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When I was a kid I spent a fair amount of time with my mom, dad, and papa working on various projects. We would build things from bare wood up to something fun (go kart! fort!) or practical (furniture!). But I would never consider myself to be a "woodworker" or really good with wood. Wood is fun - the tools and techniques for handling it are fairly cheap and easy - but it is also really tough to do "well." So, here are my secrets to having fun and making decent wood projects, in an environmentally friendly way. I've listed the secrets as part of narration of a little counter that I built for an empty spot in our kitchen. Our stove left an 11 inch gap going to the wall. Given that we lacked counter space, gaining that 11 inches of extra space became a welcome improvement to cooking happiness.

1. Start with Scrap Wood

It's not just good for the environment, it's good for your bank account and your creativity. Start with scrap wood!

These are leftover pieces of wood selected from among the rotten pieces we tore down when we replaced our fence. We're giving life to something that would be trash. It also gives a fun feeling to the end result: weathered and full of character from the first minute. If you don't have your own scrap wood, go to a construction site and scrounge from their dumpster. They'll be happy to let you do that because it's less waste for them to pay to haul off. Other great sources include your local dumpster, the alley, fence replacement projects(!), any business that deals in large goods delivered in crates, wooden sign companies (they have to take them down too...).

Dealing with scrap wood also helps with secret number two.

2. Measure twice, cut once, but only if necessary

Following on from my post last summer about Concerts in Colorado here's a few summer concerts I plan to attend and a new service.

My Summer Concerts in Colorado

I just saw the Highland Ramblers at Dulcineas which was passable, but not great. I have big hopes for this band, but the venue choices are not awesome. Where is Denver's intimate theater setting for quality music? These guys need it.

I'll be going to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival this year. I'm nervous. It should be awesome, but I imagine I won't sleep nearly enough. Oh well. After that my only plans are seeing Punch Brothers at Chautaqua Auditorium which should be epic because we're in the front row and the Chautaqua has really solid sound.

After that, Leo Kottke in Breckenridge in August should be pretty fun. I plan to head up early, maybe go mountain biking, see the show, and spend the night up there. Should be a solid time.

Finding Concerts Near You

I started using two new services: Bands In Town and Songkick which both have "add an artist" feature and you set your location and then they alert you when those artists come to your town. Great feature, but I wish that they also alerted me when artists like the ones I like come to my town. Seems like a perfect opportunity for Pandora integration...but it doesn't seem to work well for either of them.

Anyone else have summer concerts

I have two great friends in Denmark.

Freso - Precision King

Freso is the king of precision. He has helped me out a lot in being more precise in the work I do on open source projects.

The King of Denmark

And Morten is the King of Denmark - a very cool gentleman who you have to hear to truly understand. He has a unique sense of style that melds together aspects of various modern worlds but all mixed with rock and roll. Not unlike the King of Rock (Run D.M.C.? Aerosmith?) Morten is the King of Denmark.

Nikki and Greg live in the beautiful Baker Neighborhood in Denver, Colorado.

About Nikki - Spanish Teacher, Lover of Spanish Culture

Nikki graduated college with a degree in Politics and a minor in Spanish and planned to change the world through social work. She worked for several non-profits in Denver, often with Spanish-speaking populations which let her use her Spanish on a day to day basis. After a few years and not much fulfillment she decided to switch careers and found a company becoming a Spanish teacher at the Denver Spanish House.

Nikki is on Linkedin.

About Greg - Drupal Consultant, Trainer, "Geek"

Greg loves building things (and breaking them apart and putting them together again). He's done a lot of jobs, but they basically all can be defined as "solving technology problems." He loves building websites and has founded his own company Growing Venture Solutions to focus on consulting and training in the Open Source software platform Drupal.

Greg is on Twitter and LinkedIn and uses Flickr sometimes.

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