and Design*Sponge. I suppose going by that I’m in a design phase at the moment. Sites like NotCot are great for keeping me entertained throughout the day with a variety of eye candy. I’m still subscribed to Craftzine but I find I tend to mark it read without reading. Lately it’s been a lot of posts from the blogs I already read regurgitated. Used to read Makezine too but it went way downhill and stopped being about making stuff a while ago.
As well as those listed and my own feeds (got to make sure they’re still working right?), I also read some blogs on blog promotion. I’m especially enjoying Blogging Experiment. It’s a year long experience where one guy tries to make money from blogging and reports his successes and failures.

So what are you reading? Anything I might like?

We’re now starting the long and boring process of getting our flat looking good for viewers when we put it on the market later this month. Much as I hate the DIY aspect to it, it’s given me the chance to do a few of those tasks I’ve been meaning to get round to for a while.

Over the last 2 or 3 years I’ve collected 3 of these 1960s resin base lamps. As far as I know the lamp is late ’60s and was made for/by British Home Stores. Originally it would have had a brown or cream fibreglass shade but that was missing from the lamps I bought and I suppose that’s why I was able to pick them up on Ebay for about £10 each. (If you’re looking for some search for crushed/cracked ice lamp, bhs, 1960s, resin. They come in this greeny blue and yellow orange).

You can see from the pics the kind of condition they’re in: not too good, not too bad. A couple of small chips and some unsavoury looking vintage wiring. Time for a refurb!

Although one of the lamps had modern wiring, for peace of mind I decided to replace the parts anyway so if I did end up getting an electric shock I only had myself to blame.

Needed: cable, in-line switches, plugs and bulb holders.
The rewiring was fairly straight forward and took me and Tony a couple of hours to complete. The worst bit was threading the new cable through the base. We tried taping the two cables together and pulling it through but that never works so we ended up shoving it through with a skewer via a hole in the underside of the base. We kept the bottom half of the original bulb holders to screw into the brass fittings. The rest we replaced as well as adding switches to the cable and new plugs. Everything worked first time!

This would be my first attempt at making a lampshade. After consulting with the friendly folks at Fred Aldous I purchased 3 gimbal rings, 3 plain rings, glue and some Stick-It PVC backing. I also ordered a metre of silk dupion in “Jade” from fabricuk.com.

The rings I ordered were 12.5 cm in diameter with the lamp bases having a diameter of around 10cm each. The circumference would be around 39cm so I cut the PVC at 42cm wide to leave an overlap.
To calculate the height I just attached the gimbal ring to the lamp and measured down to where I wanted the shade to stop (22cm in this case). The fabric was cut to be about 1 cm bigger in each direction than the PVC.

The PVC has a self-adhesive backing which made it super easy to apply the silk. It’s sticky enough to hold it but easy to work out any bubbles in the fabric.

Next I flipped the it over and glued down the short edges of the fabric onto the inside of the PVC so when I formed the cylinder it would make a nice neat seam.

The PVC is really springy so attaching the rings was quite a chore. To do this I set the ring down flat and formed the PVC around it so it was a tight fit and used a bulldog clip on the top to keep it in place. I repeated that with the other side to hold the cylinder’s shape. I used a thin layer of glue to roughly hold the seam together.

Attaching the plain ring was easy enough once I’d secured the top and bottom. Remember the little fringe of fabric I left around the top of the PVC? I wound this over the top of the PVC and the ring and glued it down around the ring. If you’re trying this, keep the ring inside the PVC tube and don’t allow it to slip below or you’ll end up with a messy looking uncrisp edge.

Next I repeated the above, gluing the fabric around the gimbal ring this time. Doing it in this order really helped tighten the tube around the rings. Since the PVC is so springy it tends to want to expand so I kept the bulldog clips in place during the gluing.

At this point the seam down the length of the shade was bulging a bit so I applied more glue along the inside, set it on its side and weighed it down from the inside using a stapler. Finally I cut off loose threads et voila – a retro looking lampshade!