Control cable-clutter with a monkey braid
An excellent post on cable clutter from The Closet Entrepreneur has been making the rounds this week. It shows how to use a monkey braid (or chain sinnet) to shorten cables so they stay out of the way and don’t get tangled.
I tried it out with a particularly annoying 25′ 13-pin MIDI cable I use frequently and it works just as advertised. Sometimes the best things in life really are free.
(via Lifehacker)
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Posted by PJ on Jul 2, 2009 |
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18 comments posted
Posted by Sairey Gamp - 07/02/2009
Dude, that’s crochet. Ha ha! Excellent idea.
Posted by John - 07/02/2009
Neat. It’s refreshing to see a post that doesn’t recommend buying something new to deal with all the existing stuff laying around.
Posted by Jacque Harper - 07/02/2009
PJ: I have to know — what are you using a 13-pin MIDI cable for? I’ve been out of that biz for a little bit, but I seem to recall that the MIDI spec called for a 5-pin connector…and two of the pins were unused!
Jacque
Posted by Lori Paximadis - 07/02/2009
Sairey beat me to it.
Posted by PJ Doland - 07/02/2009
@Jacque Harper – Most guitar-synths use special 13-pin cables because the pickups are hexaphonic (and each string sends an individual signal).
Posted by PointSpecial - 07/02/2009
Wow, that’s really neat! I agree… looks much better and gets rid of the clutter. I’ll have to try this out!
How durable is it, though…? Do the loops come undone (or do they become more loose) over time, or does it stay nicely compact?
Posted by Another Deb - 07/02/2009
This is how I have seen commercial fishermen control rope and construction workers control extension cords. I never considered it for little wires like this. Thanks!
Posted by Gillian - 07/02/2009
Yeah, that’s chain stitch which all crocheters do and many knitters too.
Posted by Ron C - 07/02/2009
I use that method all the time with power extension cords (you know, those 50′ orange things in tangled piles in your garage). Tangle-free too.
They look a bit icky hanging from a hook in the garage, sort of like a mess, but when you start using it and pulling out some of it and there’s no knot or tangle, just smiles all around, it’s worth the looking like a mess for something that’s in a more useful state than a wound pile of extension cord that’s about to become a 50′ pile of knots that only get worse.
Posted by Susan V. - 07/02/2009
Who would have thought cables could look this pretty?
Posted by Deborah Marchant - 07/02/2009
On this link you can see more about this http://www.flickr.com/photos/since76/3169522253/
Posted by Deborah Marchant - 07/02/2009
On this link you can see how to create a monkey braid yourself
http://www.animatedknots.com/chainsinnet/index.php
Posted by David - 07/02/2009
Learned this in bomb disposal school, but for ropes.
Really.
Posted by Brian - 07/03/2009
IMO, this is the only way to put away Christmas lights.
Posted by Craig - 07/06/2009
I actually figured out how to do this on my own a few years back with headphone cords. The best part is that you don’t have to do it to the entire length of the cable, so you can adjust it to be exactly the length you need it to be, which is pretty handy for loose headphone cords while commuting.
Posted by Tuesday Share: July 7, 2009 « Di Mortui Sunt - 07/08/2009
[...] that help create a clean environment do contribute to flow, little things like organizing and cleaning up cable-clutter are [...]
Posted by bitful » Blog Archive » 7 things I did not know last week - 07/12/2009
[...] method I sometimes use to shorten long cables is called a chain sinnet (or monkey braid). This means I can finally stop calling it [...]
Posted by Dusting Off the Cobwebs! - 08/09/2009
[...] Unclutterer – I never miss an article on Unclutterer and highly recommend following them: Control cable-clutter with a monkey braid [...]
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