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Softening the Edges of Technology
Tired of the generic grey boxes that fill corporate offices? A New York Times piece looks at the efforts by some hardware resellers to soften the edges of the PC with elements from nature. The piece goes over the efforts of places like Suissa Computers, which offers 'desktop computers in cases of oak, walnut, zebrawood, purpleheart, mahogany, maple and leopardwood'. Likewise, Holzkontor of Neustadt and the company Wood Contour offers keyboard and monitor sets that adds a naturalistic touch to the average soulless desktop setup. They don't just touch on commercial options, talking briefly about homebrew case-mods: "Nicholas Falzone, 20, a third-year architectural student at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, Calif., is just putting the finishing touches on the second computer case he's made. 'It's taken me at least a thousand hours,' he said. The case has an aluminum interior frame to support the computer workings. The outer frame is made of koa and maple. Mr. Falzone did the rough cuts with a table saw; after that, almost all the work was done with hand tools. 'Each joint has multiple mortises and tenons,' he said. 'I didn't use any screws or glue.'" Interesting to see the beautification of PC cases in the pages of the old grey lady.
Let's paint all our boxen like this!
If you want your PC to look like part of the furniture then you can take a leaf out of the books of those mini-itx modders, the most notable 'furniture' type ones are:
The Clock
Mantle Radio
Cigar Humidor
Gramophone
Pictureframe
Micro TV
Telefunken
and for the geek, the Windows XP box (as in the cardboard box the OS comes in, but with a sly RedHat trick)
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
Paid Q&A/Research
For me, woodworking projects fall into two types: "quick and dirty" and "furniture".
The "quick and dirty" are things that don't need to last more than a day, a week, a month or even a year. They aren't pretty, they are fast, and they are only as sturdy as they need to be to get the job done. They are generally made from plywood, and other cheap, strong, leftover scrap wood.
"Furniture" projects are things that should last Decades. If I did my job well, they will outlast me. Tables, chairs, and cabinetry fall into this category. Pretty woods, weeks of effort, and lovely finishes highlighting the natural colors and grains of the woods. These projects honor the trees that gave their life so I could have pretty things. Not always sustainable forest-grown, but that's getting better over time.
Back to computers... They have an average life-span of 1 to 5 years... Maybe they'll last 10, but seriously, how many of us have a computer around that is more than 5 years old? So why build "furniture" for Today's Computer. The shapes and sizes and plugs and interfaces and monitors and power needs change every few years. Why would you expect that to not continue? Think about it from this perspective: if you has spend 3 months building the perfect computer case (out of rare Koa and Ebony) for your Commodore 64 twenty years ago, would it still be occupying deskspace in your home? Probably not.
So building "furniture" that fits today's computers is just short-sighted. Beautiful and rare hardwoods should be used and enjoyed in artistic creations whose lifetimes should be measured in decades, not months.
This goes for computer cases and furniture custom built around technology (stereos, home entertainment systems, computers, monitors, etc.) How well does that 50" Plasma screen fit in the "entertainment center" you bought 10 years ago?