January 2006 Archive
Best Back-Scratching Device?
As age takes its toll, I am less able to curl my arm around and scratch those hard-to-reach areas between the shoulder blades. Also, as my significant other becomes less spry, he is less willing to jump out of his chair to scratch my back for me--or at least, that's his excuse. Indeed he was the one who found the MaxScratch, to relieve himself of the chore.
I realize that this sounds a bit frivolous, but for $10 I now possess a simple tool that really does work better than hastily improvised scratching devices such as an 18-inch steel ruler (which was what I tended to use in the past, with sometimes painful results). The MaxScratch terminates in a pad of rounded spikes fabricated from some clever kind of flexible plastic, just right for relieving an inch without causing dermal abrasions. Also it comes in its own little carry bag. You may laugh, but I think it's neat.
-- Helen Briggs
MaxScratch
$10
Available from MaxScratch
A Simple Garlic Masher
 
My cool tool for the day is the Garlic Twist. It's very hard plastic so it's easy (and satisfying) to smash the cloves with it to remove the skin. The teeth inside do a great job of quickly mincing two cloves at a time, and it's easy to clean. The polycarbonate from which it is manufactured is dishwasher-safe.
I'm pretty proficient at mincing garlic with a chef's knife, but I find this to be less trouble. It's far superior to any garlic peeler or press I've ever used, even very expensive ones. It's a simple thing, but it works very well.
-- Adam Fields
The Garlic Twist
$13
Available from
Amazon
Since contributor Ryan Lewandowski apparently hasn't used the following item personally, I can't include it as a regular Cool Tool, but the online promotional video is so compelling, I encourage you to check it out at Sawstop.
The SawStop is a table (circular) saw that supposedly stops itself if you touch it with your finger. The video uses a hot dog as a finger substitute, which is marred by only a shallow nick before the saw arrests and retracts with a bang. According to the "how it works" section of the site, the safety system is electronically actuated by the capacitance of the human body. Since I have always felt uneasy using table saws, this innovation is of great personal interest. If anyone has used it, I'd love to hear about your experience.
Reciprocating Blade for Tight Spaces
I'm in the process of restoring an old lapstrake wooden boat. The MultiMaster with a saw blade was the perfect tool for cutting out a section of a board. The boards overlap each other, and the travel of the blade of a jigsaw or reciprocal saw was too great to target the piece of the board that overlaps another board. Even doing it with a handsaw was too difficult to control on this tough wood.
The MulitMaster tool is just a vibrating head. So it vibrates this little sawblade and it cuts right through with great accuracy. The blade itself has very little travel, making it perfect for this application. I shoved a thin piece of sheet metal between the overlap of the planks to keep from sawing into the other board, and I was able to cut exactly where I wanted to. I know of no other tool that I could do that with, though I'd love to hear of any alternatives.
-- Monty Zukowski
Fein Multi-Master MSXE-636-2 Electric Variable Speed Kit with Flush Cutting Blade & Scraper
$240
Available from
Amazon
Manufactured by Feinus
Hardened Tool Steel Bits In a Small 4mm Drive Configuration
I use small/micro screwdrivers all the time to work on cameras, computers, micro electronics etc. I've had the same set of Wiha microbits for going on 10 years now. I bought the following special bit set and have never needed another screwdriver set or bit. They make many other kinds of drivers and bits as well.
ESD SAFE MicroBit Set #75992
Slotted, Phillips, TORX, Inch HEX
Precision ESD System 4 MicroBit Set
27 Pieces In Molded Indexed Box
4-Slotted Bits: 1.5, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0,
4-Phillips Bits: #000, #00, #0, #1
9-TORX: T3, T4, T5, T6, T7, T8, T9, T10, T15
8-Hex: .050, 1/16, 5/64, 3/32, 7/64, 1/8, 9/64, 5/32
1-Extension: 100mm Long
1-Handle: ESD Safe Anti-Static
They are made in Germany of course.
--Vin Capone
Wiha Microbit Set, 27pc
$52
Available from
Amazon
Manufactured by Wiha Tools
Custom-Printed Graph Paper
  
OK, so I wanted to sit down and workout a grand plan for my new garden, so I figure a pencil and some graph paper is the way forward.
Just finding some simple 2mm graph paper with 1cm semi bold and 2 cm bold turned out to be a near impossible task. Then I discovered the Graph Paper PDF Generator at incompetech.com .
It does plain paper, lined paper, multi width, hexagonal, even semi-bisected trapezoid! All completely customizable. And it's free!
--Mark Coffey
Free Online Graph Paper / Grid Paper PDFs
$0
Available from Incompetech
Manufactured by Incompetech
Book Manipulation Device
 
When I was a teenager I remember reading a science-fiction story which predicted that by the 21st century, information would be piped directly into the brain. In this story, a character encountered that most archaic object, an old-fashioned book, and felt appalled that people in the 20th century had been forced to endure so much physical discomfort, holding books and turning their pages manually--or trying to prevent the pages from turning if there was a breeze.
Well, here we are in 2006, and yet another science-fiction prediction has failed to pan out. While we're waiting for wetware implants, we'll just have to make do with a stopgap solution: A plastic thumb aid.
The Thumb Thing
$3
Available from ABC Stuff
Manufactured by Thumb Thing
Nonstreaky Lens Cleaner
How do you keep a camera lens clean? You cover it with a filter. But how do you keep the filter clean?
I floundered for many years with streaky Kodak solutions and other goofy products, till I was referred to a mysterious product called Pancro by an extraordinary AC named David "AC Dave" Wendlinger. Pancro comes in industrial white bottles with a big sticker on the front, "PANCRO Professional Lens Cleaner Non-Streaking Non-Residue Non-Toxic Fast-Drying" (almost poetic).
Who knows what it is. But it works like magic. Now my lenses are spotless. This stuff cleans anything with glass; binoculars, telescopes, cameras, rearview mirrors. I carry a little bottle of it in my pocket for my eyeglasses. A pack of Rosco Lens Tissue goes well with it.
Best practice for cleaning the lens/filter? First, hold the camera upside down with the front lens pointing down. Use a little blower with SOFT bristle brush to blow off any particles from the lens surface, particles which will fall off the lens aided by gravity. Put a few drops of Pancro on the Rosco lens tissue and softly polish the lens in a circular motion. Rotate use of the 4 corners and both sides of the tissue so that you always are using a clean part of the tissue to avoid grinding grime into the lens surface. Repeat upside down brush operation if necessary. Inspect with extremely bright flashlight pointed at angle to the element. Some people recommend a cloth instead of the Rosco paper, but I've found them too fussy to keep clean and free of abrasive particles. Canned air can work as well, but it can streak the lens if Freon is accidentally sprayed when help upside down or sideways. And it can't be checked in baggage legally.
--Paul Lundahl (Creative Director/Partner, eMotion Studios)
Pancro Lens Cleaning Fluid, 4oz
$20
Available from Studio Depot
Manufactured by Pancro
Your European Guru
An award in heaven should be given to those authors who update their good books every year until they are great books. Rick Steves's guidebook on intelligent travel in Europe has been around decades, but it gets better with each yearly edition. That's because for the past twenty years Steves has spent 130 days each year exploring new and re-exploring odd corners of the continent. From this wealth of experience he delivers not only the best guide to Europe, but the best general guide to smart traveling anywhere. I spent a decade full-time traveling myself, and these days I go to Europe once a month; this book has directed me to many specific towns or regions that retain distinctive cultures, places which would otherwise have taken me years of visits to find. Among the techniques Steves offers is a sort of laser traveling (head directly from the airport to the quintessential regions, skip the rest) which only works because he knows where to send you. There are a thousand hard-earned tips on cheap travel, on getting comfortable with a different way of doing things, and, bless his soul, he updates the darn thing every year with the latest prices. I consume travel books by the barrelful, including Lonely Planets, Rough Guides, and so on; this is the one to study, the one you want to re-read. It's not about London and Paris; it is not a guidebook. It's about how to make jokes in beginners' Italian, or attend a wedding on a Greek island. With Steves's guidance you can finally do that inexpensive grand tour of Europe you've always meant to do, or, better, bestow a roundtrip ticket and this book to a recent graduate and it'll be as good an education as they've had.
Here is my review of Rick's DVD crash course on European Budget Travel.
-- KK
Rick Steves' Europe Through the Backdoor 2006
Rick Steves
2006, 672 pages
$15
Available from Amazon
Excerpts:
In many ways, spending more money only builds a thicker wall between you and what you came to see. Europe is a cultural carnival, and time after time, you'll find that its best acts are free and the best seats are the cheap ones.
*
Travel is addicting. It can make you a happier American, as well as a citizen of the world. Our Earth is home to nearly 6 billion equally important people. It's humbling to travel and find that people don't envy Americans. Europeans like us, but with all due respect, they wouldn't trade passports.
*
Extroverts have more fun. If you see four cute men on a bench, ask them to scoot over.
*
The Big Sleep: Arrive 30 minutes before your train leaves. Walk most of the length of the train but not to the last car. Choose a car that is going where you want to go, and find an empty compartment. Pull two seats out to make a bed, close the curtains, turn out the lights, and pretend you are sound asleep. It's amazing. At 21:00, everyone on that train is snoring away! The first 30 people to get on that car have room to sleep. Number 31 will go into any car with the lights on and people sitting up. The most convincing "sleepers" will be the last to be "woken up." (The real champs put a hand down their pants and smile peacefully.)
*
Museum Strategies
Eavesdrop. If you are especially interested in one piece of art, spend half an hour studying it and listening to each passing tour guide tell his or her story about David or the Mona Lisa or whatever. They each do their own research and come up with different information to share. Much of it is true. There's nothing wrong with this sort of tour freeloading. Just don't' stand in the front and ask a lot of questions.
*
For $20, you can rent a couchette (bunk bed) on your overnight train. Top bunks give you a bit more room and safety - but BYOB.
*
Tips on Creative Communication
Be melodramatic. Exaggerate the local accent. In France, communicate more effectively (and have more fun) by sounding like Maurice Chevalier or Inspector Clouseau. The locals won't be insulted; they'll be impressed. Use whatever French you know. But even English, spoken with a sexy French accent, makes more sense to the French ear. In Italy, be melodramatic, exuberant, and wave those hands. Go ahead, try it: Mama mia! No. Do it again. MAMA MIA! You've got to be uninhibited. Self consciousness kills communication.
Desperate Telephone Communication
Let me illustrate with a hypothetical telephone conversation. I'm calling a hotel in Barcelona from a phone booth in the train station. I just arrived, read my guidebook's list of budget accommodations, and I like Pedro's Hotel. Here's what happens:
Pedro answers, "Hotel Pedro, grabdaboodogalaysk."
I ask, "Hotel Pedro?" (Question marks are created melodically.)
He affirms, already a bit impatient, "Si, Hotel Pedro."
I ask, "Habla Eng-leesh?"
He says, "No, dees ess Ehspain." (Actually, he probably would speak a little English or would say "moment" and get someone who did. But we'll make this particularly challenging. Not only does he not speak English -- he doesn't want to... for patriotic reasons.)
Remembering not to overcommunicate, you don't need to tell him you're a tourist looking for a bed. Who else calls a hotel speaking in a foreign language? Also, you can assume he's got a room available. If he's full, he's very busy and he'd say "complete" or ""no hotel" and hang up. If he's still talking to you, he wants your business. Now you must communicate just a few things, like how many beds you need and who you are.
I say, "OK." (OK is international for, "Roger, prepare for the next transmission.") "Two people" --he doesn't understand. I get fancy, "Dos people" -- he still doesn't get it. Internationalize, "Dos pehr-son" -- no comprende. "Dos hombre" -- nope. Digging deep into my bag of international linguistic tricks, I say, "Dos Yankees."
"OK!" He understands, you want beds for two Americans. He says, "Si," and I say, "Very good" or "Muy bueno."
Now I need to tell him who I am. I say, "My name Ricardo (Ree-KAR-do)." In Italy I say, "My name Luigi." Your name really doesn't matter; you're communicating just a password so you can identify yourself when you walk through the door. Say anything to be understood.
He says, "OK."
You repeat slowly, "Hotel, dos Yankees, Ricardo, coming pronto, OK?"
He says, "OK."
You say, "Gracias, ciao!"
Twenty minutes later you walk up to the reception desk, and Pedro greets you with a robust, "Eh, Ricardo!"
*
One carry-on-size bag?? Here's exactly what I traveled with for two months (photo taken in a Copenhagen hotel room).
It's all information, up and down
What an astonishing book. Seth Lloyd, a quantum bit wrangler at MIT, proves that not only is the universe really a computer, but the universe is a computer we can program! He is not the first to see the world this way, but he is the first to translate this mathematical intuition into plain English. Lloyd is at the forefront of a revolution in science that says everything that exists (atoms, energy, space) is just bits of information. As the new mantra goes: all its are bits! The beauty of this book, and Lloyd's heroic achievement, is to transform that utterly mind-boggling view into a reasonable idea that anyone can begin to understand. A programmable universe is a scientific idea whose time will come in future decades, but you can read it here first.
-- KK
(This is a bit of a tease because Programming the Universe won't be published until March 2006. But do the book a favor and pre-order it now.)
Programming the Universe
A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos
Seth Lloyd
2006, 240 pages
$17
Available as a preorder from Amazon
Sample excerpts:
Ultimately, information and energy play complementary roles in the universe: Energy makes physical systems do things. Information tells them what to do.
*
Such a quantum computation would constitute a complete description of nature, and so would be indistinguishable from nature. Thus, at bottom, the universe can be thought of as a performing a quantum computation. Likewise, because the behavior of elementary particles can be mapped directly onto the behavior of qubits interacting via logic operations, a simulation of the universe on a quantum computer is indistinguishable from the universe itself.
The conventional view is that the universe is nothing but elementary particles. That is true, but it is equally true that the universe is nothing buts bits -- or rather, nothing but qubits. Mindful that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it's a duck, form this point on we'll adopt the position that since the universe registers and processes information like a quantum computer and is observationally indistinguishable from a quantum computer, then it is a quantum computer.
Former civilizations here
The news in this book is that the New World was an old world. It was far more populated, far more developed, far longer before the arrival of Columbus, then orthodox history believes. Charles Mann makes the best case yet, in non-technical prose, for the emerging archeological view that native Americans (north and south) had created vast cities and civilizations on a scale that dwarfed Europe at the time. These bustling cities, not just in MesoAmerica, but in the Mississippi and the Amazon, were erased into invisibility ahead of settlers (and textbooks) by disease and environmental factors. In scope this book is a good compliment to Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel. But 1491 heightens the discrepancy of development described by Diamond because now we see how far along American civilizations were before they unraveled on contact with the old world.
-- KK
1491
New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
Charles Mann
2005, 480 pages
$19
Available from Amazon
Sample excerpts:
When I went to high school, in the 1970s, I was taught that Indians came to the Americas across the Bering Strait about thirteen thousand years ago, that they lived for the most part in small, isolated groups, and that they had so little impact on their environment that even after millennia of habitation the continents remained mostly wilderness. Schools still impart the same ideas today. One way to summarize the views of people like Erickson and Balee would be to say that they regard this picture of Indian life as wrong in almost every aspect. Indians were here far longer than previously thought, these researchers believe, and in much greater numbers. And they were so successful at imposing their will on the landscape that in 1492 Columbus set foot in a hemisphere thoroughly marked by humankind.
*
In 1501, just nine years after Columbus's first voyage, the Portuguese adventurer Gaspar Corte-Real abducted fifty-odd Indians from Maine. Examining the captives, Corte-Real found to his astonishment that two were wearing items from Venice: a broken sword and two silver rings. As James Axtell has noted, Corte-Real probably was able to kidnap such a large number of people only because the Indians were already so comfortable dealing with Europeans that big groups willingly came aboard his ship.
*
The British and French, many of whom had not taken a bath in their entire lives, were amazed by the Indian interest in personal cleanliness. A Jesuit reported that the "savages" were disgusted by handkerchiefs: "They say, we place what is unclean in a fine white piece of linen, and put it away in our pockets as something very precious, while they throw it upon the ground." The Micmac in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia scoffed at the notion of European superiority. If Christian civilization was so wonderful, why were its inhabitants all trying to settle somewhere else?
*
It is true that European technology dazzled Native Americans on first encounter. But the relative positions of the two sides were closer than commonly believed. Contemporary research suggests that indigenous peoples in New England were not technologically inferior to the British -- or, rather that terms like "superior" and "inferior" do not readily apply to the relationship between Indian and European technology.
Guns are an example. As Chaplin, the Harvard historian, has argued, New England Indians were indeed disconcerted by their first experiences with European guns: the explosion and smoke, the lack of a visible projectile. But the natives soon learned that most of the British were terrible shots, from lack of practice -- their guns were little more than noisemakers. Even for a crack shot, a seventeenth-century gun had fewer advantages over a longbow than my be supposed. Colonists in Jamestown taunted the Powhatan in 1607 with a target they believed impervious of an arrow shot. To the colonists' dismay, an Indian sank an arrow into it a foot deep, "which was strange, being that a Pistoll could not pierce it."
*
Utterly without fear, De Soto ignored the taunts and occasional volleys of arrows and poled over the river into what is now Eastern Arkansas, a land '"thickly set with great towns," according to the account, "two or three of them to be seen from one." Each city protected itself with earthen walls, sizable moats, and deadeye archers. In his brazen fashion, De Soto marched right in, demanded food, and marched out.
After De Soto left, no Europeans visited this part of the Mississippi Valley for more than a century. Early in 1682 white people appeared again, this time Frenchmen in canoes. In one seat was Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle. La Salle passed through the area where De Soto had found cities cheek by jowl. It was deserted -- the French didn't see an Indian village for two hundred miles. About fifty settlements existed in this strip of the Mississippi when De Soto showed up, according to Anne Ramenofsky, an archaeologist at the University of New Mexico. By La Salle's time the number had shrunk to perhaps ten, some probably inhabited by recent immigrants. De Soto "had a privileged glimpse" of an Indian world, Hudson told me. "The window opened and slammed shut. When the French came in and the record opened up again, it was a transformed reality. A civilization crumbled. The question is, how did this happen?"
*
The Caddo had a taste for monumental architecture; public plazas, ceremonial platforms, mausoleums. After De Soto's army left the Caddo stopped erecting community centers and began digging community cemeteries. Between the visits of De Soto and La Salle, according to Timothy K. Perttula, an archaeological consultant in Austin, Texas, the Caddoan population fell from about 200,000 to about 8,500 -- a drop of nearly 96 percent. In the eighteenth century, the tally shrank further, to 1,400. An equivalent loss today would reduce the population of New York City to 56,000, not enough to fill Yankee Stadium. "That's one reason whites think of Indians as nomadic hunters" Russell, an anthropologist at the University of California at Los Angeles, said to me. "Everything else - -all the heavily populated urbanized societies -- was wiped out."
Accelerating into utopia
This book offers three things that will make it a seminal document. 1) It brokers a new idea, not widely known. 2) The idea is about as big as you can get: the Singularity -- all the change in the last millions years will be superceded by the change in the next five minutes, and 3) It is an idea that demands informed response. The book's claims are so footnoted, documented, graphed, argued, and plausible in small detail, that it requires the equal in response. Yet its claims are so outrageous that if true, it would mean... well ... the end of the world as we know it, and the beginning of Utopia. Ray Kurzweil has taken all the strands of the Singularity meme circulating in the last decades and has united them into a single tome which he has nailed on our front door. I suspect this will be one of the most cited books of the decade. Like Paul Erlich's upsetting 1972 book Population Bomb, fan or foe, it's the wave at epicenter you have to start with.
-- KK
The Singularity is Near
When Humans Transcend Biology
Ray Kurzweil
2005, 672 pages
$20
Available from Amazon
Sample excerpts:
Misperceptions about the shape of the future come up frequently and in a variety of contexts. As one example of many, in a recent debate in which I took part concerning the feasibility of molecular manufacturing, a Nobel Prize-winning panelist dismissed safety concerns regarding nanotechnology, proclaiming that "we're not going to see self-replicating nanoengineered entities [devices constructed molecular fragment by fragment] for a hundred years." I pointed out that one hundred years was a reasonable estimate and actually matched my own appraisal of the amount of technical progress required to achieve this particular milestone when measured at today's rate of progress (five times the average rate of change we saw in the twentieth century). But because we're doubling the rate of progress every decade, we'll see the equivalent of a century of progress -- at today's rate -- in only twenty-five calender years.
*
From my perspective, the Singularity has many faces. It represents the nearly vertical phase of exponential growth that occurs when the rate is so extreme that technology appears to be expanding at infinite speed. Of course, from a mathematical perspective, there is no discontinuity, no rupture, and the growth rates remain finite, although extraordinarily large. But from our currently limited framework, the imminent event appears to be an acute and abrupt break in the continuity of progress. I emphasize the word "currently" because one of the salient implications of the Singularity will be a change in the nature of our ability to understand. We will become vastly smarter as we merge with our technology.
*
Evolution applies positive feedback: the more capable methods resulting from one stage of evolutionary progress are used to create the next stage. As described in the previous chapter, each epoch of evolution has progressed more rapidly by building on the products of the previous stage. Evolution works through indirection: evolution created humans, humans created technology, humans are now working with increasingly advanced technology to create new generations of technology. By the time of the Singularity, there won't be a distinction between humans and technology.
*
Evolution moves toward greater complexity, greater elegance, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, and greater levels of subtle attributes such as love. In every monotheistic tradition God is likewise described as all of these qualities, only without any limitation: infinite knowledge, infinite intelligence, infinite beauty, infinite creativity, infinite love, and so on. Of course, even the accelerating growth of evolution never achieves an infinite level, but as it explodes exponentially it certainly moves rapidly in that direction. So evolution moves inexorably toward this conception of God, although never quite reaching this ideal We can regard, therefore, the freeing of our thinking from the severe limitations of its biological form to be an essentially spiritual undertaking.
Real economies in imaginary places
Virtual reality is halfway here in the form of massive multi-player online role playing games like EverQuest, World of Warcraft, and Ultima Online. Outsiders think these games are silly diversions overrun by pudgy guys in dim basements pretending to be elves, but the millions of gamers themselves (many of them women) know better. This is, as the new game in town is called, our Second Life. It's old news that real things can happen in these unreal places. Julian Dibbell's under-appreciated 2001 book My Tiny Life explored the weirdness of whether a virtual rape in a virtual world was a real crime. This new book, Synthetic Worlds, goes further. It tallies up all the world-changing consequences stemming from market places in fantasy worlds. Edward Castronova is an economist who began studying the exchange rates of token money in these games, analyzing the emerging prices as powers and characters were sold on eBay. He quickly concluded that these games have robust economies as large, and as "real" as many real countries. The clincher to this tale has been the recent stampede of newbies singing up for the game Second Life when USA Today revealed that amateurs were making hard cash (US dollars) selling virtual real estate in this unreal place. This is the fantastical stacked on the implausible stacked on the unexpected, but it is all very actual.
-- KK
Synthetic Worlds
The Business and Culture of Online Games
Edward Castronova
2005, 344 pages
$19
Available from Amazon
Sample excerpts:
Nothing is more eerie than a large, unpopulated city. It happens often in the cities constructed in virtual worlds, because the cities have no economic rationale and hence no economic activity. They are large, beautiful, empty spaces. Meanwhile, somewhere out in the countryside, all the players have accumulated somewhere to conduct their marketing activity. In the first few years of EverQuest, the main market was located in a tunnel in the wilderness because that happened to be the main route by which people traveled; a nearby city was evidently built to feel like a capital but was usually empty simply because the tunnel was the most direct route through that area. Getting people to congregate for market purposes requires that transportation practices be respected.
*
It is not uncommon for a user to own two or more accounts in a world, one that is his main avatar and the others to do nothing but menial, macro-able tasks to support the main avatar's activities.
*
The key to generating economic activity is trade. Trade constitutes a large part of social activity on Earth and should do so in a synthetic world. Trade allows people to have fun buying things. It brings strangers together, to do something other than fight. Its broader effect is to make your world feel alive. Make sure trade involves conversation, chatting, shouting, verbalizations that can be overheard. It's the buzz of the city -- more than that, it's why cities have buzz; it's why there are cities
Creating economic activity is easy; specialize economic roles, and trade will follow. Specializing roles lets people feel unique and needed, which is fun, but it also makes trading worthwhile. The economic theory here is that specialization and gains from trade are what make economic activity grow; we owe the idea to Adam Smith, the founder of the discipline.
*
In contemporary synthetic worlds, it is not uncommon to find large numbers of people who do a mundane, unchallenging task over and over, for literally hundreds if not thousands of hours, just in order to gain some kind of advancement or reward. In my early days in EverQuest, I spent a great deal of time near a ruin that also happened to be the place where a certain NPC would appear extremely rarely and unpredictably. The NPC carried an item, the Glowing Black Stone, that was of some value to wizards. I began to notice that every day, as I was going about my business, I would see one person sitting near the ruin, for hours and hours, doing absolutely nothing. After conversing with the person, I learned that he was a very powerful character who decided he wanted the Glowing Black Stone and had come to wait for it. In game parlance, he was "camping" the item. So he sat there, doing nothing at all, for hours every day. It went on for weeks. Finally the NPC appeared and the player got his Stone and went away. Word apparently went out that the Stone camp was now open, because the very next day, someone else appeared to wait for the next one. Having a Glowing Black Stone was apparently quite a badge of honor -- if you had one, it showed that you had survived a horrifically boring experience. People seem to find even the most onerous tasks enjoyable, if they provide some kind of suitable reward. The mere fact that the reward is rare and visible may be enough.
Linking everything to everything
GOOD BOOKS
While I gather more and more of my conceptual trends from blogs, and still remain an unabashed magazine junkie, there is nothing like a book to frame and surface the deeper news. The longer cycle of reflection demanded by the full rhythm of a book allows bigger questions to be asked and hopefully answered. The next five entries will be five great new-ish books that have recently floated to the top of my bottomless pile of new writings. Each of these five is stuffed full of novel things not heard or said before, lacking the usual fluff and repeats; each is an original vision that captures a bit of where we are headed, and are easy-to-read. As accounts of what's next, they are definitely way ahead of the curve. I recommend them to all trend-spotters.
-- KK
About five years ago John Battelle started pursuing his hunch that search technology like Google was the most powerful cultural force at work in the modern world. Few believed him. Back then search was pure nerddom. Ugly algorithms and no money. Geekware. The Google IPO in 2005 woke up the last doubters to the fact that search is at the heart of the next new new thing. Battelle has great sense of timing (John was one of the co-founding editors at Wired with me), and he delivers a marvelous introduction about where search came from and what search means in technology, in business, in society and in ourselves. Listen to the technology, Carver Mead preaches; John Battelle has listened harder to search technology than anyone else, and he can tell us some amazing things it is telling us.
-- KK
The Search
How Google and its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture
John Battelle
2005, 320 pages
$16
Available from Amazon
Excerpts:
Search straddles an increasingly complicated territory of marketing, media, technology, pop culture, international law, and civil liberties. It is fraught not only with staggering technological obstacles -- imagine the data created by billions of queries each week -- but with nearly paralyzing social responsibility. If Google and companies like it know what the world wants, powerful organizations become quite interested in them, and vulnerable individuals see them as a threat.
*
In short, the search engine of the future isn't really a search engine as we know it. It's more like an intelligent agent -- or as Larry Page told me, a reference librarian with complete mastery of the entire corpus of human knowledge.
*
That key element is your clickstream. Given that nearly every major search engine has a search-history feature, it won't be long before we begin to se significant changes in how results are tendered to us. By tracking not only what searches you do, but also what sites you visit, the engines of the future will be able to build a real-time profile of your interest from your past Web use. They can then fold that profile into both your search results and the search interface itself, making for what can become, with regular use, an entirely new approach to searching. Call it searching your personal Web -- search enhanced by everything you've seen, every query you've clicked on, and every page you've bookmarked or otherwise interacted with.
Better dog monitor
The pet blinker reviewed on Cool Tools is nice, but I've used a larger one which I've found works much better. They give a full 280 degrees of light, and being a much larger surface area of illumination is a real advantage. I can see my dog in the deep underbrush, even if he's laying down (where the "dangling" type lights get blocked by leaves and front paws.) We get about 5 months of use out of a single battery in flash mode, which we run for about 1.5 hours a day. We could get longer, but the light starts to dim a bit after that time period.
-- John Todd
PolyBrite Dog Collar
$10
Available from
Amazon
Superior loosener
 
As a DIY'er, this is one of my favorite products because it REALLY works. I came across it by accident at a small tractor supply store in southern Missouri. The product typically works instantly, but on heavy duty applications, I like to apply a little (or a lot) on a rusted or frozen bolt or car part, tap the part lightly to aid penetration, and wait. After a few minutes, rusted bolts, screws, shafts, piping, any types of "frozen" connections and assemblies will now break lose. I have tried a variety of other loosening products, but they tend to use heavier oils that don't penetrate as well. Smaller hardware stores, and farm supply stores will probably stock it.
-- Mike Farley
Zoom Spout Rust Buster
$1.39
Available from
Home Depot
Manufactured by
La-co
Energy smart power strip
This is so simple. You plug your PC into the main socket, and then plug your printer, scanner, monitor etc into the other sockets. When you turn off your computer, the smart unit shuts the power off to the other sockets. Saves power from constantly-on transformers, saves the environment, and saves lives from electrical fires caused by overheated DC adaptors. Also works for AV equipment.
-- Bruce Richardson
Smart Strip Power Strip
$37
Available from
Amazon
OneClick Power Strip
Available in the UK from
OneClick
Best spatula
This is the silicone spatula that will replace all your silicone spatulas.
If you've already made the switch to silicone spatulas, you know that the silicone variety do a really wonderful job scraping bowls of cookie batter, getting the last bits of sauce out of a pan, and generally making the process of cooking cleaner and more efficient. In addition, silicone has a much higher melting temperature than the thermoplastic typically used--650?F v 230?F--so you can use these spatulas in the fry pan (usually ~375?F). The soft silicone is safe for coated pans, which is a definite plus.
This particular silicone spatula is made with the silicone cast around a steel core. This gives the handle the rigidity of other spatulas, without the awkward and ingredient-trapping transition from spatula to handle. The silicone over steel makes a very comfortable grip, and the whole thing can be cleaned in the dishwasher. This design also allows them to make the spatula dual-ended, with a useful narrower scraper that is great for getting the last peanut butter out of jars.
I've been using mine for over a year, and it shows no wear. It is easily my most used utensil in the kitchen, and has relegated many other tools to the Goodwill bin.
-- Wendy Ju
Chef'n Switchit Dual-Ended Long Spatula
$10
Available from:
Amazon
Heavy-duty tool portability
This is by far the best tool bag I have ever owned. I am an Espresso machine field service technician and I use this bag every day. I purchased the LC version about a year ago and it doesn't show a single sign of wear yet. In the previous 6 years I had completely worn out 2 different other tool cases.
The Veto just feels right in your hand or over your shoulder. The quality of construction is simply amazing. A molded polypropylene tray forms the bottom, the sides are 1800 denier nylon which is doubled up in many places and secured with double stitching. The bottom and handle are attached with rows of rivets, and the the zippers are massive. The large handle is attached directly to the center divider so that all the weight is carried by the center divider and end panels. There is no weight carried by the side panels and zippers. The bag comes with a wide padded shoulder strap attached with rugged metal swivels. The Veto bag is divided into two identical half's. I keep my tools in one side and my electrical meters and plumbing hookup parts in the other. I like that this bag completely zippers closed. I don't like the new trend for bags that are covered with external pockets, I want to know my tools are safe and secure.
Veto make two other sizes, an overall larger bag and a low-riding long one to hold carpenters tools.
-- Paul Flynn
Veto Pro Pac
Model LC
$100
Available from Amazon
Manufactured by
Veto Pro Pac
Foldable wallet pen
I carry a pen that I wish was more readily available. It's a plastic pen shaped like an airplane that folds flat and sort of clips together to make a sturdy shape. It folds once lengthwise to fit in your wallet. Then, to write with it, you snap little plastic notches together inside so that you have three reinforced surfaces. Now I never need to borrow someone's pen. They're pretty cool. I even bought 48 of them figuring the company would go out of business at some point.
My only problem with the FoldzFlat Pen is that they're totally ugly, produced mainly for little kids. I'm hoping that with the right publicity they will start marketing to the nerd elite.
-- Cory
FoldzFlat Pen
$2
Available from
Fabgear
Update for the Nerd Elite: Your stainless steel pen has landed
$10
Micro suction cleaner
I find that compressed gases just don't work for me on computer accessories (e.g., keyboards and cases) or cameras -- the junk just gets blown deeper inside or I am afraid that the "condensate" will gum things up. A vacuum seems a better solution, but the teeny-tiny ones sold for these purposes don't suck enough(!). The answer -- an $8 Vacuum Micro Attachment Kit. This is an ingenious set of attachments and connectors that turns any upright or canister vacuum into a powerful "micro vacuum" that really does the trick on keyboards, PC cases, cameras (bodies and lenses) in a safe and effective manner.
-- Bryan Quattlebaum
Vacuum Micro Attachment Kit
Item #114 0210
$8
Available from Cyberguys
Also from Amazon
How to hike and camp in the snow
Allen and Mike, two wise hikers, have penned an admirable series of primers that feature cartoons and pithy advice for backpackers. This, the third, is the best of the series so far (see also Lighten Up and Allen & Mike's Really Cool Backpackin' Book). Its subject is winter backpacking, which often intimidates fair-weather hikers. Their great advice will not only keep you safe, but also warm and happy. There's a fantastic chapter on making snow shelters, presented in such accessible detail that I'm astounded that it was all new to me. Allen and Mike become your best friends as they giggle and chuckle while they give you the straight dope on what you need to live and prosper in the snow. Trust them.
-- KK
Allen & Mike's Really Cool Backcountry Ski Book
Traveling & Camping Skills for a Winter Environment
Allen O'Bannon & Mike Clelland
1996, 114 pages
$10
Available from Amazon
Sample excerpts:
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Sidecut is the difference between the width of the ski at its fattest points (the tip and tail) and its narrowest point at the waist (middle of the ski). The more side cut a ski has, the faster it will turn. On the other side of the coin, skis with less side cut are better for touring since they will hold a straighter line.
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Careful! Liquids that don't freeze at low temperatures, such as alcohol and white gas, ca cause frostbite damage because they will be the same temperature as the air.
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People in the earliest stages of Hypothermia will feel cold and clumsy. They will exhibit improper behavior, such as not putting on a hat. Their personality will show changes, and they will become apathetic, listless or emotional. They may show signs of shivering, although there are many cases where people have passed through this stage without shivering. This is especially true when people have been exercising beyond their normal point of endurance. As hypothermia progresses, a person will start to lose his or her coordination and start to stumble. The person will be unable to do simple tasks, such as zip a zipper. He or she will show more marked personality changes and may become belligerent and irrational.
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Premium power strip
The Kensington SmartSockets Table Top is very nearly the best power strip I've ever used. It has excellent surge suppression with an indicator light when the suppression is gone, and a $50,000 equipment warranty on top of the lifetime warranty on the strip itself. Beyond that, the design is excellent. It's circular so you have a fighting chance of getting six AC adapters on it. The cord is 16 feet long, so you can get it to places without an extension cord, and the cord has an angled plug so you can use the socket below it. The plug is even ridged you you can grip it better when your arm is stretched behind cabinets and whatnot. Normal power strips tip and move around if they're off-balance from AC adapters. With the power switch in the dead center, and the pre-attached rubber feet, this thing is rock solid. I wish every product I used had the same attention to detail!
-- Bob Plankers
Kensington Tabletop SmartSockets Surge Protector
$60
Available from
Amazon
Manufactured by
Kensington
Pet locater
Sending my black shitzu out on a dark night from my country home can cause some stress. Not knowing where the little mutt has gone has me worrying if he has wandered off too far. Plus out in the country there are many predators that would consider the little dog as a snack. I found this pet blinker in a local feed store. It is the greatest thing I bought for my pet. The bright LEDs can be seen for a good distance and the low battery usage means a long time between changes. The blinker is very light and does not weigh down my little dog. All I have to do now at night is just follow the blinking light to know the location of my dog.
-- Roland
Pet Blinker
$6
Available from World Pet Store
Also from Amazon
Manufactured by Flipo.
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