I went out with a group of amateur photographers last Thursday for a “photowalk” in Downtown. It was a flickr group but I was expecting more people. Those guys were nice, very friendly and knowledgeable on camera/photo stuff. Plus it really feels great when you get to know people that share the same interests with you. I didn’t get a lot of great photos out of the walk as I’m not a urban shooter, but I did PS a few of them and they turned out pretty well. Thinking if I’ll be joining them up for the photowalk at Granville Island on the 27th.

Aside from that, I’ve made up my mind to do the “difficult version” of the Howl’s Moving Castle papercraft. It’s supposed to be an illustrated book and you can cut out the shapes from the pages, however that book is apparently discontinued and very limited of them are available on Amazon Japan selling for $400USD - crazy. I downloaded a PDF version scanned by some guy, got 5x pages printed for ~$30, and started from there. I bought Elmer’s glue for adhering the sheets and got my x-acto blade replaced (it’s super sharp, can slice through paper so easily) I’ve spent 3 nights, got the head part in shape, and the tongue as well. Some parts like the hinges on the side of its mouth are SUPER tiny and therefore difficult to cut and glue - it’s smaller than a penny. It’s fun though. I don’t know how much time is needed to get the whole thing completed, the other guy Ben Millett apparently got his done in 72 hours. I’m not going to beat his time, will take my time to make the perfect model to the smallest detail.

I’ve been working on my kitchen PC for a while, finally got everything set up and it’s running quite well. Pentium Core 2 Quad, 2GB ram, built in wi-fi…etc with my 7″ Lilliput touchscreen LCD screen that I bought few years ago for my car PC. Rest of the pics are on Facebook.

So apparently my bar was really dark and it was begging for some sort of lighting system. Since I couldn’t really run wire through the ceiling without some massive destruction of the drywall, I went to Ikea and bought the Norrsken wire lighting system for about $80 plus two hanging lamps for $20 each. It was pricy but I thought it’s cool and fun to set up a cable system.

I knew it was going to be difficult but really it was worse than I thought. It took me 2 hours just to do the measurements (while watching Olympics on TV), and 6 hours to do the installation. At one point I sort of screwed up one of the wall anchors and was so freaked out, as you really only have one chance and if you fail to install it properly you’d be screwed forever. Somehow it turned out okay, I think it the anchor was 20% screwed but I was able to screw it in quite tightly. There were a total of I think 1 + 1 + 3 + 3 + 1 + 1 = 10 wall anchors that I had to install, and the measurements had to be 95-100% accurate otherwise it’d look like shit later. It was scary drilling the holes for that reason. After all the measuring and hole drilling, I got the wire system installed and the wires tightened up. It was a “wall to ceiling” set up which was not recommended by Ikea apparently as it was not noted in the manual - one end of the wire was set up on the wall, and the other end ends on the ceiling, in a 45 degree angle. I saw a picture online of the installation so I thought it may work with this Ikea one.

I was trying to think of a way to light up the “bar” area. As I couldn’t really install any light fixtures at the ceiling where the bar-top was (no in-ceiling wiring for the spot immediate above the bar-top), I thought I could install some lights that aim towards the floor and therefore would somehow illuminate the area a bit. I started by getting a brand new drill bit that allowed me to open up a couple holes at a couple different locations. Had to be very thoughtful as it was tricky to determine where to drill the holes - I need to be able to wire these lights to the existing under-cabinet lights, so that they could all be switched on/off at the same time. There was a place where I need to “fish” the wire behind a drywall, I did it by slowly fishing down a thread with a tiny metal paperclip attached to the end (acting as a weight) from a hole inside the cabinet, all the way to the bottom where the other hole was. I then was able to see the thread from the hole, and I taped the wires from the light fixtures to the thread, and slowly pull it up so that it went through the dry wall and reached the hole inside the cabinet. It was quite a risky approach as there was no way to know in advance whether it would work, but I guess I was in luck and it worked like a charm. The next day I bought some “epoxy glue” and clamps to mount the lights to the underside of the granite countertop. The glue was composed of a “rasin” and the “epoxy” (I picked one that can withstand up to 93C since the lights would get really hot), and you have to mix them up prior to application. It was basically a mixture of very sticky goo, but it was fun playing with it. After applying the glue I clamped everything in place, and let it sit for a day for it to completely dry up. Last step was to apply white caulking to one of the holes that was exposed to seal it up. I think it looks awesome

And I got my first espresso machine (Cusineart Espresso Maker EM-100) from Canadian Tire today! I had been wanting one so much but couldn’t really afford it. This one was on sale today so I couldn’t resist and took it home. Tried to make an espresso and this machine was able to create the “crema” with my crappy Starbucks beans, which was a good sign! The milk frother / steam wand was kind of hard to use though, I still wasn’t sure how exactly to steam the milk in order to make the best froth, I guess it’s going to take some practices…

Have been working on painting my pair of JVC speakers white. It was a bit scary since I’ve never done any woodwork or paint job and if I screw this pair of speakers up I’d have nothing left…not to mentionthe shelves that I made 2 days ago was “designed” to fit these speakers like a glove. I bought some 120 and 180 nits sandpaper and sander (looks like a shoe brush without the hairs) from Daiso, $2 each. I sanded the exterior of the wooden speaker casing (made a mess) and then primed the surface with a spray primer, almost suffocated when I did it in the garage. I painted 3 coats of acrylic latex paint and let it dry. The result wasn’t bad, just that I couldn’t really get the paint to look really smooth..not sure if it’s the brush, probably just my skills… They actually look pretty good when I place it on the two shelves that I installed near the ceiling in the kitchen. It’s white on white, to keep it simple.

Next will be to set up the wiring and decide on the location to place the amplifier. This is going to be tricky..