Recomendo

17 Questions/Super Vectorizer 2/List of bookmark managers

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Recomendo: issue no. 203

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Self-Review Questions
The lifehacking guru Tim Ferriss compiled 17 questions he frequently asks himself, which I find useful to review myself every now and then. They are meant to help ensure that I spend my time on the right things. You can download them as a “17 Questions That Changed My Life” PDF. — KK

Easy image vectorizing
I frequently need to convert a photo or scan into vector art. I typically use Adobe Illustrator’s Trace function, but it’s finicky. Illustrator is also very expensive. Recently I discovered this $19 app called Super Vectorizer 2 that does just one thing – converts raster images into vector images. I’m impressed with the results. Here’s a before and after of a sketch I drew, and here’s a before and after of a photo I found in the JumpStory image library (which I recommended a couple of weeks ago). — MF

Every bookmark manager ever made
My bookmarks are getting out of hand, so I knew I had to devote some time to finding a manageable solution. This is a great list of “Every bookmark manager ever made” (last updated November 2019). Thanks to that list, I went with the app that I found most visually-appealing, called Raindrop.io ($28 yearly), which lets me do a full-text search of every webpage I’ve ever saved. — CD

Serious lockdown viewing
To have a research station on another planet, we have to figure out how to recreate a tiny biosphere for humans. That’s what the Biosphere 2 project in Arizona was trying to do in 1991. I was so interested in this experiement that I spent time locked inside their test module. But this $150 million structure was built by a theater group instead of scientists, and therein lies the drama worthy of a film. Skip the comedy (Biodome, 1996) and watch Spaceship Earth (2020), a new sympathetic documentary on this remarkable project. What they learned, of life support and human dynamics, should be better known. (Imagine being really locked down for 2 years.) Streams on HuluAmazon. — KK

Huge gallery of high-res retro art
Believe it or not, Flickr is still around, and I hope it stays because it’s a great place to store and share images. One of my favorite Flickr folks is designer James Vaughan, who has amassed a gallery of over 20,000 images from decades past, including advertising illustrations, paperback book covers, movie posters, LP covers, and more. I frequently get lost here. — MF

Autocorrect your negativity
I’ve developed this small habit of editing my internal monologue when I catch myself saying something negative or absolute. If the thought “This sucks — it’s never any fun,” pops into my head, I immediately correct myself with “This sometimes sucks. It might be fun.” If I don’t autocorrect myself I stay stuck in a negative mood, but when I do, I let go of the negative outcome and just roll with whatever. I first came across this trick here: This Small Change in Your Language Can Help Downplay Negativity. — CD

-- Kevin Kelly, Mark Frauenfelder, Claudia Dawson 06/7/20

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