I’ve been carrying a backpack everywhere since before the term "backpacker" entered the hiphop lexicon, always have, so I’ve got a lot of different "rucksacks" (as my pops like say) around my place. Now I don’t have one for to match different outfits or even for different purposes, but based on size, i use different bags when i go out and do different things. See, most of packs I come across either aren’t a sling bag (personal favorite), or don’t have enough space (what can I say, I like big bottoms), don’t have enough pockets, or don’t have a stabalizing strap (why?). I’ve always been a big fan of the messenger bag, I was up on Manhattan Portage in the way back, but I’m poor and can never find one that has everything I’m looking for. So when I ran across eeio’s post about DIYing your own Messenger bag I was on it like syrup on bacon. Like I always say, if you can’t find it, make it yourself.

Now I’m not doing anything different than what eeio did, but my one problem with his post is he gives the dimensions and comments, but no photos on the actual process, which resulted in a lot of trial and error on my part, and I’ve been making my own shit for years. So I’m gonna work that out for you, show you what I did, maybe even teach you how to sew along the way. All of this can be accomplished for under $5, or less.

What You’ll Need:
- vinyl banner or construction sign mesh
- needle, thread, scissors
- ruler (2 optional)
- strap stuffing material
- some child restraint clips off of grocery carts
- about 5 hours, give or take

First off, material is way easy to procure, any vinyl banner or poster will do, you know the kind they print movie ads on, store closing signs, apartment banners, all of those are good (be wary of any thin vinyl that stretches when pulled, it’ won’t stand up and it’s bitch to put together). If you don’t want to steal, find someone who works in a retail store or a movie thater, ask if they have any display signage which they don’t need anymore, a dumpster behind a sign shop works as well. But the BEST material may be orange construction sign mesh, not only do will that give a kickass bright orange bag, but it also breathes, which vinyl doesn’t. And as far as the clips are concerned, man, the idea to use alligator clips from a grocery store cart is fuckin genius, they’re free, they’re abundant, and they’re useful. And I’m gonna show you how to do this by hand-sewing, but if you have a sewing machine and know how to use it, you can make yours look that much nicer.

So here’s what I started out with:

Here’s eeio’s dimension sketches:

and

He made his dimensions out of the golden ratio which if you know anything about, is pretty special, and has a generally pleasing design aesthetic…that is until I get through with it…..man, sewing and high-theory math? what’s fuckin next, how to crochet doillees and tea cup painting? Yes muthafucka, that’s exactly what’s next, tune in next fucking time.

Here’s my banner after I cut it up, with dimensions (in inches) included:

The top part is both the back of the bag and the flap that goes down over front (seperated by the green line, the others just give dimension lines. The middle indent is the bottom of the bag and then the bottom part is the front that goes under the flap and the overhangs so you can attach the straps. You can’t see it because I marked over them, but it’s good to mark it down beforehand, in soap or pencil, so you know what you’re dealing with.

Actual Construction
Start by taking the bottom edges of the top part and aligning those up with the indent, this will make your sides. When possible, work "inside out" (stitch on the side that you don’t want shown) and then you can flip it inside out when you’re done.

Make sure your stitching is straight across, if it’s crooked the vinyl will bunch funny and will end up ripping somewhere you don’t want it to. And if you’re hand stitching, watch the thread bunching, gets to be a pain if you don’t.

When you’ve got both sides, it should look like one of those crappy portable park chairs that has the strap on two sides and some fabric holding together.

Stitch up the sides of the other part, flip it inside out…and hey, you’ve got a bag. sweet.

Before you do stitch that side up, you can add some pockets which will go under the flap. Me, I put a main large pocket which basically mimics the front panel, and also some flat pockets which go right on top of the front panel.

After that I just flipped that white part at the top down and then stitched up the sides.

and the flap folds down like this
I also put a pocket that runs along the back of the bag as well (what can I say, I like putting things in pockets)

Alright, now on to straps, pretty simple, but a little bit more work than the other parts.
Make a couple dummy straps, just folded rectangular bits of fabric stitched together, but don’t close off the ends.

Those triangular bits on top of the front part of the bag, fold one of those over your dummy strap and stitch that up reallll good, cross wise is a good bet.

When you’ve got that done, stuff some material inside to round it out, not too much, enough to make it comfortable on your shoulder. I cannabalized an old pillow, but they also sell cotton at any drug store for cheap. once you’ve got it to your liking, insert one end of the straps you liberated from a shopping cart.

do that on the other side, clip them together and you’ve got a fully functioning bag. For a stablizer, run another strap from somewhere along the main strap down to a bottom corner. After that, it’s probably good to add some clips on the front flap to the bottom of the bag. here’s the end result or as I like to call it, the White Stripes Bag (and yes, I know I’m skinny, what of it?):

I added a pocket on one of the sides for a water bottle. I didn’t add (but planning to) a pocket on the base of the straps for keys/cell, nor a pocket on the strap themselves. Also I didn’t add a divider in the main part of the bag itself, which is handy.

And that’s it (or I’m out of photos, thank god for flickr), now you too can make your own. And if you’re too lazy or don’t have enough time or think you don’t have enough ability to make one, I’ll make you one (not freely though). eeio’s page has a lot more links and stuff, as well as some great examples of what he’s done. he has a Creative Commons patent on the design, with no commercial applications, but I’m going to be selling shoes, shirts, and artwork at the Melrose Trading Post, so I’m going to ask him about selling some there, but for what I know, this is public domain information and he wants to keep it that way.

crossposted here

i’ve been missing the city lately….”but wait, nigel, don’t you live in the city?”….yes i do, but a)melrose does not count as part of the city, it’s a bubble unto itself, and b) L.A. just doesn’t have the “traffic” that say d.c or new york has. i’m talking general movement here, people up at all times. it’s true you can go down any street in l.a. at anytime and i can guarentee you won’t be alone for very long, always another ghost moving about, but it’s like some video game that keeps the background filled, no real sense that there’s life, that’s L.A. right there. nah, i miss the sounds of the city, it’s too quiet, too lifeless at night. not country enough to have wilderness sounds, not city enough to have cars and people scraping by. my apartment in d.c. was right below street level on a major avenue, and down the street from a hospital, there was always something going on, nothing out here, i miss it. in today’s internet, there’s gotta be an internet station where someone has set up a mic outside their window and is just broadcasting the city as it happens. if not, someone should do it, really.

anyway, since i have nothing furthur, here’s a list from a random prominent mixtape dj of 80 people born in the 80’s (meaning: younger than i) who are more rich, famous, known, or “important” than me: the only thing good to come out of the 80’s was the goonies

-asian girl takes her portrait every day for 3 years, makes a movie out of it, people over at digg make a bunch of comments how all asians look the same. pretty interesting time lapsing going on (look out for the split second shot of a blond wig)…oh wait, sorry, "time-rasping", that better digg?

-to all the los angelinos: 7th Annual Festival of Fantasy, Horror & Science Fiction Brazil, RoboCop, Starship Troopers, The Omega Man, Last Man on Earth (1964), Conan double-header…not bad at all, too bad i’m poor. also, for losanjealousians midnight ridazz is going strong, with over 1300 people at the last one, think i’ll be over there this friday…need to find a bike route to get over there from where you are? bike routing allows to input variables and get a detailed way around, including hill changes.

-since i’ve been introduced to guitar hero (and it’s pc counterpart Frets on Fire) i’ve been hearing songs differently, and the White Room by Cream has one of the better openings in history…wait a second, when the hell did wikipedia start having pages for songs?

-imagining the Tenth Dimension (hover over the navigation bar on the left and click on "imagining")…..oh it works, flash makes it nice, i get it, all concievable universes and timelines contained within a single point, all except the "fold" and why it looks like a very abstract vagina.

-if you haven’t heard john hodgman (the pc guy in the "apple vs pc" commercials) & jonathon coulton’s 700 hobo names by now, you really ought to (it’s an hour long but well worth it). or you could read the master list of names. there’s a whole project devoted to illustrating each of the 700, there’s even a flickr group…currently i’m working on "#447: Pirandello, the Many-Bearded" and then i may move on to "#502: Emergency Exit Aisle Gustav Nook".

-yesterdays news: Study: Sexy music triggers teen sex….i love the use of the word "triggers"…for the last time, first rule of statistics: effects are not the cause, second rule of statistics: do not talk about statistics. i know i’m lame for using that since EVERYBODY does, but here…i actually mean it, stop using statistics please, i mean 60% of the time, it works everytime, you got me?

-i would say upgrade your ichat, but really, with google talk around to pimp, why would i?

-and finally, apprently i now design shoes, guess it’s a natural evolution

also, joe lieberman is a mark-ass trick, way to support your party fuckwit.

There’s some big race going on in the auto world today, and I for one, don’t give a crap. You don’t need to know anything about my sport preferences or my politics when I say this, just nascar has never interested me beyond the occassional wreck I’d see on Sportscenter.

Truth be told though, I started really being against it when i started smoking Winston cigerettes ("No Preservatives!" = the "good-for-you" smoke). At the time the largest professional auto racing company in America was sponsered by the tobacco giant. Now I know i’m being hypocritical when i say i didn’t support a sport that was getting major revenue from a tobacco company, the same company that I was giving money to, but cancer was, has, and is my choice, and I try to keep it that way, I don’t like when it’s foisted upon others. Winston’s no longer tied to the sport (though cellphones now are, which some would say is an even bigger threat), but that doesn’t stop my utter hatred of the "sport". Time to go deeper.

Most environmentalists will decry the fuel consumption of those cars that keep turning left, and most advocates will point out that this is the biggest fallacy of auto racing. You know what, they’re both right:

"According to figures obtained in my research on the consumption rate during a single NASCAR racing event, the average consumption of a race car is about 2 miles per gallon in a 250 mile race. 125 gallons of fuel would be required per car in a NASCAR race. Usually there would be up to 40 cars in one race (even though many cars do drop out because of wrecks or auto malfunctions). That would be an equivalent of 5,000 gallons of fuel consumed per race! That’s the nearly the same amount of fuel consumed for a 737 airplane in a one way trip from D.C. to L.A.

Let’s put all of this into a proper perspective here on what constitutes as “wasting” gasoline.

The amount of gasoline America consumes each day is 320,500,000 GALLONS PER DAY!!! (March 2005). That’s 320 million gallons! Or 3700 gallons per second! Incredible!"

taken from kokonut pundits

That’s not even to mention that most race cars use extremely high-octane fuel, meaning it’s been refined to the point of minimal impact. That being said, it still doesn’t justify the output, nor the environmental aspect. At a time when most Americans are paying upwards of 3 dollars a gallon, is there any reason why we should have a sport which relies solely on fuel which gets people around?

Here’s the thing, people have been racing cars as long as we’ve had a hand to crank the motor and another engine that might outperform our own. Humans are competitive people, and by nature will try and outduel another. But Auto racing is the only "sport" which is rooted in, and relies solely on commercialism to make it, and to make worthy competition (except any computer based competitions). To wit: every other sport, be it baseball, darts, long-distance running, even skydiving or snowboarding, can be played with basic elements found in nature, and to a certain degree, can be played at a high level. While it may have it’s roots in horse and chariot racing, auto racing was born out of the birth of the automobile, hence the name. But if all nascars were replaced with electric cars, or some variation, the appeal and competitiveness of the sport would decrease dramatically, the horsepower and power (speed) would not be the same, and that’s just the fuel, not even the parts that make up the car.

What about those other parts? A typical nascar team will go through 40 tires in a single race, these spent tires are returned to goodyear after the race. Now what happens to those tires after they’re done? Being that nascar tires are radials, they can’t be reprocessed into new tires. From Goodyear’s own website in 1978 they started to use them elsewhere: "Old tires have found new uses as construction material for more than 2,000 artificial reefs and floating breakwaters, protecting harbors and providing aquatic habitat for fish….The company established a toxicology lab to determine the safety of Goodyear chemicals…. ". Even if most of the tires are being recycled into sidewalks or playgrounds, that’s still a huge expenditure and use of natural resource for one single race and one single team! Where does rubber come from? The Rainforest. You’re telling me we’ve taken one-fifth of the Amazon so grown men can spin around an oval track? hyperbole yes, but you get the point.

While there’s a market for recycled race car parts the fact remains that the entire race industry relies on (mostly) new matreials, which are not easily disposed of afterwards. Say what you want, but with redord heat waves, hurricanes and the environmental like, we should be focusing on trying to conserve what we can, you’re not going to argue that we should keep using new material always right?

In reality though, the environmental is only half the story, indeed, with race teams and companies knowing their ecological impact of a sport derived from natural resources, it’s probably the smaller part. I can see a time when nascars will switch over to ethanol (if they haven’t already) or using recycled composite material. Like most things, the bigger impact is the cultural one. What message does professional auto racing send? I like driving as much as the next person, maybe even more, but what effect does racing have? Well, look at The Fast & the Furious. Look at Talledega Nights. Look at the Speed channel. Look at the amount of business Nascar inspires and produces. Look at Dub magazine. Look at auto shows, underground race clubs, demolition derby’s, freeway chases, anything like that. Auto Racing instills that driving around aimlessly is alright, the faster the better, and honestly, i submit to you it’s not. I got over riding around for fuck’s sake when i was around 19. Racing is a product of the car mentality, but it’s also it’s biggest propagandist. Now i’m not so niave to think we’ll all someday stop using cars, but again, with wars over oil, and people stuck in traffic for hours at a time, with car deaths piling up, with the chinese and indians just starting to get into the car marketplace, we’ve got to start looking for alternatives, and the biggest promotion "vehicle" for the auto industry just doesn’t have a place in that.

Also, in tieing with the environmental aspect, have you ever seen a racetrack at night? Even when there’s no racing going on, that place is light up like giant orange fireball, and that’s without the lights being on. Most racetracks are out in the middle of nowhere, and if you go past one, there’s that eerie orange pollution ring over top of it. Combine the actual racing with the driving of the fans to the track, and you’ve got a country eyesore.

Nascar is embedded into our society, one only needs to look at the so called Nascar Dad voting bloc of the last election, or Will Ferrell’s reasoning behind making Talledega Nights: "’Anchorman’ was too abstract for studios to get their heads around. In the process, we started half joking, half not — we said we should just pick an idea that’s really accessible. What’s the biggest, fattest, funniest undeniable idea you could ever pick?" recalls Ferrell. They picked NASCAR, the holy grail of redneck manhood, and giggled." Honestly, I think some people enjoy nascar BECAUSE of the environmental and social effects, a little "fuck you" to the liberal elitists who are trying to tell them how to live. Hey, if that’s your deal, go ahead, enjoy it, and when you get flooded, either by water or people escaping their underwater coastal cities and moving to your town, you can bitch then. just like me and my cancer, you’ve got a choice, and you should know everything you can behind that choice.

i could have a lot more to blog on the insipidness of things, but as i have neither the energy nor the time to put my poetical constipations to digital paper, and in my own version of insipidity, i now present this: from moebiusgraphics.com first, i’m in the minority, but i didn’t like Batman Begins, even beyond the make-pretend gravel voice, the whole movie just didn’t do it for me, not to mention katie holmes pulls off an edie finneran all too well. but really? i wish i could quit you as the joker? i don’t buy it. sorry batman, you’re dead to me now like all other movie superheroes. and for the record, i’ll also be the first to say that for being a huge steaming pile of bird poo, Batman & Robin will be forever immortalized like Plan 9 was, you just watch. tell me when you think of the look of Bat-verse Gotham City, that huge neon lights and oversized monoliths don’t come to mind, i dare you. elsewhere: pajiba’s 3rd date flicks shaun of the dead, better off dead, grosse pointe blank, l.a. story or before sunrise as the all-arounds, and 12 monkeys, fight club, ghost world, tromavision, or jackie brown as your test movies, those are my votes. "And listen. OK. Listen hard. Do not, under any circumstances, stick Crumb into your DVD player. That ain’t cool, man. Not cool." agreed.

Las Vegas: Don’t feed the homeless Nigel say, don’t feed the Vegas.

excerpts:"Soup kitchens serving the homeless have been banned in the US city of Las Vegas with fines coming into force for anyone caught giving hand-outs in its parks….with possible fines of $1,000 and six months imprisonment, after complaints from residents…..Officials said the ban was not aimed at casual handouts from Good Samaritans, the newspaper reported, but at so-called "mobile soup kitchens"…It was devised after residents complained that the large numbers of people gathering to use such services make it impossible for other residents to use the parks, city spokesman David Riggleman said."

hallejuah, i mean, thank GOD we can go back to using our parks again, holy fucking shit, Billy and i wanted to play catch, but g-dammitthere was this group of….peop-le who looked like vagrants gathered around a truck, i was scared, billy, the little trooper still wanted to play catch. VAGRANTS!

King of Beers, King of the Jews
Apparently Mel Gibson will spike your white russian for information, or throw a coffee cup at your head, whichever Big Leibowski scene works.

"Once inside the car Gibson began banging himself against the seat. The report says Gibson told the deputy, "You mother f****r. I’m going to f*** you." The report also says "Gibson almost continually [sic] threatened me saying he ‘owns Malibu’ and will spend all of his money to ‘get even’ with me….The report says Gibson then launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements: "F*****g Jews… The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." Gibson then asked the deputy, "Are you a Jew?""

nonononono, passion of the christ wasn’t about hating jews at all, no no no, really i swear.

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you can always tell when i’m job and school less, posting goes way ^, despite what i said about not posting here as frequently, this is just one of those things.

when modern art and nigel combine, they form…..voltron!:

close up of the "poster" in back:

inspired by hamilton’s just what is it that makes today’s homes…. there’s a big ol story behind it, which i won’t go into, nor my reasoning, but yeah, it encompasses as much modern art history as i could find and fit, with my own commentary. huzzah. oh, and we did cover sherman, kruger, basquiat, haring et al, even mueck and richter, good class.

thanks a lot al gore, thanks a fuckton. i was all ready to say that this fucking heat was an aberration, that there’s no way california would sustain this kind of humidity….but nooooo, you had to go and do the most AMAZiNG thing ever annd promote your new movie by ACTUALLY somehow changing the weather. fuck you gore, i mean that, that’s a shitty way to get people into an overair-conditioned theater to watch your lecture-movie.

and the good news is….it’s not going away. we’re going to be getting indian style daily monsoons, like more than just january.
All long-range models conclude that California’s temperatures will warm on the average of 3 to 6 degrees. Meaning, a current average temperature of 50 degrees (high and low temperatures averaged together) would warm to between 53 and 56 degrees. That in and of itself means little without folding out data into average high and low temperature plan at the regional level. For a city with an average high and low of 60 and 40, the temperature could change to 76 and 36 in a drier climate or 66 and 46 in a moist environment.

California has numerous microclimates. Depending upon inland temperatures and cooler Pacific Ocean temperatures, the future of California’s onshore flow hangs in the balance. Many of California’s microclimates are in place due to existing climate trends and the availability or absence of the onshore flow. As these trends change, the microclimates will evolve accordingly. They could simply disappear. The Pacific Ocean currents are dependent upon salinity levels and temperature, as well as northern latitudinal ice melt. An increase in salinity levels and warmer water temperatures could lead to permanent waning of the onshore flow, warming coastline temperatures, and a increasing the monsoon influence in southern California during summer months.

forget all that "could" stuff, it’s already happening, this is just for cali, not to even begin to mention the fucking week of no power in queens (that must be AWESOME) or people dying all over. here in LA desert plants are growing and budding bigger, faster, and worst of all earlier. and cali and the entire southwest is not exactly terrained to handle large amounts of flowing water, all the dirt will run off and WE WILL FIND THE GOLD UNDERNEATH THE GROUND…and then after we mine that up, the monsters come up. all thanks to you al gore. you don’t even get capitalized.

you know what? fuck it. in honor of mr. i-founded-tha-innanets, i’m gonna go fly a kite in this million degree weather.

in my underwear. like that girl in the picture. except she’s not flying the kite. she’s just standing there like a doofus waiting for al gore to sweep her off her feet. i’d be on the other end of the string, trying to stab her in the head with my flying cursor.

hyah!

and then i’m gonna go have to go fix my innanets, since it’s only a series of tubes

all this heat has probably busted up something.

damn you al gore.

my dog is awesome, he has a 4 second attention span. in fact, he forgot he had to take a shit. the details aren’t important, but just know that by the time he found a suitable spot to defecate on (a mathematical theory which really needs to be worked out by John Nash), he completely forgot why he was in that spot, and looked around confused. maybe he just has alzheimer’s.

but speaking of SAS, or maybe even alzheimers, did you know 30% of america’s internet users have a myspace? as ni@@aknow might say, that’s a lot of underage breezies. true, the question is something of a non-sequiter, but you know that most myspace users [INSERT BASELESS YET COMPLETELY TRUE MYSPACE GENERALIZATION HERE]. seriously, myspace has very few people who read anything longer than 2 sentances, which is why i’m considering putting a whole bunch of crap in my "about me" section and see if anyone EVAR catches on…hell half the literate people i know read anything longer than 2 sentances (i’m not holding out much hope for this post)…but really there’s a lot of stuff at play there in america’s favorite wasteland, or i like to call it, "tha innanets ghetto".

Tom Anderson, better known as "Tom" or Mr Andersssson (wait, now i get it, "Neo" rearranged spells "One", the entire trilogy makes sense now…), got fired from his marketing job at XDrive for working on his porn site, something like that, it involved porn and marketing and firings. Tom’s only the public face of myspace, he’s got another partner who got fired along with him from xdrive (though this time it’s the entire marketing newsletter department) who’s the ceo of the whole myspace shebang. after getting fired they started a newsletter, with their old company’s mailing list, that looked almost exactly like their old company’s newsletter. this newsletter is eventually bought up by intermix…hmmm, myspace founded by two marketing guys who worked for a company best known for spyware, dabbled in porn, and stole ideas? nooooooo, not myspace, no way.

anyway, it’s pretty interesting once you go into it, they’ve already made their money, so it doesn’t really matter anyway. this is all just a quick rehash of tyler walicek’s look into the company, which in turn was smaller rehash of another website’s findings, but now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

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NEXT WEEK: "Footnotes Suck Ass: will hotlinking ever replace boring bibliographies?" winner essay writers win two tickets to John Tucker Must Die…

woah, did anyone else notice that imdb now has pretty thumbnail peektures next to cast members names? crazy, it’s like when mcdonalds started putting the pictures on their cash registers, kinda

Here it is, the relaunch…or to put it in Hollywood terms, "THE RELAUNCH: the reckoning".

nothing too big, mostly got rid of the frames, which achieved what i wanted, but with css around, there’s no need for it. also changed the bar around some, which you can see. i’ll get around to explaining/commenting on the changes soon, but for now take a look around, added a bunch of photography (mostly in the los angeles section) a lot of new artwork, and other stuff. and if this is your first time here, enjoy, there’s all kinds of good stuff going on.