About BuildDiary.Net

BuildDiary.Net is, for want of a better term, a meta hobby. I love reading the work of passionate amateurs, especially people who take on complex hobbies that involve the construction of an artifact that most people would consider to be too complex for a single person working in a garage.

My interest in making large projects started when I was around 10 or so. I had a serious airplane fixation, and fell in love with the various Burt Rutan designs. For the longest time, I assumed that I would build a Long-EZ some day, when I had money and time.

I also have a thing for music. When I was in my early 20's, I built a couple electronic drumsets using PVC pipe, plywood, piezo buzzers and mousemats (sorry, no pictures, but there are similar projects on the internet). I used to get the Stewart MacDonald Lutherie catalog and I drew up some plans for a bass guitar that I never built. During this same time frame, I bought a Theremin kit from Paia, that I made a lot of strange sounds with, and even performed with a surf rock band.

In college, I kept myself sane by looking at web pages for boatbuilding. It was always very calming to read about someone's boat project when I had 10 minutes to spare (my school had a very rigorous program, I never had much time...). Eventually I found all the web pages for the Locost Lotus 7 replicas being built, and rediscovered airplane building, and then since I was familiar with so many different types of DIY projects, I decided to start this website because it seemed like a logical next step.

After leaving college, I started working on the kinds of projects that I enjoy writing about. I built a pair of stereo speakers, a music synthesizer, an airplane (build diary coming soon, I want a little more progress done before I link to it...), an arcade game cabinet, and a small car for the local adult downhill derby race.

The first generation of BD.N was developed on top of Zope and Squishdot, and used a table based layout (I didn't know any better at the time -- when it came to Tables, or Zope for that matter...). After getting beaten across the head for asking a simple question in the Zope forums, I vowed to change to something written and used by sane people, so I switched to Django, which is a web framework that I very much enjoy. The current version is nicely standards based using CSS for layout.

About Me (David Case):

I was born sometime in the early 70's in Ashland Oregon (about a half mile from were Nabokov wrote Lolita). I spent my entire childhood in the nearby town of Talent, going to Talent Elementary School, Talent Junior High, and Phoenix High school, were I graduated in 1990. I have a brother (Jeff), and a sister (Laura). Another brother, Jim, died in a mountain climbing accident when he was 23 (and I 16).

After high school I spent several years working for Bear Creek Corporation (better known as Harry & David, or Jackson & Perkins), and Musician's Friend. Both are mail order companies situated in Medford Oregon. After several years of coasting through fairly dead end jobs, I decided to go back to college and get my degree. I chose the Oregon Institute of Technology, because it was located in a town with absolutely no distractions (Klamath Falls), and they had a very nice Software Engineering program.

While at OIT I met my future wife, Cecilia Lasiter, who was studying Electrical Engineering. I was stuck with a roommate of such odious personal habits that I spent every waking moment in a friend's dorm room down the hall. Travis and I would watch Hollywood Squares, and I would bitch about my roommate. Eventually I met Travis' roommate Nick, and Cecilia invited herself into our little circle of friends soon after. I thought Travis had found a girlfriend, the bastard, but they were just friends. So eventually she clubbed me over the head, we became an item, and then I asked her to marry me that summer.

Eventually we graduated from college, and found Jobs in Portland, and bought a house, and here we are.