Very Simple Recycled Wood Bench

I wanted to build a simple bench for the front porch of my house. Brett (@belahm) talked me out of making a backrest for the bench to keep things simple. Also, I wanted to keep costs down as much as possible, so I used recycled wood from Nebraska Ecostores, with very good results. The bench did need a few bolts and a box of screws, so after a quick trip to Menard's I had everything I needed to get to work.

The most notable part of this bench was its microscopic cost. The wood cost around $6 for eight weathered 2 x 4s - not bad at all. Throw in a few dollars for screws and bolts and the entire project cost me under $10. The bench was a very easy build - the steps are below.

Legs

The legs took a bit of thought, but after looking at a few different options, I went with angled legs and bolted them together in the middle.

1. Cut 4 boards to 2' long segments.
2. Mark a line 2" from each end of each board. Draw a line between the corner of the board and the corner that is made with the edge of the board and the line. Shown in the first picture below.
3. Cut the boards along the lines so the ends are parallel with each other.
4. Lay the boards down in an "X" against a flat edge. Press a board against the other ends of the legs. Make sure all ends of the legs are flush and straight. Shown in the second picture below.
5. Drill a hole through the intersection of the two legs. Since I am using 3/8" bolts, I used a 3/8" bit. Be sure to drill through the first leg and start on the second leg. You can finish the second leg separately.
6. Bolt the two legs together. Tighten the bolt making sure that the legs are flat on the ground. Be sure to use washers with the bolts (I forgot). Shown in the third picture below.

Bench Top

Simplicity is key here. Based on the span of the legs, the top of the bench may need to grow or shrink by a board or too. Steps to build the top are described below.

1. Cut 5 boards (4 for the top and one for a lip to cover the front) to 3'6".
2. Lay 4 boards down side by side to form the top. Square them against a straight edge. Lay the sides for the top face down on the floor.
3. Cut 3 boards to 14". These will be used to hold the top together.
4. Lay the 3 boards equidistant from each other across the 4 boards.
5. Put a screw into each board on each cross board (12 screws total)

Bench Assembly

This was the trickiest part of the whole process. Try to get as many screws into the legs without going through the top.

1. Keep the top of the bench face down on the floor and place the legs on each end of the bench.
2. Drive 4 screws (one in each leg) at on angle so they go through the leg and into the top of the bench.
3. Drill 2 more screws (one on each side) through the inner leg on each side into the cross boards. The underside of the bench in shown in the image below. The legs are flush with the top supports. Drilling into this will provide more stability.
4. Add a support beam between each set of legs. Drilling from the outside of the legs into the beam will provide a lot of stability.
5. Add a quick piece of trim to the front of the bench to hide the supports. The trim is on the right side of the bench in the image below.

Enjoy the finished product!

That completes the very simple bench. Flip it over and take it for a test sit. It is a very sturdy bench that supports over 500 lbs. Pictures of the finished product are shown below. It's a great addition to our front porch.

Web Trends Metro Map

This map surely caught most everyone's eyes when the final beta version was released a few weeks ago. (link is from TechCrunch, Information Architects created the map).



Picture referenced from Flickr (High resolution version). For a more interactive experience - check out Zoomorama.

Every year Information Architects (iA) overlays the 333 most influential internet domains and the 111 most influential people on the internet on top of the Tokyo Metro map. With help from mapping enthusiasts, iA maps each domain and person to a stop on the rail network. As an added twist - the maps are available for a high quality printing, but the firm will only be producing 1000 of them. So get your requests in now.

This visualization is a joy to explore - I especially like the different colored rails lines, representing different types of internet traffic, like applications, broadcasting, etc. For example, The Pirate Bay is on an intersection between the sharing line and the filter line. This makes sense, because they are a torrent (file-sharing) search engine. If I follow the pink filter line up from The Pirate Bay, I eventually hit Google, which is a central stop on the filter line. Google also intersects with the applications line.

IA put a ton of time into creating this masterpiece - it takes a few minutes to get used to, but spatial locations are also relevant on the map. This means that CNN is close to YouTube, and the Onion is close to ESPN. This map is a blast to play with - please comment with any observations that you find, particularly if parts of the map layout do not make sense.

Active Uses of Twitter, Pt. 1

Evan Williams visited the Raikes School for a fireside chat between himself and whomever else managed to get in the door. It might have been a miss-communication, but the event was over advertised. The event was so popular that Paul and Dan had to act as bouncers. Dan even accidentially turned away Williams' mother from attending the talk - Hey, if you're not on the list, you're not on the list.

The talk was Webcast to anyone who wanted to listen, and the #evUNL search term was used to field questions from people in the audience and listening from remote locations. The event went pretty well, I know Nate worked hard on it. Williams fielded a wide range of questions from the audience - like technical, business and the celebrity users of twitter. Shaquille O'Neal is an avid twitter user, and Ashton Kutcher is more popular than CNN.

Someone had to ask the burning question, "How is twitter going to make money?" This is a very inappropriate question to ask. It's like asking for the formula to Coca-Cola - He's not going to tell you that. He'll tell you after it makes money.

I started using twitter a few weeks ago and I think it is fun. I especially like being able to update when I'm away from my desk (I use TwitterBerry). Most of my friends use Twitter so it is fun to keep up to date in a different medium.

Corporations, companies, businesses, for-profits, non-profits, and any other entities have begun the task of trying to tap into Twitter to market to consumers and maintain brand image. Twitter is unique in the fact that companies can hear you; you make a public post about how much you like Starbucks - Starbucks hears it. I offer you the real life example:



That was the post that I heard Kiel make. I responded with this:



After about 6 hours, I received this:



The Sonics heard me. This might be a little too creepy, but I thought this was really cool. If people are talking about the Sonics, the Soncis want to hear about it.

Please, Don't Throw the Sheep

My Mentoring by the Masters post made me think of an article I wanted to share for quite some time - Tim O'Reilly urging developers to stop throwing sheep and do something worthy. HappierHour is not a sheep throwing application. But it is not preventing global warming either.

O'Reilly makes some other observations in the article. He stresses that the United States is getting surpassed in science and technology innovations - American firms are not providing enough value. He also mentions that Wall Street firms capture more value than they create.

Value is something that needs to be in the front of your mind. Always. HappierHour might not cure cancer, but we are providing value to a significant market. I still think the value we provide is valid, but would it pass O'Reilly's test? Not too confident about that one.

Then how on earth are we supposed to tackle large (checkbook-intensive) problems? And the better question is - How do we solve a large world problem with software?

We can't directly solve world problems with software. Software is not the net that stops the spread of malaria or the smart fuels powering hybrids. We need to take it some step further and think of the building blocks that go into solving these issues. Want to map the human genome? Grab your Perl book and get to work.

Through the efficient use of software - large, complicated world problems can be solved. I hope that's what O'Reilly meant when he told us to stop throwing the sheep.

Not another bar...

I recently (I'm very late with this post) attended the Mentoring by the Masters round table/web cast presented by the Nebraska Center for Entrepreneurship. The main reason that I attended was for a class requirement - but I think I would have gone anyway (of course I would have). The master Entrepreneurs in attendance were Joey Knecht of i2rd/Vipa Solutions, Carol Farnham of Signa Solutions, and Eric Dinger of Thought District.

The talk was web cast to several other Nebraska college campuses through an awesome room in the teachers college. The place was full of flat screens and microphones - easily 20 thousand dollars worth of equipment. Of course it was not working correctly, so the talk got started 20 minutes late.

The content covered basic Entrepreneurship questions: What was the hardest part of starting your business? What is the one thing that I can do to make me successful? Questions along those lines. The content was not mind blowing, but Dinger and Knecht would crack jokes whenever they spoke to keep things interesting. Dinger's answers were effective and concise - which I greatly admire.

Other sites had their masters on hand as well, but I did not find them nearly as interesting.

Carol Farnham mentioned lighting darkfiber for distributed computing between universities - which I thought was the coolest topic mentioned during the web cast. Dark fiber is also an awesome name, and the phrase "light the dark fiber" sounds straight out of a fantasy novel.

Before the talk started, Knecht was talking to the group of students in attendance - nearly all of which were in a new venture management course. He asked the group, "So what are you going to start? And don't tell me it's another stupid bar."

This made me chuckle, because about half of the students in the management class are writing business plans for some form of bar or restaurant. However I quickly straightened up, because M7 is developing software to make losing sobriety that much easier.

Don't discount HappierHour. It took creativity, engineering knowledge and discipline to get the app up and running (and we are far from done - Follow Us!). The end goal is like any other venture, to add value to a large group of users.

Imagine It

Last week in my new ventures class we watched a half-movie (trailer) about a creative thinking exercise called Imagine It, which is part of Stanford University's Entrepreneurship Week. Imagine It is an exercise where small teams of college students try to add value to basic (turns out unimproveable is not a word) objects, like Post-It Notes. The teams are given five days to create their plan and present for judges.

Imagine It is not a product improvement contest, so teams were not changing colors or making the notes wider. The Post-It Notes were used in the contest as a tool through which the students could focus their creative, world-improving ideas. One team solicited strangers for music notes (one note per Post-It) and composed a random song. Another team, from a developing country, asked community members for ideas in creating a new constitution and presented it to the constitution rewrite committee.

In my class, we split into small teams and are currently working through a less intensive version of the Imagine It exercise. This is one of the very few times in my collegiate career where I have been required to use my brain creatively. This begs the question:

When (if ever) do we lose our creativity?

Is it after high school? After college? When you have kids? I have been witness to glimpses of creativity from people of all ages, but is there going to be a point where it drops off?

In a perfect world, I would like to think that every person has the same level of creativity. Just like everyone has (nearly) the same amount of blood in their body. Here is what I would wager: some people who the world recognizes as creative, like Da Vinci or Tufte, are very, very boring to talk to. Other people, with no artistic bone in their body, could tell you a story that would leave you in stiches or they could feed a family of 10 on $50 per week. Then there are people with no talent whatsoever; completely vanilla. If I am going to win my bet, then they must have the most outrageous and vivid dreams (anything to take them away from their boring, awake time).

Ok, so after I win my bet, it comes back to Imagine It. It would be a really great experiment if the same teams repeat it 10 years later. Some of their creativity has to be refocused into their family/friends (or even their job). Will they still win the contest? Can they still impress the creativity judges?

Random Thought: If I were a life coach, I would not have my life together at all; smoker, drinker, all around hater. It would make landing a TV show a piece of cake, chocolate cake.