I’ve been in the process of redoing my kitchen for over 2 years now. I’m going to dedicate an entire blog post to that whole process once it is finished (it’s getting close!) but for now, I have this post that’ll just go over the wooden countertop I built.

I’ve thought about building my own countertops for some time, but didn’t think I really had the skill, or was just overwhelmed by the idea of it. I was at Home Depot a while back with my parents when we were looking at different countertop options for my kitchen. I pretty much ended up either hating all of them, or being, at the very best, not enthused about others. The one countertop I liked the best was (of course) made out of wood, but came with a steep price tag of well in the thousands.

By building my own countertops out of 2x6’s I cut and assembled myself, I ended up being able to create and finish the countertop for just about $150.

Note: In this picture the kitchen isn’t completely finished. There is no backsplash behind the counter (I haven’t built it yet), no trim on or under the cabinets, and the pole going through the countertop is actually holding the house up - so I will be facing that in dark stained wood eventually like I did upstairs.

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I got this shelf piece sometime around 2012 when I was living in California from a consignment shop in Burlingame. It’s been a great piece and has worked well, but as more and more wood pieces have made their way into my house, this piece has started to stick out. I decided to, in the same fashion as the Ikea Patio Table Wood Top, replace the glass shelf with wooden ones.

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In July, I created a new music website to host all the music I have written. I put my 2014 album Memories on it and promised three new albums in 2017. Well, today I deliver on that promise with three brand new albums: Winter, Summer, and Signal EP.

Just like Memories, these three albums are available to download completely for free in FLAC or mp3 (v0) format.

http://music.daveeddy.com

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After installing Bash on Ubuntu on Windows I realized some interesting side effects related to how processes and daemons in the Unix environment are handled. Running a process in the background, or daemonizing a process, will work so long as there is a Bash session open on Windows. Once the last window is closed, all of the processes are cleaned up and killed.

I use ssh keys for authentication when connecting to remote servers which requires the use of ssh-agent. I can run this program manually and it will work so long as there is at least one bash session running on my computer, but once I close the last window the ssh-agent is killed and my keys are unloaded. I’ve found a couple guides online regarding ssh-agent and WSL specifically, but most of them assume the keys you are using are not password protected.

To remedy this situation, I managed to find a way to create a hidden terminal session that runs ssh-agent in foreground mode when I login to my computer which persists through sleeps and hibernations. This way, ssh-agent will run and stay running from the moment I login until the moment I logout (which is almost never, unless I reboot).

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Last week I made a big change in my life. In 2008, I switched off of using Windows (and even Linux) as my main Operating System for my laptop and haven’t looked back… until this year. Last week I finally made the jump and bought a Microsoft Surface Pro.

I wanted something like an iPad, but that didn’t feel like a crippled version of a computer. Instead, I wanted something that was a powerful computer that could double as a tablet (touchscreen and removable keyboard mostly).

Note: Some, if not all, of this guide may be deprecated with the release of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update in 2017.

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Last year, I covered the beam that runs in my bedroom with pine. This year, I decided to cover every other beam that was in my main living room with dark stained pine to match.

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Last year I built a Faux Beam with Recessed Lights for my bedroom. I love it so much, I decided to build another one (well, actually 3) for my living room!

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Dedicated Music Site - http://music.daveeddy.com

Three years ago I released my first album Memories. This album was recorded from 2008 to 2012, and contains songs written from as early as 2006. The recordings were resurrected, mastered, and finalized in 2014. Most of these songs were composed in college, with a few done in high school and some after college as well.

I uploaded this album to BandCamp, SoundCloud, and iTunes. Since then, I’ve made a lot more music that I’ve uploaded to SoundCloud, as well as randomly to my YouTube channel. While these sites and services have been great, in the last 3 years I’ve identified 3 main issues I have using them.

1. Cost

I pay a yearly fee to have my album hosted on iTunes as well as other services (spotify, etc.) using TuneCore. I pay a yearly fee to SoundCloud to have as many tracks as I have uploaded to them. And, while I don’t pay a yearly fee to BandCamp, I do pay a percentage of any of the proceeds I make from my album sales (which has been nothing in the last 2.5 years). In the last 2 years I’ve made around $3.00 from my music, and have paid over $100.00 in hosting fees.

I don’t mind paying for good service - and these services are great! But when it comes down to it, I’m just not that popular of an artist, and I don’t make much money off of music - certainly not enough to cover these costs. Part of the cost, of course, is for them to store and serve my music files over the Internet, which brings me to my next point:

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Last year, I put up a Tongue and Groove Ceiling in my Bedroom. I liked it so much I decided to do the rest of my upstairs (referred to collectively as the “Living Room”). The process was almost identical, the only difference being that I had to do a lot more ceiling than I had previously done.

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When I moved into my house, the closest thing to a railing it had was a folded piece of cardboard that just stood by the stairs. My Mom always complained to me that I needed a railing, and that someone could seriously hurt themselves… it just took me a couple years to do anything about that warning :p.

I decided to build a railing myself with a dark stained wood and black metal balusters.

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