reg:exp

Low-cost IKEA light tent

This weekend I built a light tent to take better glamour shots of Tania's selfmade plush toys and some of my past projects. Lots of plans for light boxes float around: Instructables has light box projects using cardboard boxes and plastic buckets; the Make Blog links to Bill Huber's PVC light box, made out of PVC pipe and a bed sheet. As I was getting ready to drive to the local hardware store to get supplies for the PVC frame, I realized that you can probably get a sturdy metal frame from IKEA for the same price as some sections of PVC pipe. Hurray for economies of scale.

Here then is the low cost IKEA light tent:

Items from Ikea:
1 - ANTONIUS laundry bag frame. $7
1 - SOVA twin bedsheet. $3
2 - FAS clip-on lamps w/ E26 socket. $10 ea.
2 - SPARSAM Bulbs (75W equiv., 15W energy saver, 950 lumens). $4 ea.

Items from any office store:
Box of large binder clips. $3
22x28" posterboard, various colors. $4

Ikea parts:

(sheets didn't fit, and there's and extra extension cord in the picture)

Assembly is trivial: put the laundry bag frame together; drape the sheet over it; secure the sides of the sheet to the frame with large binder clips; slide a poster board into frame; attach it on the upper back cross bar with another binder clip from the outside. Clip the Fas lights onto the frame (they only like to stay put on the wider side of the frame profile). Done.

One downside to this tent setup is that you will have copious amounts of extra fabric spilling over the desk and floor below. To improve on the design, Tania sewed a custom-fit cover from a second SOVA flat sheet that slides over the frame - this is a good deal of extra work, but the result is much cleaner looking:

The most expensive items, and the ones I'm least satisfied with so far, are the lights. A wider reflector, the option of using brighter bulbs, and more flexible clipping mechanisms would be nice. I toyed with the idea of using adjustable arm desk lamps (think Pixar's Luxo), but those would have taken up too much space on the table.

Here are some test shots:

Track archive finally online

I finally got around to upload MP3 files of most of my electronic music tracks from 1995 through 2004 to bjoern.org/music. All vinyl/cd/netlabel releases from the Tuning Spork years are cataloged and you can also find older, unreleased material dating back to my first four-channel experiments with ScreamTracker on a GUS soundcard with 512kB of sample RAM.

The Year in Books

Because of my qualifying exams, I didn't get to read much during the first half of the year. Here are the books that left an impression on me from the second half:

English: for some reason or other, these are mostly older books that I discovered in bookstores around the country or through recommendations from friends.
* D. Price - "How to make a journal of your life" (10 Speed Press)
* Gay and Laney Salisbury - "The Cruelest Miles" (Norton)
* Geoff Dyer - "Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It" (Vintage)
* David Brooks - "Bobos in Paradise" (Simon and Schuster) (recommended by Jaime - funny)
* Bill Buxton - "Sketching User Experiences" (Morgan Kaufmann)
* Bill Moggridge - "Designing Interactions" (MIT Press)

German:
* Heinrich Steinfest - "Die Feine Nase der Lilli Steinbeck" (Piper)
* Martin Suter - "Der Teufel von Mailand"
* Jakob Hein - "Herr Jensen steigt aus" (Piper)
* Christoph Hein - "In seiner frühen Kindheit ein Garten" (Suhrkamp)

You can also take a look at the full list.

The Year in Music

Here is my list of most-listened to albums 2007. Most of these are new releases, although there are a few items that I just had not found before (e.g., the great Luaka Bop back catalog). As in previous years, almost all of these come from eMusic where I've also created a matching playlist.

* Oh No - Dr. No's Oxperiment
* Heliocentrics - Heliocentrics
* New Pornographers - Challengers
* Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity
* Matthew Herbert - Score
* Lemon Jelly - '64-'95
* V.A. - Cuisine Non-Stop (Luaka Bop)
* V.A. - Beleza Tropical Brazil Classics 1 (Luaka Bop)
* Darko Rundek And Cargo Orchestra - Ruke
* Peder - And He Just Pointed to the Sky
* The Innocence Mission - We Walked in Song
* Elliott Smith - New Moon
* Explosions in the Sky - All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone
* Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
* Okkervil River - The Stage Names
* Ellen Alien & Apparat - Orchestra of Bubbles
* Apparat - Walls
* Parts & Labor - Mapmaker
* Max Richter - Songs from before
* Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha
* V.A. - Stones Throw: 10 years - Stones Throw Mix
* Edit - Certified Air Raid Material (from Vladlen)
* Cansei De Ser Sexy - Cansei De Ser Sexy (from Scott)
* M.I.A. - Kala (from Scott)