A. Aronsson’s WeBOLLog

Last week I made an investment and bought a new TV, one of those flat ones. Previously I’ve been using a 29″ Sony CRT weighing about 45 kg, lots of glass as it has a perfectly flat screen. Last Thursday I got myself a (craezyhueg!) 52″ Samsung LCD, at 35 kg.

I didn’t have to shell out too much for it though; Media Markt was opening a new store in a neighboring town and they had a really nice deal for it, much because it is a model from 2007. Back then it cost almost three times as much as I payed for it now!

My eyesight is a bit wonky as I have bad vision in the dark and I easily get blinded by bright lights. I guess that might be why I really want background lighting to even out the contrast between the TV and the background.

With the old TV I had an IKEA Liesta fluorescent tube just lying on top of it, with the new flat LCD that would not be feasible as there is nowhere to place it! At first I put it on the center speaker which I had behind the screen, but as the TV foot has a high gloss surface the tube was reflected like in a mirror, appearing as a bright light when sitting in the couch.

To fix this I had to get the tube higher up and closer to the back of the screen so it would not be visible through the reflection in the foot. I got the idea that I would get some suction cup knobs to mount on the back, as the entire chassis is the same high gloss plastic as the foot. I eventually found a product at Clas Ohlson which seemed perfect for the job.

The knobs are “screwed” in place. When rotating the outer shell the inner membrane is pulled away from the surface which generates a vacuum, fixing the device in place.

To get some more lighting I added a second fixture. They come with a short cable to connect the tubes in a series (like the Internet), which was thankful. At first I used rubber bands to have the single tube stay on top of the knobs, but when another one was going to hang beneath it I used cable ties instead.

A friend warned me that these things (naturally) doesn’t stay up forever so I will add something for security later. It will probably be pieces of string tied around both the lights and to the VESA screws you see right above the knobs.

Below is from the same view as the picture at the top of this post, just with the background lighting turned on! It looks more yellow and concentrated here than it feels in reality, but I guess that’s what I get from using a point and shoot camera.

Update: As I was warned, it did fall down, but just after a few weeks. My own theory is that it fell down because becase I mounted the pegs when the TV was cold. When it warms up the vacuum suckage would decrease due to the air left would warm up and expand. Yesterday (2008-12-25) I put it up again, but with a slightly adjusted position and angled lights, as well as safety strings around the VESA screws to keep it up when the vacuum fails. Below is a picture of how that ended up!

Update: The foldable IKEA bike I mention here is not the one IKEA now sells in their stores. As I say below it was a gift to the UK IKEA employees. The bike available for purchase is most likely of higher quality, at least that was my impression when I saw it myself.

As my really old bike was, well, really old, I got a new one off of eBay about a year ago. A folding bike IKEA gave its employees in the UK for free, as a Christmas gift. It has been quite fun to ride, but the gears are so close to the ground that they collect dirt really easy. This has caused the arm that stretches the chain so it wont skip over the sprockets to stop working, making it hard to switch gears or use any power to battle uphills, as the chain will just skip around on the gears. Really annoying.

This got me, yet again, to consider a new bike. When the back tire produced large bulbous bubbles ripping through its side… there was no question about it. I got the folding bike so cheap it would be fairly pointless to repair, I’ll give it to someone who likes fixing things instead.

At the beginning of this week it finally arrived, my Electra Stream Ride Rat Rod Cruiser! Thank you so much Ridelow.co.uk! In contrast to the folding bike it has a back pedaling breaking system, internal hub gears and a wicked design! \( ^___^ )/

I had to piece it together, but it wasn’t too hard, and the gears were already calibrated, so it went fairly smoothly.

I’ve been riding it to work for a couple of days now, and after a few adjustments to the handlebar and saddle it rides like a dream. It sure is different to ride a bike that differs so much in weight, size and handling compared to my old one, but it’s a very welcome change. <3

My current apartment got a fairly narrow kitchen, so when I moved in I begun thinking of how to put a kitchen table in there, someplace to eat, without blocking off half the room. After throwing away many ideas I picked up a kitchen table top, six brackets, a set of mirrors and a series of spots from IKEA and a fiber board, wooden strips at the hardware store. To this I use three bar stools also from IKEA, and actually the wall clock and timer as well.

• Table top: VIKA BYSKE (in oak, unavailable now)
• Brackets: STILIG (10¼”)
• Mirrors: ALG (only needed three)
• Spots: GRUNDTAL
• Bar stools: ANSSI (29″)

I started by getting the table top sawed in half. Something we had missed was that the table top had ridges on the underside, but we filled those with putty, and since we mounted everything I haven’t noticed them a single time. Me and my father prepared the top half by mounting the spots (required some drilling). We first attached a bracket to the corner, where it was screwed into the side wall as well. Then we fused a fiber board to the bottom half of the table top and mounted all that to the wall, resting on top of the bracket. More brackets were added.

The fiber board was required as the wall wasn’t entirely flat, and we needed a flat surface to put the mirrors on. We put the top half of the table top on top of the fiber board (lots of top there!), like a shelve with the brackets on the wrong side, and then screwed wooden strips to the fiber board before mounting the mirrors with double-sided wide adhesive tape. The description might make more sense if you check out the images below.

Voilà!

I use the top shelve for electronics, like the microwave oven, receiver, old 5.1 system, toaster and radio. Some people that visit me thinks it’s really freaky if you meet their eyes in the mirrors instead of person to person when we eat, which can be fun… but it does indeed feel a bit weird!