Evan Yamoto

Blog

  • Workspace – In Progress

    I always wanted to have one of those cool workspaces you see in the stock photos (like the one on my site).  But if I’m on my laptop, I’m usually downstairs and slouching on my sofa, in front on a TV…  But I still wanted to try to make a decent workspace in the guest room so maybe someone will use it.

    I went to my favorite wood shop, Austin Hardwoods, in Santa Ana.  I looked through a bunch of black walnut, teak and other woods.  I was thinking of how I’d have to glue some boards together without owning a jointer or planner or even knowing how to use either tool.  I was a little discouraged, but on my way out, I found this board.

    It’s Burmese Padauk – at least that’s what the sticker says.  I’ve never heard of it before so I Googled it and liked what I saw.  This piece was pretty expensive and I’m not sure how it looks to most people, but I envisioned it looking great.  There was something that told me to buy it, so I listened – something I’ve been trying to do more of too.

    I used a hand planner that caused more problems.  I’m not very skilled with these and it took out some big chunks of wood here and there.  So, I sanded it a lot.  I think something like 100/120/180/220/400 grit sandpaper.

    I decided to try this Sam Maloof finish.  People say you can make the same thing for less using a 1/3 of this, a 1/3 of that and 1/3 of something else I forgot.  It’s a little pricy too, but this quickly became my favorite finish I’ve used.  It gave the wood a nice color, brought out the grain, and provided a layer of protection that’s very flat.

    I also rubbed it down with Renaissance wax that has great reviews on Amazon.  I haven’t been blown away by this stuff, but I haven’t used it on much else either.

    I’m very pleased with how it turned out though:

    And the workspace pics are never complete without a Mac:

  • Workspace – Speakers

    My last post was about the desk I made (really more of finishing than making).  Underneath the desk are some speakers I’ve been refinishing too.  That’s taken me over two years, but they’re finally complete.

    My wife and I like to go to thrift stores to look for things we can fix up.  I found these KLH 17 speakers a few years ago and bought them for $20.  They were in pretty rough shape and one of the tweeters was blown.

    I ended up on forums, which seem to be the best source of information on the internet.  I bought a replacement tweeter on eBay as well as a sealant to repair the seal around the woofer.  I also read that the capacitors (or something) was likely to be broken so I ordered some parts and followed a step-by-step guide to replace the crossovers (thanks again, internet).

    They sat like this for over year until I started working on the desk.  I ended up refinishing the cabinets at the same time and it was much faster this way.

    I’ve also bought some speaker fabric on Etsy before, but I found the same material for much cheaper somewhere else that I forgot too.

    I’ve also been experimenting with some mini-amps on Amazon.  I used a Lepai on another project, I tried a Topping TP22, but I settled on an SMSL SA50 because it has more power and sounds great with these speakers.

    I’ll have to make some stands to get them off the ground next.  I have plans to use some of the scrap Ipe wood I used to build our fences but this will probably take me another year to get to.

     

  • Another Planter Box

    I made this planter box years ago but I never used it until last year.  I found this great Bonsai tree at Upland Nursery in Orange and it fit pretty well in here.

    I made this back when I made this dog house.  I didn’t own a saw at the time, so I made sure to cut this wood while I was borrowing my brother-in-law’s saw.

    It’s cheap redwood from Home Depot and I think it’s golden yellow stain.  Had I made it recently, I probably would’ve tried to dye the wood with some red and then apply the stain to give it more depth.

  • Back to Reliability

    Somehow, my wife keeps getting new cars!  I’ve sold my BMWs, temporarily had an old 4Runner, and now drive a minivan…

    But it was time.  My wife loved her VW Tiguan, but it was starting to have a lot of mechanical problems and other problems as well.  It was really a nice little car that seemed very solid.  However, they use a lot of cheap plastic parts that you don’t see, and these break and are costly to fix.  So we sold that and got an Acura RDX.

    It’s a very nice car that I got to drive home from a dealership out in Riverside, and that’s about it.

    I took these bad photos when I got home and the sun wasn’t in the right spot, but that’s the car.

    It drives great, has lots of power and everything is very refined.  I’m hoping now that we have switched from German cars to Japanese cars, they’ll be much more reliable.

    The only bad thing about this car is that it made me miss driving something other than a minivan…

  • Kauai 2017

    We made it back to Kauai in March and had a great time as always.  This was the first trip with my second son, who was 19 months at the time.  I’m always worried with how the young ones will do with the travel, but he did great!

    On our last trip to Kauai, we had a connecting flight in Oahu.  It’s not a big deal for adults, but it was pretty rough with my older son (2 at the time).  So this time around, I said I’d pay whatever more it cost to take a direct flight (which is a lot easier to say when you’re using miles).

    We tried to make this trip easy as possible and stayed over the night before at LAX, which was a great decision.  Getting to LA is probably the most stressful part of the trip, especially if it’s on a weekday.

    We had a direct flight to and from Lihue, which was great, except for the aircraft.  It turns out, United only seems to use the small 737s on the direct flights to Kauai.  That’s the small, crammed plane that you usually take on Southwest.  It’s fine for an hour, but 6 hours was way too much and there was no room to take crying babies to the back.  I’ll have to re-think the direct flights next time…

    The theme of this trip is that everything was different with a family.  Last time, we only had one child and my mom and brother came along.  This time, we had two kids and it made a world of difference.  Instead of doing more adventurous things, we spent every day like this.  Go to a beach in the morning, find some place to eat lunch, go back to the hotel to take a nap, swim in the pool in the afternoon, find dinner at sleep by 8.  But honestly, it was great and I had no complaints.

    Another difference is that we stayed part of the time at the Waipouli Beach Resort with this great pool.

    It was so fun for the kids that they didn’t want to go anywhere else.

    But we did and stayed in Princeville the second half of the trip.  This place was nice but we had to walk so far up and down hills to get from the car to the condo.  It was pretty challenging with two little ones and everything is a little less inconvenient on the north side.

    When it was just the two of us, we would’ve liked the Princeville place better.  But with the kids, we’d definitely choose the other place.  It was fun and there was food and markets right across the street.  Lesson learned for the next trip!

  • Enduring Conquest!

    Well, that turned out as well it could have and USC is the 2017 Rose Bowl champion!

    Rose Bowl 2017

    I have to admit that I wasn’t sure if they could come back after a crazy third quarter by Penn State.  It seemed like SC was losing battles to the refs as well as the turf and all of the “bounces” were not going our way.  And when we lost Adoree’ to injury and Cam Smith to a questionable targeting call, things were looking bad.  But we still had Sam Darnold and because of him, we’re always in the fight.

    I know this is a terrible, blurry picture but that’s also why I like it.  When the winning field goal went through, it was incredible.  Fans young and old were jumping in joy and strangers were hugging in the stands.  I couldn’t count how many random people gave me a high five or said “Fight On!” on the way out.

    Rose Bowl 2017

    It was one of the most fun and exciting games I’ve seen in person.  The stadium itself has improved a little, but despite the great game, I still hate this place.

    Lastly, I have to say that the Penn State players, coaches and fans were class acts.  One of the best things I’ve ever read was from this fan and columnist:

    http://www.pennlive.com/pennstatefootball/index.ssf/2017/01/usc_band_conquest_psu_rose_bow.html

    But you know what the very worst part is? You take in the whole scene in despondence, the USC fans mimicking the trumpet flourishes with their “Oh-oo-oh-ooooo” and the incomparable Song Girls in their white sweaters calmly punching the air with a V for victory in all their confident perfection. And you allow yourself the fleeting thought:

    If you’d been born into their tribe and their golden land, you’d love being one of them.

  • Meaningless Accomplishments

    I don’t get to play games too often anymore, but I bought Star Wars Battlefront the day it came out in November 2015.  It looks amazing and the gameplay is very good.  There’s not a whole lot of content, but it’s enough for me playing 30 minutes at a time here and there.

    The only negative was that I was absolutely terrible at the game.   I’ve never got used to playing first person shooters on consoles, so that was my excuse.  But I was bad, really bad.  Like 5 – 25 bad or maybe even worse.  And I’d also let my 4 year old son play a bit and my brother rack up even worse scores.

    But somehow, somewhere months later, I got really good and I was surprised as anyone.  I’m almost always at the top now and I usually have a kill-death ratio of 3-1 on a good day and probably 2-1 on average.

    I finally got my KDR to even recently and it felt like such a big accomplishment for doing something so meaningless.  But I guess that’s the psychological part of game development.  Interestingly, once I achieved my goal, I pretty much stopped playing but maybe they’ll add a new carrot to dangle and I’ll start again.

    Battlefront Stats

    The other thing that happened is that my now 5 year old son got really good at the game too.  I used to give him an extra controller that wasn’t connected and we’d “play” together.  It was great until he caught on.  So I let him play and all he could do was to spin around and look at the sky or snow.  But he learned really quickly and now he’d probably beat me if we we’re starting over.

  • USC and the Rose Bowl

    USC is headed to the Rose Bowl in a few days and I’m anxiously awaiting the game.  I keep thinking I have to wake up early tonight and head up there, but it’s not until the 2nd this year.

    I’ve gone to every Rose Bowl USC has been in since I was a student.  I went my senior year in 1997 and it was such a fun experience.

    USC Rose Bowl

    We went pretty regularly during the Pete Carroll era when we weren’t going to the Orange Bowl.  We went so often that a lot of our fans were complaining about it, but I definitely knew better.

    I hate the stadium, but it’s always a special game.  This was from both the best and worst of them all.

    USC Rose Bowl

    I hope it turns out better in a few days, but truthfully, I’m just so happy we made it this year after a horrendous start.  We haven’t been in what feels like forever (8 years) and that’s when I know we really are spoiled at USC.

  • Christmas 2016

    Christmas 2016

    We’ve been making Christmas cards ever since our oldest son was born, but we’ve now missed the past 2 years.  Last year was a rough year for us with my mom’s passing and we didn’t get around to taking pictures early enough this year.

    Although, we did take this one on the way to a wedding and I would’ve like to use it but was not everyone was happy with this one…

    family

  • Rebooting

    It’s almost 2017 and it’s time to start over again.  I made my last profile site in 2010 and I stuck with my blog for a little bit, but I made it too hard to update and stopped posting after awhile.  I thought it would be easy enough, but that was before I was married and had two kids!

    I’ve also always gone back and forth on if I should I have a professional site, a personal site or a mixture of both.  This time around, I’ve decided to keep my main site career focused and my blog will mostly be a place to log some of the things I’ve made with some personal things sprinkled in here and there.

    I try to work on personal projects to learn new things and improve my technical skills.  I originally had plans to write a whole blog platform from the ground up.  Since I’ve been working the Microsoft stack lately, I thought I would design a SQL Server database and use ASP.Net MVC to build an administration interface and front-end.

    However, I had some new ideas to work on other projects that will take what little free time I have to learn more new stuff, so I had to revise this plan.  My new site is pure HTML and Javascript and I decided to use WordPress for my blog.  But instead of just modifying a theme, I decided to use the WordPress REST API (Version 2, currently beta 15).  I will write some details when it’s all complete, but for the most part, my blog is a single html page that does AJAX calls to get JSON data and I use jQuery to iterate the data and display the content.

    I’m going to finish up my site, hopefully add some new content and backfill my blog with my old posts.  We’ll see how this version goes but I feel pretty optimistic this time.