This summer has been occupied by 3 major projects: a 55′x50′ garden, a flock of ducks, and a couple alpacas.

The garden is pretty self explanatory: till, plant, weed, weed, pick, can, pick, can, can, can…..

The flock of ducks involved a large, insulated, and frankly over-engendered coop.(at least I have a place to sleep if I ever get locked out of the house)

The alpacas involved fencing all our property and making a simple shelter.

I’ll be honest, most of my construction projects are pretty much by the seat of my pants.  On a whim for this one I decided I would attempt to plan a bit better and see if I could limit my trips to the store.

My criteria for this project were pretty simple:

1. Simple structure
2. Moveable to a different pasture once we build horse stalls in the front paster next summer
3. Have to be able to build it in less than a week.
4. 80+ square feet x 6-8ft tall

These criteria lead to the following structure parameters:

1. Skid foundation
2. Sloping corrugated flat roof
3. Sheet goods siding

With those parameters I dove into Google SketchUp. I started out with a simple 3 sided structure on skids. After some tinkering it evolved into this (download the SketchUp File):

This took me about an hour to design and model. Nothing fancy, but it allows me to make a very accurate shopping list.

Lumber:
pressure treated 2x6x8 – 2x
pressure treated 6x6x12 skid – 2x
2x6x12 roof – 10x
2x4x12 – 5x
2x4x8 – 35x
siding 4′x8′ pieces – 8x

Fasteners:
Galvanized nails
Construction screws
Deck screws for siding
6″ long galvanized bolts, nuts, washers – 4x

Roof material to cover – 11.5′ x 12′
Roofing fasteners.

4′ solid cinder blocks – 4x
Total cost for the shed: ~$550

Construction of this shed is pretty strait forward. I chopped a couple of lap joints into the 6×6 skids to house the 2×6’s. This allows 2×6’s to lock in and make the entire base self squaring (provided I did my layout and sawing square).

After day one I have the base and 3 walls built and in place.

Day two the roof and front small wall is in place

Day three I spent about 6 hours ripping 2×4’s in half and trimming out the shed.

Need to paint the trim when I paint the fence next week, and we are good to go.

So with the help of the ShetchUp workflow it took me just about an hour to design this shed…. and it saved me AT LEAST one trip to the store. That means that it was a time saver, and a money saver, in gas at the very least.

And here is our new fury friends.

I’ve been waiting ever since the 11″ MacBook Air was introduced, for Apple to put a decent processer in it. Finally that time as come and I jumped in and grabbed an i7 11″ Air.

Unfortunately my desk needs some rearranging to work with my new mobile lifestyle. I had to dump one of my monitors, and I need to make a stand to raise and angle my Air a bit, and maybe mount a few USB peripherals, we’ll see…

I haven’t had much time in the shop this summer as I’ve been building a coop for our ducks, managing a large garden and doing numerous outdoor things; but I had an itch to work with some hardwood so I decided to throw together a quick iPhone dock. I had some scrap Wenge and Cherry laying around so here is a quick gallery of the process.

Ok back to canning a huge amount of tomato sauce…

While demoing Snow Leopard during the recent geeksouth OS showdown, my Dell Mini 9 running OS X seemed to cause some interest. So, to answer any questions I’ll just give a rundown of my basic systems and their uses. (I’ll throw in some basic current prices in case anyone is interested in the budget to build their own.) All pricing comes from newegg.com (or dell.com in the case of the laptops).

Kheiron (iBook Mini):

• Dell Mini 9
• 2 GB ram
• 16 GB Runcore SSD
• 16 GB SDHC
• Currently running OS X 10.6.2

This is the system that I practically live on. This is system has been all over the world with me and serves as a great ultra probable for offloading camera images and basic in the field Adobe Lightroom work. I got it off of ebay bairly used for less than $200 plus another $100 for the Runcore SSD and the RAM. The Mini 9 has been discontinued by Dell but they currently make 2 alternatives: Vostro a90 ($219 as of writing) Same as the Mini 9 with just a few styling changes. It comes with an 8GB SSD and you can up it to 16GB SSD for $50…. but I would get the 8GB and replace it with a 32GB SSD from RunCore (a way faster and better SSD). Dell Mini 10v (make sure it’s a “v”) ($299 as of writing) A tiny bit larger than the mini 9 and it comes with a 160GB, 2.5inch, 5400RPM SATA (or you can order it with a 16GB SSD). The only downside to this laptop is it doesn’t have the greatest track-pad. Gizmodo just did a great writeup on a step by step tutorial on installing OS X on these netbooks: How To: Hackintosh a Dell Mini 10v Into the Ultimate Snow Leopard Netbook If you run into trouble for some reason, this forum is your 1 stop stop shop for all things Dell mini: http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/general-mac-os-x-discussion/

Aker (Hack Pro):

• GIGABYTE GA-G31M-ES2L mATX motherboard: $54
• Intel Pentium E5200 Wolfdale Dual Core 2.5GHz: $64
• 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800: $85
• EVGA 512-P3-N871-AR GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card – Retail: $134.99
• 2x 500GB Western Digital SATA Hard Drives: ~$90
• Thermaltake TR2 W0070RUC 430W ATX12V Power Supply: $42
• Dual 19″ Dell LCD’s
• Currently running OS X 10.6.2: $29

I built this about 6 months ago on the cheap. Obviously I built this into a old G4 Sawtooth Case I had laying around just for such a project (I custom painted with automotive paints). Because of that case I had to use an mATX motherboard. If I were building this today and wasn’t using the g4 case I would make these changes:

• GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P ATX motherboard- $129.99 (way better board with lots of expansion options)
• Linkworld ATX case: $37 or
• Thermaltake Tsunami VA3000SNA Silver 0.8 mm All aluminum: $80
• Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80580Q9400 – Retail: $189.99 (this is what I consider the price sweet spot right now in Quad core, I’ll probably get one of these soon for my system)

o2 (PHP Dev server):

• SGI o2
• 400 MHz R10000
• 512 MB Ram
• 4GB Internal SCSI Storage + 8GB External
• Running: NetBSD 5.0.1

Media Center:

• ASRock P4Dual-915GL
• Intel P4 3GHz w/1MB L2 Cache HT [SL7E4]
• 1GB Ram
• 750 GB Hard Drive Space
• Sapphire ATI x1950GT 256MB PCIe
• 52″ Westing House 1080p LCD
• Currently running OS X 10.5.8 (iDeneb 1.6 Light)

This system is a bit strange. The P4Dual was the original hackintosh motherboard. I bought this and made my first hackintosh in July 2005 shortly after the Intel transition was announced at WWDC in June. This system requires some kernel hacking to run properly, unlike modern hackintosh’s. Don’t even bother trying to duplicate this system; there are much better ways to do it now. (Hack Mini for $400) I have this computer set up to watch Movies, TV shows, and Video podcasts on our TV. It utilizes a Logitech Harmony Remote, a eHome IR receiver, Remote Buddy software, and PLEX Media Center software (a feature enhanced XBMC port for the mac). mythTV (SD Cable Tuner and Recorder): You can’t see it. It’s stuffed in a 4U rack-mount case in the TV stand with the AV receiver.

• Asus K8U-X
• AMD Athlon64 3200
• 2 GB Ram
• 8GB SSD Boot drive
• 250GB IDE Storage
• 1x Hauppauge PVR-250
• 1x Hauppauge PVR-150
• Geforce 6200 GT AGP
• PCI Sound Blaster Live! Value
• Currently Running: Mythbuntu 9.10

Just for those morbidly curious – the other active computers in my house: eee 4g (the original netbook):

• Celeron 900mhz
• 7″ LCD
• Internal Bluetooth Hacked in
• 2GB Ram
• 4GB SSD
• Currently Running: Windows XP / Whatever Linux derivative I happen to be playing with.

Wife’s PC (office & iPod Syncing):

• AMD Athlon X2 2.2Ghz
• 2 GB Ram
• 120GB SATA Boot drive
• 250GB Firewire Music Storage
• On Board ATI Radion
• Currently Running: Windows 7 Ult (thanks to MS Party Pack)