After recently being involved in a minor fender-bender that resulted in a cracked tail light on my Subaru, I found that replacement parts would cost about $300 brand-new. A thorough web search confirmed that no lower prices could be found for new parts. Then I thought of trying to find the parts from a junkyard, but soon realized that would involve calling all of the junkyards in my area and then traveling to get the part, if one could be found. So I did what any person would do in this day and age and searched Google for used or salvaged auto parts and found this website. Once I entered in the year, make, model of my car and the exact part I needed, I received a phone call a half our later from a junkyard in Alabama that had exactly what I needed. They sent me the part for $95, including shipping.

There are several other sites that do essentially the same thing, i.e. use a standardized format to send a parts request to multiple junkyards and salvage lots around the country. I use this one because it has the nicest interface and I received the best and fastest quote on the parts I needed. One thing I noticed in using these sites is that they all used the same software for selecting the year, make, model of the car and parts needed. Some entrepreneurial software company must have identified this niche and they now monopolize the market for this specialized type of software.

-- Jason Spitzer

Get Used Parts

I've used many different types of spray lubricants over the years, some good, some not so. One problem with all of them is I always lose the little straw that comes with them. Rubber bands always seem to dry out. Hold-it's hold the straw to the can. I haven't lost one yet. Fairly inexpensive as well- $4.99 for twelve. I've given some to friends, they love them as well.

-- Mark Phillips

Hold-It
$5/ 12
Hold-It

Rails-to-Trails (or rail trails) are roads without cars. They are where railways go when they die. Bicycles love them.

Every year 2,000 miles of railways in the US are abandoned. So far, about half of the 300,000 miles railways built by 1916 (the railroad peak) have been taken out of service. Some 13,000 of those miles have been repurposed into bike/hike trails.

Why they're great: 1) You get paths with flat to gentle slopes, 2) no cars, 3) no strip development, and 4) often passing through small towns. These wide, sculpted, relaxing paths are perfect for hiking, horseback, cross-country skiing, skates and particularly bicycles. While most of the rails-to-trails are less than 5 miles long, there are 10 in the country stretching over 100 miles and at least one that is 225 continuous miles. These longer trails are a big hit -- easy, civilized bicycle tours: gentle rides without having to compete with cars. As far as I am concerned, riding bicycles on rail trails is the way to go.

The rails to trails movement began in the mid-west, where most of the abandoned railways were. It has now spread to every state. There are about 1,300 rails-to-trails in the US, with another 1,000 in progress. Backpackers have a network of fabulously signed and maintained long-distance footpath trails; we now have the beginnings of a network of long-distance dedicated bikepaths.

Behind most of this work is the very effective non-profit Rails-to-Trails Conservancy. They publish a magazine, newsletter, and a directory of known rail trails in the US, entitled 1000 Great Rail Trails. It's a bare bones listing with no traveling information; but it is where you go to browse where rail trails exist in particular states. The same info, in slightly less useful search-mode is available on their supplemental website, TrailLink, which includes a list of the 10 longest rail trails, and introductory orientations to most rail trails.

For utilitarian logistical details, the Conservancy publishes 8 region-specific books. I've been using the California one, Rails-to-Trails: California. It covers about 60 rail trails in the state, including several in my own area that I was not aware of.

-- KK

Rails-to-Trails: California
by Ron Quinn
2000, 256 pages
$15
Available from
Amazon

Rails-To-Trails Conservancy

Sample excerpt:

While looking for a mere flexible plastic cutting board suitable for backpacking, I discovered Orikaso plastic-oragami campware. Made of flexible and durable plastic, pre-scored for folding with small plastic snaps, this proved to be a very useful, light, affordable ($6) and cool tool. It serves as cutting board, plate, bowl, pasta strainer, melitta-style coffee maker, and funnel. After three weeks of daily use in Iceland it'll never leave my kit again. Available at REI as well as online.

-- Brad Hill

Orikaso Fold-flat Dish
$6
Available from
REI
Also from
Amazon

Manufactured by
Flatworld

The Mantis tiller is a lightweight tiller (about 25 lbs), which allows for better portability than heavier tillers. It is easily moved from location to location (try that with a big Troy-bilt), and will handle a variety of jobs with various blades on the tiller shafts: tilling, digging shrub or tree holes, aerating lawns, de-thatching lawns, edging sidewalks or planting beds, making the vertical cuts in sod to be (re-)moved,�mixing compost, or even a new steel spring wheel designed to clean cracks or debris and weeds in sidewalks or patios. I have three large bins (4 x 4 x 6�feet each) that I use for composting leaves and grass clippings. I simply take down the front boards and use the Mantis to mix the compost inside and in front of the bins. Then I put the boards back and reload the bins with the mixture. Short work with the Mantis. After viewing my Mantis in action, a landscape company supervisor in Peachtree City bought ten (10) of them for his company use, one for each of their work trucks.

A Mantis is better than competing small tillers like the Honda or Sears, because of the unique design of the tiller blades. They can be swapped side to side to till deeply or lightly, are very sharp and have a squiggly (my word) design that thoroughly mixes the soil. The tiller blades are warranted against breakage. The worm-gear design of the shaft that drives the tiller axles may be unique, as well, since it is very hard to stall this tiller, no matter how many vines you wrap around the axles. The variety of blades, plus the ability to use them for light or heavy penetration (e.g., tilling, aerating and edging) makes the Mantis somewhat unique.

It is not a "heavy-duty" tiller that you would usually use to till an acre of ground. If I needed that job done, I'd rent a Troy-bilt or other massive tiller for dedicated tilling of large areas, even though they are not very easy to transport or use. However my brother used his Mantis to till a large lawn (1/3 acre) which need to be re-sodded.

-- Jim Stagg

The Mantis is a little jewel. They are exceptionally easy to work with, being easy to start and incredibly lightweight. I have two caveats though: 1) To use it most effectively, you have to put it in front of you and then walk backwards, dragging the machine with you while simultaneously trying to keep on eye on the machine and where you're about to step. 2) Tough plants have a tendency to get tangled up in the tines. Fortunately, the tines can be removed, cleaned of offending material, and replaced very quickly.

By the way, Mantis offers a lifetime guarantee on the tiller's tines. If a tine ever breaks, they'll replace it. Hmm.. I guess that would be a "lifetine" guarantee! :) Every home with a garden should have one of these. They're that good.

-- John Bodoni

Mantis 7222
2-cycle
$300
Available from
Mantis

Mantis 7260
4-cycle
$400
Available from
Kimco

There is an electric version
$300
Available from
Clean Air Gardening
Also from Amazon

Manufactured by Mantis
Mantis

This software is the opposite of CAD--- Computer Aided Design--- which is detail-driven. SketchUp gives you total flexibility messing with the FINAL look of something. You work directly with the vision you have, learn what's wrong or right with it, and keep trying variations or starting down new tracks.

You can flick details in and out. How about a corrugated steel roof on the house? No, try standing-seam metal, um, in red. Not bad. Could the pitch of the roof be steeper? That's better. Where should the chimney go? Here on the peak? No, put it over the wall corner for a corner fireplace. Going inside, how would a kiva fireplace look in that corner? It would be better if it was bigger, like that. Plop a couch in there for scale. Better move the doorway over a bit. Yeah that's good enough for now.

I came to this program because I was designing a house I want to build, and I could NOT draw a convincing hip roof. Suddenly with SketchUp I was drawing the whole house, and a basement, trees, and an adjoining building and visualizing the whole site with textured surfaces, in wireframe, in X-ray, with sun shadows, at night with lights on, in walk-through mode. I tried a clerestory my wife fancies and found that it probably wouldn't work with this design. I tried a house based on an existing barn's dimensions and found that wouldn't work either.

Check out the longer feature-tour video. That's what sold me. This is one powerful program, shockingly intuitive to use. It works for a lot more than buildings--- landscapes, worlds. Video game designers use it. Architects use it but don't let their clients touch it for fear of being replaced. There's a whole online community of people creating new downloadable components and textures for it--- humans, pets, kitchen sinks, cappuccino machines, beds, wallpapers, stones, masonries, cars, trees, fences, doors...

The full version, SketchUp Pro 5, costs $500. It's a bargain. Works on Macs and PCs.

--Stewart Brand

SketchUp is unbelievably good. It's everything software *should* be, but isn't: intuitive, productive, stable, and fun. Using a remarkable technology they call "inferencing," SketchUp has an uncanny ability to figure out which direction you wish to draw; using "locking," you can fix that direction and then reference it to other points in the model.

My productivity is skyrocketing. My ability to freely experiment with designs without punishing amounts of rework, and the sheer thrill of seeing what I'm imagining quickly and precisely come to fruition, has me raving to all and sundry about this great product. There's an eight-hour demo available. The product is pricey, but if you do any sort of commercial work, I swear it is going to pay for itself within days. It is simply that good.

-- David Priest

SketchUp Pro 5
$500

Google SketchUp
Free

Spiders up in the corners of the ceiling. Mosquitoes lurking on the wall by the light. Flies on the windowpane. They're hard to hit, and when you do, they squish. So don't even try to hit them...

The Bugzooka looks and sounds (and is priced) like a kids' toy but it has highly evolved efficiency. No batteries. Just cock the bellows on your hip, point the extendable end to within an inch or two of the offending insect, thumb the trigger, and FWOOP!, insect magically gone. Stroll the country house--- thirty spiders, fwoopety-fwoop, all gone in five minutes.

The bugs are sucked in good condition into a chamber on the end of the Bugzooka where they can be studied by a child (probably male) or released humanely. If you really don't care to see the bugs up close, the kit includes a smoked-plastic version of the capture chamber. Now that's nuance.

-- Stewart Brand

Bugzooka
$20
Available from Amazon

Why didn't we think of this earlier? A lock with a password. Much easier to remember. Because there are only 10 letters per ring, you are limited to a mere 1,000 dictionary words and names. I could not program my usual password, or my favorite names, but I did code in a memorable nonsense word, of which many abound. The mechanism has the heft of your standard gym locker lock.

-- KK

Staples Wordlock
$6
Available from Amazon

On long vacation trips when we wash our own undies, socks, and whatnots in our hotel room sink, this nifty braided rubber clothes line is the thing we use to dry them. It weighs a mere few ounces. You stretch it between two secure knobs or hooks, which you can usually find somewhere in a room. (Adding string extenders helps.) The ingenious design allows you to slip a corner of wet clothes between braids, which clinches it without clips or stains. Thus secured, we have no fear about stringing the laundry up outside in a breeze, or under a fan, where they dry fast without blowing away.

-- KK

Rick Steves Travel Clothesline
$10
Available from
Rick Steves Travel Store

This overpriced book contains a set of 40 design strategies for inventing. It is a summation of engineering design principles devised by a Soviet patent examiner in the 1960s who extracted these principles from a study of 200,000 patents. This guy, Altshuller, says that the 10% most innovative patents would use one of these 40 strategies for their novel solutions. Altshuller then went on to construct a system to help engineers consider these elemental strategies for the problems they were working on. His system is called TRIZ, and it has a cult following among process engineers. I like to think of it as Oblique Strategies for engineers.

To employ the system you apply a principle (from the list) at random to the problem, no matter how unlikely, in the hope that this lateral mode of thinking will hatch a novel solution. The best inventors combine these heuristics intuitively, and many veteran engineers have their own set which they have developed over the years. But if you are just starting out as an architect, tinkerer, engineer, hacker, designer, and do-it-yourselfer, you may find this a good place to start. I did, and have already added to the 40 some additional heuristics that work for me.

You can find the entire text of the 40 Principles posted on the TRIZ website; the only advantage of the book are some crude drawings and handy reference format. However I did find the small additional illustrations and real world examples helpful in grokking the often cryptic rules.

-- KK
TRIZ 40 Principles

40 Principles Extended Edition
Genrich Altshuller
2005, 144 pages
$55
Available from
Amazon

Sample excerpt:

My wife and I are both Master Gardeners who live on mountain land where there is not a single level square foot. We have less than 1000 square feet of grass stuff (not really turf) so I have no use for a lawn tractor. Instead we use a Powerwagon. Think of it as an ATV wheelbarrow. It can haul hundreds of pounds of rock, logs, soil, or what have you up steep grades. My wife enjoys building stacked stone walls in almost inaccessible places, and this is the only way that I can get the material to her. I doubt that I could work our property without it. Warning: it is not cheap, but for me it is worth it.

-- Mike Saunders

DR Powerwagon Pro
$1,934
Available from
DR Power

Due to roommates that didn't quite understand my displeasure at my consistently disappearing ice cream, I had to resort to this. Not a gag, it is actually is designed with the intention to work. Though I suppose that since the container it is "locking" is made of waxed cardboard (which can be deformed a bit) it won't keep out a serious professional penetration attempt.

I found that it sends a warning message, sort of like one of those little LED's you put in a car to give the appearance of having an alarm.

-- Morgan Davis

Ben and Jerry's Pint Lock
$6
Available from
Ben & Jerry's

After living in a house with 3 animals for a while, I started to notice the usual hair balls scattered around. I needed a very light, powerful vacuum that could reach corners easily.

I tried a hand-held dustbuster type, but found that its incredibly small storage and lack of any useful way to hold debris inside was just a bad design. After investigating those "Shark" or small Oreck vacuums, I found their prices were much too high and their design didn't look very impressive either, so I passed.

I found my dream machine in the 2 Gallon Stinger Wet/Dry Vac for less than $30. What you get:
Lots of sucking power, very easy to dump out debris, lots of capacity, very light and easy to move around, gets into tight spaces, and much less expensive than those premium models! AND, it will pick up both dry and wet material, as the name implies!

This really is the perfect convenient vacuum for quick clean-ups. And at half to a third the price of those premium models, you can't go wrong.

-- Steven Deterling

Stinger 2 Gallon Wet/Dry Vacuum
Model WD2010
$27
Available from
Home Depot

The best hands-on-guide to nature experiments in print. Chock full of projects doable in a few hours to a day, whether you are an adult or kid. Just outside your door, no matter where you live, is the largest laboratory available anywhere. Hello, living neighborhood!

-- KK

The Amateur Naturalilst
Nick Baker
2005, 256 pages
$20
Amazon

Sample Excerpts:

Mounting and displaying bones.
Forget plastic model-making - this is the ultimate model kit!

1. Position the newspaper behind the web so that you don't get paint all over whatever is behind it, then spray the web evenly and lightly on both sides from a distance of about 40 cm (16 in) - much closer and the pressure of the paint will damage the web. Leave it to dry for a while and repeat.

The Russell Executive Mesh Chair is the Aeron for people on a budget. I've had to sit in many, many different kinds of chairs in my inglorious temping career, and this one is by far the best. Both the seat and the back are mesh, so the chair breathes. The ergonomic control, while not nearly as complete as the Aeron's, is still definitely superior to any chair I've found in the sub-$300 range. As with the Aeron (which goes for twice that amount, or about $600-650 new), the arms are attached to the back, not the seat - and they're easily removed. It's light but sturdy (steel frame) and pretty easy on the eyes (a little bit biomorphic). I've been using mine since late last year and it's vastly improved my relationship with my desk.

Best of all, it's only $230 new at discounters.

-- Finn Brunton

Russell Executive Mesh Chair
$300
Available from, among others, Office Depot
Office Depot

Light, sharp, ergonomic and quiet, this European scythe is not what you'll find in your local hardware store. The handle (snath) is custom-fit, so you stand comfortably upright while 'sweeping' weeds and grass down with ease. Potential uses range from small-acreage hay cutting to weed and brush clearing in variable terrain. I use it as a weed-whacker replacement on my long driveway. You can talk to people and hear birds while 'weed-whacking'. Pretty sweet. The price for a new one puts it up there with gas-powered weed-whackers, but I find the experience much more enjoyable. Honestly, I believe you can clear more area with less sweat using a European scythe than a powered string-trimmer. The key is the light weight of the tool and the sharpness of the blade.

Most people are stunned when they see me take down grass or weed stalks with little more than a gentle nick from the blade. Furthermore, getting it custom fit will make it probably the most pleasant-to-use garden tool you'll ever have. (I'm unusually tall, so maybe this impresses me more than it would a 5'9" man, for example). Here's how a European scythe and string-trimmer weed whacker tally up to each other:

Scythe Pros
Scythe is lighter. Likely to be considerably more ergonomic. Quiet. Free from power source. Stalks intact, no pulverizing of plant-matter.

Scythe Cons
Must keep the blade *sharp* (The $170 kit comes with peening jig and whetstone). Sometimes the direction of approach makes a particular weed hard to cut. You won't be able to pulverize a weed in between rocks or hard things. You must not let the blade hit hard things like rocks or metal.

For those considering a scythe, be sure to get the European style and help end this sad era that has had Americans breaking their backs with horribly un-ergonomic, heavy scythes. For instance, European blades weigh 15 oz, while American style ones weigh twice as much, at 30 oz! Besides the weight difference, the tang on the American style is not angled to help you cut the stalks. The blades are thicker and not as sharp, etc. You'll find a lot more info on why and how to use this tool at Scythe Supply.

-- James Zimmerman

European Scythe
$170 (full kit with sharpening tools)
Available from
Scythe Supply

$90
Available from
The Marugg Company

$112
Available from
Lehmans

Available in the UK from
The Scythe Shop

Travel with your ears. This comprehensive, massive (700-plus pages), and recently updated two-volume guide to global song covers the planet, from Norwegian fiddlers to Filipino folk rockers. It's all here: what kind of music is out there, where it came from, who is playing it, and where to get it. Feeling stuck? Open up this book at random, order a CD, and enter another way of seeing.

-- KK

Rough Guide World Music
Vol. 1: Africa, Europe, Mid East
$18
Available from Amazon

Vol. 2: Latin and North America, the Caribbean, Asia & the Pacific
2000 (2nd edition),Vol. 1, 736 pages, Vol 2, 720 pages
$18
Available from Amazon

Sample Excerpt:

Indonesian Pop
Moluccan Moods Orchestra
(Piranha, Germany). If you haven't heard of the Moluccans since they held up Dutch trains in the 1970s, give this disc a listen. Traditional songs arranged in laid-back style with exciting percussion, keyboards, saxophone and flute.

Albanian
Famille Lela De Permet
Polyphonies vocales et instrumentales d'Albanie
(Indigo/Harmonia Mundi, France). Beautiful and approachable songs and instrumental music from the Permet and Korce regions of southern Albania. Wailing and sliding clarinets give this music an enchanting mournful sound.

The age of the informed consumer is coming about and people are picking and choosing bits of the shopping experience from different channels. My friend and I worked on this, its getting some blog hits at the moment. Basically a phone based price check against amazon items. You call, you enter the isbn, it tells you the prices, whilst you're shopping in store. We did it for ourselves originally, we purchase a lot of computer manuals but it seems to be useful to others as well...

Amabuddy

-- Surj Patel

*******************

Reader Michael Hohl figured out this wonderful way to make your computer Y10K compliant. That is, how to set your computer so that it displays the 5-digit date it will need when we reach the years after 9999: that is 10000 and beyond. In anticipation of that time, you can set this year's date to 02005 if you have Mac OSX Tiger. Here are step-by-step directions. Be first in your neighborhood to have all your documents and files future-proofed.

MIchael Hohl

Great tides software, easily set for locals, like our end of Sausalito and Petaluma.
Mr. Tides

-- Stewart Brand

**************

Most public libraries have online reservation systems. I haven't browsed the library shelves in months. Anytime I see an interesting title now I jump over to the library's web site and reserve it if possible. I get up to 25 books/CDs in my queue at any given time, and quite often it's full. I just head to the library periodically and there's always something or other waiting for me with my name on it. It's not a tool, per se, but I use it as often as I do my SOG Paratool (Leatherman knockoff).

-- Mike Lietz

****************

Joke a Day

It's so much more than just a joke site. It's comprehensively funny and personal. The owner does his level best to keep kids under 18 off the site, as the content is meant for adults only. The forums are beautifully managed and moderated, such that neither flames nor "me too" posts are tolerated. I've seen users as young as 21 and as old as 82 on the forums, and what they have to say is always relevant and interesting. Members of this online community quickly become friends, and parties are thrown throughout the year where people from all over the country and even the world come to hang out together.

This site and the people on it are terrific!

-- Marie Cassidy

Hoggans will make just about any sort of pack or bag to order. I had them make a large fanny pack about 5 years ago. It ran me about $30, but it's quite large, and is made of rubberized sailcloth, so it's waterproof and pretty indestructible. They can make small ones to order too.

Hoggans

-- Don Suarian

****************

I just bought an old house and was trying to figure out how to seal all my older wooden windows. We have storm windows, but they don't make a perfect seal, and anyway I wanted my interior windows to seal better. I tried the usual plastic sheeting approach, but it wouldn't stick well to my stained wood. Then I found DAP SEAL'N' PEEL Removeable Caulk (I got it at Home Depot).

This is wonderful stuff. It's clear, and you just lay a bead down across all the open spaces in your windows. Then, in the summer, you can just peel it off and it isn't supposed to harm painted (and I hope, stained) surfaces. DAP says this "unique removable weatherstrip caulk provides a watertight and weatherproof seal. Seals out drafts and moisture. Peels away easily when removal is desired. Won't damage painted surfaces. Interior/exterior use."

Also available from Amazon

-- Schutz

***************

Have you used the Google SMS service? Google has a service where you text message a name such Record Shop, Indian food, etc. and the zip code or city you're in to 46645 and it messages back to your phone with the info. It's a really nice way to look up businesses when your traveling and away from a computer.

Goggle SMS

-- Andrew Jones

Living in the South, we have thunderstorm and severe weather that pop-up all summer long. There are many websites which offer Doppler radar images for various parts of the country, but none do it better than My-cast.com. It offers real time Doppler radar images - unlike most weather sites (weather.com, WSI, accu-weather)  that often delay the images by more than 20 minutes. In addition, each radar image can be "center" on your location. For example, instead of seeing the radar image's center at the radar site, my-cast.com allows the user to center on your home, your vacation home - making it simpler to gauge the location and speed of approaching storms. They will even send you an e-mail alerting you of tornado, hurricane, and thunderstorm warnings. All of this is free. One final feature (for a small monthly fee) you can have these images delivered to you on your cell phone. If you have Java or BREW-enabled mobile phones, you can use this service to check conditions and forecasts, view animated radar for your location, and get severe weather updates. Great for pilots, boaters, soccer coaches, etc.

Gregg Lewis

****************

Public Radio Fan

One of the very best finds online ever. The sound quality is perfect. Unbelievably great. A perfect 10.

-- Joseph Stirt

****************
Your world textiles entry makes me wonder if you know about Beneficial Ts, a division of Patagonia? This is part of their effort to make organic cotton products more widely available. They're really aimed at doing bulk runs, so they aren't happy about selling smallish quantities - but I've bought as few as a dozen shirts at a time. Great quality, OK prices (compared to other blank Ts), help save the earth.

Beneficial T's

-- Chris Kantarjiev