The offender: a musty hardcover copy of Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme from 1981, purchased on the cheap from a third-party seller on Amazon.com. I imagined that unlike, say, the way professionals remove sticker residue from a book’s dustcover¹, there would be a dozen suggestions for defunktifying a book. Hey, presto; I was right. I Googled a batch and rewrote them concisely for the table below. Any suggestions as to what works and what doesn’t, whether or not it’s listed here?

¹ Lighter fluid. [back]

² Unscented or the book will smell like dryer-sheet perfume and nothing deodorizes that. [back]

³ Do not let the book touch the kitty litter; it can stain the book. [back]

I tried this tip for assembling a “$15 Mont Blanc pen.” At Staples, I bought a two-pack of black Mont Blanc rollerball refill cartridges and a pack of Pilot G2 gel ink pens, then swapped a Pilot pen cartridge for a Mont Blanc cartridge. Per the Instructable, I first had to snip a bit of plastic off the end of the Mont Blanc cartridge to make it fit in the Pilot casing.

It works, although the push-button mechanism of the Pilot sticks frequently; I have to slightly loosen the segments of the pen to “unclick” it. (This could be because I cut too little or too much off the Mont Blanc cartridge.)

The Frankenpen writes smoothly, and the ink smudges very little, which is a fine attribute in a roller-ball pen, but I don’t notice an appreciable difference over the Pilot Precise Rolling Ball pens I currently favor. And really, as I think someone else pointed out in the comments for the Instructable, the point of a Mont Blanc (other than to convey to people that you make a lot of money and are not opposed to sinking some of it into overpriced writing utensils) is that the casing is tooled and weighted for the Ultimate Writing Experience, or whatever the marketing phrase might be.

You know, short of a Sharper Image Automatic Eyeglass Cleaner, nothing will get the lenses of one’s eyeglasses cleaner than standard dish soap. For some time I’ve used the standard glycerin-based liquid soap in my bathroom, or the bar of Dove I keep in the shower, for purposes of lens-cleaning, but my glasses were always left somewhat fogged or streaky. But dish soap works beautifully. I don’t know why it took me so long to realize this. The sheeting action even keeps them streak-free, for a time.

Early this month, I happened upon two flat wooden crates someone on my street was throwing out. They’re in fine shape and I believe they date from the ’60s; each was made to hold and transport two dozen glass Pepsi bottles. I decided they might come in handy, so I brought them back to my apartment.

I didn’t feel like doing anything as obvious as using them as curio cabinets. After all, each of the 24 compartments is curio-sized. So I asked this girl I work with for advice. Her qualification is that she’s crafty: she’s made her own jewelry and purses and was one of the first contestants on Craft Corner Deathmatch. (In her haste trimming something, she sliced her finger and bled all over her project; she didn’t advance.) She instantly thought of three options:

1. Arrange tall clear glass candleholders in some of the slots and use it as a centerpiece for a table.
2. Hang the crate on a bathroom wall and store rolled-up washcloths and small toiletries in the cubbyholes.
3. Drape a strand of Christmas lights inside the cubbyholes then cover the front of the crate with a piece of vellum or other translucent paper/plastic for use as a decorative light.

What great ideas! I ignored them all and ended up “making” the obvious curio cabinet, which involved me standing one of the crates on end and cramming assorted small objects I had lying around my apartment into the cubbies, including Homies, miniature bottles of Tabasco sauce, an old watch, a rubber stamp and some miniature loteria cards. That stuff counts as curios, right?

For its photo-of-the-day earlier this week, the awesome NYPL Digital Gallery featured this black-and-white studio portrait from 1931 of an unnamed young lady who was a dancer in a Broadway revue at the New Amsterdam Theatre. It caught my fancy as a candidate to hand-tint in Photoshop. I’m one of many, I’d imagine, who has a copy of Photoshop on his computer but is only able to harness 5% of its power, but I found hand-tinting isn’t difficult. As the risk of offending the Photoshop experts who read my blog (both of you), here’s the technique I used:

1. Change the photo’s image mode to color (Image->Mode->CYMK Color).
2. For each element of the photo you want to tint, create a new layer (Layer->New->Layer...).
3. Change the new layer’s mode to Color.
4. Select a foreground color.
5. Use the brush tool (and for me, the eraser tool) to paint in the area.

In the end, my layers window looked like this:

Here’s the tinted photo:

That’s it. I also discovered that instead of fiddling with the Color Picker to find an exact color, it was easier for me to choose a general color then decrease the layer’s opacity until it reached an old-fashioned muted hue.

I received my external 250GB LaCie hard drive today at work via UPS and it was a wonky thrill to look forward to taking it home and formatting it. After I did, I copied over all eight DVDs of The Complete New Yorker which took a few hours. If you have enough hard drive space and The Complete New Yorker installed on a Macintosh with Tiger (which comes preinstalled with MySQL, a program you need for this exercise), it’s easy, or easier than I thought, at least, to force the program to recognize all the issues on an external drive.

Most of these instructions I gleaned from the net, tested and clarified; I had to research and experiment with creating symbolic links (aliases) using the command line. That really took me back to my Amiga days with the Shell and CLI.

Nerd!

1. Copy the complete contents of the Issues folder from each DVD, as well as the contents of the folder /Library/Application Support/The New Yorker/Issues on your local hard drive, to a single Issues folder elsewhere. In the case of this example, it’s located on an external hard drive: /Volumes/External HD/The New Yorker/Issues
2. Now that you’ve copied its contents, delete the /Library/Application Support/The New Yorker/Issues folder. (We’ll create an alias folder to take its place in the final step.)
3. Make a back-up copy of the MySQL database, just in case; the file’s path is:
   /Library/Application Support/The New Yorker/ny-sqlite-3.db
4. In the Terminal (located in your Applications/Utilities folder), enter the following command. It updates The Complete New Yorker database to indicate that each issue is now stored in the Issues folder on the local hard drive:
   sqlite3 "/Library/Application Support/The New Yorker/ny-sqlite-3.db" "update Issues set DiskID = 9 where DiskID <> 9;"
5. Of course, each issue isn’t stored on the local drive; they’re now all on the external drive. So enter the following command. It creates an alias so that every time The Complete New Yorker attempts to access the Issues folder on the local hard drive, it will be automatically redirected to the Issues folder on the external hard drive. (Obviously, you’ll need to change the segment /Volumes/External HD/The New Yorker/Issues to reflect where you copied the Issues files on your own system.):
   ln -s "/Volumes/External HD/The New Yorker/Issues" "/Library/Application Support/The New Yorker"

Whew. The bottom line: Now when you launch The Complete New Yorker, it will atomatically fetch issues from the external hard drive. Ultra-fast searches and no swapping among eight DVDs. It is beyond me why the fine people at the magazine could not simply condense all of this tomfoolery into an installation option.

1. Read “To Build A Fire,” the classic short story by Jack London, wherein a man slowly freezes to death. (Text courtesy of Project Gutenberg.)
2. Read a blog written by Simon Coggins, a scientist in Antarctica. Specifically, you should check out the entry ”Fun at -50C.” The character in “To Build A Fire” notices his spit freezing at -50C, while Coggins has entertaining photographic and video evidence of boiling water, as well as long, wet hair, freezing at precisely the same temperature.
3. Get naked, as noted in this AP story from today’s “National Briefing” section of the New York Times:

   Workers at the Justice Department removed the blue drapes that had covered two scantily clad statues for three and one-half years. “Spirit of Justice,” with her one breast exposed and her arms raised, and the bare-chested male “Majesty of Law” basked in the afternoon light of the Great Hall. The drapes, installed in 2002 at a cost of $8,000, let John Ashcroft, then attorney general, speak in the Great Hall without fear of a breast showing up behind him on television or in newspaper pictures.

My parents left earlier this week to visit my sister in Dublin. I myself traveled transcontinentally a few times a year for my old job, during which I accrued some tips that I had planned to give to my folks, who have never flown overseas before. Of course, I forgot, but here they are anyway. Most of them can apply to any flight, but make more sense for long flights where comfort is important.

Clothing. Don’t fret about looking like an idiot American who just rolled out of bed; wear something loose and “breathable.” (Anything like jeans or khakis will just seal in your bodily juices and you’ll feel all hot and nasty for half the flight.) I swear by track pants, but sweat pants are probably also a good option, with a T-shirt and maybe a sweatshirt (it can get cold on the plane and those skimpy blankets they give you only cover so much). Wear a pair of your “nice” socks (not those thin ones with dirt stains and holes) because they’re ideal for “wearing” on the plane; I bust out of my shoes as soon as the plane takes off. Much more comfortable and psychologically makes it easier for you to relax/sleep.

Food. Anything to break up the high-sodium of the airline food, and also something just in case you get stranded in an airport and don’t feel like paying $7 for a hot dog. Cliff or Luna bars, or chewy granola bars, are my top recommendations. (Avoid anything crumbly as it’ll just bust up in your luggage and get all over the place when you’re eating it.) Also nice is dried fruit (although be warned your hands can get sticky), particularly Crasins or raisins in one of those foil re-sealable pouches; avoid traditional dried fruit as the sulphur dioxide used as a preservative will give you searing gas.

Gum. I’m a big fan of sugarless gum. Freshens breath and helps your ears “pop” when you chew it.

A bottle of water. They’ll serve water on the plane but it’s always nice to have your own.

Reading material. Small paperbacks and disposable magazines are obviously best.

Toiletries. Toothbrush and a travel tube of toothpaste are a great idea, as your mouth will get all mossy if you don’t brush after dinner. A travel pack of baby wipes is ideal for wiping your hands and greasy face (or your ass if the toilet paper isn’t doing full duty).

Sleep aids. A sleep mask (those fabric ones that strap over your eyes) and earplugs really do help. An mp3 player or Walkman/Discman is also handy and helps pass the time and relax you even when you’re not trying to doze off; they’re also good if you don’t feel like talking to some chatty bastard sitting next to you or listening to the baby that’s shrieking like it’s being jabbed with hatpins.

Games. Hasbro makes travel Scrabble and Boggle (they call them “Scrabble Folio Game Edition” and “Boggle Folio Game Edition”—they’re available on Amazon.com for $20 each.) Brilliant and ultimately portable. I suppose crossword puzzle books or maybe a deck of cards might also be up your alley.

Storage. In coach, your space is at a premium; maximize it. The first thing I do upon taking my seat on the plane is take all the crap that’s in my seatback pocket and throw it up into the overhead compartment. The pocket is now yours for all your stuff; you don’t want to read any of those magazines or airmiles catalogs anyways, believe me.

I knew Starbucks had to have a redeeming grace other than its free public restrooms. I wouldn’t have thought this would be the case, especially after I purchaed a Starbucks mocha this afternoon.

The cup was printed with a fluffy quote from musician Youssou N’Dour: “People need to see that, far from being an obstacle, the world’s diversity of languages, religions and traditions is a great treasure, affording us precious opportunities to recognize ourselves in others.” I found it amusing and sad that the coffee king felt it necessary to add a legal disclaimer in tiny print below: “This is the author’s opinion, not necessarily that of Starbucks.” I suppose diversity isn’t necessarily a treasure to a corporation that values homogeny in its service, product and attitude.

But back to that other redeeming grace: You can make a protective, biodegradable case for a single CD using two of those corrugated cardboard “insulating sleeves” that are usually sitting out in a basket where you pick up your beverage. Allow me to demonstrate in a simple two-step photo instructional.

Step 1:

Step 2:

The sleeves fit the CD perfectly and won’t come apart without a good pull, even when exposed to environments as hostile as my briefcase-bag. Brilliant!