Nick Wade

Since Oskar's been going to daycare (almost 7 weeks now) this has become our typical weekend... third one in a row where he's been fighting a spiking high fever, and alternating tiredness with chaotic ready-to-go 20 minutes here and there. Nothing serious, just inoculation-by-sharing.

We're all hoping it settles down soon!

So yesterday on June 21st the northern hemisphere had the summer solstice, and tonight we had a supermoon – a full moon when by coincidence, the moon is at is closest to the earth this year. It's a bit larger and brighter than the average full moon. Really large and bright, actually. 

I thought it was worth capturing for posterity. Did the best I could with the EOS 7D and lenses I have.

When Dada has a cappucino in the morning, Oskar likes to have a cup of "bubble milk" - this is the typical result! 

Essentially as Cook's Illustrated would tell it, done my way.

You'll need two 9" cake pans that stack together. Preheat the oven to 425ºF. We'll reduce it as we put the shortbread in...

1. Throw 1 ¾ cups of all purpose flour, and ¼ cup of rice flour in a mixing bowl (or ¼ cup cornstarch)
2. Dice 2 sticks of cold unsalted butter (16 tbsp's all up) into ½" cubes and toss in the flour
3. Add 5oz of ultrafine baker's sugar (caster sugar) reserving about 1 tbsp (maybe a bit less) for dusting
4. Throw in 2 good pinches of salt and mix on low for 3 to 4 minutes. You can also mix by hand.
1. you should have something resembling large "crumbs"
5. Line the bottom of a 9" cake pan with parchment, tip the crumbs in, and spread evenly with your fingers :)
6. Press down with a second 9" cake pan, heavily, until you have a nice even cake
7. Lay parchment down on a baking sheet and tip the flat cake out onto it. 
1. Even up the edges gently, pressing with a spoon.
8. Cut a 2" circle out of the middle, and set aside (free cookie!). If you have metal cookie cutter leave that in.
1. If you don't, it's easy to clean out the mess in the middle after baking, so don't fret
9. Boost it into the oven reducing it immediately to 300ºF. A hot start is what we want, but not for long.
   
10. Bake for 20 minutes, then remove and score into 16 even slices with a knife, then pierce each with a fork
11. Back in the oven for about 40 more minutes (perhaps a few less) - until golden brown

When you pull the baking sheet out, move the parchment with shortbreads off onto a wire rack to cool for 3 hours. If you didn't have a cookie cutter in the middle, run your paring knife around the original hole again and toss out the spillage in the middle. Dust evenly with the reserved sugar and after cooling, enjoy with a cup of white English Breakfast or Irish Breakfast tea. 

Some time after my son was born (he's now just turned two), I decided that it was time to get rid of the two older MFP's and one inkjet printer that we had in our apartment, and settle on one new home-office MFP to do  everything. We print mostly photos, and want good ones, but sometimes need to scan or print a regular b&w document. Like most homes. I settled up on a reasonably well-rated Canon MG-5220 scan/copy/print device with WiFi (and I thought at the time, AirPrint). It's a slow-ish printer model but rated well for photo quality output and it's physical footprint fit neatly into the credenza style cabinet I have in the hallway by our front door. These along with it's cost-effective acquisition price sealed the deal.

All was well for a while. Well, I discovered it didn't have AirPrint all too late but nevermind - AirPrint activator to the rescue (on any Mac in the house, worked great). Until recently - my wife went to print a GiftRocket that we wanted to give to a friend later the same day. Good ole printer randomly came up with a U052 message on it's little LCD screen, which read rather ominously for a message preceded by zero change; "The type of print head installed is incorrect. Install the correct print head." After several power cycles and a day later (yeah, we emailed that Giftrocket instead) with no power in it's system at all, I learned that I should try to clean the print head out, which I duly did under a long shower of hot water. After all that, U052 kept on coming up. I don't know if you know this, but any Canon MFP is entirely f*cking useless under these conditions. Printing is busted, so scanning and copying is held back too. The problem has to be solved, and quick.

OK, so I figured the next step is to replace the print head, right? The entire printer was about $150 or $160 (IIRC) delivered with five new Canon ink cartridges. On that basis the print head, having no moving parts or ink, must be pretty cheap to replace, right? I mean - after all - it's not ink cartridges where the profit really lies, right? 

Wrong. This is where it became somewhat screwed up. The QY6-0080 print head part from Canon turns out to retail at around $95.00, if you can find it. If supplies of that part are low, it goes up to $124 + shipping. Strangely enough it also "wholesales" for the same retail price. The f*ck? To rub salt into the wound, it does not deliver with a new set of ink cartridges; that price is just the plastic print head with a small attached circuit board and the nozzles. 

On the other hand though, the latest model of my kaput printer, the Canon MG-5420 is for sale on Dell.com for $110 (actually $109.99 for the software devs and other anally retentive among you), and that delivers with a new print head and a new set of Canon-brand ink cartridges.  

So, comparing my costs; firstly for a new print head and new ink cartridge set for my (now) old printer at about $160, and the entire new model printer including those things at about $110, well you can guess what I did. I bought the new printer. The old one is sadly, going in the trash. It is useless and is going in the trash.

So what is Canon getting out of this deal? Most apparently, they're getting at the very least a $50 bill (I might have paid them $160 for parts instead of $110 for the printer), just for my custom on Canon ink cartridges. But I was already a customer, and I simply balked on paying for a part that I know probably costs them less than $5.00 COGS (Cost Of Goods Sold: to get the part made, sold, and ready to ship to me) but for which they felt comfortable stinging me for at least $95.00. Instead, they probably took a much, much larger loss-lead to get a new MG-5420 into my hands (given all it's moving parts and other fine engineering), in the hope that I buy a lot of new ink cartridges (it's about $65 for all 4 colors and 2 blacks + a bit of shipping) and Canon glossy photo paper over the next 2 years.

This is an extremely marginal business. What went wrong? Put simply, Canon saw HP's model of making creamy profits on ink cartridges and other small parts, and optimized only for that. Instead of charging $95 for a $5 part, they should charge $10, and then offer to upsell me on genuine Canon ink cartridges and paper as I grab that part. After all, it might be the off-label ink cartridges I bought last time that screwed it up in the first place, and a good Canon experience now is going to likely turn me into a repeat Canon ink customer at that point. Instead, they have optimized for agressive acquisition of ink customers, at all costs, in favor of everything else, including customer experience.

No matter to me, a new printer arrived today, it has five new Canon ink cartridges, and supports AirPrint directly. I guess I'll smugly continue this cycle until Canon figures it out, or until it becomes more cost-effective for me to buy an HP printer, but even they can't quite get this business right (and they invented it). 

Some months ago I bought a repro of something I've always wanted, an Eames Lounge Chair. Whilst I could have had the original, I have a 1.5 year old boy who climbs everything and who paints milk and crumbs on everything. I figured better to save the money and frustration of ruined premium leather, and buy a less expensive repro called the "Eaze Lounge Chair" from LexMod instead. The company does not make the furniture but simply brokers between US buyers (such as Amazon) and Chinese factories instead. This is not a bad business idea at all, here's a similar unit with a unit cost of $295 USD — that is, unless unit quality is bad and your customers feel bad.  

Well, as usual, I was wrong. The cabinet maker who had reviewed the repro as unsound on Amazon.com was dead right. After less than 3 months the chair gave a tremendous groan and sound of tearing wood one day, and the right side of the back section slumped down. Sitting in the chair was done. I'm not one to give up easily however. After contacting the company, thinking about the potential repair, and figuring what effort/cost it would take to re-pack and ship it back, I repaired it myself.

This blog then, is the procedure of that repair. I'm quite handy, and have made some strong furniture before although I'm not a trained cabinet maker, and I enjoyed this work and am proud of the results, but I believe most people would be at a loss as to what to do.

1. This angle iron is supposed to be approximately flush with the plywood. Do I see wood splinters in there in the dark opening? This doesn't look good.

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2. Disassembled, the problem immediately became clear. A thin soft steel plate is attached to the inside of the chair base (and back) section, with nothing but a matrix of tiny wood screws (#6 or #7 x 3/8" length was my guess). The back section bolts to these steel plates at 4 points (2 each plate) with a sturdy piece of angle iron. But between the angle iron and the wood base and back sections is nothing more than about 12 overly small, shallow, over-tightened wood screws in cheap soft plywood (it has a nice external veneer but is otherwise not dense). Every screw on the right side had ripped straight out. A view of the left side in the third pic above shows what it might have looked like when it left the Chinese factory.

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3. Both soft steel plates had also deformed on the right side. Enter construction adhesive between the plates and the plywood, and small C-clamps which flattened the plates right out — they are quite soft steel apparently.

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 4. After adhering and clamping, enter both #10 x 1/2" and #8 x 1/2" wood screws, that I trimmed to 3/8" length with a Dremel. I also then flattened the much larger #10 screw heads with the Dremel after screwing them home. The first picture here shows nicely where the final original screw gave way and tore through the plywood base as the steel plate and thus the right side back section detached completely from the base section.

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5. Then enter a 3/8" drill bit. I used this to drill out the old threaded hole in the steel plate, and also drill all the way clear through the outside veneer. The new connector bolts will go right through both.

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6. Finally, reassembly with some 1/4" x #20 thread cabinet connector bolts and connector cap nuts (called "furniture connector bolts" by Hillman, part 57141-G*) in antique bronze, which match the external veneer nicely. Yes, I had the angle iron incorrectly facing inwards when I first reassembled the chair in the second photo, later flipped correctly when reattaching the padded arms. I actually needed shorter bolts in the end so replaced the bolts in the photo with 1/4" x #20 x 1/2" length hi-tensile steel bolts. The connector cap nuts' outside diameter is 23/64" and so they run clear through into the steel plate through the new 3/8" hole, lending additional stability.

I do not believe the chair will fall apart again soon; even though I weigh 180lbs when I sit it is now rock-solid. Although I still have my "Eames" Lounge Chair for about $900, the less handy and experienced among you would be stymied by this chair, as I was for a while, and I do not recommend anybody purchase it.  

As for which furniture I now recommend you buy; original or repro? Neither, really. You should probably buy what my smart friends with kids all do — everything Ikea until the kids are at least 10. And by then you probably won't be able to afford an original Eames so your choices will be a lot simpler. ;) 

(* Hillman part 57141-G cap nuts )

This recipe actually sounds really fantastic. Pardon in advance my American brethren (brace yourself for Ramsay-style socio-demographic insights about obesity at the end)