It’s not like I’m Mister Usability Stickler, but c’mon, how long would this take to fix? Like, an hour?

So this was an idea I had way back at Maker Faire in 2007. It got me just inspired enough to buy a pump and a couple of the Legos, and then I let the whole thing sit around in my file cabinet at work for two years.

Finally, I got off my butt and followed through with it. All-in-all, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, so I thought I’d share with you what I did in case you’re ever inspired enough to build your own…

Part 1: Making the structure

This was by far the toughest part. Although I had an image in my head as to how it would all look when it was finished, I didn’t really know how you would start creating a plastic base. Particularly given that I live in an apartment, and apartment life isn’t really condusive to power tool usage.

Luckily, when I went to Maker Faire this year, Tap Plastics (the fantastic plastic place) had a booth set up where they advertised their plastc custom-cutting services. Thanks, guys!

So step 1 required drawing out the supports that I needed. These are 16″ wide and 5″ high, with 4″ long slots cut in them to hold the base.

From LegoFountain

I took the drawing in to Tap Plastic and, thanks to a lot of help from a guy named Edgar, in 24 hours I had this. The large rectangle  is 24 3/4″ x 10 1/8″ x 3/8″ thick plastic that he called “Komtzey”, which has a rougher surface, so it works quite well with adhesive. The bottom portions are 1″ thick HDPE, which is the plastic they use in cutting boards.

From LegoFountain

Putting ‘em all together got me this. Cool, huh?

From LegoFountain

In case you’re wondering why I didn’t make the base out of Legos, too, it’s mostly because I looked up how much it would cost to order enough Legos to make make something of that size and it was really expensive. Also, I wasn’t quite sure how sturdy it would be.

Part 2: Adding the Lego base

The next step was gluing on some green Lego bases to the big rectangle. I had this glue leftover from when I fixed the light in our kitchen. It’s super strong, and waterproof, which is nice.

From LegoFountain

These are the bases I used.

From LegoFountain

The glue is one of those dealies where you gotta mix the 2 parts together. Like I said, it’s amazingly strong, but you don’t get much of it, and a lot of the glue got “lost” behind the little divots in the Lego bases. If I were to do it again, I’d probably get twice as much glue, or use a glue that gives you a little more in the quantity department. Still, it’s been holding up so far…

From LegoFountain

These are the Lego bases glued on to the white plastic. And yes, it’s a good thing I was working outside — those fumes are strong!

From LegoFountain

They found it important to tell you that bricks were not included with the thin plastic base. Just in case you weren’t familiar with the law of conservation of mass.

From LegoFountain

Part 3: Making it a Fountain

This is the pump I used. It comes with a light (ooooh) and a nifty little flow control, just in case the water came out too strong. As it turns out, maximum power was just the right amount.

From LegoFountain

Here’s some tubing I picked up from the local hardware store.

From LegoFountain

I taped the tubing to the back of the base like this using some water-resistant duct tape. I cut it a little long and gave it a curvy path just in case I needed more tubing. As it turns out, I did…

From LegoFountain

I needed to make the end of the tube come in at a little more of a right angle so that the water flowed out just right, so I’m glad I had cut it long. (In fact, I ended up cutting it a little too long — the pump didn’t quite have enough oomph to get the water all the way up the curvy tube, so I cut some off at the bottom and straightened it out a little bit.)

From LegoFountain

Part 4: Adding Legos!

This was version 1 of the path I tried to make for the water with the Legos. Turns out this was a little too fine and intricate. Some water went down the path, but there was enough splashing and dripping that you couldn’t really tell

From LegoFountain

So this is version 2. This worked a whole lot better. The whole thing is sitting in just a bin I picked up from The Container Store.

From LegoFountain

I don’t know if you can tell by the side view, but I played a little with dimensionality — the water flows out from the base a little bit near the top there.

From LegoFountain

And here’s the entire thing in motion! I’m still getting some dripping here and there (Legos aren’t water-tight, after all), but the thing actually works.

Like I said, I’m pretty happy with how it all turned out. I’m not entirely sure this is of a scope or quality to impress the Maker Faire crowd, however. I think I’d probably want to make the entire structure a whole lot bigger, and custom order some Lego sets that would let me do fun things like add waterwheels and see-saws and stuff, and all of that probably involves a larger investment of time, money, and free space in our kitchen than I’m willing to commit to at this point. But if any of you get inspired to make a Lego fountain of your own, let me know! I’d love to hear about it.

So it surprised me when, while reading The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford, the author made the following claim: If you’re comparing the exact same item, fancy-shmancy supermarkets like Whole Foods aren’t actually any more expensive than your local Safeway or Stop & Shop. It’s just that the fancy supermarket will carry the more expensive brands and none of the cheaper brands, so the “middle-priced” item will cost more at the fancier supermarket.

To put it another way, both Safeway and Whole Foods might carry organic eggs, and they’ll cost the same at both places. But at Safeway, those will be next to some standard conventionally-raised eggs, while at Whole Foods those will be next to the Organic Free Range Pastured Omega 3 Eggs Laid By Chickens Who Listen to Smooth Jazz All Day. The organic eggs will be at the top of the price scale at Safeway, but near the bottom of the price scale at Whole Foods.

Since I had some time on my hands, I decided to test this out. I priced out several common items at Whole Foods, then tried to find the equivalent items at Lucky and Safeway (two large west-coast chains) as well as Cal-Mart, an upscale independent grocery store. I wanted to find stores in the same geographic location to make sure real estate prices were comparable (so no Wal-Mart) and wanted to find places that had a chance of carrying some of the same brands I might find in Whole Foods (so I skipped Smart & Final, and also Trader Joe’s, which tends to have its own brands. Also, TJ’s parking lot sucks.)

So here’s what I found out. Keep in mind I live in San Francisco, so prices are probably less in your neck of the woods. In places where two prices are listed, the regular price is on top, the sale price is on the bottom.

(Note: The Safeway House Brand was only 18 oz. Also, I forgot to look up this item at Cal-Mart.)

The “House” brands for Lucky and Safeway were Sunny Side and Lucerne, respectively. I don’t know if they count as actual house brands, or are just a dairy with an exclusive partnership. Interpret it as you will. For Whole Foods, I looked at their 365 brand.

So, what did we learn from all of this?

1. Dang, I gotta stay away from Cal-Mart. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a cute little supermarket. People there know you, and the butcher is awesome. But wow, it’s pricey.

2. Whole Foods is usually cheaper than the other grocery stores, if you look at the non-sale price. In the majority of the cases above, you’ll see that it’s less expensive  buying an item at Whole Foods than you are buying at the regular price at the “cheaper” grocery stores. However…

3. The other chain stores have way more stuff on sale. Both Lucky and Safeway seem to have lots of items on sale. I think it’s probably some mischievous plan where they jack up the regular price, but then put a bunch of items on sales. Partly because it makes the sale prices look better, and I’m guessing they can subsidize the cost of a sale item by charging more on the occasional non-sale item you’ve gotta buy. You’re so happy getting the good deal on the sale-item, you don’t notice how expensive the other items are, and you get that nice, “You save $4.56!” line at the bottom of your receipt.

4. If you’re looking to go organic on a budget, get the Whole Foods 365 Brand. It’s probably not fair to compare house brand to house brand, since the items could be fundamentally quite different. But Whole Foods’ house brand was almost always the cheapest option among similar items.

5. Companies are sneaky when it comes to item size. I had heard that Haagen Dazs was just slightly shrinking the size of their packages to make themselves look cheaper than they actually were. But it looks like peanut butter and mayo companies are doing it to.

6. It looks like Tim Harford’s got a point. When I’m at Whole Foods, my choices generally consist of the $7.00 orange juices. It turns out they’re generally the same price or cheaper than the same items at other grocery stores, but those other grocery stores have less expensive brands like Minute Maid and Tropicana that I can go for instead.

7. Whatever you do, don’t buy anything from Safeway without your Club Card. Did I mention all those sale prices are only available if you have a Club Card? Without it, you’re paying the highest prices of the bunch.

8. I might have too much free time on my hands.

So does Whole Foods really deserve the “Whole Paycheck” nickname? Maybe not. I mean, once you start looking at all the prices, things are complicated enough that I’m not sure you could say for a fact that you’re always going to be paying the most at Whole Foods. (Particularly if you go for the 365 brand.)

So the next time you’re at a party, and you hear a friend making a Whole Paycheck crack, pull ‘em aside and let them know they’re mistaken in their assumptions when it comes to grocery store pricing. Because if there’s one thing I know about people, it’s that they looooove to be corrected.

If you own a spot of land downtown, not only do you own that land, but you own the entire volume of space above that land, up until the limit that you’re allowed to build to. (So if I own a plot of land that’s zoned to allow a 120-foot building on top, I own the space that goes up 120 feet above that land.) So far, not all that surprising, right? But get this…

You can sell that space above your building to another developer so that they can increase their building’s height. In other words, consider the following example…

• You and I own plots of land downtown that are zoned to allow 100-foot buildings on them.
• You have a 100′ building, and I only have a 50′ building.
• You decide you want to make your building higher, but you’ve already reached the 100′  limit. So what can you do?
• I can sell you the 50 extra feet above my building that I haven’t built up into. You’re then allowed to build up to 150 feet — the 100 that were part of the original building, and the 50 you bought from me.
• At that point, though, I can’t build any higher than 50′, because I’ve sold off the rights to build in that extra space to you. If I wanted to expand, I’d need to buy that extra vertical space from somebody else.

It’s a crazy system, but I guess it makes sense in its own strange way. It’s almost  like a cap-and-trade system on building height. A developer doesn’t necessarily feel compelled to build as high as they possibly can, because they can make a profit simply by selling that space to somebody else. But I can’t imagine the paperwork involved in trying to keep track of who owns the right to what vertical space.

Ya learn something new everyday…