Making My Office At Work Feel Like Home

I’m always excited to embark on little personal projects and this one really made a difference for me. I figured that if I am going to spend 9 hours a day, 5 days a week at the office, I might as well make it feel like home.

I’ve just won an auction and received an antique art mirror of Francis Barraud’s “His Master’s Voice” with ornamental engraving to add a touch of class to my desk.

Hanging the antique piece proved incredibly challenging, as the frame is real antique wood and the art mirror is incredibly fragile. I didn’t dare attempt to drill / screw / hammer any nails into the piece to add mounting hardware.

It took an hour and a half at my local hardware store but four different staff took great interest in my project and worked together to develop a solution that wouldn’t risk damaging the valuable piece. (I made sure to submit a customer survey of thanks and to write a review of the store in gratitude.)

It took six attempts to arrive a potentially viable solution. First, we tried these hardware items and kits…

I bought and returned each of the items above one at a time trying each on the antique in the store. But none of the above would penetrate the wood without risking cracking the frame or shattering the glass. It was only the final item – one associate’s bright idea of using Command Hooks which would be removable without marring the original work.

The nylon hanging wire didn’t end up working with the plastic Command Hooks but thankfully I had more fine and pliable beading wire on hand at home from a prior crafting project.

After a good night’s rest, I trekked to work and hung the new art mirror in my cubicle. Tragically the Command Hooks couldn’t bear the weight and instantly tore from the cubicle wall, but thankfully it didn’t shatter.

I improvised, realizing that I could knot the spare beading wire around the heavy metal staples affixing the mirror to the frame. The simplest solution proved the strongest and this is how it ended up:

Here’s the piece displayed proudly:

It complements my other cubicle adornments, which include:

– my newly-antique-framed custom-printed portrait of my favorite modernist author, James Joyce

– a pair of handsome wood speakers with copper cones for a regal finish

– an engraved wood felt-lined tea chest filled with my favorite variety of teas

– a framed collage I put together showcasing portraits of a few figures in the 20th-century experimental music scene.

– and a 24×36 framed print of Miles Davis in New York in 1948 from the Herman Leonard Collection

The next investment for my office should arrive this autumn. I’ve located a craftsman in Norway who custom designs rosewood headphone stands and will be commissioning one for the ORA Graphene Q cans once they ship.

It’s a cozy space and I’ve really made it my own! ❤

The Record Divider Project

Ever-striving to improve upon the organizational standards of The Innerspace Labs library, I finally set myself to the task of creating custom genre-labeled PVC dividers for the genre sections of my collection.

I began by assessing the key genres which would most effectively and productively be represented with tabs and compiled a list of 21 primary genres. Next, I surveyed various marketplaces for materials and determined that Rochester, NY’s classic Bags Unlimited collectors’ supply store had the best supplies available and at the lowest price compared to eBay and Amazon. (A tip – phoning in your order to BU will expedite the shipment as they do not have to transfer the materials from their web system!)

While their site is well-organized, they did not specifically provide dimension information for the tab area of their dividers nor the character width of their standard 0.5″ adhesive lettering. But with some simple importing and scaling in Gimp I was able to derive those dimensions and determine the maximum number of characters per 6″ tab, (which is approximately 12-15). I then adjusted all my genre labels, simplifying them to twelve or fewer characters.

Counting the number of each letter per sheet I dumped my list into a web-based character frequency counter and determined that I would need 9 of the shop’s sheets to complete the project. I ordered a pack of 10 to be safe. Shipping was free and they arrived in just 48 hours so I got right to work.

I had read on a scrapbooking site about the technique of using a flat acrylic ruler to aid in typesetting and in keeping the lettering centered and on a uniform baseline. Not having a typesetter’s ruler handy, and seeing that all suppliers in my area were out of stock of them, I produced one myself using a spare heavy sheet of acetate I found and  trimmed down in my workplace’s mail room, added a few 1/2″ incremental markings to aid in centering, and dove into the project.

It took just two hours from start to finish, and I photographed the results. Here are the completed set of 21 dividers just as I finished setting them.

I pre-measured my various storage systems to ensure that these standard dividers would fit and function in each space. They worked perfectly. Here they are in action. I think they add a touch of professionalism to my listening room and hope that years from now when I retire and bestow my library upon a foundation or organization of my choice that these will make the work of the recipient far easier to bear.

It was a fun accomplishment!

 

(The box sets shelf seemed sufficient on its own so I didn’t include a divider here.)

The whole project was very affordable and really enhances my library’s organization. Highly recommended for anyone looking to spruce up their listening room!

Pink Floyd Yard Sale Mystery: Solved

The following info was compiled from the Pink Floyd RolO Database, backtrax-records.co.uk, and various other Pink Floyd archive sites.  I’d like to post this as a “thank you” to Mr. Pinky, Historian of the Pink Floyd Vinyls throughout the world.  His site, the Ultimate Pink Floyd Vinyl Discography includes over 2600 recordings!  You can visit it at http://digilander.libero.it/mrpinky/

Mr. Pinky confirmed my research and provided additional information about a mysterious live LP of The Wall I found at a yard sale for a mere fifty cents.  The blank white sleeve contained the unlabeled album in mint condition along with a 12″ print and a handwritten track list.

Here is what I came to learn about the album.

Title:        Pink Floyd: The Wall Performed Live
Format:     LP
Catalog:    E.M.K.A. PROD  (EMKA = MCA = Universal)
Matrix:      (P-DA/PDF-B) ß Portable Digital Audio Tape
Source:     1980 London Earl’s Court, London 1980 August 6th

Sound Quality: Excellent Stereo

Comments: Italian bootleg with plain cover and paper insert with orange print. Pressed from the same plates as the e.m.k.a release on black and lilac vinyl with plain white labels. Later re-issued again with black & white xeroxed insert on black, green and lilac vinyl. A further pressing from these plates had yet another different insert and Avion record labels.

Rarity rating: **** (all issues)

Band: Roger Waters, Rick Wright, Nick Mason, David Gilmour

Pink Floyd never toured for The Wall, but only played between five and eight dates each at Los Angeles, New York, London, Dortmund, and again London during 1980 and 1981.

NOTE: Several live performances of The Wall are mis-labeled as this performance.

The following cd package is actually a recording from the Nassau Coliseum in New York on the 26th of February 1980.

Another show mis-labeled as Earls Court 1980 is noted at this site:
http://www.spacecoast-cdr.com/Pink_Floyd/Pink_Floyd.html.  It is actually Earls Court London, UK June 17, 1981.

And finally, the widely available live DVD performance of the Wall is clearly marked as Earls Court, August 9th, 1980.  To the best of my knowledge, the August 6th concert has yet had no official release.

ADDITIONAL UPDATE: The master tape of this recording later appeared on the Siréne label on a released titled, The Warm Thrill Of Confusion (Siréne-063).  Collectors Music Reviews added the following note about the tape:

It first surfaced on vinyl as The Wall Live, Wall, and The Wall Performed Live (E.M.K.A. PROD) and on CD as Live Wall (Satisfaction Guaranteed SG 054/55 ), Live Wall (Part 1+2) on Silver Rarities (SIRA 47/48), The Show Must Go On and the fan based Digital Floyd Project roio The Wall Earl’s Court 6/8/80 Performed Live.

So that solves the case of the unmarked album.  Not a bad find for fifty cents.