Say What You See/Artists at work/Creative introduction

Recomendo - issue #419

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Say What You See

I use Midjourney to create AI illustrations of dream imagery, and to improve my skills in writing AI image prompts, I’ve been playing a Google Arts & Culture game called “Say What You See.” The gist of the game is to describe what you see and aim for at least a 50% match—or higher—to the original prompt. Warning: It can get very frustrating past level three. Thankfully, if you want to come back to it, you can skip the easier levels anytime. — CD

Artists at work

I love watching artists work in their studios. I really delight in seeing how they make their art, what tools and techniques they use, and their material approach to creation. Getting access to a studio is rare, but very easy to do via two YouTube channels. Art21 is a multi-season PBS show, available on YT, that features a contemporary American artist at work in their workshop or studio. Some artists even reveal their process in detail, which is  a plus. The other venue is Craft in America, another PBS show, which lets you watch how crafts people manifest their exquisite artifacts, such as a chair from a log, or a knitted coral reef. I am constantly inspired to make my own art after watching others create art from such raw ingredients. — KK

A creative way to introduce yourself in emails

I recently came across a clever idea in an email I received. At the bottom of the email, there was a link labeled “About me.” I clicked on it and was taken to the results of a Perplexity search about the sender. It was an ingenious way to provide a snapshot of who they are, and I found it so useful and creative that I decided to steal the idea myself. — MF

Cordless metal eater

If I had to re-assemble my workshop from scratch, one of the first tools I would buy would be a cordless angle grinder. I would not have guessed that a decade ago, but I use mine all the time now.  I’ve found that an angle grinder is the perfect tool for cutting through thick or thin metal. I can cut rebar, metal sheeting, chicken wire, hardware mesh, rusty nails, old hinges, stripped screw heads, welded parts, etc. It is the cheapest way cut metal. The cordless part (a little more expensive) makes it so easy to grab and go. Because they grind with grit instead of cutting with teeth, they aren’t as scary as a saw, too. You can find them for all battery types; mine is a Dewalt DCG 412. — KK

Peppermint spider repellent

The only active ingredient in this bottle of Mighty Mint spider repellent spray is peppermint oil. I spray it around the windows on the outside of our house, outdoor furniture, and potted plants, and it keeps them from building webs. The label says for best results use twice a week, but in my experience, once every couple of weeks seems to be frequent enough. — MF

35 Phrases To Set Boundaries

Here is something everyone should have in their communication toolkit: “35 Phrases To Set Boundaries Firmly and Fairly”. This article provides practical phrases and advice on how to assertively set boundaries without causing unnecessary conflict. These phrases work in a wide range of scenarios, from dealing with children and family to workplace dynamics. Here are a few examples: 

• “I’m not available.” – Helps establish off-hours and personal time boundaries.
• “I need you to help me.” – Encourages teamwork and shared responsibility.
• “I don’t agree.” – Clearly states disagreement while remaining open to finding a mutual solution.
• “I understand you need my help, but I cannot work on this right now.” – Balances empathy with personal limits.
• “I prefer not to discuss this topic with you. It makes me feel uncomfortable.” – Protects emotional well-being by avoiding triggering subjects.

Note: Both of my recommendations this week were discovered in Matt Rutherford’s newsletter, 👓 Stuff—a weekly email crammed full of tips for a better life. If you love Recomendo, I highly recommend subscribing to Matt’s newsletter. — CD 

07/21/24

Gar’s Tips & Tools – Issue #180

Weekly-ish (ish) access to tools, techniques, and shop tales from the worlds of DIY

Gar’s Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales is published by Cool Tools Lab. To receive the newsletter a week early, sign up here.

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In Praise of Handwritten Notes

In the early hours of the 21st century, I noticed something interesting. I was losing my ability to write longhand. I was exclusively using a keyboard and my handwriting was suffering as a result. In high school, I’d taken a mechanical drawing class with dreams of becoming an architect, engineer, graphic designer, or similar creative field, and I’d begun practicing an attractive technically inspired print writing style. That was all gone by the 21st century. I could barely write out my own name without making a mess. I could no longer read my own words and was struggling to form the letters. I decided to get a pack of Moleskine Cahiers pocket notebooks and write out all of my daily notes, ideas, sketches, writing research, etc. by hand. I’ve never looked back. Some 20 years on, I’m never without a notebook and a Varsity fountain pen in my pocket. I can’t say my handsome writing style has come back, but then, I haven’t really tried. I do love looking back on several dozen years of notebooks, seeing my thought process in, say 2012. Now, I’d love to get back to regularly drawing/sketching, another analog muscle that has long atrophied.

Designing a USB-C-based Breadboard Power Supply

I love this little USB-C-based breadboard power supply that Zach of Digi-Key’s Byte-Sized Engineer created. This is an update and improvement over an earlier breadboard power supply he built. This one uses a CYPD3177-24LQXQT power management IC, a custom-designed PCB, USB-C power, and a custom 2-color 3DP enclosure. Zach can select voltages between 3.3V, 5V, 9V, 12V, 15V, 20V on both rails of the board. By the time the project is over, he already has changes he wants to make on the next iteration. But as he points out, you need a version 1 to know what changes you want to make on version 2.

Refreshing Bit Driver Magnets

You don’t even have to watch the video to get the gist of this little repair job. If the magnets inside your bit holders get weak, you can add a new rare earth magnet with superglue, and your driver is good as new.

Getting Started in Non-Welding Metalwork

If you’ve ever flirted with the idea of getting into metalwork without having to know welding, this fantastic 38-minute video is a must-watch. In it, seasoned maker, YouTuber, and humorist, Wesley Treat takes you through the essentials of metalworking with aluminum—no welding required. He starts by poking fun at the competitive nature of welders, then quickly gets into the nitty-gritty of tools and techniques. You’ll learn how to cut aluminum using a variety of tools, from electric shears to jigsaws, each explained with tons of practical tips along the way. Deburring to remove rough edges and bending methods using everything from hand seamers to full-sized metal bending brakes are covered in detail. Drilling and fastening techniques, including the use of rivets and screws, are also discussed, providing a surprisingly comprehensive guide to working with aluminum. Wesley also shares valuable advice on sourcing materials and adding finishing touches to ensure your projects look professional. Along the way he also shares his favorite, like the DeWalt 20V Max XR jigsaw, the Harbor Fright horizontal bandsaw, and the Klein Tools Notcher. This vid is packed with insights and practical advice, making it perfect for both beginners and experienced makers looking to expand their skills.

Cleaning with Tub ‘o Towels

I’ve heard praises for Tub ‘o Towels before, the heavy-duty shop cleaning wipes. In this video, The Tool Bandit extols their virtues in cleaning up greasy, dirty tool handles.

Maker’s Muse

What’s that humming? Does anyone hear a hum?

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Consider a Paid Subscription

Gar’s Tips & Tools is always free. But if you if you find ir truly useful to you, consider a paid subscription ($8/month). This keeps me in coffee and potato chips while I’m working on this labor of love. If you really want to show your patronage, consider becoming a Hero of the Realm. I will send custom packages of goodies (books, tools, zines, and more) to all my Heroes.

Thanks to all those who have already subscribed. You are the Kapton tape on my 3D print bed.

07/19/24

Slow Travel Nomads/Least-visited Europe/Frozen Everest Garbage

Nomadico issue #113

A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of A Better Life for Half the Price and The World’s Cheapest Destinations. See past editions here, where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.

I Could Live Here

An old friend and occasional freelance contributor of mine, Ellen Barone, has a book out called I Could Live Here. It’s detailed account of being a slow travel nomad for four years, spending roughly three months at a time in different places. Most of it was in Latin America, with a bit of Portugal and New Mexico in the mix. Unlike the wide-eyed collection of giddy adventures this would be in younger hands, her book is a more introspective look at what it feels like to be ungrounded, second-guessing, and forming fluid friendships on the road as an older traveling couple. Get it at Amazon here.

The Least-visited Countries in Europe

Looking to avoid the crowds? The majority of the least-visited countries in Europe are tiny ones. This article highlights the nations receiving the fewest annual visitors, though a few are really micro-states. They range from great values (Bosnia-Herzogovinia and Moldova) to playgrounds for the rich (Monaco). See the full rundown here.

My CityPASS Experiences

If you’re going to do a lot of sightseeing at one time, attraction passes can be a good way to bring the cost down. I recently used CityPASS in Atlanta and San Antonio and found the selection choices good, but not overwhelming. In Atlanta, our family of three visited the World of Coca Cola, The National Center for Civil and Human Rights, the Georgia Aquarium (maybe the best one I’ve been to anywhere), and the Fernbank Museum of Natural History for $94 per pass, a savings of $42 each and no lines to wait in. In (Europe, look for similar deals from Turbopass and others.)

The Great Mt. Everest Garbage Clean-up

The story that often gets lost when talking about Mt. Everest summits is how much garbage and human waste has collected there, in a landscape where it all stays frozen and preserved. This year a group of government-funded soldiers and Sherpas started cleaning it all up at South Sol Camp (altitude 8,000 meters) in a project that will probably take years. The AP says they’ve already processed 11 tons of trash and multiple dead bodies dug out of the ice. See more here.

07/18/24

What’s in my NOW? — Luisa de Lachica

issue #182

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Im just a traveller girl enjoying life while on planet earth. — Luisa de Lachica

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PHYSICAL

• my plants—they bring me grounding, peace and comfort, and they make me feel at home and remind me about the magic of impermanence.

• my art books—I am a happy art historian that really enjoys flipping through my many art books and catalogues, and even though it’s never the same as seeing the artworks in person, it gives me the pleasure of enjoying some of the amazing places and museums I have been lucky 🍀 to visit.

• the art hung in my house—there’s something magical about seeing everyday a piece of art that made your heart happy the first time you saw it. This piece is by an amazing artist that worked and lived in Mexico many years; Jan Hendrix. His works is very organic, nature inspired and amazing.

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DIGITAL

• Let Things Rot—this is beautiful and enlightening.
• compliment me—this site picks me up when needed.

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INVISIBLE

“Leave your front door and your back door open. Let thoughts come and go. Just don’t serve them tea.” — Shunryu Suzuki

07/17/24

The Snow Queen / An Ideal Boy

Books That Belong On Paper Issue No. 23

Books That Belong On Paper first appeared on the web as Wink Books and was edited by Carla Sinclair. Sign up here to get the issues a week early in your inbox.

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A NEW EDITION OF HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN’S THE SNOW QUEEN

The Snow Queen: A Tale in Seven Stories
by by Hans Christian Andersen (Illustrator), Sanna Annukka (Illustrator), Jean Hersholt (Translator)
Ten Speed Press
2016, 88 pages, 5.0 x 0.6 x 9.0 inches, Hardcover

Buy on Amazon

The Hans Christian Andersen classic, The Snow Queen, is a quick and enjoyable read, made all the more so with printmaker Sanna Annukka’s gorgeous illustrations. You’ll likely recognize the textile designer’s aesthetic from Marimekko and, not surprisingly, many of her illustrations make full use of her bold, geometric patterns through the characters’ dress. Her landscapes look like fabrics, too. A panel that shows a wintry countryside looks like it could be a weaving and I wish I could buy another, a garden in full bloom, by the bolt.

The story itself is not what I had expected. In many ways, the titular character is a minor player. The heroine is a young girl, Gerda, who journeys bravely and earnestly, escaping numerous villains by virtue of her devotion to her young friend and playmate, Kay, who has been lured away by the Snow Queen. Kay first fell victim to the heart-numbing trickery of the devil himself, who had accidentally broken an evil mirror crafted to reflect and amplify only the most wicked and ugly things in the world. When the mirror breaks, pieces “smaller than a grain of sand” are sent flying around the word, one of which sticks in Kay’s eye, and another which pierces and chills his heart. As the Snow Queen further freezes Kay’s heart with a kiss, Gerda braves witches, haunts, thieves, and icy winds to save her friend.

Maybe it’s because I’m a mom who is worn out on Frozen, the Disney smash hit (which refuses to die, despite every parent’s best efforts) that was loosely based on the fairy tale, but I wish that the movie more closely echoed the actual story. The Snow Queen is a story about the good and strength inherent in children, in which a young girl saves a young boy for a change. Though the movie maintained some of this (and, of course, the “love thaws a frozen heart” moral), I think it did an injustice to the young audience who could have seen themselves, as they can in the book, in a persistent heroine their own age.

– Mk Smith Despres

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IDEAL BOY, AN: CHARTS FROM INDIA

Ideal Boy, An: Charts from India
by Sirish Rao, V. Geetha, Gita Wolf (Editors)
Dewi Lewis Publishing
2001, 120 pages, 6.9 x 1.0 x 9.4 inches, Hardcover

Buy on Amazon

Cheap visual charts were the main educational aid in Indian classrooms until recently. Meant to teach children good behavior, and to assist their reading skills, these inexpensive posters were plastered everywhere by local printers. They have a naive art aesthetic since the artists were unschooled themselves. Generally the charts follow a formula of filing in a grid with examples. Like comic books, their garish colors and simple forms have their own innocent charm. This book rounds up a hundred samples of what is now a rare folk art.

– Kevin Kelly

07/16/24

Writing Paper

Tools for Possibilities: issue no. 95

Once a week we’ll send out a page from Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities. The tools might be outdated or obsolete, and the links to them may or may not work. We present these vintage recommendations as is because the possibilities they inspire are new. Sign up here to get Tools for Possibilities a week early in your inbox.

Water-resistant writing pads

Rite in the Rain Notebooks

Whether you’re a hiker, biker, backpacker, camper, naturalist or simply someone who’s ever been caught in the rain, you’ll treasure these classic all-weather notebooks. The cover is Polydura and the pages are made with a substrate, giving the paper a wax-y feel. The effect: water beads off them, meaning no pulpy mess and no bummer over any lost thoughts or data. They are not a new invention by any means. Back in the 1920s, they were developed for Pacific Northwest loggers. These days, the manufacturer makes both bound and spiral bound books in an impressive array of sizes and types (e.g birding!). I keep a pocket-size, 24-page, staple bound mini-book in the small pack I take cycling and hiking. In the event of a downpour, all my ah-ha moments are safe. If you plan to be in really harsh conditions and want to go the extra mile, you might try one of their all-weather pens. Note: I have not used them — a pencil or standard ballpoint does the trick for me. —Steven Leckart

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Analog copy/paste

Saral Transfer Paper

Before I start a new painting, I usually draw what I want in Adobe Illustrator, and then transfer a printout of that drawing to canvas or board to paint. I’ve tried opaque projectors, but the image is faint (at least on the el-cheapo projector I use) and I don’t really have room to set it up. I’ve also tried using a piece of paper that I’ve rubbed pencil or charcoal on, but that produces a blurry line.

Like an idiot, it wasn’t until recently that I considered the possibility that there might be a transfer paper for artists. Of course, there is one. It’s called Saral Wax-Free Transfer Paper, and it works like a dream. It comes in five different colors, but I can get away with blue and white. It leaves a clear, thin line that erases easily and doesn’t mess up the color of the paint I use. I’m already hooked on it for life.

If you send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Saral, they’ll send you free samples in all five colors. — Mark Frauenfelder

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Better graph paper

Whitelines

Anyone doing technical or design work has burned through reams of graph paper. I’m a designer, and I use Whitelines to do technical drawings in accurate scale, which are then turned into 3-D models and die tooling diagrams. Whitelines is the best graph paper I have ever worked with.

The concept is simple and powerful. Ordinary graph paper is paper with a graph of lines printed on it in a light color, often blue or gray. Whitelines is paper with a very light gray grid of squares printed on it. The graph is unprinted, hence, white lines.

This is genius. Pen strokes, and even pencil, are startlingly clear against the background. The distracting visual noise of a printed graph is gone entirely, while retaining the precision and ability to see scale, which is graph paper’s reason for being.

I’ve been using Whitelines extensively for the past few months, mostly for technical drafting on the MakerBeam project, an open source metal building kit like Meccano for the Arduino set. The grid is 0.5 centimeter pitch, perfect for working on a metric standard. With ordinary graph paper, pencil lines are close in color weight to the lines themselves. When scanning pencil marks on ordinary graph paper, the pencil lines often vanish completely. With Whitelines, I can scan a pencil sketch, if I’m satisfied with it, without having to go back over it with pen.

Available in A4, A5 and pocket sizes, as tablets, spiral bound, perfect and hardbound, both lined and graph. Better graph paper makes better drawings, and this is genuinely better graph paper. — Sam Putman

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Custom-printed graph paper

Free Online Graph Paper / Grid Paper PDFs

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

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Notes under water

Shower Slate

Ever have an idea in the shower and have no way to record it…and then it’s lost forever? I use a “Dive Slate”, a small (~4″x6″ ) sheet of sturdy white plastic with a plain old fashioned golf pencil attached. They’re cheap (around $5-$8), available on the net at various dive shops, fit nicely behind the soap holder or hung in the shower and work well; they’re meant to be written on underwater by divers, so unless you shower under Niagara Falls, your thought will be captured until you erase it. — Vincent Crisci

07/15/24

What’s in my NOW? — Luisa de Lachica