Under the years I have had several home projects and I was planning to write a little of them here.
I will add any new strange projects as I start with them.
Glasses in Unigraphics
Portable frisbee basket
Kryptex
Windowfarming
Fotoböcker
Homepages
Terese och Johan (to come)
Our wedding
Johan
Johans Photo
Some years ago I took an evening class to learn to know how to use Unigraphics.
It turned out to be really fun and since then I have used it several times both at work and home. At the end of the course the final assignment was to create a product of your choice that had at least two 3D surfaces. Without thinking I chose to create a drawing based on my bicycle glasses which basically do not have a single straight edge or flat surface. The teacher didn’t even comment my choice of project, probably as he expected me to change project before the end as so often happens.
As you probably can imagine I spent a little more time on the project than was probably planed frome the beginning.
I’m very pleased with the outcome and I do not think I need to tell you that my drawing was approved.
When I had started with disc golf I felt that to get good I needed a lot of more putting practice if I was to be able to get good at this sport. What I needed was my own basket, something that I can keep in the apartment and take it to a football field for practice.
I decided to try and construct a basket that follow the rule book and can be disassembled for transportation and storage.
So I collected the standard measurements of the disc basket from the PDGA website and then started creating the basket as I wanted it. By gradually making changes, I created a design that could be done by just one piece of wood, and that would follow the PDGA standards and also be easily portable.
It was now time to transform my hallway. So now it was time to make the hall to a workplace for a couple of weeks and after a bit of thinking, tinkering and searching after special items the basket was ready to use.
The basket still works and is easy to carry to the appropriate area when you are in the mood.
As a Geocacher i have hade thoughts about creating some type of code devise that have to be solved to be able to sign in the log book. By a chance I read about that someone had created a Cryptex out of pipe parts, and obviously I had to try and make one of my own. For the fun of it a started by creating a drawing in UG to determine what I needed and what type of material that was suitable. My first prototype was planed to be a Christmas present to a friend, someone that was sure to appreciate the work.
You can se some pictures of the cryptex below, both during development and the finished part.
My wife and I both enjoy cooking good foods and if possible use fresh spices. But in an apartment it’s not easy to grow fresh spices for most of the year. By a chance I read about window farming some where on the net and the possibility that this might be a solution.
A Windowfarm is a hydroponiskt system that you can make by recycled parts you mainly have at home. The basic is that you grow the plants by recycling a nurturance solution thought the root systems rather than using soil and thereby the plants can use all energy on growing instead of growing bigger roots.
There are several places to look for more information if you are interested. http://www.konstruktioner.info/, and http://www.windowfarms.org/ where you also can buy complete kits.
The simplest versions wasent that good looking so I build a box for hanging under the window that holds most of the functions. If functions by lifting the water with an air pump to the top and then letting the water flow down through the pots back to the water reservoir.
This id our first solution using the standard PET-bottles but I plan to develop something nicer.
As many of you I have had problems finding a way to keep order in all photos you take during the years. To get some type of order i decided to create year books with the things that happened under that year (the family and vacation stuff). Under the creation of the first book it was obvious that it was better to collect pictures from two years in every book. Så from that point I have saved all year pictures sorted in folders for every year and happening to make the work easier.
The reason am telling you this is to recommend you all to give this a try on your own, and mabye give you a few pointers. By creating these photo books you get all pictures in one place and its easy to sit down and enjoy them at home or at any other place you can think of. You can make different designs, add texts and special effects to make it the best looking book possible to remember the old times.
There are several places where you can by books like this and I recommend that you investigate the firms available at you location to find whats suits your needs, and you can often find reviews that have been done and can give you some pointers.
I use ifolor as they have always worked fine for me here in Sweden.
But one thing! If you decide to order a photo book, DON’T BE STINGY! By a hardback with good quality papers instead of a cheep alternative and you will get something to enjoy for a long time instead of being disappointed.
* Comming soon *
When we started to plan our wedding we had an idea to have a website that looked like our invitations that was to be sent out to all our guests.
Terese who like to scrapbook created a template for how our invitations would look like and then it was up to me to try and create a similar website.
I started by creating picture of the invitation with a image program to get the graphics that was needed. This was not as easy as I thought from the beginning since I had pretty high standards that it would look like in real life, I had to work a lot with shadows and light to get the right feel. 
After several test on how to create a homepage that would contain the information that we wanted and have a look and feel that matched the invitation I finally ended up with using the for me new CSS language.
We are both happy with the finished result as its really similar to the invitations and includes the information normally demanded by the wedding guests.
You can see a picture of the invitation to the right, and you are welcome to visit the wedding page I created to see the final results.
As you are reading this you obviously found my homepage. I wanted a classical look and feel but yet with my own little touch. After creating my wedding homepage I now always try to create all graphics myself.
Johans Photo (in Swedish only)
I thought it would be fun to have a separate website connected to my photography. I started brainstorming to determine how the page would look like and early in the process it was clear to me that the menu would look like a roll of photonegative. I didn’t manage to find a suitable picture of a roll so had to create all the graphics on the website by byself. Yet another fun challenge!