Kevin Kelly's Blog, page 6

What3Words/Neighbors/Xhalr

Precise memorable addresses

What3Words divides the world into 3 x 3-meter squares and gives each square a unique, unalterable sequences of three random words. For instance the location of my writing desk is “smile.rocket.gates”. This global address is really handy for sending a delivery person to the right part of a building, or meeting someone on at trail head, or locating a home in the large parts of the developing world that have no operational address. It’s better than a lat/long sequence because you can remember it. Works in multiple languages. The phone app version integrates into Google maps, etc. — KK

Keep tabs on neighborhood crime

If you don’t have a Ring doorbell or security camera installed, you can still be alerted of nearby crimes and theft using the Neighbors by Ring app. Once you set up the parameters for your neighborhood you can watch video footage of suspicious activity posted by neighbors (up to 5 miles away). I already own Ring products, so I set up the free Neighbors app to alert me of crimes in my Dad’s neighborhood that I can then forward on to him.— CD

Quickly de-stress with deep breathing

Doing breathing exercises are easier for me if I can focus on something visually. Xhalr.com is perfect for that. It’s also helpful if you want to discover different types of yoga breathing. — CD

Gallery of magazine covers

I don’t read many paper magazines nowadays, but I appreciate good magazine covers. I’ve been working for magazines for decades and have learned coming up with eye-grabbing, meaningful covers is the most challenging aspect of publishing. CoverJunkie collects the best covers from magazines all over the world. The have an Instagram account, which is the best way to browse the gallery. — MF

Virtual chill aquarium

Here are 10 hours of oceanic video. Just ten uninterrupted hours of relaxing underwater scenes of fish swimming and bubbling sounds. No narration, no drama. I watched more of this than I thought I would. Outtakes from the BBC’s Blue Planet series. — KK

Strawberry huller

Gimmicky kitchen tools are usually worse than the knives, graters, and other kitchen tools you already own. This little strawberry huller is an exception. The spring-loaded jaws make it a breeze to remove stems, making short work of basket of berries. I’ve used this $7 tool dozens of times since I bought it in 2015. — MF

Making Comics

Magnificent! A work of genius. The best how-to manual ever published. I could keep piling on the superlatives because this book is simply a masterpiece. At one level, it is a comic book about how to make comics, and for that it is supreme; the best. It will walk you through every step of making a comic, including how to make them on the web, digitally, or in pen and ink. I’ve been working on a near-completed graphic novel, and every page has told me something important and spot on. With brilliant graphics, Scott McCloud combines the most profound insights from his two previous books, Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics. But in this book he raises your understanding of graphic communication further by making every lesson utterly practical and useful for both novice and expert. I can’t imagine anyone ever doing a comic manual better.

However, even if you are not planning on making a graphic novel, this book is a gold mine. McCloud’s section on constructing facial expressions and emotions is astounding, and worth the price of the book alone. The clever way McCloud arrays human expressions in one chart reminds me of the first time I saw all the colors arranged in a color wheel; it’s the same aha! The insights McCloud extracts from comics and presents so vividly here are useful to novelists, sociologists, film makers, artists, roboticists — anyone interested in human expression. That’s probably you.

Indeed, even if you have no interest in comics at all, this charming book will win a place in your life because ultimately it is about communication and stories — and those are the foundations of all cultures. Making Comics teaches you the visual elements of stories. If I had to re-title it, I would call this book Making Visual Stories.

Finally, as an example of communication itself, this comic book has few peers. I read, review and use hundreds of how-to books every year. I can’t think of any instructional manual in any subject that is clearer, more thorough, more honest, more user friendly than Making Comics.

As I said, it’s a classic. You can expect to find marked-up copies on bookshelves (or on hard drives) a hundred years from now.

Sierra Stove

There I was, in driving rain, cooking breakfast under a tree over an intense, portable fire. Fresh coffee and scrambled eggs.

It was a Sierra Stove I got for $52. It’s a mini-forge, forcing air into a small insulated chamber where a double handful of twigs (or dung or whatever) can heat water in a couple minutes—just a little longer than a butane stove, but with NO fuel or fuel containers to carry. One enthusiast hiked from Mexico to Canada cooking with one, claims Chip in The Compleat Walker IV. Chip himself now claims to camp largely solar–with backback solar charged batteries running his flashlights and his Sierra Stove.

The basic unit I got weighs 18 ounces and is clever and well-evolved. Accessory goodies can be found at the manufacturer’s site. The newest item is a titanium version that weighs only 10 ounces, for $129.

I was impressed at how little fuel was needed, and how funky it could be. A switch offers high or low speed on the fan, driven by one AA battery. No igniter — my Bic failed me in the rain, but a Lifeboat match and lil’ firestarter saved the day. Unlike butane, the Sierra Stove does blacken your pots and pans, which is the main nuisance — they go in Ziploc bags anyway though. All in all an impressive little rig.

We’ll all want one when the economy collapses completely and we have to live homeless.

Sharpie Twin-Tip

Sharpie markers are well-known for being indelible, particularly on plastic, glass and metal surfaces. Folks in labs, movie sets, and hospitals who need to mark things permanently use Sharpies. If the ink goes on, it won’t come off. What’s special here is that the other tip of these pens is an ultra-fine point Sharpie, fine enough to write like a ball-point pen – but permanently — when you need to. The “industrial” version of Sharpie ink will even resist chemicals and scrubbing. Since more writing surfaces seem to be plastic-like, I find we use Sharpies all the time now.

Stop phone spam/GateGuru/70s Sci-Fi art

Stopping phone spam

For the past 2 years I’ve been using the free Nomorobo service to stop spam calls on my landlines and it works fantastically. A few months ago I started using the paid Nomorobo app on my phone, and suddenly all those dumb spam calls have ceased. There are a number of phone spam eliminator apps, but Nomorobo is one that does not scarf up your friends’ phone numbers in order to make its white list. — KK

Airport terminal guide

GateGuru is a smartphone app with a lot of travel features, but the only one I use is the amenities list. It will show you all the eateries, shops, and services located in your terminal, along with the location. It also has user ratings for the places. I use it to find the best place to eat when I’m waiting for a flight. — MF

Streaming art

I’m enjoying this stream of old science fiction art, mostly from the heydays in the 1970s. Comes as an Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, or RSS feed. — KK

Best inexpensive hair curler

Over the years I’ve spent anywhere from $20 to $150 on heat styling tools, and this $25 Remington Curling Wand is the best hair curler I’ve ever owned. It heats up in 30 seconds and the curls keep all day, even through the next day. I owned the smaller ½-inch wand for 5 years before I bought the larger 1-inch wand and now I can curl all my hair in less than 5 minutes. — CD

Longer-lasting herbs

If you are lucky enough to stumble across these lightly dried herbs by Gourmet Garden in your grocery store, give them your money. I always buy up basil, cilantro and parsley. They last more than a month longer than fresh herbs and taste just as good. Here’s a store locator. — CD

Zippered mesh pouches

These small Japanese zipper pouches are made a some kind of sturdy, fine mesh so you can easily see what you put in them. I bought an 8-pack for $9. It includes four 8” x 5.5” pouches and four 9” x 7” pouches. They’re great for travel. — MF

Cool Flow Respirator

I am convinced that the single most effective tool you can have on hand for an ABC disaster (Atomic, Biological, or Chemical) is a good face mask. The danger of nuclear radiation is primarily from fallout, which drifts as air-born particles. Same for many chemical spills; their poison also drifts on microscopic airborne droplets. And the biological toxins we most fear also travel in the air as particles. A face mask covering nose and mouth can reduce (not eliminate) the risk of inhaling these particles.

But face masks are useless unless worn, and are not worn (for long) if uncomfortable. I’ve been trying out various inexpensive masks that I could wear for many hours without going crazy. I found the Cool Max to be the only respirator I could keep on for long periods. The Cool Max [now called Cool Flow] are cheap N95 units (workshop, not surgical quality) that fold out and fit on the face with two elastic straps. The enlarged surface area eases breathing, and removes that suffocating sensation I usually get from wearing respirators. I could talk, drive, and work outside in the garden for hours without much discomfort. These masks are cheap enough that I have stocked a supply for our household (you’ll need more than one).

Recently I attended a meeting for the world’s avian flu experts and asked them how effective a face mask like Cool Max would be in an avian flu epidemic. (I had already learned that touching hands transmits more viruses between people than does sneezing; so it makes no sense to wear a mask without wearing gloves.) About half of the flu researchers believed a mask would not do anything at all (viruses are smaller than the filter pores), and the other half said that of course it would help since the viruses ride along on larger particles. When I asked them how many of them would personally have their families wear one in a flu pandemic, they almost all said they would. Although the efficacy of masks with viruses is unproven, there is no harm in using them, as long as you don’t believe it guarantees anything.

My research came down to this: Better than hoarding Tamiflu, sequestering some face masks and disposable gloves is the cheapest, easiest and most productive thing you can do to prepare for a flu epidemic beforehand. Fancier, more sophisticated face masks would probably be more effective if you kept them clean and were willing to wear them. But I find it cumbersome to walk around with a gas mask. These Cool Max respirators will at least be worn for the durations needed, and will reduce your risk of inhaling ABC particles.

And, oh, they work really great keeping dust out, too!

Tod E. Kurt, Co-founder of ThingM

Our guest this week is Tod E. Kurt. Tod runs ThingM, an IoT device studio in Pasadena. He is creator of the blink(1) USB notification light and BlinkM Smart LED. He co-founded CRASH Space, a Los Angeles hackerspace. He is the author of “Hacking Roomba” and long ago worked on cameras for Mars probes.

Subscribe to the Cool Tools Show on iTunes | RSS | Transcript | Download MP3 | See all the Cool Tools Show posts on a single page

Show notes:

Stickvise PCB Vise with Standard Nylon Jaws ($30)

“The main difference between this vise and other vises you might use to hold your work is that it maintains your work parallel to your desktop. And that’s the other thing: it isn’t attached to a surface. It just kind of sits on your desk. It’s very small, and it’s made for doing electronics work. But I’ve seen people use it for things like jewelry and other sort of small work where you’re kind of on a desk and you need to have something that’s held flat. And the reason why you need it to be held flat for electronics is because you don’t want the parts to slide off as you’re soldering them down. If you’re doing surface mount work, it’s just like things are just kind of sitting on top and then you have to solder them down.”

Viltrox Super Slim LED Light Pane ($34)

“Anyone who has a work bench has had to try to solve the problem of how do you light up the space you’re working in, and for me I’ve tried fluorescent light tubes, the standard long tubes. I’ve tried LED strip that I then stuck to a base and then had that. But they’ve all been a little fiddly, and it becomes hard to either adjust the brightness or adjust the color temperature, which I’ve really liked lately. A lot of lights now you can change if you want them to be a noon, like a bluish-white that you’d see during noonday, or a more orangey-yellow white, one you’d see during the evening. And now there’s all these lights, all these LED-based lights out there, where you can have a knob to tune the color temperature. And this LED light panel, it’s about maybe six inches on a side, and it’s normally meant to be mounted on top of a camera for photography people to take pictures and to light their subject, but I found you can just mount it above your bench and it becomes a great task light.”

Koolertron 4.3″ LCD Digital USB Microscope ($79)

“I stumbled across this little microscope, and it’s perfect because it’s super portable. I can just kind of drag it around wherever I need it, and I’ll stick circuit boards that I’m looking at to see how the manufacturing of them went. When I’m soldering stuff, sometimes I’ll stick the circuit board I’m working on underneath it to see it. And because it is fully-self-contained — it’s a digital device, digital microscope, but it’s got a screen built in, and the screen’s good — I don’t need a computer and have to look up at a computer all the time. I can just look at it. And so it’s just brilliant.”

Asus Chromebox2 ($170)

“Everyone’s probably heard of Chromebooks. They’re the little notebooks that run only Chrome, the browser. This is exactly that, but it looks kind of like a Mac mini. So you have to bring your own keyboard and mouse and screen to the game, but it’s a lot cheaper. And so you plug in your mouse, keyboard — or as what I do, I’ve got a little combo mouse-keyboard thingy — and an old display, and suddenly you’ve got a working computer that’s on the net. You can just log in with your Google account, and you’ve got a Chrome browser that just is on the net. You can watch YouTube. You can look at documentation. That’s what I use it for. I have the schematics that I’m working against or maybe some educational videos that I’m following along with. I have that next to me. And because it’s this little, tiny, cheap computer, I don’t care if it gets a little dirty from being in the workshop.”

Also mentioned:

blink(1)

It’s a non-obtrusive notification light. You can hook it up to events on the Net you care about (“new mail”, “server down”, “it’s going to rain”).

We have hired professional editors to help create our weekly podcasts and video reviews. So far, Cool Tools listeners have pledged $342 a month. Please consider supporting us on Patreon. We have great rewards for people who contribute! – MF

Nail Puller

A nail puller like the ones reviewed in Cool Tools earlier (here and here) is not the best. It will gouge a quite horrible crater in your material unless the nail is at the surface, or just the right size. With this one, on the other hand, I can extract a headless nail from more than a centimeter inside a beam. The wood was not unscratched of course, but since it was compressed rather than splintered, a bit of water can make it swell back up somewhat.

Talin, Recovering game programmer

Our guest this week is Talin. Talin is a “recovering game programmer” whose career spans 25 years, stretching from the early years of personal computing to more recent games like Sim City 4 and The Sims 2. He’s also a writer, artist, cosplayer, musician and web developer.

Subscribe to the Cool Tools Show on iTunes | RSS | Transcript | Download MP3 | See all the Cool Tools Show posts on a single page

Show notes:

Inkscape SVG editor

“It’s a editor for SVG files, Scalable Vector Graphics, which is a web standard. You know most images are made out of pixels, little square blocks, but vector images are made out of lines and points and geometric shapes. That means they can be scaled up and scaled down without any loss of quality. All the major browsers support them, so SVG’s very efficient. Most websites use SVGs for their icons now, because SVG is a web standard, it can be embedded in the web page directly, without having to do a separate download, which you would have to do with an image. That makes for much fewer network connections, so it’s very efficient. … It’s one of the most polished and professional opensource apps out there. It’s better than GIMP in many ways, in terms of its overall level of quality of the user interface.”

ResMed AirSense CPAP machine

“I suffered from sleep apnea, like many people do, and I didn’t know this until about 20 years ago and somebody told me, “Hey, by the way, do you know that you choke when you’re sleeping?” Sleep apnea is essentially an extreme form of snoring, where your nasal passages get blocked up and you start to choke. …This has all kinds of negative effects. It means you’re tired all the time. You don’t get enough sleep, and also because you’re at a reduced oxygen level, it has other health impacts. So they recommended that I get a CPAP machine. CPAP stands for Continuous Positive Air Pressure. It’s kind of like a miniature iron lung. It’s basically a little mask that fits over your face and provides a gentle air pressure to inflate your nasal tissues, so that you get a clear airflow. It takes a little getting used to at first, but now that I’ve been using it for 10 years, I don’t think I could sleep without it. Well, I can but it’s actually more comfortable now, to be able to breathe freely when I’m lying down like that. … I’ve tried a couple ones, and the thing is, is that every one I get is better than the last, because the technology keeps improving. The machine I’ve got right now is about a year old. It’s a ResMed AirSense. It’s actually a BiPAP machine. Which means that it actually senses. It’s got a computer system that senses that you’re breathing, and that adjusts the pressure for your inhale and exhale, so that it’s actually easier. You don’t have to breathe against the pressure as you’re breathing out.”

Forbidden Desert Board Game

“First of all, I really like cooperative board games. I find winning is not that interesting. I like collaboration and cooperation. The thing I love about cooperative board games is that every turn becomes this kind of creative brainstorming session. … Forbidden Desert, it’s a very interesting cooperative game. It has an interesting play mechanic, where the board is changing its configuration as you’re playing. The desert consists of a bunch of tiles, and as you, each turn there’s a new storm card that comes up, and it moves the storm around. Every time the storm moves, it shifts the tiles, and so as you’re playing it’s like you’re playing on shifting sands. The goal of the game is you’re working together to find all of the hidden pieces of the lost airship, so that you can escape the desert before you run out of water, because every time a sun-beats-down card comes up, you all lose one unit worth of water, and if you run out of water the game ends.”

The Captain is Dead Board Game

“This is a great one. The Captain is Dead is kind of a parody of classic Star Trek. The basic premise is that you are all crewmen on a star-ship where the captain has died, and you’re being attacked by aliens, and all these things are going wrong. Each crewman has a different role. There’s a dozen different crewmen you can choose from, and usually have four or five players, each with a different role. It’s like, the doctor, and the hologram, and the alien. There’s even one that’s called crewman, which wears a red shirt, and every time he dies he respawns on the bridge as a new character. Every turn there’s a new disaster that you have to cope with, like the systems are going down, or you have a weird anomaly that’s changing the crew behavior. A lot of it is trading resources. It’s like, I’ll have three engineering skill cards, and I’ll use the communication system to give you three of my engineering skills so that next turn you can fix the warp core, and then you can use the teleporter to move me over to the armory so I can attack the aliens. It’s a very challenging game.”

Also mentioned:

Wil Wheaton’s TableTop

 

We have hired professional editors to help create our weekly podcasts and video reviews. So far, Cool Tools listeners have pledged $331 a month. Please consider supporting us on Patreon. We have great rewards for people who contribute! – MF

Elements of Typographic Style

For a long while I’ve been looking for an expert who could guide me through the complex world of typography. I didn’t need another artsy typographical design book. I wanted a reliable friend who could introduce me to the philosophy of type and then also practically guide me through the jungle of fonts to ones that work best. Mr. Bringhurst is that guru. Under his apprentice I understood for the first time how to architecturally shape a page with text, as if I were building a house. I figured out when to kern, or not. Now I find myself drawn back to his study every time I need to craft a book, a webpage, or format a report. The wisdom and experience in this book is astounding. It’s for anyone who makes words visible. That’s all of us. The book is regularly updated. Blessings on Bringhurst.