Recently in Do It Yourself Projects Category

I've been reading a lot of good things about standing desks lately. It seems that we can burn up to an extra 50 calories every hour if we stand instead of sit. The entire Internet is also telling us that sitting can literally kill us.

I'm not sure how true either of those are, but I still figured I'd give it a try. Setting up a quick, makeshift standing desk was easy and free. I did a bit of measuring and started rummaging through our closets. We have a couple of these large faux-aluminum CD cases that hold 510 discs.

Putting one of those cases on my cocktail arcade cabinet raises my laptop up to about 43 inches. That's just about elbow height for me. The case also happens to be just about the same length and width as my gigantor 18.4 inch laptop.

Using the standing desk for a few weeks

The first few days my feet weren't too happy about standing for such long periods of time. I started out using it for one or two hours each day. At some point during the first week my feet stopped being a problem.

I seem to be a bit more motivated when I'm standing. I think I actually do get a bit more work done but I haven't done any science to validate that.

My quick hack of a standing desk has a major flaw: the display is way too low. My shoulders and neck start the get pretty tired after a few hours from looking down all the time.

What can I do about it?

I'd like to continue using the laptop's keyboard but I'm not sure I can get the display up high enough without putting too steep of an angle on the keyboard. The display needs to be elevated at least another twelve inches, possibly a bit more.

I have a couple of designs knocking around in my head that I can build out of PVC. I'd like to throw something together soon, but it looks like I'm probably going to be out of town for a month or two. In the mean time I will continue to make use of what I have set up.

The verdict

Setting up this simple standing desk was definitely worth the very small amount of effort that was required. If you think the idea of a standing desk is interesting I would encourage you to give it a try for a few days.

I have no plans to convert to using a standing desk full time. My monitors are going to stay firmly attached to my regular desk and you'll have to pry my Aeron chair out of my cold, dead hands. I think from now on, though, I will always make sure I have somewhere in my office where I can stand up and use my laptop.

• Update 2011-09-06: The fix worked great until yesterday. That's probably about three and a half months. I solved the problem more permanently this time. I just unplugged the ribbon cable for the capacitive button bar. I now have fewer lights staring back at me and I no longer have dedicated buttons for volume control, but I am confident that my WIFI won't be turning itself off even again.

I have had my HP dv8t laptop for a little over a year now. For the most part I have been very pleased with this machine, it is an excellent quad core desktop replacement. It is a big, heavy laptop with an 18.4 inch screen. It usually spends most of its time living behind my desk plugged into a pair of external monitors.

A few weeks ago I did a little bit of traveling and I was using it in a hotel connected to their wifi. Sometimes things were fine, other times it was disconnecting and reconnecting the wifi every few minutes.

I've had the wifi inexplicably turn off here at home a few times but I always assumed it was my own fault. The little blue capacitive button to toggle the wifi is just about a thumb's length from the right side of the laptop, just above the keyboard. When I am sitting in a chair and I need to lift the laptop to adjust my position that is precisely where I am most like to grab a hold of it.

It usually took me a number of seconds to notice that I had inadvertently hit that switch. More and more often lately, though, I haven't been so sure that I actually touched the switch...

The problem is ridiculously common

I asked my good friend Google about this problem and she showed me all sorts of pages with people complaining about the same problem. It looks like a design flaw. I found an excellent explanation of the problem and a description of the fix on Dave Miller's blog.

There is a layer of foil that shields the cable that connects the capacitive button panel to the motherboard. It seems that if the laptop body is flexed ever so slightly, like when I pick it up by one side, the foil pulls away from the metal plate and becomes ungrounded. The problem also seems to occur more often when the laptop is hot. I imagine I've rarely experienced this problem because the laptop gets pretty good ventilation when I have it "docked" behind my desk.

I saw some forum posts that claimed it also helps to use some foil to shield the area around where the wifi antenna lead connects to the motherboard. I have no idea if this helps or if it is necessary but I thought it was a pain in the neck unsnapping all the plastic bits to get the keyboard off. I figured it was best to do everything I might need to do while I was under there!

What I actually did

I ended up putting taping a piece of aluminum foil over the whole area where the wifi lead connects to the motherboard. I put some tape on the underside of the foil to make sure it wouldn't accidentally short anything out.

I made sure that piece of foil was large enough so that it would extend over to the existing foil taped over the capacitive button cable. I know very little about electronics but I assumed it couldn't hurt to make sure the new foil shielding was also grounded.

Then I taped down my new foil and I taped down the capacitive panel's lead.

So far everything has been working just fine. I haven't had my wifi turn off on its own even once. Hopefully the fix will hold up for a long time.

Chris knitted this awesome little case for "her" Nook Color, so that she can carry it in her purse without worrying about scratching the display. It fits great. She sized it so that it is just a little bit narrower than the tablet so it stretches just a bit. That way it won't slide off.

When I start carrying my own tablet I want her to knit me one to loosely match the pattern of the Doctor Who scarf.

• Converting the Nook Color to a Full Blown Android Tablet is Stupid Easy
• Official CyanogenMod Release for the Nook Color Has Working Video Playback

I have a set of the bigger chisel tipped Expo dry erase markers but I'm not a big fan of large pointed markers. I've been using a random set of cheap skinny dry erase markers that I picked up at some sort of dollar store. I liked these cheap markers much better than the chisel tip markers and the two black markers that came in the set lasted over six months.

Since the cheap black marker died I've been using the big chisel tips again. I finally remembered to actually look for replacement markers while I was shopping a few weeks ago. I ended up finding some very good markers at Wal-Mart.

The brand name on the package is "@ the OFFICE" and a six pack of markers was about three dollars. They have very fine point tip but they don't write as dark as most markers. They do have one feature that I am very excited about, though...

They have magnets in the caps!

I am constantly misplacing markers so this seems like a very good idea. The magnets are very cheap and very weak. I ended up hiding a few strategically placed washers behind the trim of my white boards, the markers stick to those just fine.

I have a stack of tiny 4mm disc shaped rare earth magnets sitting here. I taped one to a large Expo marker. The little rare earth magnet has no trouble holding the Expo marker up on one of the nails that holds my white boards to the wall. The cheap flexible magnet on the Wal-Mart markers can't even come close to sticking to those nails.

There really isn't too much to say about this little project. We designed it and threw it together in about ten minutes using leftover parts from my monitor stand and laptop rack builds.

Most of the construction is probably pretty obvious. The part we weren't sure about was attaching the PVC J hooks to the piece of pipe at the top. We ended up cutting a notch in the pipe for each hook and we used the nails that came with the hooks to create sort of ad-hoc hinges. It most certainly isn't the best way to attach them but it was the best option we had on hand at the time and it has worked surprisingly well.

The whole thing probably used just a few dollars worth of materials. It has been in service for a few months and it has been doing a good job of keeping the laptop monitor up in line with its second display. I should probably dye it black but the white hooks match the white laptop quite nicely.