Annoying Webpage

Oh, as far as the “How To” part goes, just follow these simple steps when building a webpage:

1. Use ugly, clashing colors
2. Integrate pop-ups as much as possible
3. Includes sounds that play automatically
4. Be sure to include some sort of animated text
5. Create a MySpace page in lieu of steps 1-4

Aunt Frances’ Lemonade via Taste of Home.

A search for pre-manufactured overhead storage products did not turn up anything useful for my situation. There are some solutions, but none were anywhere near the size I was looking for. I wanted a single shelf to run across the length of the back wall of my garage. Most store bought suspended shelves are too small and too square, and I needed something over 24′ long, but only about 20″ deep so I decided to make it myself out of steel and medium density fiberboard (MDF). Plywood or OSB could also be used, but the MDF has a nice smooth splinter-free finish that doesn’t need to be painted.

I ordered 1″x1″x1/8″ steel angle and 1″x1/8″ steel plate to construct the frame. You can buy this steel at a home center, but the local stores weren’t stocked with the 20′ lengths I wanted (I think 8 or 10 feet was the max.). I was fortunate enough to be able to order it at work through one of our steel suppliers, but I’m sure if you look around you can find a source. Steel is available unfinished as well as in a galvanized zinc finish (the zinc plated steel I saw was also a much lighter gauge). The zinc doesn’t require painting and won’t rust, but it is much more expensive. I used the unfinished steel and painted it. The MDF was purchased at Lowes in 4′X8′x3/4″ sheets and ripped to width to make the shelf. For fastening the steel framed together I used 1/4″ diameter bolts available at any hardware store. The shelves were fastened to the frame with 6-32 machine screws which are also readily available. The entire assembly was screwed to the ceiling with 1/4″ lag screws.

The dimensions of the steel frame were determined by the width of my garage, the size of boxes I would be storing, and the depth of shelf I wanted. I ripped each 4×8 sheet into (5) approx. 19″ wide x 4′ long pieces. These dimensions maximized the shelf depth while minimizing waste.

Here’s a typical section showing where the steel was used.

After taking careful measurements I cut the steel using a cut off wheel attached to an angle grinder. A side note: be careful and wear proper protection when using power tools. An electric drill and bit made for steel were used to make holes for all the connections. Rip the MDF to width with a table saw or circular saw & straight edge. Drill all holes and test fit everything before continuing. You don’t want to realize you need another hole when you’re up on the ladder trying to put it together and everything is already nicely painted. When everything fits together easily mark each piece so you can put it back together after you take it apart to paint, making sure the marks will still be readable after it’s painted. I etched small nicks in the steel with the cut off wheel.

After all the fabrication is done, clean the steel to removed any oily residue providing a good bonding surface for the paint. Also, remove any burrs or rough spots with grinder. Allow the steel to dry thoroughly, and begin with a steel primer. I topped mine with two coats of satin black enamel which produced a nice clean finish.

With the length of shelf I made it was easiest to assemble it piece by piece. Make sure when attaching it to the ceiling that each screw is anchored into a ceiling joist. Use a stud finder to locate solid wood. As with any time you drill holes in walls, floors, or ceilings, be careful not to puncture any wiring, plumbing, gas, etc…

I don’t have any shots of the installation process, but here’s one before anything was put up.

I ended up building two shelves in my garage as you can see below. One was in front of the soffit and one below. I can walk under the lower shelf without hitting my head while still being able to reach it without a ladder. It has added a significant amount of storage space while allowing the floor space below to remain available. Note: the shelves are finished in this picture, but the garage reorganization process is not, hence, the other stuff in the photo.

Diagram of planned work.

Testing to make sure the circuit is off.

The outlet before disconnecting.

The wires before terminating.

The terminated wires with the juction box back in.

The finishes I used.

The top with just stain, no polyurethane.

The drawer base with the hole to access the junction box.

The kneespace drawer cut to size.

The cabinets only installed.

Everthing completed except hardware.

In the Kitchen Workstation – Part II post I did a 3d rendering of the proposed addition to our kitchen cabinets. Renderings attempt to accurately represent reality using 3d shapes along with varying textures and lighting. In order to better explain what it takes to make one of those models and why it can be so incredibily time consuming I will spend some time going into a little more detail.

First of all, the base of every 3d drawing is a polygon, thousands and thousands of polygons. Each object in the model is made up of a varying number of polygons which, put together determine the object’s shape. For instance, a simple cube would be made up of (6) polygons, one for each side. The problem is that polygons can only truly represent a flat surface. This means curved objects have to be made up of a bunch of very small polygons. The more polygons the more you can trick the human eye into believing that, for instance, a ball is round instead of faceted. An accurate 3d model is essential to producing realistic renderings. No matter how good your materials or lighting, if your model is shoddy the rendering will be shoddy. I used Chief Architect to produce my model. It is designed specifically for residential drafting and comes with a variety of built in items such as light fixtures, appliances, cabinets, etc. Believe me, I did not create all of the 3d objects in my rendering from scratch. That would have taken days or even weeks of work.

If you were to simply draw lines around the polygons of an object you would essentially get a wireframe model. To provide more realism, each polygon is assigned a material which will determine its characteristics apart from its shape. In Chief Architect every material has (6) adjustments (ambience, diffuseness, specularness, shininess, emissiveness, transparency) which determine the way it reflects light. With these adjustments you can differentiate between something made of clear glass, shiny chrome, or black fabric even if they all had the exact same shape. A material could be a simple color or a patern as with wallpaper. However, plain colors are not very represenative of reality since nearly everything in the world has some sort of texture or pattern.

In addition to the material possibilities, light is the next extremely important factor. In Chief Architect every light source can be adjusted for type (point, spot parallel), color, height, tilt, direction, cutoff angle, and drop off rate. The light’s interaction with the objects is modeled using a technique called raytracing. This technique actually traces the rays (believe it or not) of light as they reflect off different surfaces to produce the final image. Chief uses the free software POV-Ray to do raytracing on its models. This method can create very realistic reflections and shadows.

When you combine all of these variables for each object (material types and lighting) in the scene along with the fact each rendering can take hours (my final render took for the kitchen scene took around 24 hours but smaller preview renders can be done much quicker) and you can see how it can be very time consuming. The main reason 3d modeling can be so complicated is because reality is so complicated. Just think, for instance, of the amazing detail of structure, texture, and color of an ordinary leaf and what it would take to accurately represent that in 3d graphics.

To see some of the absolutely amazing things that can be done with these redering techniques check out the Hall of Fame on the Pov-Ray website. Many of the renderings there approach photo realism.

I initially did the drawing below (click to see the entire image) in about 15-20 minutes. It would have gone much faster had I have had all of my drafting tools, most of which are at work. With this drawing I was mainly trying to see if the space would work for what we wanted, and if it would look ok being so close to the window. I also sketched a few lines for a future upper cabinet above as you can see. I did not add many details since I was mainly drawing it for spatial relationships. Those would come later on the computer.

The next drawing I did was using AutoCAD. I didn’t necessarily add more details, but I was able to more accurately lay out the cabinets and determined the sizes. You can see I didn’t even add simple details like drawer pulls. Locating light switches and outlets was also done in this drawing since I will have to move a couple boxes and I needed to decide where to put them. You can also see from the full AutoCAD drawing that I experimented with adding the future upper cabinet as well.

A full 3d rendering was the last work I did. This definitely wasn’t necessary, but I enjoy doing them and this was a good excuse. You can spend a lot of time with these 3d models trying accurately represent reality. Beside getting the correct shapes as with manual drafting or AutoCAD there are many more variables to consider such as color, texture, lighting etc… Lighting seems to me to be the most difficult to represent. In the image below I added a lamp which produces a very obvious yet somewhat realistic shadow on the wall and ceiling.

To more accurately explain what’s involved in producing a rendering like the one above I will post an article specifically on that subject since it can be so involved.

We initially wanted to order cabinetry to match our existing kitchen, but, after checking, they no longer make our color and finish in the same door and drawer style. After determining that the new style would only look like a mistake if we used it we decided to go with a contrasting color for the new cabinetry. Our exisiting cabinets are maple with a honeywood stain and a chocolate colored glaze so using dark brown cabinets would compliment the glaze. We found we could still get our same cabinet style in cherry with a sable finish which goes nicely with our kitchen according to the sample we brought home.

The other major decision was what to do for the top. We thought about just using the same laminate we have in the rest of the kitchen, but it just seemed like the top should be different since the cabinetry will be. Amy immediately thought of a wood top so that’s what we had a the first choice. As it turns out the cabinet company had a leftover piece of solid wood countertop (made by SPEKVA in Denmark) that we can get for a deal. It is nearly the perfect size and will be just enough to make a matching backsplash. After bringing it home I believe I may have to stain it to make it blend more with our kitchen. I’m not yet sure whether I’m going to do a hard polyurethane finish or do a more natural oil finish. The oil finish is typical of solid wood kitchen tops since the finish is easily repairable when damaged. Polyurethane is more typical as a furniture finish and since this workstation is somewhere between kitchen cabinetry and a desk I just can’t make up my mind. I’m thinking polyurethane would be better for writing (the primary use of the top) since it’s a hard finish. We also plan to serve off the workstation since it’s close to the dining table so that makes me lean toward an oil finish. We’ll figure it out somehow.

In Part II I plan on using this project to demonstrate different drawing techniques from pencil and paper to 3D renderings. Taking the time to carefully determine exactly what you want to make/build can save a lot of trouble and enhance the end result. With something like this everything is fairly straightfoward, but the same principle applies to all projects.

Besides the handful of shortcuts most people used daily, the desktop tends to act as a graveyard for the useless triple or quad icon installs that are common with many programs. Whenever I use someone else’s computer and I see a Free AOL icon from their latest AIM upgrade it makes my skin crawl. Why are these icons installed and, even worse, why don’t people delete them?!

In addition to installed shortcuts, an unattended desktop tends to collect many downloaded or created files that either need to be moved to an appropriate folder or, in most instances, just deleted. I often use my desktop as a place to temporarily house files while I’m working with them (i.e. inbox), but I try to always clean it out before I leave the computer. Many times I have found old files on my desktop and I can’t remember where they came from or if I need them any more.

How To Do It

I have long since stopped using my desktop as a place to keep shortcuts to frequently used programs. There are few people who commonly use more programs than can be easily housed in the Quick Launch toolbar on the Windows XP taskbar. If you can see in the image above I have 6 icons as shortcuts on my taskbar, and I could easily house more without encroaching too much on the rest of my taskbar. I think the Quick Launch toolbar is one the of the most underused features of Windows along the Show Desktop button which is included in the toolbar.

By default, the lone icon that comes installed on the XP desktop is the Recycle Bin. The only way I have found to remove this is by using the TweakUI utility. It is part of a suite of PowerToys distributed by Microsoft which also includes other very useful utilties such as Image Resizer and Power Calculator. TweakUI has an easy way, under the Desktop section, to turn on and off all the common Windows desktop icons including the Recycle Bin. One thing to note, before you remove the icon from the desktop it is necessary to make a shortcut in the Quick Launch bar or from wherever you are planning to access it.

Besides getting rid of the standard Windows icons it is just a matter of looking through your icons and deciding which shortcuts are really needed and, if they are, then make a shortcut in the Quick Launch toolbar. As far as the random files go: file the ones you need to keep in an appropriately labeled folder and delete the ones you don’t need.

Follow all of these steps and you will realize why the default Windows XP background is appropriately named Bliss.

The trouble started when I went to install and use Ubuntu Server Edition. I did eventually get it installed after burning multiple copies of different versions, but I ended up removing it. Come to find out the main purpose for which Walnut Creek was wanting the server, a database server for Quickbooks, requires Windows in order to work properly. Emphasis on the properly since it will and did work on Ubuntu, but it did not perform consistently. The server holding the Quickbooks data file has to have a service running on it to coordinate the multiple computer access to the same data file. The service is only available for Windows.

Besides all that, I don’t think I was ready to handle setting up users and share permissions on a Linux/Windows/Mac network. I have come to realize that despite all the knocks on Microsoft and their products they, for the most part, just work and work quite well. I know that most of my problems were probably just because of a lack of knowledge and experience on my part, but some were a result of Linux just not being as seamless and user friendly as Windows. I know it’s blasphemy to say this in some circles, but I guess that’s what you get with the $150 or so odd dollars it costs to purchase Windows XP. I’m not off Ubuntu completely since I am still running the regular install on my old laptop without any issues at all.

I ended up installing Windows XP Professional X64 Edition without any problems. I purchase the OEM version from Newegg.com for $139.99. It was the best deal I’ve seen on XP Pro. Quickbooks installed without any problem and the muiltiuser interface was up and running without a hitch.

One additional note. I added a APC UPS battery backup behind the server for surge protection as well as to increase reliablility through power outages.

My next post on Building a Server will be on setting up remote access capabilty.

Also see: Building a Server – Part I

I am planning on installing Ubuntu Linux – Server Edition on the new server. The main reason for using this operating system is the cost – free. Also, Linux is more secure and less susceptible to viruses than Windows operating systems. I have installed Ubuntu on a couple machines before so I’m hoping the install and configuration process will go smoothly. Hopefully, considering no one at Walnut Creek knows how to use Linux, once I get the machine up and running it should be mostly maintenance free. As far as the use of Ubuntu vs. another Linux distribution; it is only because Ubuntu is the one I’m most familiar with. Also, it is very user friendly which is great for a Linux novice like me.

Since I have never built a dedicated server before, I am pretty much going into this blind as far as hardware is concerned. I did some quick research and chose an AMD Opteron 165 as the processor to build the system around. This will be my first experience with a dual core processor. Once I settled on that I just found components to fit. I am planning on using dual hard drives in a RAID 1 setup for extra protection in the case of a drive failure.

All of the components were ordered from Newegg.com. I have purchased from Newegg multiple times in the past, and they always have great prices and service. If you are planning on purchasing any computer or electronics components I would suggest you check them out. None of the hardware components have arrived, but below is a list of the entire system. I plan on continuing this series of posts as I make progress with the new system. Hopefully, it is successful.

• Processor – AMD Opteron 165 Denmark
• Motherboard – TYAN S2865G2NR
• System Memory – CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB
• Hard Drive – (2) Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600JS 160GB
• DVD Drive – NEC 16X DVD±R DVD Burner
• Floppy Drive – Hopefully I can find one somewhere
• Case/Power Supply – APEVIA (ASPIRE) X-Alien ATXA1A

Also see: Building a Sever – Part II