New provider, new site.

I'm going to start developing a new website over the next few weeks to refresh my memory on using ASP.net and PHP. It will be at disorderedsystem.com (my domain for the last ten years or so). I'll also be developing a new site for onlineeducator.us (only had this one for about 8 years) in the near future. This "could be" a distance education news aggregator, or perhaps something similar, though not quite. :-) More as it (literally) develops.

16 foot wall mounted workbench with pegboard

$125 16 foot folding workbench with pegboard

This was a project that I came up with last week to help organize the garage in our new house. The idea was to provide a large surface area for organization and projects that could be moved out of the way when needed. Below is the parts list with approximate big box store prices.

1 box of 2.5 inch drywall screws $6

1 box of 1.5 inch finish nails $5

1 sheet of 3/8”x4'x8' plywood $20

1 sheet of 4'x8' pegboard $17

8 2x3 pine studs $15

8 1”x2”x4' lathe $3

2 2”x6”x8' pine studs $ 8

1 can white semigloss exterior paint (opt) $10

6 door hinges $20

In my case, I could suspend the work benches using chain and eye bolts to the ceiling. The additional cost for 16 feet of 350lb rated chain was about $15, and an additional $7 or so for eye bolts to mount to ceiling and sides of each table.

Less expensive is using two more studs with hinges as legs. That cost is about $8 for the studs, and another $8 for hinges.

The following directions will give you a sense for how I put this together.

1. Rip the plywood and the pegboard to 24” by 8'. If you do not have a circular saw or table saw to do this, consider having it done at the store that you bought the plywood and pegboard from. Home Depot and Lowes will cut lumber for you.

2. Locate the wall studs in your garage in the area that you want the workbench located. If your garage is drywalled, you will need a stud sensor for this purpose. Alternately, you may be able to see the nail heads for the attached drywall.

3. Attach four of the lathe strips horizontally at the height that you would like the top of the pegboard to be. This is what you will be hanging the pegboard from. For my purposes, I hung it about six and a half feet high. Use a level as you attach them to assure that you have a straight and level surface. The lathe acts as a spacer so that there will be room to attach the pegboard clips without interfering with the wall.

4. Attach the pegboard to the lathe that you just installed. For me it was easiest to simply use finish nails to attach, and then come back with drywall screws later for a more permanent mean of attaching to the studs.

5. Once that the top of the pegboard is attached, cut a few small pieces of lathe to nail behind the pegboard near the middle to keep a reasonable space for the pegboard to be away from the wall.

6. Line up two more lathe sections beneath the lower edge of the pegboard and attach to the pegboard and studs..

7. I wanted a shallow shelf at the bottom of my pegboard to place small item on, and create an attachment point for tools and odds and ends. Using the drywall screws, I attached a 1”x3”x8' to the bottom of the pegboard.

8. Next I attached both of the 2”x6”x8' boards horizontally below the pegboard. These were screwed into the studs to provide a place to attach the work tables.

Height is not really a consideration here, but more matter of what fits your work style. In my case, the surface was roughly 41” from the floor, so that I could easily use bar stools in the work area. Other work benches that I have seen have a surface height of around 36”. Think about what height you are most comfortable with working in the kitchen for instance, and then adjust accordingly.

Another note: Our garage floor is sloped. The difference from the front of the garage to the back is probably 5-6” all told. For this reason, you might consider measuring the height from the bottom of the pegboard that you just hung, so as to make certain that your table surface will be level. This probably isn't as much of an issue if you are installing against the back wall of your garage.

9. Attach three door hinges to the bottom of the 2x6 that you just installed. The hinged portion should be placed just below the bottom of the 2x6. Space the hinges fairly evenly across the eight foot board. I measured in 18” from each end and marked this as the center of the hinges. For the third, I used the center of the board (48”) as the center of the third hinge.

10. Assemble the tabletops. Place two 2x3x8 studs parallel on a surface roughly 24”apart. Place the 24”x8' plywood sheet on top of the studs. Line up the studs so that they are at the edge of each the plywood. You may want to lift up the plywood and apply some wood glue to the studs at this point. Attach the plywood to the studs using finish nails. I found that a nail every six inches or so worked well.

11. Flip the plywood over and measure the distance between the studs. This should be 21 and 1/8th inches, but verify that for yourself. Now cut three pieces of 2”x3” to this length. Two pieces will be used at each end, and another at 48”. You can also add another piece or two if you wish to better reinforce the plywood.

12 Line up the pieces and attach them using the drywall screws.

Note: I pre-drilled all of the holes before screwing the drywall screws in. I did the same everywhere that I used these screws. My experience in the past has been that doing so reduces the possibility of having the the boards split.

13. Flip the plywood back over and use the finish nails to attach the three pieces to the top.

14. Move your completed top underneath the hinges attached to the 2”x6” on the wall. You will probably need two people for this next step. Line up the edge of the table with the edge of the 2x6. It might help to draw a line on the wall vertically at the edge of the 2x6. Lift the top up so that you can attach it to the hinges using screws.

15. You have two choices for holding up your table. The first is to cut legs to the proper size to reach the floor. Again, if your floor is not level, you will need to cut the legs to individual sizes. Cut the legs to the appropriate size, and then using 2” hinges, attach the legs so that they fold into the bottom of the table top. Alternately, if you wish to hang the table top from the ceiling, use chain and hooks attached to the front of side of the table for this purpose.

You now have sixteen feet of work table that can be opened or closed as separate eight foot surfaces. The tables fold down against the wall so that they do not take up space in the garage.

Notes: This whole project took about eight hours time. In my case, I bought white semi-gloss exterior Behr paint and finished everything but the work surface with it. That made for a very clean looking installation. I also used a sander to smooth the surface of the plywood edges and the roughest areas of the studs. Not critical, but I hate splinters. I also pre-drilled everything.

I used the following tools:

Ryobi 12v drill with a Philips Head bit

Drill bit 1/16th smaller than the diameter of the screws

Hammer

Ryobi circular saw with laser

Crosscut handsaw

Ancient Craftsman electric sander

$1.15 2” paintbrush from HD

Tape measure

Level

2 sawhorses

I was actually surprised at how easy this project was to complete, which is why I am going to the trouble of writing it all down. I would say that someone with the tool and virtually no experience with this sort of thing could finish the project up in a weekend. It is easier still if you have Home Depot or Lowes cut the plywood and pegboard for you. That would eliminate the need for the circular saw entirely, and most definitely make for better cuts than I could do with the circular saw.

Additionally, I was looking for something that could fold out of the way. You could eliminate the need to buy hinges if you simply screwed the tabletops into the wall and screwed the legs into place.

I would suggest that if you are going to be putting anything really heavy on the surface, you cut a third leg for each 8' section to place underneath the middle of the table for additional support.

Creating a video and uploading to LiveText

We are just beginning to roll out LiveTetx here at UW/CC, and with that comes the need to create and upload videos. We have a number of older Flip HD cameras and several newer Bloggies to be used for this purpose. It made sense to create a simple tutorial on uploading video to a Windows computer, load it into Windows Live Movie Maker, and then upload the completed video into LiveText. Of course these instructions are only of use on Windows computers. I will try to develop one for the Mac as soon as I can.

I 'd like to stress that this is not completely restricted to Bloggies and Flips. Just about any modern smart phone can be used for this purpose as well, along with most digital cameras that have the ability to shoot movies. Just follow the instructions in the tutorial and you will have a video that can be uploaded to Facebook, LiveText, TeacherTube, and many other services of this type.

You can find the instructions in PDF format here.

openSUSE Edu Li-f-e 12.2 Linux Distro

The open SUSE Edu Li-f-e 12.2 Linux has been released. I confess that I have not heard of this distributino before, and I am a long time user (back to 7.0) of this operating system. Given what I have read and experimented with in the past, this distribution looks to be an almost ideal option for schools wishing to create low cost computer labs without the overhead and expense of separate client and server software. Edu Li-f-e includes the Linux LTSP server, which makes it possible to use older computer hardware as thin clients for use in the classroom. This means no licensing fees or upkeep for the software on the individual machines as the operating system is delivered acros the network from the server. That means that every client (individual machine) has a copy of SUSE remotely running on it. That reduces the maintenance needs for the client computers to hardware and network maintenance. That is a significant saving over time.


In addition to the large selection of K-12 software included in the distribution, there is also a copy of both Moodle and aTutor to create hybrid and web assisted courses with.

Given the state of the economy in many states right now, this potentially represents an excellent opportunity to update older computer labs with modern software, without having to invest in newer infrastructure in order to do so. The minimum client requirements for this distro (knowing of course that a more powerful machine will be needed for the server) is "Any PC or a Virtual Machine with 1G RAM. PC should have a DVD drive or should be USB boot capable. For installation minimum 15GB partition is required. " That should not be difficult for just about any computer lab with machines less than ten years old to meet.

For more information, check out the wiki for the distribution here: http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Education-Li-f-e

I bought an iPad, Now What?

Here is the presentation for the course at Casper College on Saturday the 15th. https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BzePI4lBjEKzdGxSNDkyWFdnVFU

WebP, a JPEG replacement begins to gain traciton

I'll be the first to admit that this development has gotten by me for the last however long that Google has been working on it. There is a new graphic format that is being developed at Google with the aim of replacing the JPEG standard for images. According to what I have read, the WebP format is supposed to be more size efficient than JPEG and PNG (over 20% smaller in both cases) at the same resolution, supports transparency like the PNG and GIF formats, and is capable of both lossy and lossless compression using two very different compression methods.

Why is it important? The WebP format will be able to provide smaller file sizes for graphics used on the web, and also smaller email attachments when sending images.

As of this time the format is supported natively by the Chrome browser, and plug-ins are available for some other browsers. You can find out more about the format from Google here: https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/ . For those interested in being able to use WebP on Windows, the codec is available here: https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/webp_codec?hl=hu-HU

Considering the period that the PNG format was available before becoming a de facto alternative to GIF and JPEG, WebP probably has a couple of years left before becoming ubiquitous. It is good to see that there is continuing development on better image compression standards, especially given the continued adoption of wireless connected devices, where file size and transmission time is a real consideration.

iPad Security presentation link

Here is the link to the presentation from the Sept. 8th iPad security course.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1zU03K2fXwMBE_RnV0FBozNaynvwAoNrE1WjgUUYsOlA/edit