Recomendo

Learn difficult subjects/memomize/Kevin’s go-to camera

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Recomendo: issue no. 43

How to understand difficult subjects:
This four-step method for learning difficult subjects was developed by physicist Richard Feynman when he was a student at Princeton University. All the steps are important, but the most important step is the one where you have to teach what you’ve learned in a simple way so a new student can understand it. If you can’t do that, you don’t really understand it yourself. — MF

Save text for later:
My current favorite Chrome extension is memomize, which lets you save text for later. Just highlight some text, right click >  Add to memomize, and the next time you open a new tab, what ever you save will be there along with links to its original source. I save subject lines and text from emails and use it as my inbox to-do list. — CD

Nifty email:
I’m old school: email is my chief communication mode, and I primarily work on a laptop or desktop. While there are many things to recommend about Gmail on the web, it’s interface is not one of them. I use Postbox as my mail client to reach my Gmail (it runs on Mac or Windows). I’ve tried other clients now and then but keep coming back to Postbox for its intuitive (to me) design and interface. And I’m still uncovering new capabilities I didn’t know it had. — KK

Wrist relief:
I’ve been using the 18” version of this gel-filled wrist pad for five years (I’m on my second one — they last a few years). It goes behind my keyboard, giving me a soft-but-firm place to rest my wrists. This is essential equipment for me. — MF

Mute individual tabs:
I like to read celebrity gossip for fun, but most of the websites I visit are bloated with ads and videos that automatically start themselves. I recently discovered right click > mute tab on Chrome and Firefox, which makes reading my junk news a little more peaceful, and a lot less annoying. — CD

The camera I use:
I’ve been a very serious photographer for 45 years (!!!). Even though I’ve had one book of my photos published by Taschen, I have never used a state-of-the art professional camera. I have always relied on good-enough amateur level cameras. For the past 10 years, I’ve used Panasonic Lumix superzooms. They suit my cultural photography perfectly. They are silent. They are featherweight (I carry them all day, weeks on end.) They have flip out screens so I can shoot stealthily, with subjects unaware. They are cheap. They super zoom from wide angle to telephoto, very fast. The model I’ve used for the past 3 years, the FZ 300, has a super zoom (600mm equivalent) with a constant 2.8 lens. It’s been great. For my subject — recording the vanishing cultures and peoples of Asia — this camera is perfect. — KK

-- Kevin Kelly, Mark Frauenfelder and Claudia Dawson 05/21/17

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