Yesterday I threw away three ballpoint pens in a row. Normally I write with a fountain pen, but my workshop is grimy thanks to all the machine tools and no place for a schmancy fountain pen. I finally found a pen that worked, drew what I needed to draw and made some notes then went back into the house to throw away the empty pens.

I didn’t actually “throw away” three pens as much as “dispose” of them or, in essence, “destroy” them. They’re not recyclable that I’m aware of and not refillable, either. So there’s 1.5 oz (yes, I weighed them) of plastic and a tiny bit of metal that I destroyed by sending to a landfill.

How much oil did I just destroy? Probably not that much. But those pens came in boxes, factories needed to make the ink used to color the plastic, all of that had to be delivered somewhere. Still, probably not that much oil for three pens.

How many pens have I destroyed in my life? I remember buying disposable ballpoints by the box in college, so I’m guessing a lot of pens, so maybe, what, a gallon of oil? A barrel of oil? I’m not going to go all Jamais Cascio and calculate the amount of oil I’ve destroyed in the form of ballpoint pens, but I’m going to hazard a guess it’s a non-trivial amount, especially if you include the fully-loaded cost of the designing, making, and distributing of the pens.

Side note: Years ago I switched to mechanical pencils just because I like the feel more. I still have some of the same mechanical pencils I bought seven or eight years ago — including my favorite, Ohto Pro-Mecha architecture pencils. I have worn out four of the Ohotos (all .3, I guess I have a heavy hand?) and need to fix/replace/recycle them. Of note, they’re made almost entirely of aluminum with only a small amount of plastic. If I can’t fix them, I can always toss the metal bit in the recycling bin with all the other metal scrap that I take to the dealer once or twice a year.

So, I threw away — destroyed — three pens yesterday. How many have I destroyed away in my life? How many have you destroyed? How many have we collectively destroyed? How much oil have we collectively destroyed in the form of disposable pens?

BIC says they sell “24 million BIC(tm) stationery products every day” (emph. mine). They also say, “BIC(tm) products are the choice for any consumer who wants to protect the environment.”

Say what? If I want to protect the environment, why would I buy disposable pens and disposable lighters and disposable razors, all made using oil and intended to be destroyed instead of recycled or reused? I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that maybe it’s actually bad for the environment (and a waste of money) to buy things knowing you’re just going to destroy them.

Ok, so how do I go about not destroying any more oil in the form of disposable pens? Let’s try the “reduce, re-use, recycle” solution.

Reduce: It’s difficult to reduce the amount of drawing and writing I need to do, but can I reduce the amount of pens I use? Is there an alternative to disposable pens? I like Prismacolor pencils, and they’re good for some of my drawing, and when I toss the shavings and the stub into the trash they’ll go to a landfill where maybe they’ll decompose. They are a bit of a pain to use on a plane or in a car as they have to be sharpened often and they’re also fragile — dropping them will break the core and make them useless. They also don’t work well with some paper and they aren’t as permanent as ink. Face it, I’m still going to need to use ink pens of some sort.

Reuse: Another option is to stop throwing away — destroying — the entire pen. Copic makes a number of pens that use refillable inserts and replaceable nibs. True, those go in the landfill once they’re empty/worn, but the body of the pen is metal and will last quite some time before getting tossed into the recycling bin. I’m still using one I bought several years ago, and I’ve replaced the ink and nib a few times now. (Copic also makes a wide variety of refillable/repairable markers along with disposable pens and markers.) When I was a kid, replacing the insert was pretty standard and I still have a couple of U.S.Gov. black ball-point pens that would work fine today had I a refill handy.

For note-taking in class and general writing, I’ve switched over completely to fountain pens that can be refilled from a bottle of ink. Yes, they can be a bit messy some times, but I’ve bought a few 3oz jars of Noodler’s water-resistant ink, enough to last me a kerjillion years. I suspect the nib on my pen will also last me most of the rest of my life as long as I don’t drop it on concrete or somesuch. If I didn’t like refilling I could buy ink cartridges, but again, I’m destroying oil when the cartridges are empty.

Recycle: Not an option with any of the disposable pens I’ve seen. If someone is making pens that I can put in with the #1 and #2 plastic (all my city takes), please let me know. I’m pretty certain none of the pens I destroyed yesterday were made of HDPE.

So, there’s my solution: fountain pens for most of my writing, Copic markers and Prismas for drawing. I suspect I can go the rest of my life without destroying nearly as much oil as I used to in the form of disposable pens.

Am I saying that people who use disposable pens are evil? No, and I’ll continue to use Sharpie Industrial disposable markers when I need to make semi-permanent marks in the shop. (However, I should buy them in bulk instead of in the three pack that uses paper and plastic packaging.)

What I am saying is that we destroy a lot of oil in the form of disposable pens, and that there are steps we can take to reduce the amount we’re destroying. Each of our solutions will be different, but collectively we can prevent a lot of oil from being destroyed.

Technorati Tags: oil, pens, recycling, sustainability

I’m working on a few long-form posts right now, so there won’t be as many short posts as usual. And if you’re thinking, “man, most of what you write is long”, then apologies in advance.

Speaking of which, shameless plug for a tool I’m growing to love: Scrivener. After years of writing in emacs, making outlines in ascii then filling them in, I started checking out all sorts of outline/writing tools. In the past 5 years, Scrivener is the first thing to have me writing from the start in a tool and not an editor. Scrivener is a great tool and I’m beginning to get really sucked into for long-form writing, and it appears to have a sizable fan-base in the dramatic writing world as well.

Ok, so I’ll probably export the finished text to ascii and post it here; then load it up in emacs, mark it up in TeX and make a PDF. But I’m broken that way.

Technorati Tags: scrivener, tools, writing

Awhile back I went on about how much I liked the Oxo Uplift Kettle. Three Oxo Uplift Kettles later, I’m not sure I’d consider it The Best Teakettle Ever Made. I think it might actually be The Best Idea for a Teakettle Poorly Executed but Properly Marketed.

The idea is great — lifting the teakettle by the handle and tilting the teakettle forward opens the pour spout. No fumbling around with a poorly insulated hot stopper, no finding a dishtowel to use while removing a metal stopper, just pick up the kettle and pour. Great idea, but Oxo isn’t able to (or perhaps does not want to) implement it effectively.

The first Uplift Kettle we had worked just fine for a few months — then the handle for the lid snapped off, making it effectively impossible to refill the teakettle. The handle was made of plastic and bolted to a metal lid in a way that pretty much guaranteed the handle would break due to the strain placed on the handle near the bolt holes. Oxo was very nice and sent us a replacement Uplift Kettle under warranty, but that took a couple of weeks. As we make multiple cups of tea and coffee every morning, it was two very annoying weeks of boiling water in a pot and trying to pour that into filters and cups.

The second kettle — the replacement for the first — stopped making a proper whistling sound after six months or so. It still made a noise, but not loud enough that you could hear from the dining room, which meant checking back every few minutes to see if the water was ready. One day it stopped whistling at all, boiled dry before we realized it, and got dumped into the garbage. Probably should have gotten it replaced under warranty when it stopped making a noise, but going for a couple of weeks without a teakettle is really annoying.

So, we bought a third Uplift Kettle. Like the second, it quickly developed problems whistling and soon stopped making much of a noise at all. After about a year of use, water started dripping water down the spout when we went to pour water into a cup. In other words, hot water goes in the cup and also trickles down the side, off the bottom, and onto my toes. It looks to me like part of the lip of the pour spout is coming apart and I don’t see any easy way to repair it.

We probably won’t buy another Uplift. I don’t like disposable things in the first place and a teakettle definitely should not be a disposable object. My All-Clad was annoying to use, but at least it didn’t come apart all the time or drip water. I sold it on eBay when I got the Uplift Kettle, now I’m wishing I’d have kept it.

I’m wondering if it’s really so difficult to design and manufacture a teakettle for $30 that lasts for more than a year being used on a daily basis. Maybe the market is such that people don’t mind buying a new one every year, or we’re an edge case in that we use it daily. Oxo has a full like of teakettles, if I buy a different one will it be toast within a year? Is there some sort of failure/repurchase cycle in which I’m supposed to be participating?

So, what to do. I could buy another All-Clad, as they seem to be indestructible. My All-Clad pots and pans hold up quite well under daily use. There are some other Oxo teakettles that look interesting, but I have some doubts about their reliability based on my experience with the Uplift.

For the studio there’s an easy answer: I bought a Zojirushi electric dispensing pot. These are a great solution if you’re going through a few liters of water a day or don’t have a stove/hotplate handy. I brought it home for the winter break and it’s quite handy to have around the house, but I’m not sure if I’m ready to buy one just for home use. It puts out water that’s just-under boiling (208 F) which is great for tea but not so great for coffee, instant miso soup, and other things that call for boiling water. It also doesn’t have any sort of on/off switch, just a “sleep timer” that you hit at the end of the day when you leave work. I’m going to guess that it uses more energy keeping water hot all day than does boiling water 3-4 times a day when I want it.

I wonder if the person (or people) behind the Uplift Kettle use it every day, or if they even drink tea in the first place? Maybe they have a Mr. Coffee or a home espresso machine of some sort.

Or maybe they do use it, have no problems with it, and I’m simply the unluckiest customer they’ve ever had.

Technorati Tags: design, oxo, review, tea, teakettle

I’ve had my Hag Capisco for almost a year now and have a few thoughts to share about how much it’s changed my life. No, I’m not selling them, I didn’t get paid for this review, and I bought my Hag with my own, hard-earned money. The Hag Capisco is one of those discoveries I feel the need to share with anyone not smart enough to run away when I get that look in my eyes.

A little background if you haven’t heard of a Capisco. It is designed to be a perching chair — instead of putting all your weight on your butt and thighs while sitting you put some of your weight on the saddle seat and some of your weight on your feet. (I reviewed Galen Cranz’s “The Chair” last year, she discusses perching and the history of sitting on chairs in a fair amount of detail.)

Some differences between the Capisco and other “ergonomic” chairs:

• The chair back is not intended for support. Working while sitting on a Capisco is more like sitting on a backless stool or on the edge of a bed.
• The chair arms are far enough back that they are out of the way during normal use. You can lean back in a Capisco and rest your elbows on the arms to take a break, but when sitting upright the chair arms will not interfere with your arms.
• The chair has more (and different) adjustment options than many chairs I’ve owned. One of my favorite is the ability to slide the seat pan forwards and backwards to better accomodate different leg/butt ratios.
• The chair seat and back are both solid and firm. If there’s an opposite to the hammock-like bucket seats of an Aeron, this might just be it.

My seated (and standing) posture started improving within a few days of switching to the Capisco. It did take a couple of days for my back muscles to get used to holding me upright, but my body adjusted relatively quickly. It’s surprising just how much muscle tone I had to develop just to sit up straight for a few hours a day, but my back developed the muscle tone needed the same way my legs adjusted to living in a three-story house. I’m also fond of the feet rests that are on top of the casters. Normally with an office chair on casters, repositioning myself would require grabbing the chair with one hand to keep it from moving while I got up and sat back down. On the Capisco, I can make minor adjustments to my sitting position by simply lifting myself with my feet on the textured footrests, shifting a bit, then sitting back down.

Another change I’ve noticed is that it’s now easier (if not required) to move around quite a bit while sitting. In my old Aeron chair I could slump back and sit motionless for hours. On the Capisco, however, the only thing supporting me is my feet and butt. I’m able to sway, lean over, turn around, do all sorts of things that weren’t possible in the Aeron because I’m sitting on the chair instead of in the chair. (If you’ve ever been stuck in the rear bucket seats of a 70s muscle car, you know exactly what I’m talking about.) Sitting on a Capisco, I’m able to put things out of arm’s reach or on a shelf beside me and still get to them easily while working. In the Aeron, an item or task either had to be within arm’s reach or I had to get out of the chair.

There are a few downsides to the Capisco, but they’re mostly related to distribution and adjustment to a different sort of chair. Here in the states Hag chairs are damned difficult to test-drive unless you live near a major city. There was only one dealer in the greater San Francisco bay area that had a Capisco I could look at in person, something I like to do before dropping US $600 on a chair. Here in Pittsburgh I could only find one company even able to order a Capisco for me — they had none in their showroom to demonstrate. It took me a couple of months from initial contact before my chair arrived for me to pick up, I suspect due to the fact I was the first person in the area to ever order one of these. There’s also the cost of a Hag, and unlike the Aeron, there isn’t a surplus of used Hag chairs on the market that were freed up in the dot-com crash.

The Capisco does take a few days (if not a week) to get used to and for the first few days of use you’ll probably think it is uncomfortable or tiring. This is mostly your body complaining about having to build up some muscle tone needed to start doing the work of holding your head and spine in place.
Once you’re in a bit better shape, you’ll find the Capisco plenty comfortable.

If you have specific questions, let me know and I’ll update this review with text and photos as needed.

Q&A

Answers for some of the questions in the comments section:

• “Can you read heavy books in this chair?”: I would never consider doing any sort of reading in this chair unless the material was supported in front of me at a height that let me look straight ahead while reading. I’ve seen people using reading stands in beds and in other chairs, so you could probably find one that fit the Capisco. However, holding a book in your lap and looking down at it would probably defeat many of the benefits of using a Capisco. Yes, your weight would be distributed between your butt and your feet, but you’d also be bending your neck over at a very uncomfortable angle.

Technorati Tags: capisco, hag, review

(Note: This is a reference entry that I’ll cite in the future, that’s why it reads like a footnote.)

It’s hard to describe The Crucible without using their phrase, “An Educational Collaboration of Arts, Industry and Community”. The Crucible not only offers classes in a wide variety of industrial skills, the arts, and practical knowledge; they rent out studio space and work areas to artists and provide a venue for all manner of entertainment.

When I first took a class at The Crucible they were crammed into a horrible little building in Berkeley and our classroom was a storage room with a table in the middle. To be honest, I didn’t really notice or care — I was so absorbed in learning the tricks of working with electroluminescent wire that minor issues like lack of proper ventilation, noise from the power hammer in the main room, or rickity chairs simply didn’t register .

Now The Crucible is in a huge building in Oakland with wonderful classrooms, designated areas for various fabrication methods, plenty of power, light, and ventilation, and just about anything you could ask for in an industrial arts facility. More amazing, classes and studio time at the The Crucible are cheap. Cheap, cheap cheap, even when compared to something like the Pittsburgh Glass Center, located in a town with roughly half the cost of living as the Bay Area.

The Crucible is an amazing resource and other cities should be envious enough to fund similar ventures in their industrial districts. You can learn everything from neon to tig welding to blacksmithing to kinetic sculpture, share workspace with some truly inspiring and creative people, and not spend much money in the process. If you’ve ever wanted to build outdoor art for Burning Man, make a tricked out bicycle, blow glass, make sculpture out of scrap industrial equipment, or do damn near anything involving fire, metal, glass or electricity, head over to The Crucible. If you’re just wanting to pick up some useful life skills they also teach classes on basic metal working, motorcycle repair, sewing, and other skills useful to the modern DIY type.

Technorati Tags: art | Burning Man | industrial design | sculpture | welding