By Hand and Eye

...lden section, for instance, and the shelf spacing came from an exercise on page 131 of the book. Far from being restrictive, I found the principles in Walker and Tolpin’s book liberating. I now had a starting point for any design project. For modern folks it’s difficult to imagine working without a ruler. Walker and Toplin explain, Instead of asking, “How high is this base dimension in inches?” pre-industrial artisans would have asked, “How tall i...

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Make a Rain Barrel

...nstorms. I put this rain barrel together as a test and because I was tired of looking a blue drum that sat in the backyard for a year giving our patio a methamphetamine lab vibe. Again, for complete instructions and a list of parts visit Chenkin’s ehow page or, if you’re not adept at perusing the isles of the local hardware store, buy a kit from him through Aquabarrel. [Editors note: due to spamming (are rain barrel enthusiasts really that excited...

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Saturday Tweets: Architectural Screw-Ups, Road Diets and Pet Dragons

...story here: https://t.co/dTN60J6Abv — Peter Kalmus (@ClimateHuman) January 11, 2018 The average kid can identify 1,000 corporate logos and… 10 species of plants. https://t.co/Rr3YBJH9pU — Thomas Rainer (@ThomasRainerDC) January 11, 2018 Cartoon from 1906 predicts our obsession with smartphones https://t.co/p8TvygdViD — Root Simple (@rootsimple) January 9, 2018 When your pet dragon gets pissed off at you [BnF, Fr. 242, 15th c.] pic.twitter.com/Neu...

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Black Widow or False Black Widow?

...e kind of dangerous, either. This is not reassuring. But then on the handy page Frequently Encountered Spiders in California, I learned about the False black widow. Another European invasive, this spider seems to be displacing our native black widows in urban areas. This spider is roughly the same size and shape as a black widow, but is brown with a faint purple sheen. I like this false black widow option a lot. The false widows don’t have a dange...

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