Kellbot!

Shopping for a small family car

April 11, 2012 Kelly

We knew it was only a matter of time before we would need a car. Sure, there’s a zipcar lot near our place, but as my baby bump gets bigger I realize that installing/removing a car seat from a car on a regular basis would pretty much suck. After procrastinating as long as possible, we broke down and started looking at cars for real.

The new vs preowned and buy vs lease discussions are covered extensively elsewhere, so I’ll cut to the chase: after crunching numbers we determined that buying a car new would be the best option for us.

I like small cars. However, we ferry large objects on a regular basis, and no one makes a Tardis yet, so we focused our search on hatchbacks. To start, we armed ourselves with a Consumer Reports car buying guide and a handful of relevant articles from Car and Driver.

Our priorities included size (we live in the city, smaller is better), fuel economy, cargo / backseat space, and enough of an engine to safely get us up the incredibly short highway on-ramp near our house. Neither of us commutes via car, so a lot of the creature comforts that commuters crave are lost on us.

The models on our list included the Toyota Prius, Toyota Yaris, Scion xD, Hyundai Accent, and Honda Fit. We also contemplated some other manufacturers, but there’s only so many cars you can test drive before you start going insane.

We shopped for cars over two days, about a week apart. Test driving cars takes about 3 times longer than it seems like it ought to. Compared to my husband, I’m a little more critical of how a car drives (particularly acceleration and handling), so RevolvingDork drove on day 1 as a coarse filter, and then the cars that passed his liking got scrutinized by me on day 2. Heading into test drives, the Prius was our top pick.

Toyota Yaris

The Yaris is cute! The Yaris is peppy! The Yaris is tiny. It didn’t take long to realize that the Yaris was just too small for us. If it was just the two of us it would be adorable. But with a kid on the way it didn’t seem like it could possibly fit the gargantuan car seats children apparently require, let alone the mountains of accessories everyone says we will soon carry with us everywhere.

Verdict: We took it for a quick spin, said “meh,” and moved on to the next one.

Toyota Prius

With gas prices around $4, hybrid cars look pretty attractive. A friend of ours has an older Prius and it’s served him well. There are a few different models of Prius, including the new Prius C (which has a body very close to the Yaris). We looked at the Prius “Two.”

The Prius is the most expensive of the cars we looked at by a long shot, but it’s a small price to pay for earth-saving street cred, right? I’ll keep the comments about the earth-hostile battery packs to myself. Unfortunately, the newer Prius’s incredible fuel economy seems to come at the expense of acceleration. The car didn’t feel like it drove as well as our friend’s older one. RD was unimpressed when we took it on the highway, and compared to the other Toyotas I thought the interior looked cheesy. You have to go up to the Three to get something nice looking, which I might not mind except the car starts a good $5,000 more expensive than the others.

Verdict: “The lack of acceleration on this car would drive you nuts unless you put it into ‘power mode’ every time you merged on to the highway,” said RD. Out.

Scion xD

First off, every time I see the xD I think it’s a laughing emoticon. It makes it impossible to take the car seriously.

We liked this car a lot more than we thought we would, but the engine still felt underpowered (which we realize is a theme with small cars), and RD wasn’t into the overall feel. It does have a nice tall cargo area, but the back seat felt a little shorter on ~~car seat~~ leg room than some of the other cars we looked at.

The taller height makes it feel kind of SUV-ish, but it still handles well and gets good gas mileage. Unfortunately for the xD, both my husband and I actually dislike being higher off the ground.

Verdict: Not a bad car by any means, but nothing to get excited about

Hyundai Accent Hatchback

I came into the test drive prejudiced against the Accent; we’d just rented a 2011 Accent the previous weekend and it was one of the most pathetic cars I’ve ever had the misfortune of driving. Part of this was because it didn’t have power locks, but in terms of handling and drive it really was a miserable little beast. Thankfully, the Accent has been completely redesigned for 2012. It looks almost sexy! For a compact hatchback, that is.

The Accent has an impressive amount of cargo space and rear leg room for such a tiny car. The engine is still under powered, but it felt punchier than the Scion, Prius, and Yaris. Hyundai has really improved their dashboards, it feels like a much classier car than previous model years. At 30 MPG city / 40 highway, the fuel economy is excellent.

Verdict: Oh hey, we actually like this car a lot!

Hyundai Elantra

Wait, Elantra? That’s not a hatchback! No, but since everyone and their mom has been talking about how awesome the new Elantra is, we decided to test drive it anyway.

It sure is nice driving a car with a real engine. Don’t get me wrong, the smaller cars are totally adequate for the type of driving we generally do, but you can really tell that the Elantra’s engine is better matched for the size. The sedan-shape was kind of a bummer (though there are rumors of an Elantra hatchback this summer), but the trunk is pretty cavernous.

Verdict: At the end of day 1, it looked like we were going to have to stage a death match between the Elantra and Accent. Which would win, the nicer drive on the Elantra, or adorably festive and considerably cheaper Accent hatchback?

Honda Fit

Fit — What a great car for transporting potted plants! That's a thing, right?

After the first day’s 5 car marathon, I didn’t really feel like looking at the Fit when we came back on Day 2. But in the interest of due diligence, and because the Honda dealership was all of 200 feet from the Hyundai dealership where I assumed we’d make our final purchase, we stopped in.

Holy cargo space batman! Though the exterior dimensions aren’t much different that the Accent, the cargo space is huge thanks to some Transformers-like contortions of both the rear and front passenger seats. In addition to folding down, the rear seats can fold up into “tall mode” which would be handy for transporting tall things that need to stay vertical, like ficus trees (?).

The drive was on par with the 2012 Accent. It wasn’t super exciting, but not bad and certainly better than the 2011 Accent we rented (the 2011 Accent is my new benchmark for suck). Visibility felt considerably better on the Fit than on the Accent, which is important when you live on a busy city street. The dashboard was uninspiring, but still not as blah as the Prius. At 27 city/33 highway, fuel economy was the worst of the ones we looked at (though still decent).

Verdict: Just think of all the oddly shaped things we can transport in this car!

Final Decision

The Fit and Accent were both close to what we were looking for, but for us the visibility and cargo space pushed the Fit ever so slightly ahead. With the Accent out of the arena we came to the final battle: the Honda Fit’s cavernous maw of holding versus the Hyundai Elantra, which has an actual engine instead of a wind-up toy. The Fit felt more utilitarian, the Elantra felt classier and more fun to drive.

Priced with the options we cared about, the Fit came in considerably cheaper than the Elantra. Additionally, Hondas retain their value slightly better than Hyundais, so if we need to trade in for a minivan when our kid is president of the Mathletes it may be a better option. After some hemming and hawing over the numbers, we decided to go with the Fit. What it lacks in sex appeal it makes up for in practicality, and that’s why we’re getting a car in the first place: to haul stuff around.

Gardening

Windowfarm Hydroponics Version 1

April 6, 2012 Kelly

It’s been a few years since I tried any hydroponics, but now that we have a place with nice big windows I’m trying my hand at a windowfarm. Windowfarms are drip planting systems that are set up vertically, making them great for places without a lot of outdoor gardening space.

7051849995_f4036f11a0 — Two dwarf sweet pea plants

Windowfarms are made from plastic bottles stacked vertically. A small airpump lifts water from the reservoir at the bottom to the topmost bottle, where it then trickles down over each plant. The plants, which were started in root plugs, are sitting in 3″ net cups filled with expanded clay pellets. The pellets offer root support for the plant, and retain water while still allowing plenty of oxygen flow.

My set up is, in a word, ugly. Eventually I plan on having four columns hanging in the window, and with any luck they’ll get more attractive as I go along.

I used a large plastic orchid pot to hide the water reservoir, which is simply an upside-down water bottle with a coil of 1/4″ tubing coming out the cap. The blue tray is leftover from a previous hydroponics experiment, and is there to hold the bottle vertically.

To make the joint between the cap and the tubing water tight, I sacrificed the barbed end of a plastic hose connector and pushed it into the cut end of the tubing. This pushes out the sides of the tubing and keeps water from escaping.

The water line is about 3 feet long and runs up to a t-joint, which you can just barely see in the photo of the reservoir. Airline tubing from the air pump comes in from the side, and the black tubing carries water up to the top of the plant column.

The basic theory of the system is that water comes up from the bottom and is then pushed up the black drip tubing by air from the air pump. Undergravel filters in aquariums work on a similar principal. Getting it to actually work is a trial and error process, and your reservoir needs to be high enough above the t-joint to keep the water pressure up.

The air pump also needed some tweaking to work well. Too much air and you get a noisy system that doesn’t lift water well, too little air and you get a quiet system that doesn’t lift water well. I found a nice four-way adjustable valve on Amazon which allows me to carefully adjust the airflow.

The system is on for 15 minutes every two hours, which I’ll increase as the plants grow. I’ve planted dwarf sugar peas, tomatoes, and basil so far. With any luck I’ll have something edible in a few months.

Cooking

It Came From the Internet: Recipes

April 5, 2012 Kelly

Things have been really busy around here, but sadly not with stuff that makes for interesting blog posts. In the meantime, here are some of the recipes I’ve been compulsively hoarding, holding out for the day when I actually have time to do some cooking / baking.

For the fantasy world in which I hold fancy dinner parties, prosciutto asparagus sprials.

Pizza muffins. Or, things I can throw in the freezer and then eat later when RevolvingDork isn’t around to feed me.

Strawberry Basil Margaritas. In ~6 weeks my basil plants will be fully grown, and I’ll be able to drink alcohol again. Coincidence?

Sweet Potato Veggie Burger. I’m not that into veggie burgers, but I am into sweet potatoes and avocado.

What’s on your recipe to-do list?

Hacking

SketchUp Models of PCBs

March 22, 2012May 12, 2014 Kelly

I don’t usually reblog stuff, but this was too neat not to share.

The folks at EagleUp have written a plugin to help you generate 3D models of your Eagle boards. This could be handy for designing enclosures, or just feeling like a badass.

[Dangerous Prototypes via Make]

New Construction Townhome

Built-in Bookcases by Ikea

March 17, 2012 Kelly

RevolvingDork and I have completed our first DIY home improvement project together: built in bookcases for our living room. It was only a little nerve wracking to coordinate on a project where neither of us really knew what we were doing.

We used Billy Bookcases, closely following the example from Centsational Girl’s blog. After trying a few different combinations we went with four full-width and one half-width bookcase. In between each bookcase is a strip of 1 11/16th inch moulding. We were able to pull up and reuse the floor moulding from the back wall (though as you can see in the photo above we need to get new quarter-round shoe moulding).

Our base moulding is pretty tall, and because we planned to install doors we needed to make sure the bottom edge of the lowest shelf was above the moulding. All together we needed to raise the bookshelves by 2 and a half inches. We built a frame out of two by fours, and nailed little wooden “feet” to the bottom to get things to the right height.

Like most houses, our walls and floor are not perfectly square so we had to fudge things a little bit to get them to line up. We used some scraps of the flat moulding as shims to convince the bookshelves to line up correctly. Conveniently, the crown moulding at the top hides any uneven edges between the bookcases. Once everything was in place we painted all the moulding to match the trim.

I’ve seen a lot of Billy build-ins, but none with doors. The doors weren’t quite as much of a problem as we’d expected; you can get away with up to 1/4″ thick moulding before you have to re-drill and reposition the mounting holes for the door hinges.

The bookcases themselves came in at $500 (more than half of which was the doors), and we spent about another $150 on wood, moulding, nails, etc. Despite being very crafty / hackery, neither of us is very handy so don’t have much in the way of spare lumber or hardware lying around. Thankfully we were able to borrow a compound miter saw from RD’s dad. We started the project on Wednesday and finished it Saturday morning, though it took longer than it needed to because we don’t have a car to easily get large things from the hardware store.

It may not be the most technically perfect bookshelf in the world (don’t look too closely at the mitered base moulding…) but we’re pretty proud of our first home improvement project. As a bonus, the living room is finally a livable space instead of a box maze.

New Construction Townhome

Installing a Modular Rug

March 14, 2012 Kelly

We used the Flor modular rug system in our TV room, which is made up of individual carpet squares you assemble yourself.

Each square is 20 by 20 inches. On the underside of each intersection is a small sticker which holds the pieces together. The rubbery backing on the carpet squares keep them from sliding around too much.

For the border pieces we cut the squares into thirds. To make the corners line up evenly we needed an extra 2/3 length border piece on the end of the border row.

When it’s done you can’t tell that the pieces are separate, though there are a few “fuzzies” that need to be vacuumed up. My cuts weren’t quite as clean as the factory edges, so I turned the cut edge of each border piece in towards the center of the rug. The pieces with two cut edges were used at the back of the rug (shown above), which will eventually be covered by a couch so no one will see it.

Overall we’re happy with how it came out, and will likely use the Flor squares in a few other places.

PS, notice something different? My blog images are now watermarked, something I’m going to try for a bit. You can read about why I’ve decided to go this route over on the main blog.

Organization

Kellbot’s Guide to a Successful Move

March 13, 2012 Kelly

In New York, moving frequently seems to be the norm. The longest most people stay in once place is a few years, and many of my friends move every year. And yet for some reason, a lot of people are kind of… bad at moving. Our recent move from the New York area to Philadelphia went really smoothly, and I’ll share our secrets.

A good move is low stress and over in time for an early dinner. A bad move involves lots of last minute freak-outs and unloading the moving van in the dark. Whether you’re hiring someone to do the heavy lifting or rounding up 6 of your closest friends, you want to be a good mover. Being a good mover isn’t hard, but it does take a little planning.

Sort before packing begins

There are really three phases to moving: sorting through all your junk, putting it into boxes, and then moving them to your new home. The only thing you should be doing on moving day is the last one! Sorting includes taking care of things you’ve been putting off, like filing things properly or culling your shoe collection. It can go to a thrift store, Craigslist, or the trash/recycle bin, but you should get rid of anything you don’t want to bring with you well before packing begins. Trying to do both at once is just an exercise it exhaustion. You can start sorting the moment you suspect you might be moving – the worst case scenario is you end up staying where you are in your newly junk-free space.

Give yourself an appropriate amount of time to pack

Waiting too late to pack is obviously a bad idea, but there’s also something to be said for not starting too early. As tempting as it is to start packing your books right away, living out of boxes for weeks makes your move feel longer. By sorting through stuff before packing begins, it’s easy to quickly put things into boxes when it’s time.

How much time you need depends largely on how much stuff you have, but for our two bedroom apartment I gave myself one week. My husband, who isn’t nearly the pack rat I am, did all of his packing in two days. We had the luxury of being able to set aside entire days right before the move, so if you’re cramming moving around a full work schedule you’ll likely need longer.

Pack your belongings in honest-to-god boxes

This is the chief offense I’ve seen in bad moves. You need boxes. Boxes that close and can be stacked. Stuffing your belongings into tote bags or carrying them out by the armful is a great way to make your move take three times as long as it needs to.

There are lots of place to get boxes: you can buy them from a moving company or find them used. You can often find free moving boxes on Craigslist or Freecycle, or ask a local business to save boxes for you. You can scrounge them off the street on recycling day, but since a lot of stores destroy the boxes to break them down you’ll get better quality boxes if they’re actually saving them for you.

Furniture should be empty

Not only does your chest of drawers weigh a ton with all that stuff in it, but the most likely outcome if you try and move it full is that the drawers will fall out and all of your belongings will tumble into the street. Remember: stuff goes in boxes. Furniture is not a box. Therefore, stuff does not go in furniture. This includes those plastic drawer units, which are not boxes, and therefore should be empty.

On the subject of furniture: furniture pads are awesome! We rented three dozen for a total of $15, and they came in incredibly handy. Not only are they good for wrapping up your furniture, but they can be shoved into gaps between odd shaped items to keep your stuff from sliding around.

Use small boxes for books, and pretty much everything else

The biggest box you should fill with books and other heavy items is a 1 foot cube. Beyond that, you’re going to end up destroying your back, the box, or both. Have mercy on your moving help, and use small boxes for books.

In fact, we used very few boxes that were larger than 18 x 18 x 12 inches (uhaul’s “medium”), and even then we had a number of boxes that were just too heavy. Your mileage will vary depending on the kind of stuff you own, but since very little of what we have is larger than 12 inches in any dimension, I wish I’d used fewer “medium” sized boxes and more smalls.

Label your boxes

Write which room the box came from on the side, or use sticky labels if you’re feeling organized. That way you know where to deposit each box in your new place, and can easily find anything you suddenly realized you desperately need. The somewhat OCD color coded labels I used were really helpful, it made it easy for me to see at a glance which room each box was going to. The downside is that now our entire family is keenly aware of the insane amount of craft supplies I own – it seemed like about 1/3 of the boxes were labeled “craft room.”

Have enough help

You need a minimum of two strong people. Three sturdy folks can load a properly packed two bedroom apartment into a truck in a little over two hours, so if you’ve got more stuff, aren’t so sturdy, live in a 5th floor walk-up, or didn’t pack well you’re going to need more people. If you’re out of strong friends, check Craigslist for hiring help. In our area, $120 gets you two guys with giant arms for two hours.

Be upbeat, even if you’re stressed

I snapped at RevolvingDork when we were loading the van, over something dumb, and immediately regretted it. Even when things go smoothly it’s stressful to move, don’t add to the problem by being a pill. Try to remember that your stuff is just that – stuff. Obviously you want your belongings to get from point A to point B without damage, but yelling at people isn’t actually the best way to achieve that: careful packing is.

Feed your friends

In addition to some sort of thank you meal afterwards, it helps to have a few drinks/snacks on hand for your friends who are helping. In the morning this can be coffee and donuts, or in the afternoon a cooler of sodas and some snacks, but make sure your friends stay well fed – particularly if you’d ever like their help in moving again.

My husband and I have a lot of stuff, and we managed to load up the truck in an hour and 45 minutes. We had 3 people loading the whole time, and 3 more who joined us about 45 minutes in. When we unloaded in Philly, we had a total of 12 people and got the truck empty in under 45 minutes. The longest part of the Philly leg of the trip was waiting for our cheesesteaks to be ready.

If there’s overlap such that you can get into both your old place and your new place, consider carefully whether it’s worth it to do the “trickle move.” Sure, you can move all that stuff one car load at a time over two weeks, but do you really want to? For this move we did take some stuff down in advance – since moving my Vespa is sort of an event we rented a van to move it and filled the remaining space with stuff we knew we weren’t using any time soon.

Moving doesn’t have to be a painful experience. It always sort of sucks, but you can mitigate the suck by staying organized.

To Watermark or Not To Watermark?

March 12, 2012September 11, 2014 Kelly

I have a love-hate relationship with Pinterest. I enjoy browsing the site to see new ideas for organizing and decor, but more often than not when I follow a pin to the source I find an orphaned image. These images are often sitting unaccredited on Tumblr and have no background information to tell me more about what’s going on. I know at one point these images had parents, probably blog articles, but through sharing and re-sharing the original content has been lost. On more than one occasion, I’ve found things on Pinterest with a description which I knew to be completely incorrect.

I spend a lot of time on my own photos for my blog, and a few of them have made the rounds on pinterest/etc. I’m contemplating watermarking my images with my blog URL. This isn’t because I’m concerned about “stealing,” in fact I love it when people reblog my stuff, it’s about attribution. It’s about someone seeing something I’ve done and having a snowball’s chance of learning more if they’re interested.

If someone wants a watermark-free copy for use on their blog or whatever, I’m more than happy to provide it. The image above shows what I’m thinking of adding to my photos from here on out.

So what do you think? Is the watermark shown above an acceptable way of “claiming” my content, or just it just distract too much from the image to be viable?

New Construction Townhome

On Home Decor Trends

March 12, 2012 Kelly

“The Restoration Hardware catalog = going over to the home of Howard Hughes, if he were a giant robot & married to a gay solider from WWII.” – Millie De Chirico

I know I’ve been looking at home decor catalogs too much lately, because when I read this I laughed so hard I started hyperventilating. The latest post on Offbeat Home also resonates with me, since I use Pinterest to get ideas for organizing and end up just rolling my eyes at the same ridiculous styles that keep popping up. “[Frack] you, decorative typewriter,” indeed.

Now back to finding the perfect spot for my vintage sewing machine…

Software

Domestic Adventures: Cat 6 Ethernet and Daily Calendars

March 9, 2012January 17, 2014 Kelly

Things have been quieter over here lately, but busy on Kellbot’s Domestic Adventures, the part of my blog dedicated to home and personal posts. It’s a little tricky to balance what goes where, so for overlap posts I’ll provide a summary. If you’re not reading it, here’s some of what you’ve missed:

Wiring for Cat 6 Ethernet

It’s been a little tricky to balance what posts go where, especially when they’re home improvement hacks. The second post in the series about our home network is now up!

A script to generate a daily chore calendar

Because I’m a slob, I have to have a daily check list every day to tell me to clean up. I converted an old page-a-day calendar into a daily chore checklist, with help from Ruby and ImageMagick.