Human CD Holders

The other day I ended up on Popgadget, which happens to be a site covering “Personal Tech + Innovative Life Style for Women”. I have no remembrance of how I landed on the site, but I assume it was when – once again – I was googling for some product. Although I certainly don’t have an innovative life style (and, just in case you were wondering, I’m not a woman either … not that it matters), I had this immediate “Want! Need! Will Have!” moment when I saw the photo of the “Human CD Holder” on said page. I then used Popgadget as a jumping board on my search for who produces and sends out this holder and similar products and ended up on both wrapables.com and then on Amazon.com that carries a whole lot of Wrapables’ products (affiliate link). Of course, as is always the case with these geek products, you can easily find a whole slew of sites covering them such as geekologie.com, haha.nu, technabob.com, and a trillion others. Of course, as is often the case, they got with the program about one year before I did. Continue Reading →

Digital Music Files Suck

Yes, I know, all you young folks swear by them, but digital music files just drive me up the wall. They suck. On the list of things that make my life miserable, digital music files, whichever format they happen to be in, are in the top ten, slowly creeping towards the number one spot.

Let’s just assume that you rip lots of CDs to your hard drive(s), either because you also want them on your PC or because you simply want to make a backup copy for safety’s sake. After all, if you were dense enough to invest 500 Bucks into a limited Mosaic box which has been out of print for ages, you also want to make sure it survives at least the next century.

Just for arguments’ sake, let’s also assume that it took a whole load of time to do all that ripping, tagging and filing away. On top of that, let’s add the assumption that you paid for and downloaded a plethora of tunes that you wanted to have without having to shell out the dough to get the full album. Finally, let’s just assume that all of the work and all of the downloads add up to about a terabyte of music, perhaps a bit more – after all, you do have about 55 to 62 meters of music, depending on how many of the clunkers you are willing to put on that list, a lot of which have ended up on your hard drives. Continue Reading →

Gothic Cabinet Craft: LP Rack

Sometimes I think I should have kept most of my LPs, which I didn’t, but when that thought crosses my mind, I always remember how much space my old record collection took up. When I had LPs only, many years ago, I ended up with a really cheap metal basement shelf system that I could afford but which was also butt-ugly (brown and beige), and it took up an entire wall of my first rather spacious one-room student apartment. I just didn’t have the cash that time to get anything else, and just like today, I favoured investing my money into the music on the shelves instead of the shelf units themselves.

Today I don’t have many LPs left (some I have in storage to be sold one day) and they are housed in my old rock-solid IVAR cupboards. Whenver I come across some interesting posts on music forums discussing LP shelving units though, I always check them out and when I do, I always feel a tinge of regret about having sold or given away such a large part of my old vinyl collection. Continue Reading →

Moratorium

Well, I didn’t think it was ever going to happen, but it did. I ran out of space. After reshuffling and realigning my collection over and over again, every spot is filled up. I’ve reached 45 meters plus. There are plenty of options, but at the end I decided to go for the radical one: Continue Reading →

Rosendahl CD-25 Chrome

I think that it is a good idea to have a smaller CD-holder close to your stereo so that you don’t have to act the long-distance runner every time you want to put on a new CD, jogging back and forth between remote CD shelf units and your hardware.

The problem is that many of the smaller CD-holders start acting up when you try to load them up with anything but single jewelcases. If you have a whole lot of digipacks that do not adhere to standard jewelcase measurements or double-CDs in those fat, ugly and impractical jewelcases, you end up having to pile up the CDs next to the stero – not really the solution you were looking for. Continue Reading →

IKEA Benno gives more head

When I have a look at my site statistics (and to be quite honest, I rarely do that), I notice that my short description of using the IKEA Ivar system to store my CDs is by far the most popular post. Of course, people often reach this site trying to find assembly instructions, which I don’t offer, or a “free IVAR system”(?), which I certainly don’t have either, but a whole bunch of those accidental tourists actually decided to subscribe to the site’s RSS feed, so why not pull in the other half of the earth’s population as well, the one that goes for the other outrageously cheap IKEA system, the Benno CD/DVD/Video unit (and no, I did not forget the “Billy” fans … they’ll be served next week)?

I am a fan of cool designs, expensive storage systems and classy shelf units, but my budget is eaten up by what I actually put on the shelves or into the units, so until I win a million in the lottery, IKEA it is for me, and many others like me. Continue Reading →

Sigmarail by LOWKON

Although Lowkon sounds more like a Chinese or Asian company, they are in fact object designers hailing from southern Germany. Their design concept is one of simplicity and minimalism, as embodied in the often-heard slogan “form follows function” (and pushed to the forefront of design with the advent of the “Bauhaus” school of design in the early 20th century). Before entering the market with Sigmarail, Lowkon was primarily known for its successful commercial, industrial and fashion photography. Sigmarail is their first and, as far as I know, only product. Continue Reading →

IKEA Ivar

As soon as this site went online, I was flooded with e-mails (please do use the comment function on the site if you have questions on a featured item or related issues). Enquiring minds wanted to know what I myself use to store my collection and what I could recommend. Well, despite my posts to the contrary, I use the ultimate budget system, a simple IKEA shelf system called “Ivar”, slightly “tweaked” to fit my needs. Before you read on: Ivar is not one of those Ikea products that you need an IQ of 200 and infinite patience for to put together. You don’t even need any tools besides a screwdriver, and the skills required to put it together tend towards zilch. Fact is, it doesn’t get much easier than Ivar (and I have lots of IKEA experience with other, err, less successful products in that regard). Continue Reading →