Tue, 05 Feb 2008
Cubicle Toys
Kaden Harris, Eccentric Cubicles, O'Reilly
This book is from the Make: Projects series and really
doesn't need to be related to cubicles at all: Anywhere a handy
tabletop cigar guillotine will go ...
There are a number of projects in the book which mostly have
a retro-futurish look and so have a visual interest alongside
some kind of warped utility - like a thing that will fire objects
across the room, or the gubbins that will let your desk be a bass
instrument, or how about a fog machine?
These are quite complex objects too and need a fair bit of
building and a few tools as well. Kaden Harris starts off by giving
us some general build and materials hints and then goes through
each project in a fair bit of detail and with lots of diagrams
and pictures to help along. If you're already good with your hands
in this sort of way, you should be quite OK. Complete novices
should be OK as well but a few of the projects would be a bit of a
leap.
A nice side-effect of the book might be to further ways of
improvisational thinking as he's forever using things to do
something that were designed to do something else. When you get to
that stage you can do the fun thing of surveying a pile of junk to
see what interesting and unlikely products can come of it all.
The only minus for some people will be the tone, a sort of
pally, slang-ridden patois which can get on your nerves in about
20 seconds.
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pre Dec 04 reviews are here
