(part 1) (part 2) I actually managed to finish this project surprisingly quickly. I think I only spent about 10 hours total building it.

Anyhow, I decided to abandon the vertical plywood since I liked how the desk looked without it and it turned out to not need any additional support that the plywood would have offered.

I also decided that, in the interest of cable management, I wanted a few holes that went through the surface of the desk (where, eventually, cables will land in wire cable racks). I settled on linseed oil over tung oil since it was cheaper ($9 for an 8oz bottle of tung vs $9 for a quart of linseed) and I didn’t want to get too little and have to get more in the middle of the project.

And, here’s the finished product:

(part 1). Since I last worked on the desk, I realized I had to figure out how to attach the horizontal braces to the legs. I hadn’t really done much carpentry before so the obvious choice – lap joints – didn’t occur to me and it too my sister suggesting them before I realized it was the obvious choice. Anyhow, here’s how that looks in CAD:

I’ve been meaning to build myself a computer desk to replace the one I currently use. The features I need it to have are:

• Shelf for speakers and other electronics (speakers, amp, server, printer, networking gear) – currently speakers are being used as supports for the shelf =(
• Easy mounting of Ergotron flexible monitor arms (for when I upgrade to them from my static triple monitor stand)
• Easy-to-hide cable management (sufficient to be able to run that inside the nooks and crannies of the desk)
• Able to fit through standard doorways (roughly 34 inches)
• High enough that my legs will fit comfortable while maintaining proper posture for computer usage
• Relatively modular so that disassembly isn’t too difficult if I have to break it down in order to move
• Possible to build with the tools I have available.

So far I’ve just been planning it out in a 3D model (partly to practice my CAD skills and partly so that I can tally up how much lumber I’ll need). Here’s what I have so far:

Mariah’s multicolor pen broke. I didn’t have any prior experience doing 3D modeling so I figured I’d take the opportunity to start learning CAD (I needed to anyhow if I ever hope to get any use out of a 3D printer). My goal was to get a new pen machined in aluminum but it seems like that might be prohibitively expensive given that it’s a one-off design with some fiddly parts.

Here’s the original pen:

I was curious if there were any perceptible benefits of shooting in raw. I know it’s a pretty well covered topic but I had some time on my hands and wanted an excuse to play with lightroom. Here’s the rundown of the experiment I did to test the question. I shot a photo in raw. I made sure it started out with an over-exposed portion. I cropped it to just the part I wanted to observe. I exported it from lightroom so that I would have an jpeg copy. I then preformed the same operations on the raw copy and the jpeg copy: