Gross Anatomy Dissection Kit

Low cost electronics tools

I find myself using this dissection kit all the time for electronics. It has two different sizes of hemostats, it has a scalpel blade, it has a couple of different kinds of forceps — one has teeth on the end, so it’s really easy to grip stuff really tightly. And it has a probe so I can push wires out of the way.

(This is an excerpt from our podcast interview with Simone. Listen to it here. — editors)

Squeezing Tool / Minted.com / Lochness Monster

Cool Tools Show and Share #3

Links:
Big Squeeze Tube

Xmas Card Printing Services:
Minted
Shutterfly
Paper Culture

Nessie Hunter sculpture

Picture Frame And Mirror Hanging Assortment

Everything you need to hang large and small pictures

This Storehouse picture/mirror hanging 200 piece assortment from Harbor Freight (SKU 67666) comes in handy around your house or apartment, especially for its low price of $3.79.

I bought one about t years ago and used most of the contents at our house, hanging a few clocks and about e pictures and a few pieces of artwork. I also used some to hang items for relatives. We recently moved into an apartment with no existing hangers. I grabbed one of these at our local Harbor Freight. My stepdaughter also moved into the same complex and asked if I had any nails that she could have to hang some pictures. I told her tackets instead, and I gave her plenty to use. The lease allows small tacks for things like posters and small fasteners for larger wall items. This kit is perfect for that, as the brackets are very sturdy with small thin nails that go in at a 45-degree angle for great holding power with minimal damage to the walls. It will be practically invisible if the brackets ever have to be removed.

The kit also includes drywall anchors and screws for going into looser wall materials like plaster. Thumbtacks are also provided for posters and thinner materials. If the item you want to hang has no mounting hardware on it, the kit comes with hooks to screw into the wall hanging and wire to mount it on the wall bracket.

The kit even includes a small level, so you can make sure that a new piece of art, picture, clock, dry erase board, etc. is level.

The Rescue/Knife sharpener/The Wisdom Index

Recomendo: issue no. 283

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Incredible feel-good documentary
You may remember the story of the Thai boys stranded in a deep cave years ago. There was an international effort to get them out that lasted weeks. But the story of how they actually rescued the kids is so unbelievable, so amazing, so insane, and so crazy that it is definitely worth watching The Rescue, the thrilling National Geographic documentary about this unlikely feat. The heroes of The Rescue are unexpected and unlikely themselves. I call this the best documentary of the year. (Streaming on Disney+) — KK

Easiest knife sharpener
I’ve never had much success with sharpening kitchen knives to a razor’s edge by hand using traditional sharpening stones. But I now get razor sharp knives very fast using a small motorized sharpening belt made for the purpose. The Work Sharp MK2 requires little skill, it’s small, and relatively inexpensive ($80) for a sharpening system. Sharpening takes maybe 5 minutes per knife even when very dull, and is pretty foolproof. It also sharpens scissors, axes, and other tools. I now sharpen our knives much more frequently. — KK

The Wisdom Index
Researchers at UC San Diego created a 7-question survey that can determine your level of wisdom called the Jeste-Thomas Wisdom Index. You can take the 5-minute test here. The questions relate to 7 components of wisdom: Acceptance of Divergent Perspectives, Decisiveness, Emotional Regulation, Pro-Social Behaviors, Self-Reflection, Social Advising and Spirituality. Wisdom scores range from 1-5 with a score of 3 being considered neutral. My highest score was a 5 in Spirituality and my lowest score was 3.75 in Social Advising, which is kind of ironic because this is a recommendation. I posted my scores here. — CD

Super strong mounting tape
I used small squares of Gorilla Heavy Duty Double Sided Mounting Tape to attach panels of plywood together as part of an art project. To test the strength of the adhesive, I pried the panels apart with a screwdriver. The wood broke before the tape did. — MF

AI-created weirdness
The Internet Dungeon of Unexplained Phenomena is a website of AI-generated images and text depicting paranormal occurrences — like Dimensional rift at Scholastic Book Fair and The spooky locked door in the public library. It reminds me of a visual “Welcome to Night Vale”. It’s creepy and poetic and just scrolling through the blog excites my imagination. — CD

Short bits of useful advice from books
You might not know that we publish a few other newsletters besides Recomendo. One of them is Book Freak. Each issue offers four short pieces of advice found in useful books. Here are two quotes BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits, which is the subject of issue 61. — MF

Before making a decision, ask yourself these two questions
“Will it help you do what you already want to do? Will it help you feel successful? The answers to those questions is freeing because if the change program doesn’t satisfy these two requirements, it’s not worth your time. ”

Form habits through emotion, not repetition
“In my own research, I found that habits can form very quickly, often in just a few days, as long as people have a strong positive emotion connected to the behavior… When I teach people about human behavior, I boil it down to three words to make the point crystal clear: emotions create habits. Not repetition. Not frequency. Not fairy dust. Emotions.”

Lenore Edman, Co-founder of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

Cool Tools Show 309: Lenore Edman

Our guest this week is Lenore Edman. Lenore is a co-founder of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. When she’s not building pen plotters, she likes to bake, sew, and make jam for relaxation. You can find Lenore on Twitter @1lenore and @EMSL.

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Show notes:

The All New All Purpose: Joy of Cooking (1997 edition)
I have the 1997 edition of The All New All Purpose: Joy of Cooking. The Joy Of Cooking has undergone several major revisions over its decades and decades of publication. So for me, the 1997 one is the best one, because it’s the one that I use the most. We also have the 1952 and it has recipes that the 97 doesn’t have, but I don’t use it very often. There’s one bread that we usually make for Thanksgiving that’s in there. But what’s great about the 97 edition is, that it’s modern enough that the ingredients are pretty consistently available and it’s undergone enough revisions that the recipes are really, really reliable. I love this one. It’s the one that my mom got me when I was basically starting my own cooking adventures. So it’s got special meaning for me.

Borner Mandoline, V-7000, Red
We call this the red slicing tool. It’s a mandolin by Borner. We buy one every few years because the blades gradually get dull and it’s made of plastic so it can crack, but we use it so much and it really streamlined a lot of things in our cooking process and our prep processes. This is one that has not just a flat slicer, but also a julienne slicer and coarse chopping. We use it for onions all the time. But there are a couple things that we’ve found it’s really good at that we didn’t anticipate. And this is things like making Banh Mi Slaw where you’re going to lightly pickle, the diakon and carrots for sandwich slaw. And normally the recipes will call for you to grate it. But when you grate things, it kind of tears the surface and it damages the cell structure. Whereas if you do a fine julienne, it leaves it crunchier and crispier with a better texture. So similarly, we do this for hash browns and for latkes that if you julienne the potatoes, instead of grating them, you get a really different texture that retains the moisture inside the pieces instead of getting wet and, and soggy. And it’s just really great.

Wire Potato Masher
This is a potato masher and it’s one of the ones that’s a wire that is squiggly shaped. And I do use it for mashed potatoes, but we don’t make mashed potatoes very often. Only at Thanksgiving. I use it for a couple other things. One is guacamole. I think it makes a nice chunky guacamole because you aren’t mashing it as fine as you would with a fork. And then the other thing that I use it very regularly for is jam. When I’m making jam, I start cooking the fruit and then I mash it with the masher and it breaks up the pieces more and lets the juices and things out so that it gels better. And I don’t have to cut the fruit as fine. I don’t have to puree it or anything. I just cook it down and then mash it with the masher and it helps it to just make a better consistency. I like a chunky jam. And so I use it for jamming.

Bathsheba Grossman’s Klein Bottle Opener
A Klein bottle is like a Mobius strip. A Mobius strip only has one side. It’s a flat piece of, for instance paper that is twisted so that there’s only one side to it. Well, a Klein bottle is a bottle that only has one side. It doesn’t have an inside or an outside. It just has a side. They usually look a little bit like a figure eight, like the handle is kind of going through the surface and coming out the inside. This is 3D printed Klein bottle that is also a bottle opener. So you can use it to open a bottle of ginger beer or regular beer and it is made by the artist, Bathsheba Grossman. And I met Bathsheba at the very first Maker Faire back in 2006 and was just blown away by her artworks, which are mathematically generated 3D printed objects, usually in metal, in a centered process. This particular one comes in a bronzed finish. It’s really beautiful. And what’s wonderful about this Klein bottle opener is the way that it feels in your hand. Like it’s the one tool that I use that just feels perfect to use. It’s the right shape, has the right amount of leverage. It fits in your palm beautifully.

About 10 LED Projects for Geeks:

I got to participate in a project to write a book with some LED projects. And it was put together by folks that we know through Maker Faire. We got to participate, especially in the sort of beginner level projects like getting started with LEDs, learning to use resistors and do creative things. It’s a project based book. And so the kinds of projects that we included were ones that take as their core, the LED throwie, as sort of the basic building block where you have an LED in a coin cell, and you incorporate that into something, whether that’s putting it into something beautiful, like a sea urchin shell, or making a greeting card out of it by etching plastic, those kinds of things. And then the later chapters in the book go over more complicated things like adding microcontrollers to change the behavior of the LED.

Dexter-Russell Dough Knife / Grill Scraper

Indispensable kitchen utensil

Although it was designed specifically for bakers, this low-tech tool is absolutely indispensable in the kitchen. Beyond scraping bread dough off the counter, we use ours to transport all types of chopped foods from counter to bowl, counter to skillet, etc.

There are other dough scrapers out there, but Dexter-Russell’s S496 features a wide wooden handle that helps make it the best. Don’t want to take my word for it? I was in a local Sur la Table recently. They had various bins filled with dough scrapers; the Dexter bin was empty!

(This is a Cool Tools Favorite from 2006 — editors)

What’s on my junk shelf? — Casper Kelly