Zoya Street

One day, when I’m no longer flat broke, I’m going to replace my 2006 MacBook with a mini desktop (like a Mac mini), a mobile projector and some low-profile alternative to a keyboard – I say an Arduino LilyPad-based homebrew dataglove, but I’m told that the technology for webcam image recognition is so advanced now that visual gesture recognition is much more efficient than conductive fabric and an accelerometer. We shall see. In the meantime, I’m going to fantasise about a mini desktop that is light, portable, and actually looks like something you want to pick up and touch and take to bed at night for an evening of Battlestar Galactica on the ceiling. Enter the glorious google search for wooden computer enclosures. Not all of the examples I found below are small enough for my liking, and none of them are affordable – some aren’t for sale – but oh my, imagine the warmth schnuggliness of a living room with one of these as its media center.

The original show and tell for this DIY modern danish computer enclosure is now long gone, but isn’t it pretty? It’s far bigger than what I’m looking for, but if you’re going to have a massive computer tower it really better had be an item of furniture in its own right.

This mod, entitled level eleven, is pretty much exactly the size and style I’ve been dreaming of. The only thing I would change is get rid of the speed stripe, and make the overall shape a bit more curvy, as at the moment it looks like something that should be sat on a desk whereas I want something that looks grabbable and maybe even cuddle-able.

This beast is far too large, but so beautifully ornate and art-deco that it makes me want to charge around shouting, ‘I’m a time-lord, biyatch’ – something Doctor Who will, admittedly, probably never say.

And finally, yes oh my god yes that really is a computer. But they only made 10 of them. No, it doesn’t look grabbable or small. But if I had one I would bow down before it every morning and bestow upon it fragrant oils, precious jewels and sprinkle gold powders. Just imagine the patina.

My room is getting close to completion now. Photos of the whole room will come when I’m finished mounting art on the walls and when I have a nice divan sheet (I know the perfect one is out there, so I’m still holding out). For now, here’s before and after shots of the furniture!

My Mum found most of the furniture in a second-hand shop, except for the bookcase which was a hand-me-down from a family friend. In total the whole set cost £70, plus the cost of paints which I have lots and lots left over of. Unfortunately I still need to touch up the paint job in some places, but once that’s done I’ll get hold of a nice camera and take some really beautiful shots!

So here’s the before:

First of all, the dressing table had a blotchy stain on it, so needed repainting anyway. Also, I’m really not into the antique-effect pine look. Finally, the cabinet was pretty revolting: with the random hovering cupboard and ill thought-out s-shaped transition from large lower section to small upper section, the tudor-effect window right next to the flowery panels and the fact that it was covered in knots and holes, it really needed some TLC.

Here’s the after:

So, the first thing to get out of the way: the bookcase fits almost perfectly on top of the chest of drawers, so that seemed like an obvious decision. I promise that by the time I show photos of my room again I will not only use a better quality camera, I will also have reorganised these shelves so they look less messy! Never mind. One important point is that the bookcase and the mirror unit for the dressing table both have furniture pads underneath them to limit damage to my paint work. Definitely a necessity.

I was going to go for full-on 2009 colour of the year Pantone-style turquoise, but my Mum talked me down and had me go for this colour, which Dulux call ‘inky pool.’ She was completely right to do so – it’s much more relaxing and looks particularly lush on the curvy legs of the dressing table and buffet. I went for a bright, snowy cream because glossy, pure white would look too cold against the turquoise, but a more yellowish shade of cream might have clashed with the walls. I’ll write a post about what went right and what went wrong with my painting methods later on.

Aside from paint colours, I also had to choose a new fabric to recover the buffet. I didn’t have a major problem with the yellow cover from before, but I absolutely love the reupholstery jobs featured on blogs like Design*Sponge that involve dramatic prints and I wanted to try my hand at something similar. In the end I didn’t go for a print with contrasting colours, but I’m still very chuffed with this big, leafy design on soft, cream fabric that almost matches the paint.

Finally, the cabinet. I knocked out the small cupboard from the top and replaced it with glass shelves, which look much less fussy. In the process of getting rid of the cupboard some of the flowery panels were removed, but I’ve kept others because they actually look kind of sweet in cream. I knew all along that I was going to put that massive, red book in front of one of the s-curves, but I didn’t know that the cabinet would fit so well in the corner of the room that the curtain would conceal the other curve – that was a massive stroke of luck. Finally, I put some little wicker baskets on top (they don’t really show in the photo) to use more the height of the room for storage. Now the parts of my teapot collection that are not in daily use can sit proudly in the corner of my bedroom!

I was going to do a bit of research about the concept of privacy in the information age, and write a blog post about the latest issues with Facebook. But then I realised it would be more informative if I just repost this.

I’m considering running away from the echoing chamber of self-obsessed monologues that is Facebook. I think to some extent, Facebook inscribes a certain kind of use into its design, and that use is a combination of stupid games, whiny status updates, and embarrassing photos – none of which reflect well on its users. I want out. However, Facebook is like a digital cafeteria – you don’t know who you might bump into, and you get to talk to people who you know, but might not usually make the effort to contact. Quitting Facebook will be like moving away to a tiny village in Wales. I’m hoping that some platform will arise that is similar to Facebook, but much more pared down and much less invasive.

I don’t see why the diaspora project is necessary, though. While google is no stranger to privacy issues, I feel quite positive about the frameworks google has come up with for drawing a common social thread between separate internet platforms, such as google friend connect and google profiles. Google has platforms for pretty much every task that facebook carries out, and provides the ability to link as many or as few of these together as you want. And unlike Facebook, google’s Blogger, wave, gmail, googletalk, even buzz don’t seem to be designed to make an idiot out of you.

I recently made the decision to hide someone from my facebook news feed. This is not a decision I take lightly. I decided to carry out a careful statistical analysis of all their facebook statuses from the past two weeks to make sure that a sufficiently large proportion of their facebook statuses annoy me for them to be worthy of exclusion from my news feed. This, I’m sure you agree, is what any sane person would do.

I defined as annoying anything that related to death, mafia wars (excluding notifications from the app) any complaints of any sort, and quotes, which includes movies, songs, tv, stand up comedians, old jokes, or any viral copy-paste statuses. Almost three-quarters of the facebook user’s statuses were annoying by this definition.