gnome dancing around the aforementioned Stonehenge
+1 for the Spinal Tap reference
This week, I have been worried about getting it to stand up. The more I worry, the greater the difficulty in ensuring a sturdy erection that doesn’t immediately flop over. I hope you understand that this has never happened to me before. Perhaps I could try again in a few minutes? Ah, there we are. Nice and stiff and thick …
What is it with cats and boxes ? Try to get them into a pet carrier and you end up in A&E. But leave a box/shopping bag unattended for a moment and it'll be wriggling around and a face will appear with an expression (as per article pic) suggesting that the cat is trapped and panicking -- which clearly it is not. Only time I actually had to intervene was when my cat caught her head in the handles of a Sainsbury bag and was racing around the house desperately trying to evade this rustling pursuer. She collided with me with such force that the handles tore off.
Yup, have now been the servant of two cats, both of whom like nothing better than a large paper bag (think old-style American grocery bag, like you used to get from Ikea over here) that they could curl up in. But woe betide you if you went anywhere near it when they're in residence, as claws will inevitably be thrust out to gouge hands or whatever you've put near the bag.
I guess it's a security thing, as current one also seems to like snoozing in a cardboard box at night.
And what about when you need to give 'em a tablet from the vet?
The vet shows you how to do it and they swallow the damned thing straightaway. Then, when you try it at home - and this is a true story - you need gardening gloves and a blood transfusion to get them to take it, and they still manage to spit the bloody thing out behind the sofa five minutes later.
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"Amazon - the world's largest supplier of cat beds!"
I think you'll find El Reg has already given that crown to HP in their Aboxalypse now series.
My wife's cat, when I first met her (the wife that is*) used to treat a litter tray like a dog burying a bone in a sandpit. In compensation for there never being any litter in his tray he took to using any coiled up wire he chanced apon: failing that, a pair of shoes.
I suggested we get a cat-flap pronto. Unfortunately our new abode was a first floor flat so I ended up constructing a complicated climbing frame so he could get in and out.
(*) She wasn't my wife when I first met her. That would be a wierd.
It seems a little lacking in foresight just leaving the surface as untreated cardboard .
Why don't they at least put a shiny, moderately coffee proof surface on it (especially as a result of the 'drawback').
We need a long term test! I think Dabbsy should actually use it, and report monthly on how it is faring with regard to cup rings, grease stains, wear from mice (strangely missing from his desk) and keyboard legs.
Oh, and the use of it to support virgins, if only one at a time.
You need Blue Peter's Sticky Backed Plastic?
The legs look unstable.
The price seems high as I got nearly as much cardboard with my industrial 2.2m high MDF & steel shelving, which as the uprights are in two parts could make two standing desks. It's half that price too. Bolt free. No screw driver needed.
The legs are stable and very strong: they are composed of multiple layers glued together, about 1.5cm thick. I admit it's a challenge to ensure a taut fit when slotting them in place without creasing any other part or crushing the corners of the slots. But as my mini video demonstrates, the forward-backward stability might be like a rock but side-to-side is a bit creaky.
Ahem "wobbly" & "leftover bits"!? Neither the icon or Mechanical Engineering qualifications are needed to form a link between those :-)
Lo and behold the spurious leftover bits look like corner reinforcing triangular plates! Methinks from pure logic they belong at the top inside of the legs performing anti-wobble reinforcing functionality.
Just a pure guess:-)
"The price seems high as I got nearly as much cardboard with my industrial 2.2m high MDF & steel shelving,"
I was wondering why the packaging was not part of the desk itself. It does seem odd to pack a flat pack cardboard desk in more cardboard which then needs to be disposed of. It would make far more sense to use the desk itself as the packaging in some way, e.g. the outside of the packaging would be on the inside of the assembled desk so any labels or transportation marks don't show.
I've seen some very complex shaped/folded single piece cardboard boxes which are a triumph of engineering design and origami. Surely someone could design cardboard furniture which includes the packaging in the design.
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-NINE Great British Pounds for a wobbly cardboard table?
Well done Mr. Dabbs, that is surely the funniest article you have ever written.
(I opened the video in a separate tab and the other videos on the offered appear to be German Benny Hill style smut. Well done for keeping such good company.)
Yes, I was also going to call bollocks on this one, for the same reasons (even including the optional glass top the desk I've used for the last ten years cost less than £100). However, searching my trusty office equipment provider (IKEA) for the term "standing desk" only gives me items in the £400-500 range, so I guess the cardboard equivalent is of roughly proportionate price.
If only the term "standing desk" wasn't being deemed the marketing equivalent of "hipster twat with too much money" we might see something reasonable for £129.
"However, searching my trusty office equipment provider (IKEA) for the term "standing desk" only gives me items in the £400-500 range ..."
Those are electrically adjustable (Bekant range) and actually quite good. I've got one of their bases (fitted with my own custom top) and it's v stable and seems to be robustly built.
I find I prefer to do typing sitting down, but standing is fine for reviewing documents.
Here's a beer to start the weekend.
Can't you find something in real wood in the next flea market, you could even transform as you wish to feed your needs? An old folding table for instance?
The ultra-consumerist attitude to buy and throw has to be amended. Let's reuse old things instead of making new junk.
JM2C, of course ^^
We had to remove a door which opened the wrong way in our house and being of the older persuasion it was nigh-on solid wood. Bit of 2by4 plus some large shelf brackets and instant desk.
There's a self assembly plywood computer desk circa late 1980's buried under some dust. It has bowed about 3 inches and all it has on it is an Atari ST, a couple of ST monitors and one of those ST "slab" hard disks: 100mb £400. I find it real hard to chuck stuff because I don't like waste. Next to it, the ST printer (Citizen 120D) is still powered, attached to my old firewall (FreeBSD 4.x) box and has been flashing "out of paper" for over nearly two decades.
Nothing wrong with an old door! :--)
This is one of those ideas that literally every new generation of design graduates comes up with.
Meanwhile, my generic desk from an office supply catalogue in melamine coated chipboard, has been going for 25+ years. Since there’s no reason I'll ever need a new one, it trounces your soybean and hemp furniture hundreds of times over.
Office supply, nothing. Go to a builder's supplies store. Two A-frame trestles and (basic spec) a door or (looks better, lasts for ever) a 2-metre solid timber board of appropriate width. Saw the latter in half and place on the former. Disassembles in a minute when you don't want it where it is.
When I was a child, my sister had a grocery shop made of printed cardboard furniture. We also had cardboard "horses". So nothing new here, just now they are selling to adults...
If you need a reliable mobile desk (although not a standing one), check this:
http://www.pelican.com/us/en/product/mobile-military-weapon-cases/mobile-office/field-desk/472-FLD2-DESK-TA/
No need to fear children/cats/etc. with one of these....
" ...why anyone would buy it, especially at that price."
Amen! I would have stopped off a an appliance shop and asked for a box a full-sized fridge came in.
Use a box cutter or shears to trim to height, cut a knee well, use the left over bits for bracing, and Bang!, cardboard desk at no cost, and probably less time to assemble.
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I like to compute with a really hot cup of coffee near at hand. My 2010 Acer netbook managed to survive a quick spill (lucky I don't take milk or sugar).
Can't see this contraption lasting even a cup with a damp base for long, nevermind a clumsy put down of fairly full cup.
Three cheap camera tripods with a sturdy plastic top would be better, more durable, just as portable and cater to people of varying stature.
"As a result, the process of opening the box felt less like I was unpacking a heap of cardboard slats and more like defusing a bomb, with David Hemmings down in the boiler room asking me by walkie-talkie whether to cut the red wire or the white one."
IIRC, it's always the blue one.
Unless they're all blue. In that case you're screwed.
Missing from the instructions:
If you happen to find that your new hyperexpensive wobbly desk is too wobbly, you may, assuming you never want to flat-pack-it again, apply copious quantities of GLUE to all joints. For additional stability, apply to the GLUE, the materials known as PINE or MDF (available at all good hardware stores for a small suplimentary fee). PINE and MDF may be conveniently cut to size with a 2.5kw Circular SAW, much to the enjoyment of neighbours.
We also supply strange cornery bits known as 'braces' that when attached to the legs and the desk-top in the correct manner (6.75 packets of araldite) provide additional bracing.
There. Fixed it for them:
"PINE and MDF may be conveniently cut to size with a 2.5kw Circular SAW, much to the enjoyment of neighbours."
Pine warps and MDF is very heavy. My favourite bodging material for these jobs is the lowest grade of marine ply. Incredibly easy to cut, easy to sand, glue a few wooden braces on the bottom for added rigidity and assemble with 6mm panhead screws, nuts and washers. When you get tired of the product or want to make changes it is dirt simple to redo. My current desk started as a small Scandinavian desk made out of marine ply, then when the top got too small I simply put a bigger piece on. The one piece of advice I offer for free is that when you get your cheap circular saw replace the blade with a fine one with tungsten carbide inserts. It doesn't cost much and it cuts ply with no mess, fast and clean, and the slight give permitted by the inserts makes cutting extremely easy.
My circular saw and set of clamps, with half a sheet of suitable ply, would cost somewhat less than the cardboard desk, and after that you're limited to cost of materials.
"I’d retrieve what I thought was the packaging except for the fact that it got collected by the recycling lorry an hour ago."
Cardinal mistake when assembling anything that comes in a box, no matter what.
Always keep every last bit of the packaging until whatever it is is unpacked, assembled and tested.
Otherwise the single loose page correcting the manual or that other tiny plastic baggie with nuts and bolts will be lost forever.
And you won't realise it until after the shops are closed / the helpdesk is off duty / everbody else has left / the zombies are already on the front porch.
(Harsh lessions, learned young, etc etc. Have a nice weekend, everybody. I'm off to the DIY emporium.)
I assumed there was going to be some trick that made it easy to switch between sitting and standing*, due to the lighter materials or something. But this isn't a desk that changes height, it's just a taller than normal desk that happens to be made of cardboard. But you can get a desk made out of materials that aren't utter shit for less than that, so what exactly is the point?
* Incidentally, there's absolutely no point in getting a desk that only allows you to stand, studies have shown that's just as bad as spending all your time sitting. It seems to be changing your stance and posture from time to time that actually gives benefits, so unless you get a fancy desk that goes up and down you might as well get a normal one that allows you to slouch properly.
That's the reason for the cardboard.
First thing in the morning it's an upright standing desk, by lunchtime it's become a regular sitting desk and by the end of the day it's the perfect height for slouching.
The cleaners then throw it away overnight (while leaving the overflowing full bin in the kitchen) and in the morning you get to start all over again
Expensive on desks though
Take 8-16 cinder blocks and 4'x8' sheet of OSB.
1. Cut OSB to size/shape desktop desired. (Custom!)
2. Stack blocks to provide sitting or standing desk (Adjustable!).
3. Place OSB desktop on top of cinder blocks. (Ease of Use!)
4. Computate. (Efficient!)
We also offer custom bookshelves, rack enclosures (smaller bricks), and buildings.
Is there not an El Reg rule against posting scary videos?
On the desk drawback side, apart from exhibiting all the stability of a 3 legged donkey, what happens to it in the event of a liquid spillage incident, Mr Dabbs?
Time for an in depth coffee/tea/fizzy-drink spillage test?
£129 for all that cardboard. Missed a trick there, should have just ordered something small and cheap from HP
Have you looked at the folding desks available on eBay for less than £30 quid?
I was well prepared for the pics and didn't need to clean my keyboard, a shame bonfire night is over and it's going to completely fill your recycling bin! Can you torch it in the back garden with some old kit on it and post the pic to the manufacturer for a laugh?
Thanks!
Indeed. When assembling several pieces of flat-packed DIY furniture for my son's first apartment, I was swearing long and loudly enough that the neighbors popped round to see if everything was OK. My son greeted them at the door with a rapid and complex series of shrugs, gesticulation in my direction, and various silently-mouthed apologies. They responded with a slightly less complex series of knowing grins, silent nods, and dismissive hand gestures. It was a brief but enlightening (and mildly amusing) glimpse into modern methods of non-verbal communication.
I had no idea who David Hemmings was, but I immediately recognized the scene you described. (the movie showed up a few times on HBO during the few years I subscribed.) Unfortunately I couldn't remember the name of the movie, either, though I did remember Omar Sharif being the captain.
I looked up "David Hemmings" on IMDB and started scanning titles backwards until I encountered one that had absolutely nothing to do with exploding boats -- I did remember THAT much about the title -- and sure enough, "Juggernaut" turned out to be the movie I remembered, and presumably the one you referenced. High fives!
You sound pretty much like I'd expect. Only when I'm reading your articles, the voice in my head insists on speaking with an American accent. But then, most of the voices in my head speak with an American accent, even when I know better. Oddly enough, it's the same accent I speak with. (I'm sure it's a coincidence.) Now I've actually heard you speak, perhaps I can convince my brain to at least read your words with something other than "bland Midwestern US with a dash of New England but grew up in semi-rural PA". As I write this we (at work) have a guy visiting from Australia, maybe I'll get confused and you'll end up with an Aussie accent in my head.
Come to think, I'm already confused, that part's a no-brainer. Speaking of which... back to work!
"I may be stupid, but I'm not BLOODY stupid!"
Just get rid of your chair & you'll be standing in no time.
If you want to vary sitting & standing just have the Mrs hide your chair every time you go to the loo. By the time you find it again you've had your excersize for the day!
Now if you'll excuse me I've got a chair to find...
I am stunned that you paid £129 for enough cardboard to freeze the arse off a homeless person (seeing as there would not be enough to cover his arse) well maybe if you include the packaging his arse could be draft free.
For that much money you should be able to buy enough cardboard to house a family, albeit a tad too cosy, http://thetinylife.com/tag/emergency-shelter/
Ah @The firstDave see below the emergency shelter on this page, foling ISO containers.