New Paint – The Pics

I have been lazy uploading pictures of my living room, first, let’s compare my workstation.

Before:

Just_My_Setup_by_justex07

After:

Results of New Paint

I know, it’s kind of stark, especially in the following pics, but it really brightens up the place, makes it seem even larger and will let me hang out my artwork without needing to match colors, etc etc.

Off to the living room.

Results of New Paint

And the hallways.

Results of New Paint

MUCH brighter, cleaning and nicer.  I can’t wait to hang some of my own artwork as well as other pieces of art that will probably be a lot better than mine 😉

Engadget… Why I Oughta!

My AppleTV has been acting up… I think it might have something to do with the fact it gets two trillion degrees…  There is a fan in there but damn, that thing gets hot.  I opened it up to replace the hard drive, using Engadget’s directions.

First, let’s look inside

Fan vent along the left, fan on the bottom left, audio/video, ethernet, usb, power inputs on the bottom.  Power supply along the right etc etc, nothing special (cough, this thing is fucking crazing).

Sadly, my upgrading of the measly 40gb drive to a 160gb drive didn’t go so well.  Engadget’s directions didn’t quite work.  Hard to mess up terminal commands…

dd if=/dev/disk1 of=/Users/justex07/AppleTV.img count=1335 bs=1024k

dd if=/Users/justex07/AppleTV.img count=1335 of=/dev/disk1 bs=1024k

2732016  309849759 

gpt add -b 2732016 -i 4 -t hfs /dev/disk1

diskutil eraseVolume “Journaled HFS+” Media /dev/disk1s4

gpt add -b 3141672 -i 4 -t hfs /dev/disk1

Plus a few gpt commands…  Well, no go.  Put the old drive in and it works well enough.  I’m just going to go the lame-oh way and have a kit shipped to be, pre-formatted hard drive.  Thanks Weaknees.com.

The thing is… After you get all of the tools, the Weaknees’s deal is as cheap or cheaper than doing it totally ourself.  Who knew?!

My New Lights

I made some cool photography goodness tonight.  I have the stuff to make another set, but just ran out of time.  But basically I turned <$100 in cash into >$1200 of lighting equipment.

My DIY Light Ring

My DIY Softbox

Not bad considering the price and that I did it without that whole making a plan thing, just ran to Lowes right before it closed and the wonderful people there helped me get the stuff I was going to need.  I way over bought and actually am going to be able to return stuff and get money back tomorrow.  How awesome!

I’m Building a Wine Room

This week I’m starting the conversion of a utility room into a Wine and Booze room.  Painting the walls a dark burgundy with copper faux finish.  Then installing some wine racks.  I have so much room for storage and will never be able to fill the entire room with wine… I’m thinking of other things I could build for the room.  Some speakers for music is a must of course, I mean, it is Justin’s wine room and every room deserves good sound.

So the walls are dark burgundy with a copper faux finish, but what color for the trim and ceiling?  Currently the trim and ceiling are a combination of sand beige and off white.  I’m thinking a solid bright white would make for some serious crisp lines.  I’ll try to take pics and you can tell me what you think.

The New Apartment

I have figured out why I feel so lazy, slothy and such.  Typically I would wake up everyday between 6:30 and 8:00 in the morning and get ready for class which started at 8:00 or 9:30 in the morning.  Then I would drive to campus and park my car which was followed by a brisk walk to class.  Everyday.  And then walking from class to class and then back to the parking garage.  All that walking burned a lot of calories and kept me from feeling icky.

Since summer started I haven’t really been walking all that much.  I workout but not enough, especially considering my goals for the summer…  So I guess starting tomorrow I will take some long walks, actually ride my bike somewhere and have an adventure.  I work Friday through Sunday, so that will get me some real movement.  Maybe I will start swimming or something.

I feel really alone right now, and doing any of these things alone just isn’t much fun.

My new apartment will be ready in just a week and a day.  This is very exciting.  I won’t actually be able to move in for a few days or weeks after that.  I’m getting my floors refinished before I move in.  Right now they have the potential to be beautiful but thanks to years of wear and tear, the wood floors don’t look so hot.

When I get to Houston I’m going to make a trip to IKEA to figure out a way to make my kitchen work for me.  As it is right now there is zero counter top space, as in, there are zero counters.  Just a 5 foot wide sink “thing”.  It seems the sinks from the 20’s required drying racks on either side, what?  No dishwasher? haha  And the wall opposite the sink is totally bare, not a damned thing on it.  And really, there isn’t room for anything, I believe there is only a few feet between the wall and the sink.  Yikes.  Only one cook in there at a time.

I have already found some really cool kitchen systems at Lowes and Target that should help remedy this situation.  I plan to turn the breakfast nook into a kitchen prep nook instead… and turn the living room’s dinning area into the primary dinning room.  It’s placed in front of these beautiful windows, what better place to eat one of my delicious dinners? haha

Even though I won’t be able to actually move anything into the apartment, I am excited about spending time, cleaning it up.  Doing a deep clean of the kitchen and the bathroom… and just about every other part of the place.  The guy who has been living there is a really wonderful fella and did some great things to the walls of the apartment, love the colors, but as with most guys in college, not the cleanest guy around.  Super considerate though, I wouldn’t be surprised if I walked in there June 1 and found it shining from floor to ceiling.  (well maybe not floor…)