Eyeloop

Eyeglass holder for shirts with no pocket

Eyeloop is a simple metal loop and magnet that allows you to hang your readers or other glasses off of a small loop so they are always at the ready. Instead of fumbling with a collar or buttonhole to hold the glasses. There are various designs, but I like just the simple basic one. It allows me to always know where my readers are when I am working around the house and it’s easy to pop on and off different shirts.

Neeva/Timeline of food/Tile Slim

Recomendo: issue no. 279

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Ad-free search engine
There are at least 10 alternative search engines to Google, each with a different emphasis, such as better privacy, or non-linear displays, or long-tail results. Recently I’ve been using Neeva as my default search app. (It has a Chrome extension that makes it the default in the browser.) It offers a different business model: a subscription without ads. So unlike Google these days, I get only answers and no long list of camouflaged ads to skim over. I would say the answers are comparable to Google so far. Right now Neeva is free, but will be about $5/month once out of beta. I will be happy to pay for it, or until Google offers a ad-free subscription option. — KK

A timeline of food
I became fascinated with the history of food after experiencing the Last Supper in Pompeii exhibit and seeing up close their cookware and wine vessels and foods. This food timeline is equally fascinating. A Food History Librarian has outlined the beginning of food, beginning with water & ice, and has transcribed ancient recipes found in her research. She started her project in 1999 and continues to update it. — CD

New Tile Slim for wallets
I keep a Tile Slim bluetooth tracker in my wallet. If I misplace my wallet, I can use my phone to make the tracker chirp. If I misplace my phone, I can press the button on the tracker and make my phone chirp. The 2022 version of the Tile Slim is out. It’s still as thin as 2 credit cards, but has an improved range of 250 feet. I bought one for my daughter, who recently had a scare when she lost her wallet (someone found it and returned it fortunately). — MF

Bicycle touring
Multi-day bike touring is way under appreciated. Touring by bicycle is inexpensive, not difficult, covers a lot of ground and is very satisfying. Great with small groups, too. You can use almost any bike, including ebikes. If you are new to touring on a bike, try following a proven route. For the US go to Adventure Cycling for many detailed annotated routes (where to go, eat and sleep). There is an increasing number of no-vehicle, bikes only routes, which are a fabulous experience. For bike touring in Europe, this overview article Cycling In Europe by Adventure Cycling is the best place to start. — KK

Ultra absorbent hair towel
This is an update to a previous Recomendo and specific to medium-long haired readers. This soft, microfiber hair wrap is a turban-style towel that has a small button on the back and a loop to secure it in place. It is very light and comfortable to wear and it squeezes out and absorbs most of the water out of my hair. It does everything my old AQUIS hair towel did, but slightly better. — CD

World music by decade
Radiooooo shows a world map. Click on any country, then click on a decade from 1900 to the present time and it will start playing music from that time and place. — MF

2021 Holiday Gift Guide: Claudia’s picks

Three things to help cultivate meaning

Last year, I made a shopping list of everything that made me happy in 2020. This year I have been trying to be less of a consumer, so I only have three things that I would recommend as gifts, and each one helps to cultivate meaning and gratitude in my life.

The Moon Lists Workbooks
The Moon List workbook ($10) is an 18-month guided journal that I previously recommended. There is now a second volume, The Moon Lists Workbook 02 ($28), which is similar in format but with a new visual flow and different prompts to inspire you to reflect, expand and discover new insights about yourself. I write in both. My favorite prompts are the ones that ask me to make lists, like what would I like to move toward and away from, or when I list recent experiences through of each of my senses: sight, smells, tastes, sounds and touch. These workbooks help to push my inner life to the forefront of my mind.

Blessing Cards ($12)
Blessings cards are less like an oracle deck and more like a tool for setting positive intentions for your day. There are 210 two-inch cards, each with a different word. All the words serve as catalysts to help guide or create meaning for your day. Some of the words I’ve pulled recently are: Yielding, Synchronicity, Excellence, Delight, Creativity, Openness, Unknown and Trust. I like to draw two at a time which adds another dimension of meaning. These cards have only benefited my life. They inspire acts of gratitude, courage, closeness and help to break me out of rigid thinking.

Wall Calendars ($15)
I love wall calendars. I keep one right by my desk. I don’t use it to log daily tasks, so some of the days are always left empty. When I look over at it, it orients me in time and serves as a visual reminder of my life’s progress. I get blissful satisfaction when I cross off the day with a permanent black marker. I keep my old wall calendars and repurpose them to make collages and hand-bound books. My favorite time of year is getting to choose what theme my next year calendar will be. 2020 was the year of Alphonse Mucha, this year was The Reading Woman, and 2022 will be about Celestial Journeys. Calendars.com is the best place to find calendars based on format, category or artwork. If you buy a calendar, Paper Mate Flair Felt Tip Pens are a must for writing on them and for getting creative.

Carol Tilley, Comics historian

Cool Tools Show 305: Carol Tilley

Our guest this week is Carol Tilley. Carol Tilley is a comics historian and associate professor of information science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A lifelong nerd and former librarian, her research explores how young people did cool things with and through comics during the mid-20th century. You can find Carol on Twitter @anuncivilphd.

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Show notes:

Merlin Birding App
Like several hundred thousand people, I downloaded the Merlin app once the pandemic lockdown started last year. The Merlin app is a product from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and they keep integrating really cool new stuff, including identify this bird by the song. But since I have been working from home and sort of staring out the big window in front of my desk, I’ve been amazed at all of the birds that seem to exist in this little corner of the yard that I don’t see elsewhere, looking out from my house. And the Merlin app has just been so extraordinarily helpful for me to figure out what some of these small birds are that after a while start to look alike.

Zassenhaus Coffee Mill
I’m a coffee drinker, and I had relied on an electric blade grinder, for the last 25 years or so. But just about a year ago, my wife bought a German-made Zassenhaus coffee mill for us, and it’s got a burr grinder. I sit with it. I grind the coffee by hand. I hold the coffee mill between my knees, and it has made what was already good coffee just even more fragrant and tasteful.

Extratigator
Part of the reason that our yard is so full of birds is because it has overgrown. We’ve got a half acre lot in town that’s heavily wooded, and it’s full of volunteer and invasive trees. So we purchased this amazing thing called the Extractigator. It’s this sort of bright orange, amazing, powder-coated steel tool that will rip up trees up to about an inch and a half or two inches in diameter, and it has just been such a lifesaver, truly, for us in terms of just trying to get the backyard under control. And that said, I could probably use the Extractigator an hour a day for the year, and we would still be overgrown. But it’s getting us closer to ensuring that our neighbors don’t hate us completely.

Oxford Grid Design 3X5 index cards
I work in a discipline and a profession where I’m overly connected, but index cards and using them is just a way for me to get offline and sort of appreciate the tactile pleasures of doodling and taking notes. A few years ago, I’ve got a space in one of cartoonist Linda Barry’s workshops, and her only requirements for things to bring with us were some packs of index cards and I think we had to have either three or five Papermate Flare pens. They had to be black, and they had to be medium. I have continued with both of those. I hadn’t used a Flare pen in years before that. But there is something truly satisfying that the index cards are thick enough and substantial enough that the ink doesn’t show through. She didn’t specify the grid, but I think I have a leftover love for grid paper from when I was a kid and I used to play at designing my own houses. So I like having the grid on one side for a little bit of structured doodling and home design on the side.

More about Carol Tilly:

Dear Sirs: I Believe You Are Wasting Your Time (National Archives talk)

Carol Tilley: Comic Book Crusader (Big 10 Network)

Disposal Genie

Prevents silverware and other larger items from slipping into drain

My husband bought the Disposal Genie for our sink over a year ago, and I was immediately skeptical. It seemed superfluous and unnecessary at the time, but now it is one of my favorite tools in the entire house.

The disposal genie covers the gaping, menacing hole of the garbage disposal while still letting liquids and smaller food pieces through. No more worries about accidentally dropping a fork, measuring spoon, or chopsticks down the disposal. You can also safely run the disposal with the genie sitting in its hole, so no need to remove it.

The built-in scraper is also really handy. Videos show people using it to scrape plates, but I more often use it to scrape food scraps that are at the bottom/walls of the sink into the disposal as it runs. The vast majority of the time I don’t need to touch the genie at all — most food scraps run through without issue.

Other garbage disposal covers tend to act more like strainers that need constant emptying (annoying) or are flimsy baffles that will let anything pass through (especially heavier items like flatware). And did I mention that the built-in scraper is really handy? I never realized how much the open garbage disposal drain bothered me until I no longer had to worry about it. It is a fantastic tool for all sinks with disposals.

Shoe Goo

Super rubber cement

Originally marketed to repair old tennis shoes (which it does very well), this industrial-strength rubber cement has many, many purposes.

I had a problem with the trim falling off of my second Mazda Rx-7, so I went around the car and pulled off all the trim and re-glued it with Shoe Goo. I never had the problem again. Through all kinds of weather and at very irresponsible speeds, the trim was still on the car after the vehicle was used up, wrung out, stripped of parts for my third Rx-7 and sold to a salvage yard for scrap metal.

Goop makes several other varieties that are supposedly specialized for different applications, but after trying them I keep going back to the original.

(Note: Apparently "Shoe Goo" is not a trademark. Several products from differing manufacturers use the same name, in very similar packaging. Amazing Goop is the brand Justin Belshe used. Beware of imitations! — editors)

What’s in my trophy case? — Rusty Blazenhoff