Recently, I had to set up WordPress on an IIS6 machine. Yes, WordPress does work on IIS6, believe it not. The only really tricky bit is getting fancy permalinks to work, so that urls looks like www.foo.com/2011/06/my-awesome-post instead of www.foo.com/index.php?p=6. I used IIRF to get mod_rewrite like functionality, as the supported IIS Rewrite isn’t available until IIS7. It’ll take the same .htaccess configuration as mod_rewrite on Apache, with one very important difference; you have to add a U to the [L] in the final redirect. This passes along a HTTP_X_REWRITE_URL header to PHP, which WordPress uses internally to decide what to show. Your IIRF.ini will end up looking like this:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase / #whatever your virtual root is
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule .* /index.php [L,U]
Sometimes, it’s the little things that keep you going through the big things. I’ve got a couple big projects in the shop looming over me, the Stickley Lost Side Table and a new porch swing. Both of these projects are things that are going to take a fair bit of time, which can be a drag on your motivation.
Mandy has been reorganizing the kitchen and wanted a new place to store all our spices. They had hung out in a drawer in our pantry, but it was hard to see what we had and was always messy. We have a nice, wide shallow drawer under the range that would be perfect, but it’s just a wide open expanse of space. Spices would roll all over and it didn’t keep things neat and tidy.
I happened to have some 1/2″ poplar lying around and thought, hey, I’m a woodworker. I can make drawer dividers! Two hours of work later, most of that planing the stock and fiddling with divider placement, we had a nicely divided drawer.
I sized the area so that the individual spice jars cannot spin, for the most part. That way, when the drawer opens and closes, everything stays in place and doesn’t roll around. As bad as their spices are, the space jars from McCormick, with their octagonal sides, are really nice here. They just stick in place.
The piece is just 1/2″ poplar, planed down to about 3/8″. The short arms are fit into notches in the long arms, so I can easily adjust the width of each horizontal space, but not the height. This is fine in this case.
No finish on this, just nicely planed poplar. Fits right in.
Update: Decided I didn’t like the narrow look. Back to the old design.
Trying out a new site design, much narrower than my old design. It’s only about half done, but I had enough to push forward with it.
The main motivation was narrowing down the text column, which should make it easier to read. I might try jumping the font size up to something slightly silly for body text, like 16pt, just so its easier to have big images. That’s the only thing I really do not like about the current iteration, images have gotten too small, as well as videos.
I’d like to let them overflow the text column, but I can’t find a way to do that with CSS. A negative left margin of 50% does not line up quite right.
This is not the first thing you want to see when you walk into your shop, especially when said cabinet was full of your hand planes and sharpening stones. Definitely not the first thing.
After pushing my stomach down out of my throat, I surveyed the damage. Fancy new tote on my jack plane, toast.
Yoke on my no. 8 jointer plane from the late 1800s, busted.
Otherwise, my tools were mostly unscathed. The handle on my crappy spokeshave snapped off, and my 8000 grit sharpening stone has a nice crack, but it’s still useable. And that was really it. Couple dings in things, but nothing major. Thank god for the ductile iron in the modern planes, and a couple lucky bounces for the others.
I ordered a replacement y-adjuster for the 8; it arrived on Saturday. After a trip to the local hardware store to pick up some punches, it was pretty easy to replace, if nervy. Anytime you have to hammer on cast iron from 100 years ago, you get a little nervous. All went well though, and I have a working jointer again.
Now, back to making furniture. And tearing down all those crappy cabinets.
No, I haven’t gone and decided to embrace some of the shadier parts of rural Michigan. I’m doing something even crazier. I’m building furniture.
If you’ve followed this site at all, you’ve seen the recent videos for Chris Schwarz’ new book The Anarchist’s Tool Chest. I received my copy yesterday and finished it up tonight; here are my impressions after the first read.
First off, the book itself is a beautiful object. It has a lovely solid cover with an embossed graphic, no silly paper dust jacket to get torn up and lost. The cover has a texture to it, so it won’t slip when placed on a stand or your lap. It’s a good size, and has the feel and look of an old book. The paper is heavy and crisp, the type is wonderfully set, with some nice little touches in the typography. There’s no colophon, so I’m not sure what fonts were used, but the type is easy on the eyes and well spaced.
The book is a story in three parts: why you should build things yourself, what tools you’ll need to do it, and finally, where to store those tools so they will outlast you. Unlike many of the books published under the Popular Woodworking label, which tend towards a collection of articles, this has a narrative and a coherence that makes it an enjoyable read, more like a novel.
The first part, why you should build for yourself, struck a chord. I strongly dislike most manufactured furniture, especially Ikea’s furniture. My father taught that it’s better to buy a quality thing once, rather than buy a cheap thing ten times, and I’ve ended up kicking myself every time I’ve forgotten this maxim.
To that end, as my wife and I have been furnishing our home, we keep moving up the retail ladder. First, I picked up a bedroom set from Ethan Allen. Looks nice, but after living with it for a while, the build quality is only OK. The Stickley living and dining room stuff we purchased later (after saving many pennies) is better, but even that has some quality niggles. And going back to the showroom now, I don’t see Stickley getting better. Boards in top glueups are getting narrower. Joints look sloppy.
In the second part of the book, what tools you’ll need to build quality furniture, Chris doesn’t pull any punches. His thesis is that you only need about fifty different tools to make just about any common piece of household furniture. Yes, only fifty tools, and none of the fifty are power tools. He advises that you should buy the best you can afford, trying to buy such that you’ll never have to buy again.
As the (soon to be former) editor of one of the more popular woodworking magazines, I think it takes some testicular fortitude to say straight out that it would be better for most folks to limit their tool set and buy tools that you only have to buy once. He does include some power tools in the margins, things that will make life easier, but not the standard table saw. The shop as described is much more centered around the workbench, not the power equipment. The powered gear exists like a shop apprentice of old, dealing with the drudgery of milling rough lumber.
The third part, how to build a chest that will hold your tools so they’ll last a few lifetimes, is more like the workbench books; here’s what we’re going to build and here are the rules for how to design and construct it. The writing and pictures are clear and concise and have me seriously considering building a tool chest instead of the hanging tool cabinet for the Hand Tool School final (sorry Shannon). [ed note: definitely building a tool chest instead of a hanger after I proved gravity works]
Throughout the book, Chris punctuates his point with personal stories from the journey down the path. It’s a much more personal book than anything he’s written before and I enjoy that touch. The writing is top-notch.
