It’s easy to neglect your personal contacts on your Mac. For starters your phone is probably where you are most likely to reach out to people – make calls, write text messages, set appointments, even fire off an email. This is why I said in a previous post that it’s important to keep your iPhone’s…
Search the App Store for “To Do” and you get 249 hits. Do the same search for “Address Book” and you get 43 results…and half of those are utilities for cleaning up your contacts, not apps for managing contacts. This is a little weird seeing that your “Rolodex” is supposed to be the most valuable…
Let’s say you want to rip-cut some planks and plywood for a chicken coop and you don’t have a table saw. The Kreg Rip-Cut is a stand-alone fence that lets you make long, straight cuts with a circular saw. Yes, many saws come with a rip fence as an accessory, but these accessories usually don’t…
I worked one summer on a blue card fire crew, one of the best jobs ever. A ten-person crew can clear a trail five feet wide down to mineral soil almost as fast as you can walk it. The tools we used were so useful that I’m surprised at how rarely I see them in…
Our ancestors went camping with little more than a breechcloth and stick. Nowadays you can’t get out without your Osprey Stratos pack and MSR Hubba Hubba. There’s no upper limit to how much you can spend on adventure gear. The big question is how much do you really need? The Last Whole Earth Catalog gives us…
Christopher Van Tilburg talks on Outside Blog about a search and rescue operation that went far better than usual because the stranded hikers had a smartphone. Rescuers were able to get detailed coordinates and guide the hikers to a safe pickup location. Maybe smartphones should be basic equipment? If you are an adventuresome smartphone user,…
Recently I tried cutting a crusty baguette with a sharp, serrated bread knife. Instead of placing the bread on a cutting board like a reasonable person, I simply held the loaf in one hand and the knife in the other while thinking “this is a bad idea.” Which it was. Ouch. Make: Online has a…
I’ve reached a place in my life where I don’t want to learn one more stoopidly designed interface. Take the Shoretel phone system…please. (Although it’s a big improvement over Rolm phones). Former Wired editor and technology guru Kevin Kelly explains that the technology we need most is not necessarily the technology that’s available today. Instead,…
The state of Maine has legalized switchblades for amputees. Backers of the measure say legalizing switchblades would eliminate a need for one-armed people to be forced to open folding knives with their teeth in emergencies. The state of Maine has legalized switchblade knives for people with one arm via BoingBoing
The problem I have with running is that my brain still belongs to a high school athlete but my body is ancient. Consequently I wind up pushing myself too hard. After three weeks it’s simply too painful to continue. This changed when I started using the free Adidas Micoach app (pronounced My Coach). The core…
Let’s say that you want to become a Suburban Frontiersman…like Yours Truly. Where would you start? Perhaps you think you might need some gear, a pair of sturdy boots, a handy knife, a trustworthy haversack. But you’d be wrong. What you need is time. The Suburban Frontiersman’s life is chopped up until it’s a pizza…
Jaymi Heimbuch puts together an industrial-strength survival pack, the sort you might need to survive a Haiti-style disaster. There are plenty of good resource links here, plus lots of chatter in the comments. Heimbuch’s main complaint? This first aid, survival kit tips the scales at 30 lbs. (Hint, go with LED flashlights and lose the…
Today’s frontier adventure involved snaking out the bathtub drain. First we tried using a Zip-It flexible strip. These plastic drain cleaners are a gross, yet effective way to de-gunk most drains. Problem is that a bathtub drain takes a left turn at Albuquerque, leaving you without much room to move the strip. Liquid Plumber failed…
