The Scope

Make your own hobby horse

By Ryan Davis

The hobby horse is a peculiar breed. With their menacing eyes, and crooked hobnail teeth, the mummer’s hobby horse has been terrifying the bejesus out of people for centuries. It harkens back to the days when our not-so-distant ancestors would save the skins of animals, dry them, drape them over their bodies, and chase people around at festive times of the year. Pretty creepy, I’d say.

Also referred to as “Horsey Hops”, “Flop Jaws,” “Horse Chops,” “Hobby Hoss,” and “Lop Jaws,” the hobby horse has been known to follow people into churches, pull tablecloths off tables, turn off ceiling lights by pulling the string with its mouth, and to swallow oranges, apples, and caplin when tossed its way. They also tend to dance around in a rather awkward and grotesque manner.

But most of all, they tend to chase people.

In some extreme cases, hobby horses have peed on floors (with the help of a water bottle), ripped the sleeves off of shirts, and they almost always get dogs howling. They often lurk in dark places, and hide behind doors, or around the corners of houses. There haven’t been too many accounts of serious harm inflicted by the hobby horse, but they have been known to push boundaries and the expression, “you’re as bold as a hobby horse,” speaks to their mischievous side.

The hobby horse has always been a do-it-yourself project. Pieced together with whatever was around, and often in secrecy, the hobby horse often came to life in sheds, barns, and basements around the province. Because the hobby horse accompanied mummers, the builders would take precautions to keep it a secret so as not to reveal the mummers’ identities by association. Hobby horses have been made out of junks of wood, giant blocks of styrofoam, leftover plywood, stitched-together cardboard, and the skulls of horses, moose, cows, and pigs. It’s rumoured that an albino hobby-moose is lurking somewhere in St. John’s.

What they all tend to have in common, besides their creepiness, is a snapping lower jaw, usually attached with a hinge, a piece of leather, or rubber. The sound of the hobby horse’s jaws knocking together are known to bring a chill up the spines of people who grew up with the tradition. A string gets knotted on the lower side of the jaw, goes up through the tongue and the roof of the mouth, and along to the back of the head where the carrier can pull the mouth open and closed. A blanket or sheet ties onto the back of the head to cover the body and a stick or broom handle acts as a third leg and supports the head. With a bit of ingenuity, anyone can piece together a hobby horse.

The head can be covered with fake fur, moose hide, fabric, or paint. Eyes have been made with ping pong balls, tennis balls, jar lids, and bottle caps. And when the crooked hobnail teeth are lined up just right they’ve been known to make sparks.

The Mummers Festival’s last Hobby Horse Workshop is Saturday, December 19th from 1-5pm. That’s just enough time to piece one together for the Mummers Parade on Sunday, December 20th. See www.mummersfestival.com for hobby horse photos and more workshop information.

How to stop giving gifts for Christmas

By Angus Woodman
Photo by Ryan Boren (www.flickr.com/ryanboren)

I’m not sure what I like most about Christmas shopping.

Perhaps it’s dodging traffic in the busy streets. Perhaps it’s squeezing my car into the only open parking spot between two poorly-parked SUVs. Perhaps it’s strong-arming my way through a store, dodging holiday displays whose invasion of the aisles gives me war flashbacks.

Or maybe, just maybe, I don’t like any of it at all. Yes, that sounds right. Luckily, I’m not under an obligation to put myself through it this year, because a few years ago, I gave up exchanging presents. Completely.

Before you call me a grinch, or something unprintable, let me explain. There are plenty of reasons to give up giving on the holidays.

I once watched my then-27-year-old brother receive a Dallas Cowboys blanket from a member of his step-family. My brother doesn’t watch football. I doubt my brother knows what a football even looks like. I once heard him call it “footsball.”

Watching him pretend to like this blanket was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.

Also, I don’t want anyone worrying themselves over what to get me. And I don’t want them feeling like they failed when they don’t do it before the Christmas timer buzzes.

Now let’s drag some economics into this. Christmas creates what is called a deadweight loss. (Stay with me for a second.) This happens when a good is purchased for more than its utility. That is to say, someone giving a gift will pay more—in one 2006 study, 16 per cent more—than the person receiving it would have paid to buy that same item for herself.

This is wasteful and challenges a free market. Some stores depend on the Christmas spending surge to stay afloat. Ever think, “how is that place still open?” Christmas over-spending. That’s how.

There are many other reasons (the economic downturn, the enviroment, etc.) but let’s assume you’re completely convinced already. You’ve decided you no longer want to participate. So how do you extricate yourself from the mass hysteria? It seems impossible.

Tell anyone and everyone
That’s right. You have to sit and have a semi-serious conversation with anyone you think might give you a gift. Tell them you aren’t accepting or giving gifts. Tell them why. If they argue, lay on as much guilt as you need. Then when it’s over give them a cookie. Repeat until you run out of friends or cookies.

Start with a small group
If you can’t give up gifting completely, try to convince a smaller group of friends first. Maybe start with a group that’s hard up for cash.

The charity beard
Two things here: First, if someone is completely uneasy with the idea of not giving you something, tell them to give to a charity in your name. Your friend would never argue that. Because that’d make him a bad person.

Next, tell everyone that if you do end up with a gift, you’re going to give it to charity. Or if you can’t because you’ve already eaten it, donate the equivalent amount to charity.

Alternate gifts
Bake each other cakes, clean each others’ shoes, trade significant others for a night. There are lots of things you can do for someone besides buying things that will embarrass people and erode the economy.

Whatever your reason for doing it, removing the traditional gift-giving from Christmas will have one effect: it will make the season fun again. If you don’t believe me, try pouring all the money you would’ve spent on gifts into alcohol.

Now you’re with me.

How to raise honey bees

By Jill Pasquet
Illustration by Tara Fleming

When I was a kid, my grandfather, who lived in rural Nova Scotia, kept bees. We were used to seeing bees flying through the fields, settling on the back deck, and hanging around the yard. The sweet, warm smell of honey permeated the house from the back room where my grandfather extracted it from the combs. There was a great sound of industrious buzzing when we pressed our ears against a hive.

And my grandparents had fantastic gardens.

Now, long after my grandparents have sold their hobby farm and moved to the city, I have become the proud keeper of my first hive of bees.

I live just outside of St. John’s where my bees have access to fields of wildflowers and a nearby pond. I’m not sure if there are any bylaws regulating beekeeping, but the neighbours who know don’t mind and the neighbours who don’t haven’t noticed the little hive tucked in a protected corner of my backyard.

Let’s be clear: I haven’t quite earned the title of beekeeper yet. The bees still have much more to teach me than I know to do for them.

Starting out
I began to find out about bees by contacting local beekeepers. Aubrey at Paradise Farms/Bee Natural and the folks at the Newfoundland Bee Company have been immensely helpful and welcoming, and their enthusiasm has been catchy.

One of the first things I learned was honey made in Newfoundland is unusually pure, since the kinds of parasites that commonly affect them are nonexistent here. Plus, the instances of disease are very low. In fact, Newfoundland is one of the few places where you don’t have to automatically treat your bees with pesticides and chemicals—which inevitably ends up in the honeycomb and honey.

My beekeeping year began last winter when I ordered a starter colony, or “nucleus”, of bees. The “nuc”, as it’s called, consists of a few frames of bees and larvae, including her majesty the queen, one or two frames of honey and pollen (food for the bees), and a spare frame for them to build honeycomb onto.

I picked the bees up in a specially-made travel box and installed them into my own “super”, or hive body, which I had mail-ordered and put together myself beforehand.

Yes, installing the bees was nerve-wracking, since I was pretty much just letting a few thousand bees loose in my neighbourhood.

Miraculously, though, they clung to the frames as I transferred them to their new home. The few stragglers followed their sisters into the super.

Ouch factor
Ever since getting past my initial intimidation about getting stung, keeping the bees has been pretty easy.

These supers are the building blocks of a beehive, and as my colony of bees grows, I will add more supers for honey and more bees. My bees spent their summer building honeycomb on the empty frames in the super and gradually filling the comb with nectar, honey, pollen, eggs, and larvae at various stages of development.

I opened up the hive every few weeks to peek at them and help them with basic maintenance of the hive.

It’s been pretty amazing to watch my relatively few bees blossoming into a healthy colony—buzzing with activity and literally dripping with honey. Honey is harvested at the end of the summer and into fall and one healthy colony can produce 75 to 100 pounds of surplus honey. Because my bees are not a well-established colony yet, I left this summers’ honey in the hive for them to feed on over the winter, where they’ll clump together in the middle of the hive, huddling and “shivering” their little wings to keep warm together until the spring.

Getting to know and learn more about the bees has been really rewarding. They’re pretty low-maintenance, really, but it’s a true pleasure to see them soaring through my backyard and hovering around their small hive. I’ve gotten to introduce a beneficial natural element into my environment and also to reconnect with the excitement and wonder that my beekeeping grandfather shared with me.

How to live on a desert island

By Michael Flaherty
Illustration by Tara Fleming

Michael Flaherty is a bonafide desert island expert if we’ve ever known one. This summer he spent three months living alone on The Grey Islands— an uninhabited island group off the east coast of Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula—as part of an interdisciplinary ceramic art project, where he spent his time constructing an inside-out ceramic kiln in which he “fired” the islands. He’ll be giving an artist talk about The Grey Islands project at Eastern Edge Gallery on Monday, November 9th at 7pm.

•••

Admit it: you’ve thought about it more times than you can recall. Remember that horrible break up a couple years ago that almost sent you over the edge? How about that time at work when your incompetent manager took credit for your work? Or that Saturday afternoon when you wasted a half hour searching fruitlessly for sesame oil at Sobeys?

Civilization, as becomes apparent at times like these, is ridiculously over-rated. Why not go live by yourself on a desert island?

It’s not as crazy as it sounds. It can be done, and fortunately for you Newfoundland abounds with deserted islands (Count yourself and your escapist inclinations lucky that you don’t live in Regina.) There are so many locations to choose from that it shouldn’t be hard to find the perfect island for you.

But where to go?
So how do you decide? Start by asking yourself a couple questions: How much time do you have? How isolated do you want to be?

An easy overnight excursion can be made to Kelly’s Island in Conception Bay, while a week might be sufficient to experience Merasheen, near Placentia. Traveling to Belle Isle between the Northern Peninsula and Labrador would, however, require a significantly different level of material and psychological investment.

When you’ve narrowed it down a little, consider some other key elements: geography, history and aesthetics.

Talk to the locals
When you’ve figured out where you’re going, you next need to get to know the locals. Sure, your island is deserted now, but it wasn’t always. Humans, opportunists that we are, inhabited virtually every neck and arm in this part of the world until resettlement happened in the 1960s. Someone out there knows a lot about wherever it is you’ve decided to go.

Talk with fishermen, tour boat operators and cultural organizations in the area. These people can give you information you need to know, like where fresh water and a good campsite can be found—the sorts of things that won’t necessarily be obvious when you look at your topographical maps. They can probably also tell you whether your cell phone will work, or what stations you might be able to get on your AM radio. Don’t worry about them thinking you are a bit flaky—even if they do, it’ll probably motivate them to check in on you now and then. In any case, you’re going to need to hire a local with a boat who can drop you off and pick you up later.

Food as company
Bring a lot of food. A lot a lot. I can’t emphasize this enough. Bring more food than you could possibly ever eat. Food won’t just be your sustenance—although I don’t want to suggest nutrition isn’t important—it will be your company. And eating will be your entertainment.

Remember: you are going to be on this island all by yourself without much else to do. Keeping the kettle boiled is going to be the closest thing you have to your usual habit of continually checking your Facebook account.

For a short trip, fresh fruit and vegetables with plenty of canned food might be all you need. To prepare for a longer trip, though, a food dehydrator is a must. Through the miracle of dehydration 100 pounds of bulky, spoilable raw ingredients can become 10 pounds of edible, easy to pack, virtually indestructible fruit leather and beef jerky. Mac and cheese is a great staple meal, so bring plenty of pasta and cheddar (which I was astonished to find would last months if unopened). Rice with lentils and dehydrated vegetables is another.

And for a quick snack, nothing beats popcorn doused with lots of spices and cooked over an open fire.

Other gear
Of course you’re going to need a lot of other gear, too. Get the best tent and sleeping bag you can afford. Bring clothes for every possible type of weather—you’re likely to get any or all of them on any given day. You’ll need a good knife and an even better axe.

And don’t forget your emergency supplies—a first aid kit, any medicine you might need, and, if you can afford it, a personal satellite tracker.

Boredom is the enemy
Most importantly you’ll want something to keep you sane while you’re out there. Sure, living on a deserted island seems romantic enough in itself. But if you don’t have anything to do you’re going to get bored.

I suggest you give yourself a project, preferably one that keeps you on the move. Bring a plant guide and make a list of every species you can find out there. Pick berries and make fresh jam every morning. Make detailed records of the temperature/winds/precipitation/tides/phases of the moon/whatever. Build cairns on all the highest points of land. As long as it’s time consuming and enjoyable it doesn’t really matter what you do.

You’re going to love it! Your first night alone might be a little scary, but it quickly gets much easier.

Maybe the hardest thing will be coming home at the end.

Ever spent time on a desert island? Leave a comment below.

DIY: Write Your Own Novel

By Angus Woodman
Illustration by Tara Fleming

My to-do list for November: rake leaves, mock American friends for their placement of Thanksgiving, write a novel.

Alright, so I may not have a yard or any American friends, but the last one is true. November is National Novel Writing Month — NaNoWriMo, if you like — and each year people the world over join in on the fun and attempt to write their very own novel.

How novel.

Now, writing something like this isn’t as impossibly stupid or stupidly impossible as it may sound. If you can read this sentence, you can write a novel. (If you can’t, go fudge a battleship cackle.) It doesn’t matter if you’ve always dreamed of being a novelist, or if you just want to impress the ladies (which, trust me, doesn’t work.) Anyone can do it. So dust off the pen and paper, throw them away, and get out your laptop.

Before you attempt this, however, a warning. There are pitfalls everywhere. Success, then, hinges on a few important, time-tested strategies.

Free-time management
There aren’t many times in life when the following applies, but neglect is the key to success. Forget cooking. Forget house chores. Forget washing your pants. If it’s not writing, throw it out the window (literally or figuratively.) Your friends can entertain themselves for a while. Showers are optional, but shaving can be cut.

Alertness
A regular sleep pattern is good. Less sleep and some caffeine is better. Sleepless caffeinated hallucinations are best.

Community
You are not an island. Or if you are, you are part of a large archipelago. Over a hundred thousand people will be attempting NaNoWriMo this year. There are local events where you can meet and get support from fellow writers. Though should you actually live on an island by yourself, the website houses forums where you can discuss plot points, find a quirk for a minor character, or read horror stories about what happens when you don’t backup your work.

Back up your work
Seriously. If you don’t, someone will beat you with a hammer. (And that someone will likely be yourself.)

“It’s about your mom”
You will get asked over and over (and over and over) what your novel is about. Have a one-line answer prepared. “It’s about a vagrant who finds a magical pot roast and uses it to fight crime,” or something. It doesn’t have to reflect your novel in the least, just have one ready to whip out. Also, if the one-liner is weird enough it’ll also work as an instant conversation killer, thus freeing you to return to writing.

You’re glue and it’s also glue
Lastly and most importantly, stick to it! You will want to quit. Don’t. You will think your story sucks and want to start over when you’re part-way through. Don’t. Keep going. It will get better. Eat more candy, drink more coffee, punch someone to vent your frustration if you have to, just keep writing.

If it all goes well, by December first you’ll have a complete novel. Imagine. You’ll also have a really dirty house, some relationships to mend and some rockin’ face and/or leg hair. But you’ll have written a book.

And it won’t completely suck.

Parts of it will be awful because parts of every first draft are awful but, mark my words, there will be gold in ‘dem pages. You’ll read it over and marvel at your own brilliance. You’ll see how frantic writing forces your mind to vomit up all kinds of wonderful things you won’t remember having put in there.

But unlike when that happens with food, it’s a wonderful feeling.

Learn more about NaNoWriMo at www.nanowrimo.com

DIY: How to make your own diamond kite

By Kevin Woolridge
Illustration by Tara Fleming

Who doesn’t like kiting? Well my dog doesn’t show any interest in it, but unless it’s a cookie or his own butt he doesn’t show much interest in anything. As a species, though, humans have been fascinated with the idea of flight for thousands of years. Probably invented by the Chinese nearly 3,000 years ago, kites have been used for various applications ever since, from military use and scientific experiments (remember Marconi? And despite common belief, Ben Franklin never attached a key to a kite in a lightning storm, he just wrote about the idea) to festivals both spiritual and playful.

Kites have been a part of us for almost as long as we’ve dreamed of being in the sky.

For many of us, flying a kite as a kid is our first real experience with the idea of flight. Although my memory is a little hazy, I’m pretty sure we had more than one kite from Pipers when I was little. Probably with Spider-Man or the Hulk splashed across its cheap plastic. I guess Superman would have made more sense—at least it would have matched the Underoos. As an adult, kiting can do much more than connect us with our inner child, it can be a great recreational and social activity. It can be a great workout.

And at the very least it’s a good excuse to get out and ‘get a bit of air on ya.’

Nowadays there’s a great variety of kite styles— from parafoils, deltas and boxes to bowed and stunt or power kites—and it can be daunting to someone just starting out. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s say it’s a rainy day and you’re looking for something to do that doesn’t include mopping your floors and cleaning the bathroom.

Here’s what you’ll need:
• Glue
• Tape (of the transparent type)
• String or twine
• Two wooden dowels (bamboo
skewers will do in a pinch, but will make for a very small kite)
• Paper (a large brown paper bag or some nice wrapping paper, or, in a pinch, this page)
• Ribbon
• Knife
• Scissors

Step one
Take your dowels and put them in the shape of a cross. These are the spars of your kite. Your horizontal spar should be about 12 cm shorter than your vertical spar. Use string to keep these together with a dab of glue. With a sharp knife cut a slit at the end of each dowel. The slit should be level with the kite.

Step two
Grab your string (or twine) and tie it to the top. Feed it through the slit and around the frame. If you like, you can loop it around the end of each dowel after it goes through the slit. When you reach the top you can go around again for good measure. The strings should be taunt. At the bottom tie a little loop and then again at the top.

Step three
Lay your frame down on your paper and cut around it, leaving a bit of extra paper. Fold the extra paper over and glue or tape it to the other side. The paper should be nice and taunt on the frame.

Wow, you’ve almost got a kite!

Step four
Now take a piece of string, roughly 20cm longer than your vertical spar and tie each end to your loops. This is your kite’s bridle. Tie your flying line to the bridle about a third of the way down.

Step five
Add some extra glue to your edges to be safe. Take another piece of string and tie ribbons to it. Then tie the string to the bottom loop of your kite for a tail. You may find you need to adjust the length of the tail once you try it out. Grab some crayons and/or markers and decorate the thing.

Viola! You’re holding a kite.

There are lots of resources online for kiting, and a quick Googling will come up with hundreds of pages.

My only advice is to pack sunglasses/sunscreen, gloves, extra string, tape and a knife or pair of scissors, and with that you should be able to handle anything that comes up.

Happy kiting!

As part of the Association Communautaire francophone de Saint-Jean, the Festival Du Vent (Festival of the Wind) Sunday, October 16 is Kite Day in Bowring Park. There will be wind-themed crafts happening from 2-4pm, and a kite judging contest at 3pm. Follow the signs from the Waterford Bridge Road/Park Road parking lot. For more info, visit www.acfsj.ca

DIY Cinema

By Adam Clarke
Illustration by Tara Fleming.

In theory, going to the movies should be an escape, allowing you to get lost in the story unfolding on the massive screen.

In theory.

Oooh, let’s check back in with grim reality, shall we?

Check out a film on the weekend and there’s going to be plenty of bawling children running around.

Opening night will leave you awash in the blinding glow of cell phones as of mouth-breathers text around you.

Make the mistake of going to the early evening show and you’re sitting with sexagenarians unwittingly speaking in “outdoor voices” during a movie.

I’ll never forget the stewed-prune receptacles sitting behind me at No Country For Old Men dribbling on about their semi-functional prostates.

With so many reasons to avoid the cinemas, why not build your own? It’s easier and cheaper than you think.

When his eldest son moved out of the house, David Hammond, a Mount Pearl musician and sound engineer, transformed the boy’s basement bedroom into the perfect home theatre. Hammond’s got a seven-foot screen, two rows of seats, an LCD projector and a 5.1 sound system for only $500 total. How much you want to spend is up to you, but first you’ll need…

• A room that’s at least 12 x 16 ft
• A DVD player, VCR, computer or whatever you play movies on.
• An LCD projector with bulb
• Speakers with active subwoofer
• Amplifier
•A king-size white bed sheet
• Dark-coloured bedsheets
• Window valances
• Seats

Don’t worry, LCDs are relatively common items on eBay now. Once you’ve hooked up the yellow video cable that came with your DVD/VCR to the projector, you can just project your movies onto any ol’ king-size white sheet.

Found items will keep your budget low. Staple window valances to create a border around your screen. Your seats don’t have to be fancy, either. Grab a couch from the curb and place it 10-12 feet away from your screen. Create elevated seating by using a wide bed frame and bracing it with plywood. Put some chairs, car seats or a loveseat on it and you’ve got an elevated row behind you, just like the real cinemas.

And if All Else Fails, Go To Piper’s
Cheap materials aren’t impossible to find in this city, what with Piper’s, Zeller’s and second-hand stores around. XS Cargo is another good bet for discount sheets, or you might even find a decent sound system up there.

Sure, you might be leery of budget-priced speakers, but you don’t need too go crazy and buy a state-of-the-art Bose sound system if you don’t have the money for it.

For 5.1 surround sound, you’ll want five speakers, an amplifier and an active subwoofer. Once you get your set, take the fibreoptic cable that came with your DVD player and hook it directly to the amp. DVD players have a decoder which sends the audio signal thru the optical cable output, while the amp’s fibreoptic output will decode the sound and send it to the different speakers.

Your sound is taken care of as easy as that.

Baffling!
Once assembled, you need to consider sound baffling. If you’re surrounded by pink insulating foam, you may be okay. Otherwise, you’ll need to muffle the sound. This, can be done by stapling bed sheets where sound could travel outside the room. The layers of bed sheets you’ll need will vary with how well-insulated the room is. Use dark material as baffling so the glow of the projector doesn’t bounce off the walls and ceiling.

So, it’s true. With a little time and effort, you can build your own state-of-the-art home theatre, ideal for watching videos, sporting events or even playing video games. (Most video players, consoles and computers can be hooked up to a projector with ease.)

Plus, you can build these things pretty easily if you coax friends to help you with the promise of having regular movie nights. With a few beers, the right equipment and the right friends, you could make this dream project happen almost overnight.

How to Metrobus

By Kerri Breen
Illustration by Tara Fleming

I write to you from Toronto, the city whose 24-hour public transportation is the Wi-Fi to the St. John’s Metrobus’ dial-up. As I’ve learned, the public transit grass is greener here, as in most metropolitan areas, but that doesn’t mean takin’ the bus in the city of legends is a total bust. In fact, with the right insider’s advice, you can make the most of our flawed public transportation service.

Here’s my guide to happy, efficient riding—especially useful for those new to town.

We’re special

There’s no shortage of complaints about Metrobus, and rightfully so. Buses are infrequent, even by standards of similarly sized cities, and service to communities such as Shea Heights is very limited. But before you step on the bus, or even load up the Metrobus website, you have to understand with what difficulty these fine folks deliver the service.

There are many stumbling blocks in trying to create a cost effective public transportation system in any smaller city, but take a closer look at what we’re up against in particular:

1.) Service spanning two municipalities and three small communities

2.) Unforgiving geography.

3.) Roads that were established when city planning was a mere twinkle in someone’s eye.

4.) An overwhelmingly car-centric culture, which makes improving bus frequency less of a fiscal priority for our governments.

In 2006, the average weekday ridership was 14,815 people. If you think that’s low, that number is actually up from 2004’s 13,608. It’s kind of a chicken-and-egg situation: We avoid the bus because it sucks, and it sucks because we avoid it.

I don’t mean to imply that there aren’t ways Metrobus can be improved, but until a larger segment of the population opts to get on and be moved, it’s reasonable to assume not much can change. In the meantime, here’s how you can ride most efficiently with what we have.

Good for something

The bus is especially good for trips to certain areas at certain times of the day, vague as that sounds. Most routes are generally on schedule in the morning if you need to get to work on time. But by suppertime, watch out, especially in the downtown area (where there’s perpetual construction as well) buses are frequently late.

Compared to a few years ago, access to box-store shopping areas such as Stavanger Drive and Kelsey Drive is a lot better. The Village Mall is the epicenter of Metrobus service because it’s the most logical connecting point for service to areas such as Mount Pearl, the Goulds and Kilbride, and Cowan Heights. The Avalon Mall, despite it being more hip with the kids, is not so special.

Access to institutes (MUN, CNA, etc) starts at 6:30 in the morning, but expect to wait an hour for many routes servicing the university (like Route 10) if you’re heading home after that night class. Most routes stop before or around midnight.

Unlike in many capital cities, Metrobuses are rarely crowded, so you might not even have to sit next to someone you don’t know, if that up-close-and-personal aspect of public transit bothers you.

Tricks of the trade

This is the state of affairs we’re dealing with: Of 24 buses on the road at around 4pm on a Tuesday, ten were running between four and ten minutes late by Metrobus’ own record. Try to be patient. If you are frustrated with the service, call or send an e-mail. There’s a link to a feedback form at www.metrobus.com. Try to resist taking it out on the driver, for obvious reasons.

At the best of times, buses run no more frequently than once every twenty minutes or half an hour. Keep in mind that bus service at night—with about an hour between buses most of the time—is dicey no matter your destination. The more you know about Metrobus schedules, the better you can work around them.

The good part about there only being 23 routes is that it’s possible to commit some basic info to memory. Metrobus’ website does not have an online route planner yet, but Metrobus assured one customer on its website that one is in the works as part of its Google Transit project.

There are some handy features already in place on the website. Timetracker lets you know if your bus is off schedule, and you can chat live to someone from Metrobus about route information. You can also reload or purchase an M-card with rides through the site.

My last trick is to do your math and avoid getting duped into buying more bus rides than you need. Remember, for an adult, a $70 monthly pass is only a good deal if you plan to ride more than 31 times. A semester pass (good for four months) means you need to ride at least 27 times per month to have any advantage over paying the cash fare, aside from convenience.

DIY: How to run for city council

By Simon Lono
Illustration by Tara Fleming

So you want run for city council?

Once you’ve decided to run, you have to have an idea. Every campaign starts with an idea—an answer to the question, “Why do you want to be on council?”

If you have no idea why you would want to be on city council, or what you want to do when you get there, then you have no business running.

Stop wondering if you’re qualified to sit on council. If you can read this sentence then you are as qualified or more qualified than the people already elected.

All kinds of people run, all kinds of people win, and all kinds of people do a good job. Democracy is a beautiful thing that way.

Make sure your family is behind your decision. You need a frank talk with your mate and family to gauge their support. Unless they give you unqualified support, you have no business running. Nothing dooms a campaign—and family—faster than a war on two fronts.

Pick the right seat
There are 11 seats on St. John’s city council: the mayor and deputy mayor are elected separately in citywide ballots; four at-large councillors are elected citywide, where everyone votes for up to four candidates; and five other councillors are elected by ward. There are about 16,000 voters, or 12,000 households, per ward.

At-large, deputy mayor and mayor campaigns cover about 50,000 or so households.

Unless you want to make a big splash right away and can’t wait to sit in the big chair, avoid running for mayor your first time out. The cheapest and easiest campaign to mount is in a ward.

Pick a campaign manager you trust and do what they tell you. There are a minimum of two jobs in any campaign—candidate and campaign manager. You can’t do both so pick one and stick to it.

Friends, effort and money
You need at least two of the above. All three are best, but you can get away with two out of three if you play your cards right.

Friends will help spread the word, assemble and erect signs, and deliver flyers.

The effort is yours. Be ready to walk the streets knocking on doors and attend every event you can. Introduce yourself and shake hands with everyone. Anywhere there are three or more voters in one place, make sure you’re there too. (Don’t forget the hand sanitizer.)

Money is always an issue. A ward race will cost around $7-10,000. Councillor at-large is more like $15-20,000—give or take. The two top spots might run up to $50,000 or more. Take up collections, run a bake sale, organise a BBQ, send out letters, ask your family and don’t be shy.

Time it right
Timing is everything with the St. John’s municipal race. Starting early is key. The city will send out the mail-in ballots around September 11, so the voting starts September 14 when ballots arrive in the mailbox. Half of all ballots are returned in the first week, with the rest trailing in until September 29—election day. Nobody pays any attention until Labour Day, so it’s a time-compressed campaign. You need to hit hard and hit at the right time because the system has a hard tilt in favour of incumbents.

Get your name out there
The main materials you need are flyers, buttons and signs. You need a flyer to pass around, to spread your name, face and idea. Keep it simple and colourful. Also, get a couple hundred buttons for you and your friends.

The most visible part of the municipal campaigns are signs. Usual sizes are 2×2 (for lawns and medians), 4×4 (for minor intersections) and 4×8 (for major intersections). Cost depends on how elaborate the design is, and like flyers, the more you order the less they cost per unit. One-colour signs are cheapest. More colours and photos drive up the price. The smallest, simplest signs might go for as little as $2.50 each, while elaborate 4×8s might be $75 to $100 a unit. Keep them simple and colourful, so they stand out. If you can’t read a sign travelling at 60kph then it’s just another part of the landscape.

Forget radio ads, TV ads and print ads. Unless you have lots of money to burn, signs are more cost-effective.

Media will mostly ignore you because they ignore almost every municipal candidate. Don’t expect long television interviews with David Cochrane earnestly asking about your garbage policy. Your best media hit will be calling talk radio—make sure you do it to the limit.

Political party
Plan a party for election night. Don’t drink until after the media comes calling for reaction. If they do, be sober and gracious in victory. In defeat, be even more gracious; the people are always right.

Win or lose, it’s time to celebrate your induction into the select group of human beings with the heart and dedication to put your name on a ballot. Congratulations!

Simon Lono is running for councillor at-large in the upcoming September St. John’s municipal election. His favourite curse words are “shagger” and “shmoe.”

DIY: How to survive a hangover at work

By Lesley Marie Reade
Illustration by Tara Fleming

Everyone has been there. You know, the Regatta is supposed to go ahead tomorrow and your friends have you over for a celebratory beer because you just may have the day off. Suddenly it’s 2 a.m. and you’re singing Madonna songs at the top of your lungs. The fun continues until you wake up to the sound of torrential rain and you realize the Regatta was cancelled. You spun the wheel and lost!
Of course that’s never happened to me, but I’ve gathered a few helpful tips on what to do and what not to do if you end up having to go to work hung-over.

Wear makeup
It’s amazing, and it isn’t just for girls. A little cover up makes everyone’s eyes look brighter. Looking at yourself in the mirror and seeing what looks like your normal, non-hung-over face boosts your confidence. It makes you feel like yourself for a moment, and that can go a long way, especially if you also remember to take water breaks. If you start to lose composure, go to the bathroom, look yourself over in the mirror, put some nice cold water on your hands, place them on your cheeks, and go back at it.

Keep cool
There was this one time, when a group of friends at the campus bar in Corner Brook won big at trivia. We drank a $50 bar tab in very little time and I had to be at the school for 8 a.m. to model for an art class. But not just any kind of modeling. It was nude modeling. I was standing on a stage leaning against the wall—a super easy pose—with a projection of elk or something shining on me. Everything was going fine and then it started. Saliva gathering in the mouth, followed by the churning feeling in my stomach. Finally I blurted out, “I have to take a break now!” I grabbed my robe and ran to the bathroom. (I honestly don’t even know if my robe was closed.)
Nothing humbles a person quite like being on the floor of a school bathroom, in your robe, spewing, and hearing an unseen person ask if you’re okay. Sigh.

What I took from this experience wasn’t necessarily to not drink before you have to work; it was to make sure you won’t get overheated. It’s bad. I suppose you could just wear layers but when you can’t go down past your final layer, it may be nice to have a portable fan with you. If anyone asks, just tell them you’re having sympathy hot flashes for your mother or someone in your life that could be going through menopause. It could happen.

Stop smelling
One other thing to think about is your smell. Using a portable fan does wonders for keeping yourself cool but it also spreads your alcohol-from-last-night smell around to anyone near you. You know the smell. It comes from your pores even though you showered. Just remember to bring deodorant. Use it frequently. Also, chew minty gum. It helps your breath, keeps your coworkers happy and provides a pleasant taste. Winterfresh gum is the best. Trust me.

So, yeah, I have to admit that I’ve had the unpleasant experience of being hung-over at work, but only once has it been because of the Regatta. At least now I know how to handle it. Remember: water, gum, deodorant, makeup, a small fan.

You’ll be all right.

DIY micropublishing

I’ve only ever made two 24 page mini-comics, but that’s a good start, and I love doing it. I used to make homemade colouring and puzzle books as presents when I was a kid, so I suppose I was onto something all those years ago.

I’d been wanting to make a mini-comic for a long time, but the thing that made me do it was the San Diego Comic Convention last summer. I wanted to have something to give away to the comic writers I was hoping to meet and buy stuff from. When I went to the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, Mr. Mini-Comic Number Two was born. I thought it would be nice to be able to say, “Can I give you a copy of my mini-comic?” instead of just, “Hi, I like your comic.” It helped a bit, but I still need to work on my real-life social networking skills.

So far, I’ve played things safe with cardstock, computer paper, screen-printing, and staples. I’ve seen some very nice books done in accordion style, or stitched and Gocco-printed, with sleeves, incorporating anything from fancy paper, cardboard, wood, bark, Mylar, to old board game boxes. If you can draw on it, you can use it. Know any good origami moves? Go to town! Can you cross-stitch in glorious 8-Bit? Then you may be my hero. Buddy’s got a button machine? Butter him up, brother.

The most important thing, though, is to plan your project carefully. Winging these things usually leads to frustration, so make a little model of your book, number every page, and then when you take it apart to make copies so you can see which pages will have to be next to each other.

Then comes the most difficult part: Draw! Write! Then make a cover that is both eye catching and not boring. For inspiration, be sure to read plenty of other mini comics, artist books, and zines, and Google ‘making mini-comics.’

Once you’ve finished creating, scan, photocopy, resize, cut & paste or use image editing software to reformat your pages. Then reproduce them via printer or photocopier. Get some pals to help you collate or bind your books, but be sure to use good, heavy-duty staples if you go that route. If you are so inclined, it’s cool to make inserts, coupons, stickers and buttons to slip inside.

Finally, you have to promote, distribute, and network. Share your work with friends, galleries, libraries, comic shops, conventions and coffee shops so others can see what you’ve done. Budget for some trades and give-aways. (The standard for pricing is $1 per 10 pages.)

My Best Tips So Far:
• Draw bigger than you normally would, that if you shrink it all down people will be able to see your work. For example, if you are going to make a comic that well end up ¼ the size of an 8.5×11 piece of paper, write your words four times as big.

• Give yourself lots of time and plan for errors at the photocopy place. Start with a manageable amount of copies for your first run (25-50); you can always get more printed later. Don’t overwhelm yourself either; start with a small number of pages (<24).

• And, like pretty much any other art form, make sure you’re doing it for fun.

Links To Get You Going:
Your Comics Will Love You Back by Alec Longstreth. This was a lecture he gave at the Center for Cartoon Studies (2008). I met Alec briefly at TCAF and he traded comics with me! He also has a huge beard.
www.alec-longstreth.com/comics/comics_love/

This is a good illustrated demo of how to construct minicomics, but I don’t know who the author actually is. www.caption.org/2002/minicomics/

Liz Baille makes tonnes of comics and you can subscribe to her Minicomic of the Month Club, which is awesome because you get real mail. www.lizbaillie.com

Illustration by Tara Fleming

diy@thescope.ca

DIY Fish Pond

Bryhanna Greenough dislikes pet fish almost as much as that guy in The Orchid Thief.

I recently discovered I hate fish. Fish in aquariums are so depressing.

But it’s taken a long time to get to this point.

Once upon a time, a hefty, 10-year-old common goldfish glided unexpectedly into my life. He had been living in a pond in a greenhouse, and, while he was very healthy, the algae was becoming a problem and the pump had crapped out from algae overload. The water was evaporating. I had to get him out of there. So I decided to bring the fish to my apartment in town, and put him in a fish tank.

I started off by giving him a name. Then I gave him some fishy friends, and plants, and decorated the tank with overpriced pieces of imported South African wood, because I felt there was nothing sadder than a solitary fish in a bare tank.

But no matter what I did, Mr. Dingles still seemed sad and cramped.

For two years, Mr. Dingles and his gang were the focal point of my living room. The tank rested where a TV might have. Goldfish have good eyesight. They can see you. They have no eyelids. The term “fish guilt” came into regular usage around the house.

I got a bigger tank—the largest that would fit—at the cost of blocking out a window. Despite weekly water changes, a regime of live carpenters (when in season), and a fancy filter, Mr. Dingles’ kept staring at me with those accusing, depressed eyes.

This spring, I planned on returning Mr. Dingles to his original home in the pond. It’s one of those black plastic forms you can pick up from any big garden center, and it was now dry and perfectly clean. Starting a pond can be costly, and maintenance a bit of a pain, but freedom from this fish would be priceless. Pond pumps are expensive (depending on the amount of water) but that’s not the end of it. You also need a filter, preferably a UV filter which zaps the life out of algae. Without good filtration your freshly filled pond will turn green within a week and you won’t be able to see your fish (even though some people say this is okay for goldfish). Every week I set aside time to clean out the pump and filter, and top up the pond with fresh water. Part of the fun has been digging up plants from a wild pond, and researching water lilies for this water garden.

The payment is Mr. Dingles and the gang no longer swim laps, now they zip wildly in all directions. Their lives have improved. I think.

Serious fishness
James and Lang Sparks have a series of four ponds in the backyard of their home on Elizabeth Avenue. With three pumps, a huge UV filter, piped in rainwater, and about 50 lilies to help purify and oxygenate the water, the Sparks have created an ecosystem where koi actually reproduce in their back yard. James says the biggest problem is controlling algae. His advice to anyone thinking about making a pond is “be prepared for a lot of maintenance and care.” (Dammit!)

In the winter the dozen or so koi are moved to the deepest pond and a canopy is raised over the area to keep it from freezing. The fish are dormant in the winter. Once the water reached 10 degrees Celsius they rest on the pond’s floor until spring.

“This here is extravagant, but I’m retired, have lots of time, and just enjoy doing it. For someone who is working—just make a small pond,” he advises.

Excellent advice, especially if you hate fish.

Illustration by Tara Fleming

diy@thescope.ca

Photo by Bryhanna Greenough

DIY: Detox

Tara Fleming on the de to your tox.

How to make your bike your best friend

By Sarah Smellie.

I know you know it’s good for the planet. I know you know it’s good for your health. I know you know that here in St. John’s, we often only have three legitimately snow-free months and voluntarily spending even one unnecessary second of those months trapped inside a car is totally ludicrous.

I also know that it seems lot easier to just keep driving and leave your bike at home.

But easy doesn’t mean better. So here are a few tips on how to get yourself inspired—and keep yourself safe and savvy—to ditch your freakin’ car already, and start cycling.

Get inspired
Just look to the streets. These days, you’re very likely to see cyclists jousting with the car-bound drones at all times of the day. Observe how fabulous these cyclists look—muscled and smiling, free from the tyranny of road closures, detours, parking fees and other regulatory nuisances that drivers must abide by. Sure, the top-half-of-an-alien-pod bike helmet is a bit dorky, but they still look cooler than the chump in the SUV who’s absentmindedly picking his nose, no?

Of course, there are legit studies and stats you could have a look at. It’s a well-known fact that exercise is an effective anti-depressant. And cycling is great exercise: thirty minutes of it will burn anywhere from 200 to 550 calories, depending on your weight and speed.

The best thing about cycling, though, is that it’s not just exercise. It’s cheap and effective transportation.

Ease into it
Now, obviously, to burn all those calories, you’re going to be doing a bit of work. This might take some getting used to.

First, map out your regular route to work, school, or wherever, so that it avoids monster hills and insanely busy streets. Then give your route a few test rides. This lets you see how much time it will take, how sweaty you’ll be, and lets you experiment a bit.

If you’re sore the next day, or any day, take it easy and walk—don’t drive!—and bike again the day after that. Don’t push yourself too hard, you’ll only get discouraged. If you keep it up, your regular ride will become too easy and you’ll be looking for bigger, better rides to challenge yourself with.

Watch the weather
The weather can certainly suck. This is St. John’s, after all. But that means you probably own a rather effective set of rain gear. Well, that rain gear is just as effective when worn on a bicycle. Yes, you’ll get a bit wet. You’d get wet running to your car, too.

Avoid the hills
They’re huge. They’re brutal. They’re everywhere. But there’s usually a way around them. For example, to get out of downtown, Queen’s Road is a bit gentler than, say, Victoria Street. If you’re up for a scenic tour, taking a side street around the Alliant building and zooming up Rennie’s Mill Road will get you out quick and easily.

Of course, there’s no shame in walking your bike up a hill. I’ve walked my bike, Godspeed, up some of the finest hills in Eastern Canada—the Cabot Trail mountains, Kelly’s Mountain in Nova Scotia, that one stupid hill in the middle of P.E.I.—and it never ruined my day. I was even given a beer one night for having the good sense to walk it up Prescott Street.

Be careful
Biking in St. John’s can certainly seem like a suicide mission. The roads are narrow, some are narrow and busy, and the potholes appear bottomless. But if you plan your route and aren’t adverse to taking an extra ten minutes to use residential streets, you’ll be fine. If you have to use a busy and/or narrow street, be assertive. You are traffic, so take your space. Despite any swearing and/or obscene gestures, the cars will be fine if they have to slow down and get around you.

Feel awesome
Honestly, though, the most immediate obstacle will really be you. Some days you just won’t feel like it, and not even the thought of your hot self breezing into work/school/whatever, all rosy-cheeked and breathy, can bring about the requisite oomph. While you’re flipping your car keys off their hook, just remember: If you leave your beloved bike cold and alone today, you’ll have a much easier time leaving it tomorrow. You’ll also feel a whole lot better about yourself, whether you’re cranky at the beginning or not, if you just cowboy up and ride.

So giddy-up!

—

Illustration by Tara Fleming

diy@thescope.ca

DIY surviving a hard drive crash

Elling Lien sends you back in time to save your deleted data.

Have you ever flicked on your computer and had it casually ask you where your boot drive is? Do you know what a blue screen of death looks like? Do you know what a Mac with crosses for eyes looks like? Or, even worse, a flashing question mark?

I don’t claim to be much of a computer expert, but I’ve seen all of those things. And I’ve seen enough.

Last Monday I returned from a short Easter break and my hard drive had crashed. Completely. It was gone. I checked the connections to make sure it had failed. There was a brief moment of panic.
A few seconds later a calm washed over me, like a warm, salty ocean breeze.

Ahhh. Can you feel it?

Well, okay, maybe I didn’t have that feeling, but at least I didn’t shit my pants. I had automatic backups, and I had my system discs, so I knew it wouldn’t take too long to get everything back up and running. After a quick call to tech support to confirm everything was gone, and an attempt to squeeze a few final moments out of the drive by putting it in the freezer (no luck), I mosied on over to Avalon Software to get a replacement hard drive.

One afternoon later, and like that Robert Frost poem about the kid who saws off his hand and dies, I eventually turned back to my affairs.

Hard drives die. Some will die silently, some will die violently, some will die quickly, some will die slowly—but all of them will die. It’s a fact. The hard drive you are using now will eventually die. Likely, your hard drive will die much, much earlier than you will, and if that dead hard drive had something inside it you needed, you will be shit out of luck.

If you plan to rely on a tech person or software to pick your data from your mangled drive, I wish you luck, but, unfortunately, just like no one has ever proven to make contact with a spirit in the afterlife, it’s likely your data will just as far out of reach. And besides, like freezing your body for cryonics (starting at only $20,000 US!) data recovery is really expensive.

Thankfully, being prepared for a hard drive failure isn’t so hard.

HOW TO SURVIVE A HARD DRIVE DEATH

Items you will need:
• A time machine.
• A beer or something.
• A pen.
• A sheet of paper.
• A spare hard drive (anything from a 1 terabyte motherload to a USB thumb drive.)
• Another USB thumb drive.
• A Ziploc bag
• Some automatic backup software.
• System software discs.

Okay. So your hard drive has crashed. It’s completely and utterly screwed.

The first, important step is not to panic. The reason you are not panicking is because you are prepared. Relax. Have the beer.
Set your time machine to one month ago. Hop in.

While you’re whizzing back in time, make two lists: one with the location of the files you can’t do without (like, say, your music, or your photos, or your homework folders), and the other with the programs you can’t do without.

Now imagine how much space you’ll need to back up all your files. If the majority of what you do is word processing, accounting, or the scattered music file, you might not have to buy a spare hard drive—who knows? You might even be able to plunk all your backup data on a $20 USB drive. But on the other hand, these days a 750GB internal hard drive will only set you back around 130 bucks. Get the space you need and multiply that by two.

Now it’s time to install the automatic backup software. I’m on a PC desktop, and I use SyncBack Free because, well, it’s free, easy to use, and it does exactly what I need it to. Instead of copying the whole drive every time, it only copies the new files and the files that have changed. For just 40 bucks you can pay for a version that does more, but for now give SyncBack Free a try.

I set mine up to back up the most important files nightly (right after work) and other files weekly (on the weekend). Setup is a piece of cake.

First for the automatic weekend backup, create a new profile called “Weekly” then select the directories you want to back up once a week. Then select the destination folder on your new drive or USB drive. Then, under the Misc tab, hit the Schedule button and pick a good day and time for the backup when you know your computer will be on and you won’t be using it too seriously. (You have to enter your Windows password for this, or it likely won’t work.)

Et voila! You’ve got your weekly automatic backup ready.

Repeat for daily, or monthly, or whatever, and for the first while, be sure to check the destination folders periodically to make sure the files are copying. It may require tweaking.

If you really want to get fancy, you can set things up to FTP your files to a remote server, or sync to a service like Dropbox (www.getdropbox.com) but that’s a bit more complicated.

Now that your important files are safe, get your important programs together. Collect your installation discs from your cupboards and closets. Collect the installers for the free software you use and put that on the other USB drive. Now stick all of that in a plastic Ziploc bag with your system discs, label it DO NOT TOUCH, and put it in a safe place.

Now you’re ready to hop in your time machine and resurrect your data. Life after death!

Illustration by Tara Fleming

diy@thescope.ca

DIY: Cookie tin banjo

Sharleen Simmons turns a cookie tin into a banjo.

Banjos, ukuleles, mandolins, oh my! If you’re anything like me, you may have a slight obsession with musical instruments. To feed this addiction I often search the interweb for new, interesting, and cheap instruments. That’s where I came across the 4-string cookie tin banjo. Brilliant! I may not be able to afford all the instruments I want, but I sure can try and make them—and so can you.

First, the fun part: finding a cookie tin. Call up every granny you know. You’re bound to strike one, and maybe even get some hard candy in the process. If Nan doesn’t pull through, your next stop is going to be the local second-hand and antique shops.

Make sure the cookie tin is between 10-12’ in diameter or length. Sure, you may get some funny looks running around the store with your measuring tape—I know I did—but that’s all part of the fun. You also want to look at the sturdiness of the tin. Older tins are often made of thicker metal and are stronger. Finally, you should consider the shape. I recommend a round tin. It’s going to be less likely to warp than a rectangular tin.

When you find the perfect tin, you’ll feel an immediate “that’s my banjo” connection. Trust me.

Now for the neck. If you can find an old guitar or banjo neck, go ahead and use it. If not, you’re going to have to find a piece of wood and build your own. I recommend a hard wood—poplar seems to be popular. (Groan!)
Cut your piece so that it’s approximately 1 ½” wide, 1 ¼” thick, and about 35” long. Those 35 inches are divided as follows: The tail of the neck is the diameter/length of the tin – about 11”, the fretboard (from the top of the tin to the nut, the little piece with the grooves in it that guide the strings) should measure about 19”. Leave 5-6” for the head (nut to the top of the neck). If you’re lost with all these terms, check out this diagram at www.tinyurl.com/guitarparts.

Shape the head however you like, just make sure you have room for your four tuners, those knobs you twist to tighten the strings. Drill four holes for them – two on each side of the head, evenly spaced apart.

You can add frets if you like, but this is a little more complicated. I suggest leaving the neck fretless, or simply drawing them on.

Now let’s put it all together! I recommend using the back of the cookie tin as the front of the banjo. This way, you can access the inside of the banjo. Plus, it’s great for storage!

The first thing you want to do is cut a slot in the tin for the tail of your neck to slide through. Use a boxcutter knife and try to make this slot as tight to the neck as you can. Slide your neck through the slot so that the bottom sits on the bottom of the inside of the cookie tin. Then, secure the neck in place by driving a screw from the outside of the cookie tin into the bottom of the neck.

All you need to do now is install the tuners, tailpiece, nut, and bridge. There’s another diagram to orient yourself with at www.tinyurl.com/banjoparts.

Either grab these parts off an old banjo, guitar, or ukulele, or check the local music stores for new or used parts. They’re fairly inexpensive items.

Attach your tuners to the headstock, where you drilled the holes earlier.

Install your tailpiece at the bottom of the front side of the tin.

Place the nut at the top of the neck. The nut should stay in place from the pressure of the strings, but a dab of wood glue doesn’t hurt.

As for the bridge, I glue two pieces of grippy fabric to the tin, under the bridge. This way, the bridge will not slide around on the tin. Now, put your bridge in place just above the tailpiece, and install your strings. Tune it up, and you can start pickin’ out some tunes!

Remember, there are unlimited variations on this plan, so feel free to improvise, pimp it out as much as you like, and have fun with it! Make sure to send any pictures or videos to diy@thescope.ca.

Happy playing!

Illustration by Tara Fleming

diy@thescope.ca

DIY milk crate crafts

Dave Sullivan can imagine a world made entirely of milk crates. Can you?

Recently I’ve begun working in a technology lab where milk crates are being used to store everything from files to computer and robotic components. With an economic meltdown close at hand, milk crate crafts are experiencing a comeback of sorts. Below are seven items that can be made from milk crates.

—

Milk Crate Pet Cave
4 milk crates
1 extremely sharp knife
16 zip ties (cable ties)
1 blanket

Instructions
Carefully cut the bottoms out of all the milk crates using the extremely sharp knife. Line them up in the shape of a tunnel, connect each side of the crate to the adjoining side using zip ties. Take a blanket and cover the crates to create the darkness of your cave. Then it’s up to your cat/dog/rat/hamster to make the most of it.

—

Record Storage
1 milk crate
30 – 40 LP’s of your choice.
Optional:
4 pieces of masonite cut to fit the crate.
Various photos of your favorite band (mine is REO Speedwagon)
Glue (not for recreational usage)

Instructions
Take crate. Chuck albums in said crate. Bingo! You got yourself a record storage rack. For optional supplies, adjoin masonite to the sides of the milk crate, then decorate using the oft-overlooked decoupage technique of southern France.

—

Snowshoes
2 milk crates (for skinny folk, double for girth)
1 pair of winter boots
1 ball of twine
Glue gun
1 sharp knife
Snow

Instructions
Take the winter boots and tie them securely to the base of each milk crate. Slip on your boots, tie them up and away you go. You may want to try cutting down the sides of your crates by six or seven inches with an extremely sharp knife. This may make things more comfortable. For larger folk, such as myself, you need to cut out one side from each crate and fasten the crates together with both hot glue and twine. Place the boot in the center at the join and secure it to the base of the crate.

Happy snowshoeing.

—

Milk Crate Bed Frame
(Queen sized bed only)
30 milk crates (6 rows of 5)
Lots of zip-ties (cable ties)

Instructions
Layout your milk crates in 6 rows of five crates down the centre of where you want your bed to be located. Secure the crates together with zip ties. Slap your bed on there, and sweet dreams.

—

Coffee Table
16 milk crates
48 zip-ties
1 nice piece of fabric

Instructions
Simply stack two rows of four milk crates upside down on your floor. Next, stack two more rows of four on top of those crates. Zip-tie them together, complete the piece with a nice piece of fabric and nobody will ever know that there are milk crates under there.

—

Ball Hockey Mask
1 milk crate (blood red… for terror!)
1 baseball cap
1 glue gun
1 glue stick (for the gun)
1 extremely sharp knife

Instructions
Using the knife, carefully cut out enough plastic from the side (pick a side, any side) of your crate. Get an adult to glue the baseball cap to the top of said crate. Sick it on your head and away you go!

—

Milk Crate Laptop Bag
(13” or less)
1 milk crate
1 shoulder strap
1 neoprene sleeve
1 extremely
sharp knife
6 zip-ties
1 glue gun
1 glue stick (for the gun)
nylon (optional)
measuring tape

Instructions
With the milk crate sitting open side up, measure two inches from one of the sides without a handle. Cut straight through the crate at the two-inch mark, you are now left with a small cross section of the crate. Next, cut the opposite face off the crate (only the face) so it is a flat surface. Glue the removed face onto the two-inch wide section you cut earlier—this should form a slim box without a lid. Reinforce the gluing with zip-ties to be on the safe side. Connect your shoulder straps to either side of your box. Slip your laptop (13” or less) into your neoprene sleeve. Put the sleeve in the box and there you have it, a milk crate laptop bag! If you wish you can glue gun nylon fabric around the inside of the crate bag for extra protection.

Stay safe!

Illustration by Tara Fleming

diy@thescope.ca

DIY Etsy shop

Corner Brook-based fibre artist Shawn O’Hagan spins a yarn about setting up shop online at www.etsy.com.

I’ve always been a painter, but in the past 10 years I’ve turned my attention more to textile arts—hooked mats and sewn vintage chenille clothing for children—and these days, my focus has been almost exclusively on hand-spun yarn and knitwear. I realized that in order to make a living from my work with wool, I would have look off the island for my market. After all, everyone and their nan can knit here, and are willing to sell an exquisitely knit pair of socks for just 12 bucks! So about a year ago, I set up shop on Etsy, an online craft market.

Since then, I’ve sold almost a hundred items to people from Canada, Europe and the U.S that otherwise would be sitting in my studio.
Most of my customers are individuals, although last year a woman opening a shop in Vermont bought a dozen of my scarves for her store, and lately, customers have bought my yarn and commissioned me to knit scarves from the skein they buy. I now even have a number of repeat customers for my yarn, so I get to know a little about their lives through our e-mails back and forth.It’s exciting not knowing what the next step will be.

The idea of setting up my own website was daunting, so when I first read about Etsy in a Globe and Mail article, I checked it out. It’s sort of like eBay, but it’s only for handmade products, craft supplies, and vintage vendibles. And there’s no bidding. You set a fixed price for your item.

I started buying on Etsy first, that’s where I got my first drop spindle! It helped me get used to how it worked from a buyer’s point of view, and I now do almost all my shopping for supplies on the site. It’s a great feeling to buy handmade work from people like me.
Anyone can set up an Etsy shop. The set-up costs nothing, and it’s simple to do. First, go to their website at www.etsy.com and click on ‘Sign In.’ There’s a ‘Sign Up Now’ button for non-members, and from there, it’s just like setting up an e-mail address with Gmail. Etsy provides you with tons of information and easy-to-follow instructions about establishing your store. I spent a lot of time initially on the Etsy site, reading all I could on the “how-to” pages, and visiting the various forums to get to know other sellers and have them get to know me.

Once you’re set up, it costs 20 cents to list an item. When you list the cost of an item, you also estimate the cost of shipping and the customer pays up front. If you make a sale, Etsy takes 3.5 per cent of the cost of the item.

Most exchanges are through Paypal, an online banking system which keeps your credit card or bank account number so you don’t have to give it out to the people you buy from. It keeps things safe and easy. When someone buys an item from me, they pay Paypal, who, in turn, pays me.

You need to keep the feel of your shop fresh, and I think the reason people fail on Etsy is because they are neglectful. www.islandsweet.etsy.com is my shop, and I treat it seriously, spending about an hour working on it every day.

It’s important to add new products often. It takes me about ten or fifteen minutes to list a new item, and this includes taking photographs. Good photographs are essential. Every day, a few times a day, I also renew an item. Each renewal costs 20 cents, but a renewal puts your item back up onto the top of the list. If a potential customer types in, say, “art yarn,” my item will be on the first page or close to it.

I’ve made some wonderful Etsy friends. Etsy has groups or teams that you can join, and the information passed around in the fibre arts team has been helpful and encouraging. And since I’ve been buying much of my fibre for my yarn online, I’ve been able to arrange trades with other Etsy sellers. Just recently I traded two hand-knit shawls for almost $300 worth of hand-dyed fibre from a seller in Taos, New Mexico. The colours carry the desert with them.

Etsy makes it possible for me to stay home in Corner Brook and open up my shop to the world.

Illustration by Tara Fleming

diy@thescope.ca

DIY CD cases

Mercy, The Sexton’s keyboardist and design guru Duncan Major has got you CD-covered.

Forget download cards, vinyl records, cassettes and online distributors. For the unsigned, empty-pocketed band with a finished album, the Compact Disc remains king of the cheap release. With access to a CD burner, a printer, scissors, and a few dollars to purchase CD-Rs and their accompanying jewel cases, you’ve got the means to release an album all by yourself.

But, pffft, jewel cases – they are so industry. There are definitely better ways to creatively and inexpensively house your sonic gold.

Cheaper, easier to make cool, and somewhat “greener” than plastic is paper. With paper cases, a lot can be accomplished with little more than an X-Acto knife, glue and some manual labour.

An easy, but unsuspectingly slick method to make a stand-out CD case is to fold copy paper around your disc so that it holds together without tape or glue. There are numerous ways you can pull this off. Papercdcase.com gives folding instructions for a neat case with an origami twist. For a rushed release, the site also provides a type-in-your-band-name-and-track-listing feature which lets you print out a prefab cover all ready for folding. All they ask in exchange for their guidance is a mixed CD, preferably mailed to them in a folded case of their design.

Some of the coolest paper cases out there have “beak” designs that hold the disc in a pop-up form. You can find lots of templates for these online. There’s a good video of one here at tinyurl.com/dx98b3. This one requires a thicker, sturdier paper.

But there’s really no end to the shapes and forms that your folded case can take on. The Satans set a new St. John’s standard recently by releasing a CD encased in a well-engineered paper coffin. In the past, Sound Salon placed discs in a kimono-like paper structure to go with their gift certificates.

If you have the time to cut, fold, and glue, you might consider making a simple pocket design similar to an LP sleeve, using copy brand card stock. But really, the best advice I can offer is to find a case you like, take it apart to see how it’s made, and then copy the structure as best you can. When making Mercy, the Sexton’s CD cases, for example, I gaffed the structure from a dissected Matt Mays album.

A caveat: When making your cases be aware that paper has a grain running one way – usually lengthwise – and folding against the grain can cause heavier papers to crack along the crease. When using thicker papers or card stock, you’ll need to score your paper first. This involves using a bone folder, or a knitting needle, or something with dull rounded point, to make a depression down the line you want to fold across. When making your score marks and cuts, use your mom’s quilting ruler instead of a regular one. It’ll make your life a lot easier.

Of course, the fewer CDs you’re releasing, the more far-out you can make the cases. Materials like door hinges, duct tape, staples and bolts are all useful to the DIY CD case maker. You could stitch a fabric CD pocket and rubber-stamp or stencil the cover. Or use found objects—secure some airsickness bags from your friend who works at the airport and modify them; extract the CD trays from old cases and glue them to squares of spray painted cardboard; go to Princess Auto and check out the surplus section. Wacky cases guarantee to be immediately thrown out or saved forever, becoming coveted rarities in the future. Just make sure you do a test case before securing your mountains of junk.

Once you’ve nailed down your style of packaging, you might want a cover graphic. For mass production, photocopiers and printers make for the least time-consuming way to replicate images. But for a true handmade aesthetic, depending on what you can get your hands on, there’s screen printing, stenciling, spray painting and block printing to consider.

There are setbacks to the wholly handmade approach. If you intend on having your release in stores and in radio stations, regular jewel cases with spine labeling are preferred because they are easier to catalogue. And if you’re producing more than a few dozen copies of your disc, the thought of constructing each case by hand becomes less appealing. With all the bargain bin All Saints and Color Me Badd CDs at Value Village, I’ve been wondering if anyone has the chops to do something like what the legendary Newfoundland punk outfit Da Slyme once famously did—gather up empty promotional and commercial LP sleeves and spray paint their name over the the cover of each jacket. There you have it—a readymade bang for an easier buck.

Illustration by Tara Fleming

diy@thescope.ca

DIY: Cold remedies

Bryhanna Greenough is sick of being sick.

After three healthy winters, I’ve become a cold magnet. It’s been relentless. The runny nose of one infection turns into another sore throat and the cycle of snot and suffering repeats itself. I’ve rested, bobbed in a bath, chugged gallons of juice, and mega-dosed on Vitamin C to the point where my tongue is orange for days. There was a denial period where symptomatic support options were completely ignored. Then a new battle broke out, and I broke down and splurged on $25 bottle of hope in the form of Cold FX.

I did start getting better, s-l-o-w-l-y, but I want to believe my body is strong enough to get over this vile treachery without a trip to the doctor for antibiotics.

I just can’t stop a common cold from treating my body like a cheap hotel room.

As you probably all know, the common cold is a virus, and the experts say all you can do is treat the symptoms. And, unfortunately, nothing really seems to work that well. That said, it’s always interesting to learn what others do, and have done, in their desperate search for a little relief. A handful of Scopemakers called up their families for traditional home remedies for seasonal sickness and recalled memories of friends and neighbours helping them fight the common plague. If nothing else, it was a good excuse to finally get around to calling. As you can see I’ve lost all hope. But here you have it.

Chicken soup is the comfort food of the masses. It sells books, and, supposedly, cures colds too. It’s filled with all sorts of vitamins and it’s easy on the stomach when you don’t feel like eating very much. Editor Elling Lien’s mother Judy Lien remembers friends bringing soup by the house.

“It’s a wonderful gift for any family going through colds,” she says. And it’s true, a few spoonfuls of salty, brothy goodness lifts the mood and re-affirms life.

Cartoonist Tara Fleming puts a twist on the Vicks VapoRub standard by smearing it onto the bottom of a bowl, and then very carefully adding hot water. She makes a tent by draping a towel over her head, closes her eyes and inhales the steamy camphor, eucalyptus and menthol to relieve congestion.

“Though if you don’t close your eyes you may experience temporary blindness,” says Tara. “Hey, my grandparents weren’t doctors!”

(Vicks also warns against this because so many people have been burned in the process!)

Journalism intern Ross Mair has experienced some bizarre home remedies in his lifetime. His old neighbour on York Street claimed wrapping your left sock around the neck and securing it with a pin before bed would cure a sore throat. Luckily, he was too young to remember. These days he digs the hot water bag, “an instant cure-all for all things muscle related, and without the smell, hassle and burning of Tiger Balm,” he says.

This is off-topic, but Ross also has an incredible antidote for nasty tooth pain: Microwave a ceramic plate to burning hot, wrap it in a thick cloth and lay down pressing the sore side of your face into it. Bah! Who needs a dentist anyhow?

Goose grease is the cold remedy of choice for Sydney Blackmore’s family in Grand Falls-Windsor.

“Whenever a goose was prepared for a special family meal, the grease drippings were kept to be used as a decongestant,” says her mother about her grandfather’s Sidney Butler. The grease was applied to the chest to relieve congestion in the lungs, and a few drops of camphorated oil were also used in this way.

Black currants, those tasty little temptations growing on bushes in backyard everywhere, are also a traditional Newfoundland home remedy. Sydney’s family ate homemade black currant jam to ease the pain and swelling of a sore throat. Elling’s mother is also convinced of the benefits, claiming black currants are high in anti-oxidants. One year she canned her own black currant juice, the reinstated it by mixing it with some water and heat. She says you can also use frozen black currants to make juice by heating them with some water on the stove, then straining them.

Last but not least, I called my grandparents and ask them about their home remedies for colds. My grandpa says if you’re fairly healthy your body can fight it off. His words exactly, “suffer it out.” And if you can, don’t go to bed, because you’ll just feel worse. No rest for the wicked.

Illustration by Tara Fleming

diy@thescope.ca

DIY: Drum kit

Drummer Alex Pierson teaches you how to make your own kit.

So the RPM Challenge is upon us once again, and you’re going to need some drums, pronto. Assembling a homemade drum set may seem like a big deal, but it’s actually pretty easy. C’mon… it’s not like you’re making a set of stairs or anything. Really, the hardest part is going to be explaining to the neighbours what the ‘cursed racket’ is all about. All it will take is an afternoon, and a few items that you have kicking around.

Before you set out, keep in mind that many before you have created decent sounding drum sets from household items, and I am willing to bet you’ve heard a record or ten that features some sort of unconventional percussion instruments. The band Elliot Brood, for example, have destroyed many a suitcase in the throes of live performance.

To build your own kit, all it takes is lots and lots of imagination—all hot-glued and duct-taped together.
First things first: the bass drum. The heartbeat. The foundation. It is surprisingly easy to fashion a decent sounding bass drum from a large cardboard box with the lid taped shut. Even an old hard-shell suitcase, or a round plastic garbage can with cardboard cut to the size of the lid will do wonders. And just think: if you’re bringing your new kit to a jam, (or even better, a gig) your bass drum can double as a carrying case. Word!

The tangly part of the homemade bass drum is the kick pedal, and this is the only ‘real’ component that I recommend you buy, since building one is tricky and time-consuming. It’s definitely possible to rig something up—but given the amount of time you are likely to spend creating one, you may as well invest $20 at the pawn shop. I promise you’ll be happy you did. However, if you are bent on assembling one from scratch, there are many internet sites that’ll teach you how. Or feel free to e-mail me and we’ll talk (alex@thescope.ca.) There just isn’t enough space on this page to do it justice.

Whichever route you decide to take, the next step is to attach the pedal to the bass drum. If you’re using a cardboard box, this is easily done with a strip cut from one of the cardboard flaps, taped to the bottom of the drum, protruding out a foot or so, long enough so that you can stick the pedal to it. If you are using a suitcase, you may have to screw a small piece of wood on to the bottom, just so the pedal has something to clamp on to. Also, if you are using a cardboard box, you may want to reinforce (read: duct tape) the place where the beater of the pedal makes contact with the drum so as not to compromise the integrity of your delicate instrument. To change the texture of the sound, you can wrap the beater in some fabric. A sock works well. This’ll also help the drum last longer.

Next, the snare. Any large plastic bucket, turned upside-down will work great. Tape some sheets of old newspaper to the top if you want a decent ‘buzz’ sound. You can also get all kinds of different sounds by lifting a side of the bucket off the ground while playing. Ideally, you want something that you can position between your legs, something tall enough to wail on while sitting comfortably.

From here, things get a little more open-ended. The other drums, or toms, can be made from smaller buckets, or if you are still feeling adventurous, throw together a couple of log drums for yourself. Here all you need is plywood and finishing nails. The size is up to you, as long as you have the four sides, and it should be fairly long, like a rectangular prism. Seal one of the ends shut for maximum logarithm…

Cymbals? Bah! Who needs ‘em when you have trash can lids, stainless steel bowls, pots, pans, baking sheets, and…well, you get the idea. Mount these on top of your box (like a real trap set), or hang them from the ceiling like they used to do back in the day. A quick and easy cymbal stand can be made by taping a broomstick to the side of your box so that it points to the ceiling. Insert a screw in the top, and mount your ‘cymbals’ pro-style. Just be sure to get Mudder’s permission before putting holes in her bakeware.

On top of all this, there’s what you might call the auxiliary—the shakers, the rattlers, the proverbial can o’beans. Tape a couple tambourines to your non-bass drum leg and tuck a shaker into your sock in the place of a high hat. You are only limited by your imagination, and how many shakers you have on hand.
As always, the important thing is enjoy yourself… And be sure to send us audio or video samples at diy@thescope.ca.

Illustration by Tara Fleming

diy@thescope.ca

The year in DIY

This year the DIY section featured a wide cast of guest columnists. The mission was simple: Teach us one thing you know how to do well. The topics weren’t always practical, but certainly amusing. Holes were dug, fires were lit, drag queen makeup was applied, and stairs were built.

Bryhanna Greenough looks back at the year of D.I.Y.

Marry yourself
Right in time for Valentine’s Day, Berni Stapleton and Diane Weston share how they escape the tyranny of coupledom. They have married themselves.

“I hardly ever quarrel with myself, have only had to have couples counselling once, never take myself for granted, and I always buy myself gifts on special occasions,” say Berni Stapleton.

We caught up with Diane while she was preparing a special dinner for herself. Her reasoning was simple: “If it makes you happy doing it for someone else, why not make yourself happy doing it for yourself?”

Link to original article.

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Bend circuits, make noise
Craig Squires of local music improv group The Black Auks cracks apart Speak and Spells and other secondhand electronics and modifies the circuitry in an attempt to make weird new sounds. In our session we encountered the dreaded ‘black blob’ and triggered a mechanical bend (ie. Furby went crazy.)

Link to original article.

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Go on a fast
Meranda Squires talks about giving the body a rest from digestion so it can clean and repair itself. At the Lotus Centre, she leads groups on three day fasts. “For me there is hardly a difference between eating and not eating,” she says. But fasting can be pretty intense for some, she says. She calls it a “food addiction.”

Link to original article.

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Grow sprouts
Laugh in the face of winter by growing alfalfa, clover, radish, kamut, canola, sunflower, adzuki, fenugreek, and broccoli raab in countertop mason jars. Jars of green nibbles and bobbly bits will be popping apart like mad, their mass doubling every couple days.

Link to original article.

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Remember names
We all have our strategies for getting around this one.
“Wait for someone to use it aloud in conversation, discreetly ask someone else, go through their mail and look for anything not addressed ‘occupant,’ or give them a nickname so you don’t need to remember their real name.” Wise words from Geoff Younghusband.

Link to original article.

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Make a time capsule
Sherri Levesque reminisces on the buried cookie tin filled with New Kids on the Block trading cards, grocery flyers, letters from Grade 5, and the reunion that resulted ten years later to dig it all up.

Link to original article.

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Extract lead from soil
Much of the downtown core exceeds the Canadian ‘safe’ level of lead in our soil by eight times. Alison Dyer talks about detoxifying with plants and building raised beds.

Link to original article.

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Make a podcast
Local podcasting hero Wankergirl (aka Dana Hawco) teaches some basic life skills to the 21st Century non-geek. On Podcasting: “All I know was that I had some stupid things to say and I needed somewhere to say them.”

Link to original article.

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Run a road race
Sarah Smellie trains for the infamous ten mile running race from Octagon Pond to Bannerman Park. “You’ll get to the point where, after you’re all warmed up, you can think about something other than your burning leg muscles, like the music you’re listening to, or the book you’re reading, or whether or not today is the day you’ll ask that special someone to try and bounce a quarter off your arse.”

Link to original article.

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Tour by hitchhiking
Forget a van. Two-man music act Ghosts of the Highway use only their thumbs to tour across the country. Words of wisdom: “Never under any circumstances accept a ride to the following places: Wawa, Ontario; Keremeos, BC; or Sintaluta, Saskatchewan. They’re on the shit list for being notorious dead zones.”

Link to original article.

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Set up a micro radio station
Eastern Edge Gallery becomes the site of a temporary radio station emitting live sonic montage.
“When radio was first invented,” says Kristen Roos, “it was in the hands of the people, there were no laws governing how it could be used. Pirate radio movements, which focus on putting radio back into the hands of the people, first sprung up in response to this control in the sixties and seventies.”

Link to original article.

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Make an ugly stick
“What if you are like me and can’t fiddle, or whistle, or rock? We are people known for being as musical as we are handsome, and I don’t want to be overlooked,” writes Jason Sellars. His solution: “Get noticed getting ugly… by rocking out on an ugly stick.”

Link to original article.

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Make a backyard garden
Jason Sellars produced his own produce by nailing containers to a salvaged door, filling them with soil and seeds. “This year I’ve grown myself an edible door,” he writes.

Link to original article.

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Promote your music
“The world is a sprawling maze of opportunities and dead ends,” says musician Neil Conway. The best way to do anything is to consider things carefully. “There’s no limit to what you could be doing right now, but before you do anything, think about it, talk about it, argue about it, sleep on it, and then think about it some more.”

Link to original article.

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Build stairs
Dave Sullivan teaches us how to build a set of stairs and revises some definitions along the way…
“Nosing: That part of the stair you trip up on when you come home loaded at your mudders. It pokes out like a big old snotbox.”

Link to original article.

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Be a drag idol
“You’re also gonna wanna add some knockers to your outfit. Every queen has her own size and substance—I like socks. They give me about a C cup and are guaranteed to stay perky. But not too perky,” writes Matthew Sheppard aka Lola Lucci. Other wise words: “In drag world, more is more, so keep caking on the blush and eye shadow.”

Link to original article.

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Find vintage chic
“If you find the perfect leather jacket for ten dollars, your life might change: your co-workers might respect you, and that cute barista may slip you extra foam—at no charge,” pines Jill Butler.

Link to original article.

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Rock out
Dave Sullivan on how to get ready for a rockin’ 80s tribute show: “Ladies? Yeah, I’m talking to you. I hope you’re in shape. ‘Cause I got three words for you: tease, tease, tease. Get those biceps flexin’ and get that hair higher than Atlantic Place. I want that hair so high planes are going to have to radio in to ask for permission to go around it. I want that hair so high that Google Earth can pick up each and every one of you at that concert.”

Link to original article.

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Tell stories to kids
“Tell more stories to kids,” says Kevin MacKenzie. “Whenever a storyteller gives a story, a different illustration appears between every pair of ears in the room.”

Link to original article.

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Winterize your bike
On days where 40cm of white stuff dumps all over the city, “making roads into one lane quagmires of cars and pedestrians” you can find Rob Sexton riding around Quidi Vidi Lake or Mundy Pond on the fresh white snow. One of his favourite tricks? “Carry a lighter. You can use it to unfreeze parts. Just don’t melt anything.”

Link to original article.

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Burn mp3s to tape
“Like stuff you see in infomercials, my ‘tape burner’ is based on cutting edge, space age technology,” writes Kerri Breen. “Or conversely, ancient wisdom kept secret for years and not available in stores.” Kerri takes the digital and makes it anolog, all in the name of having a great cassette for a trip in an older car.

Link to original article.

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Light a fire
Paul Warford teaches us how to build a fire, have fun, influence friends, and impress lovers. While researching wood what doesn’t burn here, he talks about something called ‘old var.’ “I’m not sure what that may be, but if you ever encounter someone selling it by the cord for a price that seems too good to be true, move on.”

Link to original article.

Illustration by Kira Sheppard.

diy@thescope.ca