Designing the World’s Most Pretentious Garden Shed

September 13, 2016

...rplane” bungalow (a common type of house in our neighborhood). Next it was time to put the idea into Sketchup. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Sketchup rocks. All DIYers should know how to use it. With Sketchup I was able to come up with a framing plan that allowed me to cut all the pieces out of the hot sun in the comfort of my garage workshop. Then I just had to carry my stack of pre-cut lumber up the hill and hammer it together. Anot...

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Do I Need Books?

Mr. Homegrown

May 30, 2018

Domesticus, Tidying up

24 Comments

...as well as some new ebooks that the library makes available for free. Sometimes one’s personal library can devolve into a kind of virtue signaling, a way to seem smart when visitors drop by. In my case it’s definitely time for a book winnowing and, yes, I will still have a bookshelf populated with books I use for reference. Kelly has her own books and shelf. Of course books have a tendency to accumulate and I have no doubt that I will have to go...

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Starbucks Moderne

Mr. Homegrown

December 4, 2019

Design

2 Comments

...n and ignored, Generation X. We’re the last generation that can remember a time of lounging in curlycued, overstuffed post-modern furniture, a time before the gig-slave economy. Now we’re hunched over in misery contemplating eking by on Fiverr and Mechanical Turk while the fat-cat masked billionaires enjoy slices of pie and a cup of coffee on the way to their Eyes Wide Shut parties. Further evidence of the age of the artist or, more likely, that t...

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A Brief History of Cat Art

Mr. Homegrown

July 15, 2019

Animals, Cats

3 Comments

...60-1849) painted a lot more than just cats. His work reached the West at a time when there was an interest in all things Japanese. Cornelius Visscher 1629-1658 was a Dutch Golden Age engraver. His 1657 print Cat Sleeping has a bit of an Albrecht Dürer vibe. Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) is the most famous of this short list of cat artists. He liked to fill the margins of his sketchbooks with cats and, as you can see from the examples above, his wor...

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Sad foot sign, the end is comin’

Mr. Homegrown

June 28, 2019

Design

2 Comments

...all seriousness, our corrupt city government does a very poor job of placemaking. The best they can do is name intersections after people with pathetic little signs posted high up on a signal. You know you’re in trouble when a podiatrist sign is a better placemaking option. Paris LA ain’t. I think we’re going to have to take things into our own hands and build our own Happy Foot Sad Foot Arc de Triomphe. One we do that the People’s Parliament of...

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