tools

the wirecutter’s trustworthy technology reviews

We find ourselves spending a lot of time sifting through product review websites as we try to make smart purchases. This can be a tedious process, and often we end up more unsure of what we’re looking for than when we started. That’s why we were really excited to discover The Wirecutter ,”a list of only great technology”. Run by Brian Lam, a former Gizmodo and Wired writer, the site lists “the best” in gadgets, from phones and TVs to cables and wireless music, to vacuum cleaners and electric toothbrushes.

We came across the site while researching portable hard drives, and really loved the layout of Lam’s reviews.Lam names the Lenovo Thinkpad USB 3.0 Secure Hard Drive as the best, but gives a thorough explanation of his choice and offers a couple of cheaper options that he still recommends. At the end of his write-ups, he includes a list of the “best sources” on his product choices, so you have easy access to a few other reputable reviews and his evaluation process.

Best of all, we like the way he thinks. read more…

02.01.12 | comments | in resources, resources blogs + sites, services, technology, tools |

string lights as everyday indoor lighting

photo: blog.ounodesign.com

The great blog Ouno recently documented a visit to Taliesin West, Frank Lloyds Wright’s winter home and the main campus of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. A photo of the “dinner cabaret room” caught our eye: strings of tiny lights glowe3d on the ceiling. We don’t know if this is a Wrightian touch or an innovation of the current caretakers (more images below). But it got us thinking about using string lights as actual indoor lighting…not Christmas lights, but strings of lights with bigger, more illuminating bulbs.

So, we went on the hunt for ideas and sources, to explore the possibilities.

We love these lights hung vertically to make a partition and define a room… read more…

01.31.12 | comments (3) | in housewares, inside, lighting, materials, reimagine, resources, tools |

cheap, chic, useful: anthropologie’s ephemera clip

A satisfying find from the recently-redesigned Remodelista: Anthropologie’s Ephemera Clip. Made of distressed iron (wonder if it will rust…then it might get REALLY beautiful), with a hole in one handle so you can hang it, it is like a little sculpture…Endlessly useful for clipping together receipts, papers, closing food bags…

01.26.12 | comments | in cheap + great, elements, gifts, tools |

the creative possibilities for being ‘on hold’ via christophe neimann

christophe niemann for the new york times

A revelation from last weekend’s New York Times’ Magazine: the great Christophe Niemann doodle made while he was ‘on hold’ forever, waiting for a person to pick up, listening to Clair de Lune. Click to listen while you follow the amazing path Niemann wandered and the many discoveries he made…

(Our strategy for being “on hold” is to wear an old-fashioned telephone headset - an essential tool – so we can write, scan blogs, surf…as we follow one thing to another… draw….and make cups of tea…cook. It’s not so much being “on hold” that we mind, it’s the irritating music that’s the problem. Take away the music, and it wouldn’t bother us much at all.)

What do you do while you’re on hold?

01.25.12 | comments (2) | in paths + processes, people, resources, solutions, tools |

portable rubber stamp for instant business cards + signs

Inspector Stamp Card

We are big fans of impromptu business cards as well as interesting signs posted on public walls, or, well, anywhere. So we’re smitten with the possibilities inherent in Printery & Bindery’s compact, portable self-inking rubber stamp, with a ring to affix it to your key chain, for anywhere stamping. You could have it made up to print your essential info for instant business cards, OR design a sign you want to stamp around town…like CREATE! or JOY! or BE YES!. At $23, they’re a bargain (and a gift we’d want to get).

via Swiss-Miss

01.04.12 | comments | in cheap + great, gifts, resources, stores, strategies, tools |

foolproof roast turkey recipe + brining strategies

pioneer woman with wild turkey, helvetia West Virginia

photo: helvetia west virginia archive

I know of very few people who don’t get anxious at the prospect of roasting a turkey. Because the breast cooks more quickly than the dark meat thigh, it is often dry and overcooked by the time the bird comes out of the oven. Nobody seems to be certain of what, exactly, the best roasting method is, whether high heat or low, tented with foil, or roasted breast down.

Brining, submerging the bird in a salt-and-sugar solution before roasting it, is one of the most foolproof ways I know of to insure a succulent, flavorful roasted turkey. And the best brine I know of for turkey was created by Alice Waters, the inspired, inspiring founder and guiding light of Chez Panisse in Berkeley California, from whom this recipe was adapted (and published in A New Way to Cook.) The seasonings in the brine bring out the turkey’s natural flavor, and make it taste more like a farm bird with subtle herbal overtones.

The only problem with brining are the logistics: read more…

11.17.11 | comments | in celebrations, family + friends, food, recipes, strategies, tools |

painting kits from 100,000 years ago, and today

photo © science/aaas

Remember the beautiful Chauvet cave paintings we wrote about a few months ago? Well every artist needs his or her toolkit, and archeologists recently discovered what appear to be “artist kits” in a South African cave. The kits, which date back 100,000 years, are made of abalone shells, perfect for holding and transporting essential painting materials: a quartzite stone for grinding up pigments like charcoal and ochre – which produces rich reds and yellows – and the pigments themselves. The ground pigments were poured into the shell and mixed with a liquid to make paint. One of the kits held a slender bone from the front leg of a wolf or dog with one end dipped in ochre: a possible paint brush. The kits are the first known instance of homo sapiens compounding a painting medium. Charcoal and ochre are the same materials used in the Chauvet cave, but those paintings are only 30,000 years old.

The desire to create is built into our very DNA. Our lineage is full of artists… read more…

11.03.11 | comments | in art, gifts, identity, paths + processes, people, resources, sightings, tools |

d-i-y bench of strapped-together boards

Dutch Interior magazine VT Wonen recently commissioned stylist Frans Uyterlinden to create interesting ‘show house’ using an eclectic mix of materials. (Check out a preview at VosgesParis). Our favorite bit: a bench/sideboard made by lashing together recycled boards. We see big possibilities in this idea… read more…

10.06.11 | comments | in cheap + great, cool spaces, copy this!, d-i-y, elements, how-to, inside, materials, reclaim, resources, tools |

‘what to focus on’, reminder via marc johns

We really love the message of this drawing from Marc Johns. Apparently quite a few folks have used his drawings for their tattoo design, so he’s selling it as a temporary (stick-on) tattoo. With all that’s been going on in the world, we think it’s the perfect reminder…easily done with a nontoxic pen. read more…

09.12.11 | comments | in art, identity, people, resources, signs, tools |

sugru inspires repairs and hacks

When the wooden knob came off our 50′s Danish tea kettle, we TRIED EVERYTHING we could think of make it stick tightly to its metal lid that would regularly got really hot. No longterm success. We finally put the kettle in the street hoping someone would find a use for it. We wish we’d known about Sugru, a silicone “modeling clay” that sticks to many materials including aluminum, steel, ceramics, glass and some plastics like perspex. You’ve got 30 minutes to mold it or use it as you want; after that, it’ll cure at room temperature, into a tough, flexible materials that is waterproof, and can withstand temperatures from -76′ to 356′F.

According to Sugru’s site, it is the brainchild of Jane, who was studying product design when she had an idea: “I don’t want to buy new stuff all the time. I want to hack the stuff I already have so it works better for me.” So she enlisted some materials scientists to help her develop a material that would allow her to do that.

We’re inspired by the gallery of possible uses sent in by Sugru users…Our favorites:

using it to adapt a videocamera for skydiving…

…and adding grippy feet to a chopping board to keep it from sliding…

…and making a usb lid connector to keep from losing the little cap…

We especially love their philosophy: “Hack things better. That’s our motto…It’s not about ‘making-do’, it’s about taking control of our stuff; modifying and improving the products we own so that they work better for us.”

YES!!!

We already have a ton of ideas for using Sugru, and ordered some in chic black and white.

You can buy it here, in packs of colors, or black-and-white, or small packs of single colors.

Related posts: repair manifesto is a force!

the fixer’s collective: improvisational mending + fix

duct tape repair of bear-ravaged plane

lemon squeezer repair in honor of platform 21

hacking ikea: throw away the book!

07.06.11 | comments | in cheap + great, materials, paths + processes, resources, stores, tools |

hula-hooping as life-changing exercise

A while ago, we noticed a woman walking down the street with two brightly-colored hula hoops balanced on her shoulder. We ran after her to find out what she was doing with them, and where she was heading. She told us she was going to practice hula hooping, to which she was devoted. She called herself Suzi Hoops and she said she LOVES hula hooping because “Whatever is wrong and bothering you in your life disappears.”

Suzi came to hula hooping couple of years ago when she saw a sign for a free hula hoop class being offered at Groove Hoops, a hula hoop performance troop. She went to the class and got hooked right away, finding hula hooping to be the perfect exercise and a great way to meet cool people (“who are always have a smile”). “Hula hooping is hopeful.” she said. We asked her if she’d spin her hoops for us and she did (we’re sorry we didn’t shoot video)… read more…

06.17.11 | comments (2) | in health, outside, paths + processes, people, projects + play, sightings, tools, video |

dental floss shoe repair (thinking on your feet!)

Charles McFarlane

Charles McFarlane, a friend who is a student at the Rudolf Steiner school (and who provided the material for the great post on World War II improvisations recently), sent us this inspired improv he spotted at school.

“…when a friend’s canvas shoes started to separate at the sole, he used dental floss to chain stitch them back together.”

Great! (We never thought about dental floss….)

Made any good repairs lately?

Thanks Charles!

ribbon watchband repair

the fixer’s collective: improvisational mending + fixing

lemon squeezer repair in honor of platform 21

repair manifesto is a force!

duct tape repair of bear-ravaged plane

06.13.11 | comments (3) | in cheap + great, d-i-y, materials, paths + processes, reclaim, resources, tools |

d-i-y stylish stools made of random wood scraps

Stuart Mason Dambrot, ‘the improvised life’s resident concilientist|futurist has sent us many wonderful ideas since our first syncronous meeting on a New York City street corner. The latest, the work of designer Siren Elise Wilhelmsen, inventor of the Toast Spoons we recently blogged as well as Found, an oddly stylish stool put together from scraps found in a carpenter’s workshop. “Depending on which business and which projects they are working on, the waste will always be different and one stool will never look the same as the other; each item is unique.” read more…

05.17.11 | comments (4) | in cheap + great, furniture, how-to, inside, materials, repurpose, resources, tools |

toast spoons and the (r)evolutionary process

When Consilientist | Futurist Stuart Dambrot alerted us to Norwegian designer Siren Elise Wilhelmsen’s toast spoon s, we were totally smitten. We envisioned them brushed with olive oil and a cut clove of garlic, to eat our soup/stew/eggs with. Then we realized that they were part of a bigger study, of the idea that “Like the fascintating species of nature are a result of biological evolution, our everyday products are results of an artificial evolution; both are the results of optimization of hereditary characteristics from generation to generation.”

Feeling that the spoon had come to the end of its evolution, having hardly changed for hundreds of years (except in its decoration), Wilhelmsen set about to explore its evolutionary possibilities, adding into the mix ‘different ways of human eating’ (necessity just about always being the mother of invention). The experiment came up with some “interesting spin-offs, read more…

05.05.11 | comments | in food, housewares, paths + processes, people, principles, repurpose, resources, tools |

knife rack as magnetic note board, recipe holder

Remodelista

Tucked into Remodelista’s recent Knife Rack Roundup was this image: knife rack as impromptu message board, holding a recipe or list, or billet-doux (a love letter).

Great!

05.02.11 | comments | in housewares, inside, kitchen, tools |