I work for an engineering firm, and my workspace is a cubicle. I wasn’t sure how well the standing desk option would go over, but when I noticed several coworkers augmenting their desks in various ways to stand while working, I saw my open door. I decided to take the low-cost, DIY route to test the waters. In this post, I will show you how to convert your cube to a standing desk.

Design

I closely followed the design of the Standesk 2200, a standing desk conversion kit pieced together from random IKEA parts. Instead of building an entirely new desk, it’s an add-on that sits right on top of your regular desk. The name “2200” comes from the price: $22.00. I made a few modifications that pushed the cost up (Standesk 5000?), but I think these were well worth it. A shopping list is below. I’m pleased with the final result:

As you can see, it’s nothing more than a black coffee table with a shelf mounted on the front. One of the reasons I went with this coffee table instead of the recommended side tables is that the coffee table’s lower shelf provides an inconspicuous spot for my laptop docking station and 3D mouse (when not in use). The keyboard shelf is approximately twelve inches wider than the coffee table. This provides a helpful work platform to the left of my keyboard where I can place papers or books.

One concern I had was that the final product wouldn’t feel solid enough, but I was wrong: it feels very sturdy and the monitors exhibit minimal wobble. I was also concerned whether it would look professional enough, but based on the comments I have received from colleagues, it passes the test. Finally, this design doesn’t have a great option for working while sitting if needed — the best I can do is undock my laptop and sit at a different area of my desk.

The Transition

The transition to standing has been surprisingly easy — much smoother than expected. I’m fairly healthy/fit, but I’m not a big exerciser. I haven’t had much trouble standing all day. I don’t feel noticeably more fatigued at night than I did before. I do stretch frequently during the day and try to walk around periodically. I sit to eat lunch. Otherwise, I don’t know why it’s been such a smooth transition. You might be surprised and find out you can stand all day as well. Five weeks in, I hardly notice it or think about it anymore.

This is entirely subjective, but I feel like my alertness and capacity for sustained concentration throughout the day have improved. This could all be in my head, but it makes reasonable sense that standing would keep you more mentally engaged. Friends have reported similar productivity gains.

When it comes to assembling your desk, you need to take some careful measurements to get the keyboard and monitor heights correct. I used the ergonomics graphic in this post as a guide. I did the best I could ahead of time, but this required some trial and error. Even after measuring, when I brought the assembly to my office, I found that the working surfaces were several inches too low. I’m 6’1”, so several furniture risers brought the set-up mostly into compliance, but I still experienced an RSI flare-up in my mouse hand. Nobody tell Edward Tufte, but my copy of Beautiful Evidence was just the right height to solve the RSI problem. It’s been fine ever since.

I found that the floor in my office was too rigid (carpet on concrete slab). I needed an anti-fatigue mat. I didn’t want foot or knee problems to negate the health benefits of standing. After reading a multitude of reviews online, I learned that anti-fatigue mats are a get-what-you-pay-for commodity. Furthermore, a lot of them are marketed as kitchen accessories and are styled accordingly (patterns, etc.). I needed something that wouldn’t draw attention. This led me to the only expensive component in my set-up: the Imprint Cumulus Pro anti-fatigue mat. It is black, plain, has tapered edges which reduce its tripping hazard, and it is awesome. Once I’ve worked here longer, I might add a wobble board to mix things up a bit.

Good shoes are important. I expected the transition to standing to trigger a shoe upgrade, but my feet have been fine. I repeat: my feet do not hurt at all after nine hours of standing. Several years ago when I began teaching, I splurged on a pair of Ecco Berlins. These shoes are incredible. I now travel internationally with only these shoes, and have put them through everything from multi-mile traipsing on cobblestone streets to climbing through castle ruins. I may upgrade to a “barefoot”-style business shoe in the future, but the Ecco’s are more than sufficient for now.

Shopping List

• Lack Coffee Table (35”-long version) — $19²
• Ekby Valter Brackets — 2 @ $4
• Ekby Hemnes Shelf (47x11”) — $19
• ¼ x 3-in bolt/nut/washer sets from Home Depot
• Imprint Cumulus Pro Anti-Fatigue Mat (24x36”) — $100 (optional)
• Black Bed Risers — $17

In conclusion…

If you are intrigued by the idea of a standing desk, I highly recommend you give it a try. My set-up is proof that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to test the waters.

I’ve now spent five weeks with this set-up. I have really enjoyed it so far and am feeling great. I plan to write a more comprehensive review after several months or a year passes, so we’ll see how this ongoing experiment pans out. For now, though, I’m excited.

But recently, I’ve been more and more intrigued by Octopress and the like. I have wanted to dig deeper into git and play around with Amazon web services, both to save money and learn something new.

For the uninitiated, Octopress is a static site generator which is written in Ruby, based on the Jekyll codebase, and closely allied with the git ecosystem. An Octopress blog is basically a folder of text files on your computer. You type some commands, and your blog is generated as a static html site that you can host wherever you want.

After you convert your blog from Wordpress to Octopress, it’s customary to write an excruciatingly detailed post explaining how (by an act of God) you got everything to work. I imagine that it’s straightforward to set up if your line of work means you already have the dependencies installed. I did not.

But the transition went much easier than I expected. The Octopress docs are great, and by constantly breaking it down step by step, I was able to get things up and running over about 6 or 8 hours. Noting that many of the following steps was preceded by 20 minutes of Googling, I:

• Exported my Wordpress database.
• Synced existing comments to Disqus in case I wanted to keep them.
• Installed Octopress.
• Installed any missing dependencies with Homebrew (highly recommend).
• Ran exitwp on my Wordpress database.
• Cleaned up a few errors and copied my posts to the Octopress _source folder.
• Copied my wp-content/uploads folder into the source directory so I didn’t have to rewrite image links.
• Modified the deploy file to send to S3 using s3cmd
• Generated and deployed the site.
• Created a Cloudfront distribution pointing at my S3 bucket.
• Created a cname alias at my registrar.

And that was pretty much it. You can find ten blog posts around the Internet detailing how to accomplish every one of those steps, so there’s no need for me to reinvent the wheel with more detail.

A static blog is not for everybody, but I really resonate with the philosophy. I found it incredibly liberating to see my blog as a folder of plain text files. Every blog post I’ve ever written right there, a click away from editing in Sublime Text or iA Writer. I also learned a lot in the process and will save quite a bit in hosting costs.

Aside from collapsing the sidebar and tightening up the horizontal dimensions to improve readability, I have decided to keep the default design for now. I plan to redesign it at some point, but I’m content to make this transition in stages.

I’m very excited to announce that I’ve accepted a position at a structural engineering consulting firm in Boston. I’ll be working in the engineering mechanics division on structural failures, seismic evaluation of nuclear facilities, and other interesting things. I start at the beginning of April. So there it is: I’m moving to Boston.

The other day I attended a really interesting doctoral defense (congrats Mustafa!) which used computational fluid dynamics to look at vortex shedding from fluid flow around various-shaped objects with prescribed motions. Check out this animated gif to get an idea what I’m talking about.

Vortex shedding is an interesting phenomenon in skyscraper design because, depending on the building’s aerodynamic characteristics, moderate wind can excite torsional modes or cause other serious problems. Nowadays any landmark skyscraper is evaluated in wind tunnels to attempt to detect this effect ahead of time.

It reminded me that a year or so ago I got interested in building a collection of photos showing vortex shedding around skyscrapers. I found two decent ones (shown above) of the John Hancock Center in Chicago, one of my favorite skyscrapers. These photos were really hard to find because most tourists taking photos from the base of a skyscraper don’t tend to tag their photos with “vortex shedding” on Flickr. The next time I’m in a big city on a windy+cloudy day, I’m going to see if I can recreate a photo like these.

The Atlantic’s InFocus feature does it again with an awesome series of before/after shots of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, separated by 2 years. If you click each image, it fades to the current state.

As someone who works on the seismic resilience of structures, I always find these sorts of things fascinating and motivating. I appreciate and try to internalize every reminder of the gravity of our charge as engineers.

Also, for my engineering professor friends out there, maybe you should show the photo above sometime when you’re teaching about load and resistance factor design and say: “You never know when a yacht might land on top of the building you are designing.”

I encountered this frequently during graduate school, from informal meetings to conference talks. I show a result, someone questions it, I suspect they think the result isn’t very good, until they finally reveal that they have the opposite concern: the model looks too good.

This is a fair question that should not offend you.

The solution is simple: Share your code or simulation input files. My thesis included an appendix with a Python script for generating material model inputs as well as the relevant material definition blocks for all major finite element models I ran. I am considering posting the entire model definitions once all the papers are submitted.

So the next time you are giving a scientific talk and a listener is concerned that your results are too good to be true, simply point them to where you have made the code or simulation files publicly available, and invite them to verify your inputs and play with your model.

Otherwise, what are you going to say? “I really really promise these numbers are legit!” ?

How many times have you tried to decode a spreadsheet created by someone else, clicked in a cell to see the underlying computation, inadvertently clicked on another cell outside the current focus, and overwritten part or all of an expression? You can undo, but that isn’t exactly a selling point, is it?

This is exactly why I prefer simple Python scripts. They are transparent, plain text, and it’s much harder to accidentally delete the flow of logic.

(by way of Ben Brooks)

The best way solution I know to this problem is this: Never “blind add” an article to Instapaper. If I see a headline that looks interesting, I open that article long enough to skim it and make sure it’s something I want to read. If I’m still intrigued, it goes into Instapaper. If not, I forget about it and move on. I don’t know how to measure the impact of this, but qualitatively I think it’s greatly reduced false positive interesting articles. Like a lot of things, the solution is in the human filter layer.

Matt Mullenweg, in a post that I can only interpret as a blatant attempt to troll me with jealousy, has posted a photo gallery from a jaunt to the top of one of the cables of the bay bridge. I would do this in a heartbeat.

bucket_list_items = bucket_list_items + 1

→BAY BRIDGE CABLE WALK (76 PHOTOS)

Platform

This is all geared toward WordPress users. I considered a move away from WordPress to Octopress or Jekyll. These are awesome tools, but at the end of the day I don’t think they’re right for me right now. I like my theme. I want to primarily write this blog from my iPad and keep the setup as simple as possible. And—-knock on wood—-I have never had performance issues with WordPress (w/ caching). I had a post hit the front page of Hacker News a few months ago and it performed fine on shared hosting.

Forwarding old permalinks

There are a couple of ways to preserve in-bound links pointed at your old domain, but the easiest way is the .htaccess file. This took me longer to figure out than it should have, but this tip from Stephen Hackett pointed me in the right direction. You need to place (or modify) a file called .htaccess in the root directory of the old domain. Edit this file to add the following line at the start:

RedirectMatch permanent (.*) http://onlyamodel.com$1

Make sure you permalink structure on the new blog matches the old one. That’s it; your old permalinks now forward to the new ones.

Cleaning up data

There were several housecleaning items I wanted to clean up in the XML Export from the old blog before importing to the new. I did all of this with several dozen find-and-replace moves in Sublime Text. Obviously I replaced all instances of the old domain with the new. I switched to Disqus once and then back again, so there were some inconsistencies in comment data. I cleaned up all the past versions of my name/email so all of my comments would get mapped to my account in the new install. Anything else you want to scrub site-wide, this is the time.

One side note: If your WordPress XML file is bigger than 2mb, the importer will recommend you split it up. Depending on your server configuration, you may can upload a gzipped version. It worked perfectly for me.

Before you upload your media archive to the new site, it’s also a good time to run your blog’s image archive through a tool like ImageOptim to reduce your blog’s footprint a bit. I try to compress images before uploading, but oftentimes forget.

Updating relevant services

Google Webmaster Tools has a nice utility where you can tell Google that your site has migrated to a new domain. This helps Google index your content the right way and regain some search engine cred.

Feedburner RSS links don’t have to change; just change the source rss feed and all your subscribers will get content from the new domain. The only pain point here is knowing you’re going to spam your subscribers with the most recent ten posts again.

Google Analytics is simple as well. Use your same ID and you won’t lose any stats.

A few design comments

I’ve said this many times, but I really like the Standard Theme and the folks behind it. If you are thinking about redesigning your site, I highly recommend it as a starting point. There are very active communities for theme support as well as child theme development on Github. The new design was loosely inspired by Edward Tufte’s website, and Standard made this relatively simple to build out. I also wanted the site to have a slightly warmer feel, hence the shift to a brown/red palette instead of grey/blue.

I decided to keep comments for now because most comments I get are really helpful. However, I really dislike the idea of comment counts as social proof. On a lot of sites I really like, the best material gets few comments. So, I nuked all instances I could find where comment counts are displayed. I turned this off using CSS display:none’s in the child theme instead of modifying PHP files. In a well-written theme, you can get an awful lot done with nothing but CSS tweaks.

I have also thought a lot about starting a linked-list aspect on this site. I have implemented this functionality as of now, but I’m not sure yet whether I will do this or not. John Gruber I am not, but perhaps there is another version of me that would like to read all the miscellany I find. But I wanted to have the option to play with it in the future, so we’ll just have to see on that one.

Why abandon the eponymous domain? I originally started this site to serve as an academic portfolio, but my interests have evolved over the years. There are ideas I want to write about that don’t mesh as nicely with the construct of a CV website that’s attempting to manage my portfolio as a researcher and engineer.

If you are curious about the name Only A Model, its origin shouldn’t be too hard to figure out. I think it fits my professional and personal worldview:

• My understanding of the world is, at best, an approximation to reality. So let’s keep iterating and converging toward the best approximations.
• It conveys a key message in my field of research: all scientific or numerical models have limitations. It conveys what—-on some level—-the blog is about.
• It’s short and memorable.
• It’s general. It doesn’t constrain me to only discussing FEA or structural modeling.
• I got tired of constantly linking to a website that starts with my name. Personally, I started feeling too egocentric about it. I don’t project that onto other eponymous bloggers—-that’s just me.
• It’s a Monty Python reference. If I need to appear more professional, I can point out that it’s also a CS Lewis quote.

So here we are. I think the new construct will pave the way for more interesting and regular posting. The goal, as always, will be to document the things I’m learning as well as things I find inspiring, helpful, or useful. Same topics as before: research, engineering, writing, programming, FEA, life, etc.

Nothing should change for you. All permalinks and RSS feeds forward to the new domain, so you don’t have to change anything.

If you have any helpful feedback or suggestions, please do let me know. I hope you enjoy the changes and look forward to the next year of interaction and ideas.

My current system is a lot more lo-fi than Seth’s, but I’m pretty happy with how it’s working so far. I wrote about it before, but it’s basically a Circa notebook with Behance Dot Grid paper. I use a subject divider for each current project, and at the end of the project that stack gets scanned and stored with the other project materials. I think Seth’s system could be easily extended to work with the Behance/Circa Dot Grid paper, which would partially sidestep the binding issue. This paper is very heavy and takes fountain pen ink wonderfully. I’ve been using the cheap plastic cover that came with mine, but I think I’m ready to commit and upgrade to one of the premium Levenger covers.

If you are not following Seth’s blog, I highly recommend it. He doesn’t post very frequently, but his posts are pure signal and obviously the product of a smart guy who has thought very hard about the problem he is trying to solve.

If you’re writing, or indeed doing anything creative at all, you’re going to need something to throw. Do everyone a favour and don’t be one of those arseholes who throws something that could actually hurt somebody, or break a decent computer (like a Mac). […] The perfect object is a beanbag.

This cracked me up because I have a similar object constantly within reach at my desk: the Waboba street ball.

It’s become an instinct of mine to reach for it when I start pushing into deep concentration.

I like the Waboba ball because it’s small, I can throw it against a nearby wall, walk around bouncing it, lean back in my desk and toss it in the air, and its shape prevents it from rolling around on my desk. Mine came in a two-pack so I have a designated inside and outside one, which would make for a great lunchtime game of catch with an officemate.

Cello Talks — The Comprehensive List

Even for those of you who don’t play a stringed instrument, I think you’ll enjoy seeing the craftsmanship in Finckel’s approach. Also, if you are new to the Emerson String Quartet, let me suggest you begin with their recording of the complete Mendelssohn quartets.

We measure length in feet, weight in pounds, time in seconds and expertise in failure. The problem with becoming an expert is that often there’s no beginning and no end. Worse, there’s no measure we can use to perceive our progress. This is my attempt at a retrospective measurement of my journey. […]

Over the years, chemistry became an escape for me. It was a topic that supplied an endless stream of ideas and small joys. I could play with thought experiments in my head as easily as normal people carry a tune.

I had a hard time picking a quote because I didn’t want to give away the best thoughts or where he landed. Suffice it to say there’s some real heart behind this that you don’t hear coming from many scientists.

Advice

Here is the net of the advice I received from colleagues mixed with my own recollections:

• Only a terrible human being of an advisor would let you proceed to the defense if they weren’t 99% sure you were going to pass.
• The defense is almost a formality. Almost. Prepare like you might fail, present knowing you are going to pass.
• Your committee wants you to succeed, and even if you feel they make unreasonable demands, the net result will almost certainly be an improved manuscript.
• You will know more about your topic than anyone present, including your advisor. Seriously, chill out.
• It’s impossible to talk about everything you did. You have to condense years of work into 45 minutes. Kill your darlings.
• Convey contributions early, convey contributions often.
• It’s common to question whether your contribution is substantial enough, but you are too close to the project now to have an objective opinion on this. Rely on your advisor and colleagues here.
• Practice it until you have premonition-like mastery of every single slide and transition. Practice it separately in front of colleagues and non-technical friends/family—-both audiences will expose different weaknesses in your talk. I would estimate that ~10 full runs should put you in the ballpark in terms of preparation.
• You should probably re-read your thesis a day or two before the defense, but you don’t really need to study—-you already know everything in it backward and forward. This review will highlight any weak spots in your memory that need a refresher.
• Profile your committee (PhD Comics nails it again). Try to meet with them in the weeks leading up to your defense to get some pre-defense feedback so you can short-circuit their major pushbacks during the big event. Talk to grad students of wild-card committee members to find out if there are any biases or key intel you need to know about. Knowing your allies will give you more confidence.
• The closed portion will probably not be too painful. Your committee—-more than anything—-wants to have an interesting discussion.
• Order good food, and order a lot if your defense is near a meal time. Mine was at 1pm, so I basically catered lunch. I wanted to be able to tell my committee that lunch would be provided to give some relief to their schedule, since they were already spending several hours on my defense.
• Encourage local friends and family to attend—-this is one of the few opportunities they will ever have to see you in your element. I was glad they could share the experience, and a lot of them told me they enjoyed connecting the dots on what I’ve been spending years doing.
• Have fun—-this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

What to expect

The defense format varies among universities and countries. Here is the standard anatomy of the defense in my department at Georgia Tech:

1. 45-minute public talk on your research. Aside from your committee, other grad students, friends, and family are invited.
2. Public Q&A.; Typically, this portion is dominated by questions from other grad students, but don’t be surprised if your committee gets quite involved at this stage, especially if they have a question they think might benefit the general audience.
3. After the general Q&A;, your advisor will dismiss everyone but your committee. Ask for a 10-minute break during this transition to recoup, eat a quick snack, say goodbye to your fans, etc.
4. The closed session. Here’s how it went for me: Each committee member got a chance to go through their series of questions one by one, during which the other members would chime in with clarifying/follow-up questions. We proceeded through each member like this until everyone was satisfied. It was neither adversarial nor intense.
5. You are dismissed from the room while your committee deliberates whether you passed and works to consensus on what additional revisions they will require.
6. Your advisor will open the door, invite you in, and say “Congratulations, Dr. ____”. Enjoy this, it’s an incredible moment.
7. Your advisor will typically summarize their discussion and convey additional requests from your committee. Go ahead and schedule a meeting for the next day because you are mentally spent by now and won’t remember anyway.
8. Go celebrate! Here’s what you will feel like (via Research in Progress):

Resources

On the lighter side, PhD Comics ran a great series on the defense several years ago. Start with this one and click ‘next’ through the series:

• The Thesis Defense | PhD Comics

While not specifically aimed at the thesis defense, Matt Might’s piece on giving academic talks is the best resource I have ever found for this type of presentation:

• 10 Tips for Academic Talks | Matt Might’s blog

Here is a long list of defense-specific articles that I found helpful:

• 10 tips for surviving a dissertation defense | A Memorable Fancy
• Hints for PhD defenses | Columbia CS Department
• Defending Your Dissertation | Gradshare
• Tips for your thesis defence | Bill Gardner
• Defending Your Thesis With Flair | Science Careers
• No Custard Pies | Thesis Whisperer
• What I’ve learned about Defenses | GradHacker
• Ten tips to give a great thesis defense | www.labspaces.net
• Anatomy of a PhD Defence | FemaleScienceProfessor
• PhD Defenses | Mike Brotherton

Feedback?

I’d love to hear in the comments if there are any resources that I should add to the list. What do you remember from your defense that might help a fellow grad student? If you are a professor, what key advice do you give your grad students?

Compressing your emotional response to art into a 1-to-10 scale is robbing yourself of the appreciation of nuance. Albums are complete works of art: flawed, human, beautiful. Even the worst album I listened to last year couldn’t be properly described in four long paragraphs. Reducing an album’s worth of songs to a “five star” rating and a pithy sentence is painfully dumb.

On people who rely on top-ten lists for discovery:

I wonder—did they listen thoroughly to every record they bought last year? Did they listen to them all the way through, even? The people making records are still spending months and years on them, while the people buying them are munching through them like corn chips. Slow down.

Much broader application than just music here—-there is much we encounter in life that requires time, patience, and perhaps effort to fully experience, appreciate, and learn from.

Getting to that point was less glamorous, easily the hardest year we can remember. I don’t feel like getting into all of that in a public forum, but suffice it to say, we are looking toward 2013 with renewed pursuit for healthier and happier times.

Having just completed a PhD, I expect this to be one of the only times in my adult life when the new year will be accompanied by more than just a symbolic opportunity to start over. The first quarter of this year will bring my first post-grad employment and relocation to a new city. It’s an exciting adventure, and my wife and I are eager to rediscover who we are in this new context.

All that to say, the word “resolution” rings a bit hollow to me right now. I am more or less undergoing a full reboot of my life’s rhythms and vision.

I want to say thank you to everyone who has taken the time to visit my little corner of the web this past year. I have enjoyed the conversations and count many of you friends. Once I upload my final thesis edits later this week, I have a lot planned for this site over the next year that I hope you will enjoy as much as I plan to.

Here’s to new beginnings!