One of my favorite things about scouring the internet for fantastic furniture with which to fill my meagerly furnished home (or as is more often the case, bemoaning the lack of dosh that prohibits me from doing so) is analyzing the pieces that catch my eye and making mental notes of how they are constructed so as to attempt my own (far less expensive) reproductions. Such is the case with the Reel Rocker.

How Reel Furniture can charge $870 for this in good conscience is beyond me. It’s simply a massive wire spool converted to recliner/rocking chair, and to be honest looks a bit uncomfortable. But I’m an enterprising young fop, and don’t balk at the idea of a bit of work to replicate (and improve) on a design, so away it was filed as a possible project should I find myself with time and the scraps I need.

Granted, this design might not seem appealing as it is, but imagine a few coats of stain or paint, a bit of burgundy brocade upholstery, upgraded stops, polished fixtures over exposed bolts and suddenly this otherwise laughably expensive piece becomes something you can be proud of. Keep in mind I’m no enemy of craftsmanship, some hideously expensive pieces are justifiably priced, but making obscene gestures at my wallet by way of overpricing is a sure fire way start my gears to turning.

Reel Rocker [cribcandy]

Fired from Wired last year for the evacuation of various mucousy Eldritch discharges upon the beard of a paralyzed and supine Lore Sjoberg — not to mention ancillary transgressions such as making an executive decision to rename Table of Malcontents to “Conde Nast = Cunt” for the first week of May 2007 — Eliza and I founded Ectoplasmosis. Nine months later, the tag line’s still pretty good: “Technically, the viscous progeny of material ectoplasm and the mind-controlling brain parasite toxoplasmosis, aborted from the belly of an octobee.” But the scrambled-embryonic aftermath of that abortion was always our template.

Consider this a violent flushing. We’re all tickled pink to unveil the new template in all its mewling, slimy glory. Designed by none other than the Gypsy CSS King, Mr. Rob Beschizza, we’re aping the style of the broadside for a smart layout designed to look pretty swank and force an endless parade of advertisements in front of your squirming eyeballs.

It’s not entirely finished yet. There will be bugs, and we would encourage you to report them in the comments here. Ectotweet is currently missing, but coming back shortly (and we’ll still read Ectotweets). The site looks best in a modern browser: IE6 users, it should look okay, but be warned that it’s not perfect. Also, although the site should look fine without installing them, Ectomo looks best when using the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society font pack. It’s a free download for both Mac and PCs. Shortly, you shouldn’t even need to have those fonts installed to see the site as intended, but if you want the 100% experience in the meantime, it’s worth the small download.

We’ve also shifted hosts. Though for the last nine months, we’ve been hosted with aplomb (and dirt cheap prices) by POE Hosting, ultimately they couldn’t keep up with our traffic. We would still heartily recommend them to anyone looking to start up a blog: they would respond to summonings at belief-defying hours of the AM and put up with us long after we had become more of a liability to them than anything else. Plus, it’s run by Chet of Old Man Murray fame, one of the guys who wrote Portal. Give these guys your business if you’re just starting a blog. We’re now hosted by the equally awesome Wing Six and you should notice a huge speed and stability increase.

And that’s about it! Please drop problems, bugs, criticisms, compliments and anti-consumerist outrage in the comments! The Octobee is pleased