Archive for Gadgets

Excellent can opener

KTO recently gave me a nifty kitchen device: a Bartelli soft-edge ambidextrous can opener. Instead of cutting through the top of the lid of the can, it cuts through the side edge of the lid of the can. It has some advantages over traditional can openers: You don’t have to squeeze it to puncture the […]

I now have a rice cooker!

My latest acquisition: a rice cooker! (No advice, please.) It occurred to me a couple months ago that I like rice, but that I only eat it with takeout food, because I don’t like making it. My parents taught me how to make rice when I was a kid. (Using the knuckle method for measuring […]

My first shoehorn

I have a pair of shoes that’s a little bit difficult to slip on—the shoes fit well when they’re on, but it takes a little work to get there. So it occurred to me that what I needed was a shoehorn. (No advice needed.) A couple weeks ago, I went to a grocery store, and […]

Mic ramblings

This is a long rambly post about microphones and mic quality and my dissatisfaction with perfectly good audio tools. (I should note, for my own future reference, that this post is not entirely in chronological order.) Back when Mary Anne and Ben first invited me to be a guest on an episode of their podcast, […]

Printing presses

Every so often, I get it into my head that I desperately need a tiny printing press. At which point I go through a mental process (and series of web searches) that goes something like this: I could buy a Speedball Press or other small art press. Art, ink, paper, squeeze them together—boom! printing! …But […]

Bose Hearphones notes

I see that it was about a year ago that I first tried out Bose Hearphones: directional sound-canceling/amplifying earbuds. Specifically, you can use them to turn up the volume on the world around you, and/or to cancel sound coming from certain directions. I most often have them set so that sound from in front of […]

Parrot Mambo Fly quadcopter

My latest toy is a Parrot Mambo Fly mini-drone. I found it in a Wirecutter article about best inexpensive drones, and ordered it from Amazon (via the Wirecutter affiliate link). And I love it. I’m a near-total beginner; my only previous drone experience consisted of (1) a tiny drone I bought in the UK years […]

Refrigeration, or lack thereof

A month or so ago, a carton of milk in my fridge went bad a couple of days before the sell-by date. A couple weeks later, the same thing happened again, this time with an unopened carton. Around the same time, half of an avocado went moldy in my fridge. That had never happened before, […]