The Office of Erik Dahl

Baking and Breaking Bread…

I came back from a week in Scottsdale, AZ to have a great weekend with Kelly and Cooper.

I finally got around to baking some bread based on the techniques in “Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day” (Jeff Hertzberg, Zoe Francois). Wow! Its so simple, tastes great, and couldn’t be easier or quicker. I recommend this book to anyone interested in making bread. It only takes a few minutes to mix all the ingredients and then you can store the wet dough in the fridge. Then whenever you want to make a loaf in the next 14 days, just tear off a grapefruit sized clump, form it, let it rest, and bake it. Nothing complicated. No kneading necessary. Did I mention that it tastes amazing.

Continue reading…

Uncork your potential

The annual DWR Champagne Chair Contest is back. Create an original miniature chair using only a Champagne bottle’s foil, label, cage and cork.

Maybe I’ll get around to submitting an entry this year.

get all the details at DWR…

Chairs will be judged by a panel of industry experts and the winning chairs will embark on a nation-wide tour. Plus, three winners will receive a Morgans Chair, from our partners at Emeco, the Pennsylvania-based furniture manufacturer. This chair, a DWR exclusive introduction, was designed by Andrée Putnam for the Morgans Hotel in New York. (The chair will be available in January.)

In the spirit of the Morgans Chair (which is made from 80% recycled materials), and in an effort to minimize the mountains of packaging waste that the contest has generated in the past, submissions must be made digitally. Submission deadline is 5pm (PT) on Friday, January 9, 2009, so start assembling your materials now. Cheers!

All entries must be received, via email, by 5pm (PT) on Friday, January 9, 2009.

Lockpicking for sport

I’ve always been fascinated with lockpicking, and it looks like MAKE has put together a lockpicking gift guide for the holidays.

Excerpt from the gift guide:

Each year there is more interest in locksports, or hobby lock picking, until recently, the hobby of lock picking in much of the world has been a solitary pursuit with enthusiasts practicing their skills alone – but that’s changing. At technology events, hacker conferences and with groups like locksport more folks are taking up this challenging sport and hobby.

This year MAKE has put together the only lock picking gift guide that we know, we hope you enjoy it – Special thanks to Austin Appel and Doug Farre (The president of Locksport International) who helped put this lockingpicking gift guide together!

read more…

Make snapshots look more professional

Tutorial Blog has a quick tutorial about giving snapshots and family photos a more professional edge. Take a look at the tutorial

Original photo from tutorial (left) | Finished and retouched photo from tutorial (right):

Future Present: alternative gift wrapping

London based agency Represent have challenged the design community to develop innovative and eco-friendly solutions to the problem of wasting wrapping paper with a project they are calling Future Present!

According to their website:

Every year in the UK we use more than 8,000 tonnes of wrapping paper for our Christmas presents, equivalent to 50,000 trees. And sticky tape, being non-biodegradable, prevents us from reusing those mountains of wrapping paper.

Now we’re challenging the design community to develop fresh and eco-friendly solutions to the problem, by designing sustainable and totally tape-free ways to wrap a Christmas gift.

The twenty best ideas will feature here on our website and also in our ‘advent’ window at Represent, with a different display daily throughout December.

You can see more images on their website.

I particularly like that plain paper wrapped in cord or rubber bands. I think it would be cool to use those think rubber bands that come around things like asparagus.

What are your wrapping strategies? Traditional or alternative?

Xmas Cheat Sheets!

Xmas Cheat Sheets! The idea is that you print one out for your other half and get them to fill in the their vital stats, then go out shopping with confidence that you’ll buy the right size and they’ll fit come Christmas day.

You can download the copies for yourself over at Made in England by Gentlemen by Cookie. There are versions for both boys and girls.

Print your images on 2×2 in ceramic tiles

This seems like a fun idea when thinking about adding a tile backsplash in the kitchen. Of course, there are many other ways you could use them.

On Teenytile.com you can customize two-inch-square ceramic tiles printed with your images. Each Teeny Tile comes with an adhesive magnet that you can apply to the back of the tile.

[From swissmiss: Print your images on 2x2 in ceramic tiles]

love-growth-cash triangle

There’s a certain joy that comes from doing what you love, getting compensated for it and constantly learning new things in the process. Your goal should be to maximize each experience and try to cover as many new areas of the bigger triangle as possible. Maxing out your Triangle, by Jack Cheng

National Day of Listening

Don’t forget. November 28, 2008 is National Day of Listening. There are some great resources over at the StoryCorps website. Having just visited my grandmother for her 100th birthday this past weekend, this is a great opportunity to talk with someone you love about their own life experiences.

StoryCorps is declaring November 28, 2008 the first annual National Day of Listening.

This holiday season, ask the people around you about their lives — it could be your grandmother, a teacher, or someone from the neighborhood. By listening to their stories, you will be telling them that they matter and they won’t ever be forgotten. It may be the most meaningful time you spend this year.

To get started, download our free Do-It-Yourself Guide.

[From National Day of Listening]

The $20 gift guide at MAKE

The $20 gift guide at MAKE – Electronics kits for $20 and under!

Make’s $20 gift guide has been posted for your gift giving pleasure.

I’m interested in the MintyBoost USB Charger Kit v2.0, but they are all pretty awesome for under $20.

HVAC Hack – pens to the rescue

Sometimes designs break, and sometimes there is an easy fix. We arrived to the office the other morning to discover a very nasty rattling noise coming from the hvac system near the ceiling. I forgot to grab an audio sample for your listening pleasure.

Building maintenance is notoriously unresponsive and unproductive, so we took matters into our own hands. After a few pokes with the tripod pictured in the lower left of figure 1, which resulted in nothing more than momentary solutions.

So, we escalated the situation to stage two and got the ladder out of the shop for a closer look. There seemed to be a metal plate on the bottom of the box that was rattling. The easiest solution was to place something between the two rattling plates. The tool we had at hand: a nice black pen. It fit between the louvers and between the plates.

The pen has been there for about a week now, without the slightest hint of a rattle. Its also a nice visual reminder that infrastructural systems degrade over time and we should not take these systems for granted.

View the images below for a closer look:

Figure 1. The Scene of the Crime (click the image for a larger version)

Figure 2. Close-up view of the hack (click the image for a larger version)

How to Solder

A nice concise primer on How to Solder properly.