art taylor

Note: if you're looking for a headset you can buy, I ended up buying this Logitech headset and have been reasonably happy with it.

So I'm not what you would call a DIY type guy, unless it comes to completely random stuff that is a total waste of my time. This is your warning.

At first, my expectations were not high. I had the only-ever-used-as-microphones iPod headphones nearby, and I was using the laptop's built in microphone. This microphone is really close to a fan, and a particularly noisy hard drive. Not a good experience. However, I didn't have a real headset around the apartment, so I thought about how I would improvise a suitable alternative.

I needed to have the ability to get the sound into my Mac. I can't find my only microphone, and it's XLR and 1/4" anyway, so I'd have to dig out my first-rev mbox and wire that up just to get audio in. I'll put up with a little whirring and chunking (and more importantly, my colleague will put up with a little whirring and chunking) to avoid that hassle.

What I did have were the following:

1. An Apple iSight camera, which includes a microphone in the housing, and connects directly to the Mac using FireWire. This means I have a digital microphone. That's extra cool.


2. A full set of mounts for the camera, including one adhesive mount intended for the back of one of the Apple Cinema Displays, which I had never used because who wants a big tape spot on the back of their $2k monitor? It has a long "boom" and a wide adhesive base, just about the size of the back of one of the ear cups on


3. An old pair of Grado SR-80s.


4. Lots of adhesive tape.


5. Plenty of large newsprint, colored pens, and clay for important visualisation and prototyping.

And, of course, a digital camera to document the process, and no shame in putting pictures of myself with washed-and-not-brushed hat-head on the Intardweeb.

Let's begin, shall we?

I needed to understand the basic form of a headset, so I drew a preliminary sketch.

It looked as if the general basis included ear pieces and a mouth piece, and something connecting them together. It also looked as if I could use biyalis if I didn't mind a little onion in my ear. The next step was obviously to build a clay prototype, to see how all the pieces would fit together. Not quite giving up on the biyali model, I sculpted a very realistic vision of what would turn out to be the final product. They do the same thing with cars. Can you believe this took me only three minutes? I am a genius. Pininfarina, feel free to email me when you need help.

It was time to translate the prototype into an actual design, using the elements available to me. I carefully kept everything to scale, observing important things like perspective, shading, and a very respected time-tested technique called "churrascaria", which is, "use light and dark while eating something greasy", in my case, cold Pizza.

This accounted for all the parts, as prior planning prevents piss-poor performance. I learned that in the army. I also learned how to kill people without making a sound, in the dead of night, using only a dead vampire bat and an overripe mango. It's a real hit at parties, but overripe mangoes and vampire bats are not part of this bill of materials, so don't get distracted.

As you can see, the "boom" of the monitor mount will help the iSight clear several inches from the base, placing it nicely near the front of my face. The front of one's face is often where one can find one's mouth, which is convenient, given how they've made all those headsets with that configuration.

The great thing about using an iSight is that it's first-and-foremost a camera, which means that, based on my design, while I'm talking into the side of the iSight, the camera is pointed at other unexpected and unpredictable things, like anything that didn't get washed out by my neti pot.

Now we come to the output side of the equation. As it would be difficult to attach the monitor mount to my earphones, such as the before-mentioned iPod earphones-of-pain-and-bad-sound, I elected to use an old pair of Grado SR-80s. They're several years old and well-broken in, but they're kind of in the lonely middle in terms of usefulness. I have a pair of SR-125s for listening to music (such as that included in Katamari Damacy), and the SR-80s require too much power for most portable unamplified devices such as iPods or Mini Disc players. They have spent a lot of time just sitting around the apartment, unloved. Until destiny called. Via Skype.

It is important at any stage in the creation of complicated technical artifacts that one frequently checks one's own work. I laid out the headphone, monitor mount, iSight, and FireWire cable to make sure that this would actually work.

It's a thing of beauty, isn't it? Measure twice and don't have to cut anything at all.

All I needed to do was attach the round monitor mount to the outside of the ear cup, so I peeled back the adhesive from the base to make permanent the union of headphone and nostril-inspecting digital microphone.

I'm of course a kidder, (no relation) and that was just a joke. Ha ha. Take a moment to back away from your monitor and let your sides recover for a brief intermezzo.

Better?

OK.

For this, a hopefully temporary measure, I decided to use good old fashioned adhesive tape, invented in Scotland, which is why they were beaten back to the north by the english, who used rivets, leather and buckles, and little metal rings to hold their weapons and armor together. Also, the english wore pants, shrewdly avoiding the distraction of "Friday Flip-Up Day" during battle.

In case the adhesive tape (here decorated with the tartan of the clan "Mc3m", whose descendents have settled in the Minnesota area and taken up mining, dropping the "Mc" from their name as they came through Ellis Island.) was insufficient to hold the boom onto the headphones, I was prepared to learn from the scots' miserable mistake and back things up with a binder clip, of the "Big Honkin'" variety, judging that a C-clamp would require just a bit too much skull modification.

I didn't have any double-sided "scotch" tape, so I had to improvise, making little rolls of the tape. Now, this is a very important thing to know should you desire to follow in my footsteps with this fantastic construction: the sticky side of these rolls needs to be on the outside. I would not have known this had I not spent countless recesses, lunches, and afternoons in various teachers' classrooms, making tape rolls under their watchful eyes in preparations to hang battle standards throughout the school, invigorating students to attack, maim, and even kill our nemesiseseses at other schools. Not yet having learned about the bat-and-mango trick, I am ashamed to this day that I was unable to participate.

This is what the monitor mount looked like, with iSight attached, ready for final assembly.

All that remained was to stick the sticky bit to the place where the sticky bit needed to go.

It's a thing of beauty, as if G-d ordained that these two things would come together to make something greater than the sum of its parts. They don't call me reeses for nothing.

I hired a very famous celebrity to model the headset while I took pictures, but apparently Russell Crowe really likes other men's wives, so he spent some time in the living room talking to Kat while I had to make do with a tripod and the delayed-shutter-release feature.

As you can see, everything came together absolutely perfectly, due primarily to the exhaustively reflective methodology I employed in its conception.

Here is another view, from the front, of the happy user.

It's important to do a post-mortem of all projects, even if they are considered resounding successes. In that vein, I definitely had a few lessons-learned during the execution of this endeavor:

1. Comb my hair before taking photos I'll be putting onto the Intardweeb. Or wear a cap. Or a kippa.


2. Shave every once in a while.


3. Wear a shirt that doesn't moire when photographed by a digital camera.


4. Wear a shirt that doesn't make you look like a complete slob. It's like I picked the absolute most casual shirt out of my wardrobe and wore it, just for these pictures.


5. Perhaps spend a little more time on the "drawing bits" and "making bits out of clay" parts, so that they look vaguely realistic, rather than some recon-deconstructionist exhibit.


6. If your "in use" photos do not reveal the hand perched just out of frame to catch the inevitably-falling camera before it hits the ground, perhaps "sticky tape" is not the best solution for conjoining the pieces.

Those minor lessons aside, I saved a great deal of money in comparison to actually buying a headset. Based on current retail prices, I could buy an acceptable headset for Skype for about $60. Instead, I built my own for only $95 + $149 + a few cents for tape, newsprint, and ink = $244.

Disclaimer:

I am a trained professional technical person, with a long history of experience doing technical things with technical...things. If, due to your incompetence, ineptitude, and inferiority, you follow these directions and fail to have the same result, any results you do have, up to and including dying, killing everyone around you, or supergluing your iSight to your ear, I am in no way liable. I would like pictures, though.

I am also bound to disclose I am not affiliated with Skype, Grado, 3m, Apple, or Scotland, in any way. And I have never killed anyone using the combination of a vampire bat and an overripe mango. Or any type of mango.

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I had worn through the crocodile epidermis (ok, put that way it's kind of nasty) on my older JLC, a Master Chronograph that always astonishes watchmakers when they see it, much like the last of the Interceptor V-8s.

This is kind of odd, because it's one of the mechaquartz models. Quartz being, in this age of neo-retro-horology, like going commando at your wedding, and not being in a kilt while doing so. I like to remind the pain-in-the-butt purists that Patek makes a huge number of quartz watches -- but then, those who know, know, and those who don't know, we don't care to know, because who are those people anyway?

Inferior though it may be, the last model Master Chronograph is -- per JLC form -- the perfect example of the type, and watchmakers love to see them. They usually get so excited that females around them, even if they don't understand, think that I brought in the hope diamond for a little polishing. It is amazing how much attention I get from all the female salespeople on these rare occasions, despite how relatively little the watch cost.

No, this entry is not to point out how erudite I am in my fine choice of timepieces, or any shallowness of the female character, but rather, to relate the incredibly odd experience I had buying a strap for this watch.

I had intended to walk into Shreve, a nice big jewelry store downtown, near Hermes and other goodness. They carry all kinds of brands on my hit list, like the aforementioned PP and A Lange & Sohne, in addition to JLC, who have, unfortunately, embraced the large watch movement with abandon. This only makes sense, since they engineer the most difficult complications for most of the other top-tier manufactures, and would inevitably follow suit.

You'd think a store such as this would have scads of straps, and I'd be able to walk in and say,"Hie thee hence and fetch me a black croc strap for a Master Chrono."

You'd be wrong, as was I.

Now, your watch is basically the same as mine, unless you're wearing a pocket watch or some Rado or Casio variant (among others, but you'll get the idea). There's a strap or bracelet attached to the case of the watch at some point, usually between two pairs of thick prongs called "lugs". The strap or bracelet fastens closed in some way, with a buckle, a clasp, or what is called a deployant. The strap or bracelet itself is long enough to go around your wrist.

So, three things really matter: space between the lugs (not to big, not to little, but just right), type of clasp, and length of strap/bracelet. Beyond that, it's cosmetic -- do you want the end of the strap curved to conform to the edge of the watch, do you want it in dead crocodile, dead ostrich, dead cow, dead snake, etc.

It came to pass that the bag of straps the first service desk person brought out contained nothing that would fit my watch, because I wear a smaller watch than the current 40mm+ behemoths.

As a result, a special order was called for. Since I was buying one strap, I thought, I might as well buy a second strap for my other JLC, a Master Ultra Thin I bought a few years ago and have had fun with since.

They're a dealer, they carry 60 watches from the company, they have to be just about the biggest JLC dealer in the area.

"Do you have the watch with you?"

"No. I only wore one watch today."

"I cannot order the strap for that watch, as I need to take the numbers off of the back."

At first I thought this was some ham-handed anti-theft mechanism, to keep track of stolen serial numbers, but she wasn't after "Number 1004" at all, just the style number, which they should have on file. Heck, she could have gotten all the information she needed with a pair of calipers.

She went on to explain that ordering straps is always the hardest thing to do with the watch company, and that they require so much extra information before agreeing that a particular strap is the correct one for a given watch. Then she rolled her eyes in empathy and said that maybe she always ended up talking to "new people".

At this point, I saw that she was clearly insane. I told her that I bet their JLC salesman had the numbers in his catalog, and went over to get the info. I returned with the numbers, and she was so concerned she uncaged the senior watchmaker (who was all of twelve and wearing an IWC Big Pilot on his 6" wrist) to verify that everything was all right and she wasn't committing herself and the store to litigable exposure by letting me order a watch strap based on a mere specification book produced by the manufacture.

I am not exaggerating this one bit, apart from the imagined internal narrative.

Fortunately, the watchmaker had a secret stash of JLC straps hidden somewhere, and there was one strap that fit my watch. It's a beautifully soft ostrich strap, much like the original it came with, and I forgot how well it set off the tiny gold hands and chapter markers. I don't normally like gold, but this made me consider that a rose gold watch might not be a bad choice next time.

We then came back to the order. We still had the Damoclean watch hanging over our heads in its absence, but after wandering through the quarry for half an hour, I told them I'd make another trip next week with the other watch, and we could measure and fit it appropriately. She was as relieved as if I had taken the knife myself, and I could actually see tension leave her body as she relaxed her posture.

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This post was inspired by the most recent "this is how you should live your life" posts on 43folders. I blogbarfed a way-too-long comment that was in poor etiquette, and decided to edit it down into two related posts here. I'll add to it as I remember more things, and I'll add photos the next time I have to pack for travel.

Just like any moving part, the collection of things I carry from place to place is scrutinized repeatedly for ways to reduce weight. An obvious decision, I've separated my car keys from my house keys so I don't have to carry the big plastic lump with me since there's zero chance that I'll be using it.

As you can tell from the title of this post, this entry will focus on work-related travel. Traveling for work is quite a bit more difficult than traveling for play for a number of reasons. 

Clothing

If you're traveling for work, you probably have at least an informal dress code. You may not need a suit and tie, but you're not going to show up in jeans and motorhead t-shirts either. At a minimum, you can probably get by with khakis and the consultant-blue "wrinkle-resistant" shirts, but you'll more likely wear wool slacks, dark socks, black shoes and belt, and long-sleeved, button-up shirts. I'm writing this from the male perspective, obviously, as that's what I have been for the past several years.

First and foremost, you'll want to optimize your wardrobe (or this part of your wardrobe) for this type of travel. Find a pair of pants that fit comfortably, and buy as many as you can stand to buy before it seems ridiculous. Buy them in one color, or many, but get them in dark, neutral colors like black, charcoal, and maybe grey. No one notices your pants unless there's something wrong, and quite often, you may end up having to wear the same pair twice on a visit. Dark colors are less noticeable, they're slimming, and wool can absorb just about any gunk without looking nasty. Plus, it's easier to do the "salesman's iron" trick of hanging wool in the bathroom while the shower is on full-steam.

The same goes for socks -- find a pair you like, and buy 10 pairs in the same color. When they start to discolor, or get nasty, start throwing them away with extreme prejudice. If you can throw them away on the road, that's extra good -- it's less to pack and carry back. When you get down to one week's worth, wash them, donate them to goodwill, and buy another 10 pairs. Even if you buy the same type of sock in the same color from the same maker, don't overlap "generations". You'll end up dressing in the dark and not noticing that your socks don't really match -- you'll have a faded "blue" sock and a new "so navy it's black" sock making a pair.

It's not the best for the shoes, but if you're taking short trips, just take one pair of shoes. It'll shorten their life, but if you trade off pairs every week, and keep them on cedar shoe trees while they're off-duty, you'll squeak out an extra year or so. Bruno Magli makes some casual shoes with no metal and a rubber/plastic heel less than 1" high, so those are a way to avoid having to take off your shoes in the decreasing number of airports that don't have mandatory removal regulations.

Learn your sizes, and not just your neck measurement, chest width, arm length, waist size, and inseam. You'll run up against some situation (an extended stay, not making it to the dry cleaners on time, whatever) that requires you to buy an essential piece of clothing on site, and you don't want to be pulling the fabric under your arms all day. Pick a couple chains (Banana Republic and Brooks Brothers can be lifesavers, and there's one in just about every city) and figure out your size in a shirt and pant style that you don't detest. Feel free to buy all the pants at either of these places -- they'll all look fine, and you're going to be rough on them, so you might as well save the $500 pants for when you're going out on the town at home.

Underwear is a personal choice. I've finally (after 20-teen-something years) realized that "boxer briefs" kick all ass. The best I've found are from ex officio, and available at REI. I love the advertising on the packaging -- they claim you could go for weeks with just one pair, hand-washing them in the hotel room sink every night, and I believe it. This absolutely disgusts my wife, which is like a special discount that doesn't save me any money.

Speaking of hand-washing in the bathroom, I only have one tip. The things you can wash (socks and underwear, basically) are fairly durable, and can be dried more quickly by hand-squeezing the excess water out first, then lying the item flat in a towel. Roll the towel up, grab the ends of the roll, and twist your little heart out. Unroll the towel, and hang up the now-damp clothes to finish drying.

I'm a pajama guy, and I can't really get around that. However, I've learned to do without heavy flannel, which takes up a lot of space. Patagonia's Capilene line packs incredibly tightly, and a shirt and a pair of long-underwear-style pants work very well. They're also very room-washable when you need to do so.

Here's probably my biggest secret about managing clothing while traveling: if I regularly travel to the same place, I cache clothing in the client's city. Many hotels (especially higher end hotels, such as Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons, and Park Hyatts) will allow regular customers to keep a bag on site. This "service" can range from letting me keep a piece of luggage in a back room to giving me a locker, into which only my clothing will go. This can easily be combined with dry cleaning, so I can drop off my dirty clothes (except for socks, pajamas, and underwear, which I have prefer not to leave in the care of strangers with blacklights, which is why I love microfibre for these items) when I check out, and pick up clean clothes when I check back in next visit.

If your hotel doesn't offer this type of service, if you travel often but not often enough, or if you plan on staying wherever is least expensive (go hotwire!), you still have the same option, just with a little extra work. Almost every dry cleaner will hold clothes for thirty days after you drop them off. This is probably due to some regulation, but all of the claim tickets I've read have said,"Not responsible for items left over thirty days." A shirt on a hanger costs about $1.50 to launder and press, and pants cost $5 or so to dry clean and press. This is one of those situations where it's so cost-effective to let someone else do it that you shouldn't be washing your clothes at home, packing them, carrying them to the car and to the airport, unpacking them and noticing the prominent wrinkle right across the middle of the chest of your shirt. $1.50 to save yourself all that time, and almost a pound of weight carried on your shoulder.

Yeah, your shoulder. If you don't need to carry anything but four pairs of underwear and socks, and a pair of super-foldable pajamas, you're going to shove that in an Eagle Creek Pack-It Compressor, push all the air out, and throw it in your slightly-larger-than-normal laptop bag.

Screw rolling bags. I foolishly bought a roll-aboard from Tumi based on the salesman's assurance that it adhered to all of the carry-on requirements, only to find out that extreme force was required to get it to fit in the overhead bin of any Boeing plane. If you need a roll-aboard, do your research about specific models, make sure they are no longer on any axis than the shortest airline requirement in that axis, and favor fewer, large pockets over more, small pockets. You can make your own packaging with the Compressors mentioned above and the Pack-It system, available on the same site.

Electronics and work gear

Converge as much as possible. I hate the Treo, but a combination phone/PDA is a great space saver if you're going to be carrying both of them anyway, and it's a better PDA due to its connectedness than most options anyway. With an SD card or two and some planning, you can easily carry 2-4 gigabytes in any pocket you think is already full. For $10 or so, you can buy an adapter to convert the tiny 2.5mm headphone output on the Treo to the more conventional 1/8" size that most portable headphones expect.

Speaking of headphones, this brings us to one of the more important topics. Anything with cords will break with repeated use. It's plastic wrapped around metal (and sometimes another layer of shielding metal), and bending and unbending it in various directions several times a week will result in accelerated wear. Figure that, unless you baby it (and occasionally irritate other people trying to get off the plane while you're repacking your earphones), you're going to go through anything corded and mobile once a year. If you don't like the idea of buying $500 Shure E5Cs once a year, leave them at home and buy a pair of E2Cs or E3Cs for $80-150, which is only about $7-13/month. When you're on a plane, there's so much ambient noise anyway that the attenuation given by the more expensive in-ear earphones won't make much difference. You're not going to have an audiophile experience at 35,000 feet. That doesn't mean the crappy iPod earbuds are OK, though. Throw those things out right now.

The cord issue goes for the clever retracting usb-to-everything chargers and ethernet cables as well. Once a year, the cord will short, the spring will break, or one of the plugs will just stop conducting. Don't sweat it, but don't spend so much on these things that you'll be upset at having to replace them either.

Don't buy a 17" laptop. Just don't do it. If you're buying a Mac, the 15" PowerBook/MacBook Pro is what you're going to buy. If you're buying a PC, I would have directed you to buy a T-series Thinkpad, but Lenovo is doing a fabulous job of screwing up the brand (look at the X-60 for harbingers of things to come). If you can stomach it, look at Dell's smaller laptops, but I'm thinking the Panasonic ultra-minis are very attractive right now.

Bathroom goods

I have a few requirements, such as shampoo, conditioner, soap, toothpaste, toothbrush, deodorant, q-tips, flossing sticks, razor, shaving cream or gel, and nose strips. I try to pick the type of thing that I can buy in any Target or CVS/Walgreen's/Rite-Aid/etc., and I try to buy the smallest unit available for sale. This is wasteful, but this stuff leaks, they all come in awkwardly-sized plastic vessels, and are not easy to pack compactly. Better to spend $15/week on this stuff than to have a mess all over your laptop.

Client storage

If you have a desk at a client to whom you travel on a regular basis, take advantage of it. Buy the big can of gel, store cold-weather wear, overshoes, whatever, in your desk drawer. This is like gold, because it solves so many of your problems. Buy an extra laptop power adapter, and only carry one between the office and your hotel, not between home and work. Pack everything cleanly in a backpack or sports bag, so you can easily ship it (yes, ship it) home when your engagement is over (or looks to be about over).

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