Gareth’s Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales is published by Cool Tools Lab. To receive the newsletter a week early, sign up here.
Don’t forget about my Holiday Giveaway Challenge. I’m giving away a bundle of both my tips books (Vol. 1, Vol. 2) and three of my favorite everyday tools: The Williams ratcheting screwdriver, the Canary cardboard cutter, and a plastic razor blade. To be eligible, all you need to do is convince three people to sign up for my newsletter (and then send me their email addresses). If you sign up 5 (or more), you get two entries in the drawing. Contest ends Midnight, Dec. 9. Sorry, but this contest is US-only!
One of the things I love about holiday gift exchanging is getting to ask your loved ones for things you might not normally think about buying for yourself. That’s the premise behind this video on A Glimpse Inside. Honestly, I was expecting less common, everyday tools, but the stuff on here is definitely things you might not think about or know about that would make great practical gifts. A couple of things he mentions that I think fall into that special “I wouldn’t likely buy this for myself” category are the Viewtainer storage system, the GRABBO electric vacuum cup lifter, and a benchtop tape dispenser.
If you’re looking for great gift ideas for any maker on your shopping list, consider my two Amazon best-selling tips books (Volume 1, Volume 2). They are filled with tips on things like cutting, gluing, fastening, painting, finishing, electronics, soldering, 3D printing, hobby tips, and much more. The books are designed to appeal to DIYers of all skill levels and interest areas.
Isn’t it time you gave yourself (or someone else) a little Artistic License? Years ago, I created these cards and they’ve been a hit for the holidays. Perfect stocking stuffer! They are $5 each or 5 for $20 (post paid). They come in a wax-sealed white envelope. The cards are credit card sized on thick, laminated card. If interested, email me and we can arrange payment and shipment. Foreign orders will require full postage.
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A cool tool can be any book, gadget, software, video, map, hardware, material, or website that is tried and true. All reviews on this site are written by readers who have actually used the tool and others like it. Items can be either old or new as long as they are wonderful. We post things we like and ignore the rest. Suggestions for tools much better than what is recommended here are always wanted.
Zulay 2 in 1 Citrus Press - an indispensable kitchen item, for its unparalleled ability to squeeze all the aromatic oils from the skin of the fruit, with less effort. The Zulay one has a dual-sized fruit cavity to make it better at adapting to the sizes of limes and lemons. I came to find out about these relatively late in life - these Mexican style citrus presses are historically not super common in the UK - more usually here we have reamers or terrible glass juicer dishes, neither of which get the aromatic skin oils. Now I would never be without one. Pro Tip: use unwaxed fruit!
‘Buff’-style neckwear as a sleeping eyemask - These tubular, stretchy multifunctional scarves are more often used for neckwear, and have multiple conformations they can be used in. I use mine, folded into itself in roughly thirds to form a flat band, as an eyemask for sleeping. They are super comfortable, don’t dig in, don’t get moved out of position, work over sleep headphones and even the genuine Buff™ branded ones are cheap (but cheaper ones are available). They’re great for travel as they have multiple other uses - sweatband, wristband, bandana… I have at least two looped onto all the travel bags I own.
Sit to Stand Laptop Stand - brings a laptop up to a better working height to avoid neck and back strain. This particular model is extremely solid, high quality aluminium, very flexible to different heights, yet folds down to a very small space for storage or travel. I use it to raise a 16” laptop up to eye height on my desk, as well as for raising the laptop to standing height in the kitchen. Tip: Always use a separate keyboard to keep your arms and shoulders relaxed.
DIGITAL
CopyQ - a free, open source, cross-platform clipboard manager. The ability to retain clipped items speeds up my digital workflows more than any other tool. It’s highly configurable, and can even be set up with custom hotkey functions that allow me to type ‘Ctrl’ + ‘1’ to insert my email address, or pretty much anything else you can imagine! I’ve included a link below to some of my open source recipes for commands. Works on any platform - Windows, Mac and Linux.
Simon Willison’s Weblog on AI and LLM coding - both fascinating and instructive, it is the publication ‘of record’ for LLM-driven coding, maintaining a nice balance between positive developments like new model releases and rapidly advancing capabilities, and thoughtful considerations of the risks such as prompt injection vulnerabilities. I recommend you Subscribe to it and read them as they drop, follow along with the coding, learn from the ideas - stay up to date with AI, without the fanboi AI hype.
INVISIBLE
“Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of the wise” — Douglas Bader, Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter ace during the Second World War.
Even before I’d heard this quote, I’d always thought this way - guidelines are great but they probably don’t apply to me! In all seriousness, it’s just a good way to humorously remind ourselves that all rules came from other people like you - and while there are many good and fine rules to always obey, those that have thought carefully and fully understand the subject at hand might need to bend them, especially when the benefit can be for all people.
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