Last night the spark was: make my own Festival of Lights candelabra from common components, and design it to accommodate standard size birthday candles—those are always readily available. What’s ritual without tolerance for convenience, right?

So I do what any Jewish immigré to Canada does in a situation like this: I schlepped myself to Canadian Tire.

That’s right.

So I wandered the aisles eyeing potential components while a background mind-thread refined the concept of the It part of DIY. I’ll skip the image of me staring down one blister pack of nuts and bolts after another for what amounted to at least hour on that alone. Yes, I’ll spare you; I’m considerate that way. So here’s the parts list on which I settled, paid, and with which I left the store:

• Wood cutting board twin pack (lg and sm; ended up using the large)
• Aluminum sheet metal
• Epoxy
• Copper plumbing end caps
• 1/4″ nuts (tapered with built-in polymer sleeve)
• Small brass screws (head same diameter as tapered end of nut)

All Assembly Required

First off: trim to size, 45-degree the corners, and buff the aluminum. I turned to my ridiculously awesome neighbour and he ended up collaborating with me a bit on the assembly approach and tooling. He let me use his workbench, the whole workshop actually. Amazing guy (he was as intrigued by my project—I mean who wouldn’t be?).

Moving along.

I squeezed out that epoxy on the back of the aluminum piece and firmly put it in its place on the cutting board, then put a rag over it and a heavy toolbox on top to hold it flat while the adhesive set. Done! (well, later on one of the small sides popped up a bit as it lacked enough goo, so I smeared in more with a paperclip and put a vise grip on it).

To secure the copper end cap and have a slot to hold each candle I epoxied a small screw to the bottom of each nut. This was the trickiest part and any future iteration of my design will have a less jury-rigging hardware config. But it works.

Next, I drilled a centre hole in each copper cap (the center cap, for the shamash, is a larger size, but requires no different treatment as the smaller ones).

I measured out and pencil-marked the location for each cap. Then I used a centre-punch to make a small indentation to guide the bit for drilling the pilot holes.

With the screw-nut assemblies done curing and dropped into each copper cap, I began hand-driving them (#0 Robertson) into the pilot holes.

Uh-oh: Screwed

After a few nut-screw-caps got secured to the wood-metal base successfully the next one fails: the brass screw broke in two leaving most of it embedded in the board. Ok, now what?

Best neighbour ever recognizes the location of the sheared off screw is such that it will fit under the bit of his drill press. Boom—zombie screw gets drilled out and it’s ready for a second try. Glue a new nut-screw assembly and presto I get a do-over (no breakage this time). By the way, this happens again with another screw, so I repeat the recovery steps and we’re good to go (again).

I drill out the pilot holes with one size larger bit to put less pressure on the screw while being driven. It makes a big difference.

We’re almost to the end of the saga now.

Cleaned up the mess I made neighbour’s garage.

Done. Do it yourself menorah now complete.

Twist the standard issue birthday candles into each holder and commence the prayers, singing, and light display.

Happy Hanukkah!

Behind the camera, foreground, and background.

Beginning, middle, and end.

Here am I, a boy in the foreground with his family.

My father is not pictured here. He’s behind the camera.

The background is the larger world, our shared experience; then, now, or tomorrow, but it is ours together.

In love, in hope, in truth may we ever strive.

Golden View for Google+ – Chrome Extension – Initial Release July 18, 2011:

Chrome Web Store Install page

(short URL: http://wittman.org/gv )

Details:

Compatibility: Chrome only (see below for cross-browser scripts)

Discussion: on Google+

Code Project: https://github.com/wittman/goldenview

Extensions (user scripts):

User Mute – Mutes all posts by specific users.

Default Circle – Set a circle as default (instead of Stream).

Hide Images – Hide image: original and all shares.

Hide Comments – Hide comments (option hide all by default).

Search With Google – Search Google+ w/ Google Search.

Hide Sidebars – Hide left & right side bars, widen middle.

Compatibility: All Google++ extensions / userscripts below should work on:

Chrome

Firefox w/ Greasemonkey (download)

Safari w/ NinjaKit (download).

GooglePlusPlus User Mute

General Information

The googleplusplus_user_mute userscript / extension for Google+ (aka Google Plus aka G+) mutes all posts by specific users. Click MUTE USER link next to the Public/Limited status. Once muted, a placeholder for each post appears with {User Name} UNMUTE, which if clicked will stop muting that particular user.

Shared posts where the originator is muted also get muted and in the placeholder appears: (MUTED SHARE – SEE ORIGINAL POSTER TO UNMUTE). Clicking SEE ORIGINAL POSTER TO UNMUTE takes you to the originator’s profile where you can UNMUTE them.

Install: http://go.wittman.org/azpz

Discussion on Google+

Fork project (github)

GooglePlusPlus Default Circle

General Information

The googleplusplus_default_circle userscript / extension for Google Plus (aka Google+ aka G+) adds a star next to each circle stream name. The star can be clicked to set or unset one circle stream as your default. When a default is set, going to the Stream view (which is an aggregate of all your circles) you automatically get redirected to your default stream.

Effectively, you can make one of your circles as the new everything you want to see by default based on one circle not all circles.

Install: http://go.wittman.org/ays9

Discussion on Google+

Fork project (github)

GooglePlusPlus Hide Images

googleplusplus_hide_images is a user script for Google Plus (aka Google+ aka G+) that adds a button under each Google Plus post image to hide it (toggle show / hide). Hides the image on original post and all shared posts. Tired of an animated GIF that keeps getting shared over and over in different posts? – hide it once an forget about it.

Install: http://go.wittman.org/axdz

Discussion on Google+

Fork project (github)

GooglePlusPlus Hide Comments

General Information

The googleplusplus_hide_comments userscript for Google Plus adds a Hide Comments or Show Comments link on each post; this feature is sticky (the hidden or shown state is recorded in the browser’s local storage).

Install: http://go.wittman.org/aua5

Discussion on Google+

Fork project (github)

Alternate Versions

Alt version “hidden” hides all comments by default (as opposed to comments being visible by default using the standard version). The standard and alt versions work exactly the same in all other ways.

Install Alternate Version “hidden” – Hide all comments by default”: http://go.wittman.org/aydn

Installing more than one version: The scripts are named, namespaced and versioned exactly the same so installing one over-writes a previous primary or alt version. In the description will be an ALTERNATE VERSION clause only in an alt script.

Note to Developers: The _build.rb build script creates alternate script versions. At this time there is one currently supported alt version, “hidden”.

GooglePlusPlus Search With Google

googleplusplus_search_with_google is a user script for Google Plus (aka Google+ aka G+) that toggles the built-in search input Find People with another option: Search Google Plus with the Google search engine using the site: filter.

Click TOGGLE SEARCH TYPE link to toggle between Find People and Search with Google.

Install: http://go.wittman.org/f2wt

Discussion on Google+

Fork project (github)

GooglePlusPlus Hide Sidebars

The googleplusplus_hide_sidebars is a user script for Google Plus (aka Google+ aka G+) that adds a feature to hide/show left and right side bars, and makes the main content wider. This feature is sticky and will show either a Hide Sidebars link or Show Sidebars link.

Install: http://go.wittman.org/wdjg

Discussion on Google+

Fork project (github)

Lower portion, age 35.