Creator tutor / Reset reference card / Keychain glasses

Recomendo - issue #529

Creator tutor

I watch a LOT of YouTube videos about making stuff. Mostly people in their workshops making furniture, or props, or costumes, or miniatures, or their own tools, or weird art. One of the best teachers in this maker-verse is Laura Kampf. Based in LA, she calls herself the Janitor of LA because she likes to pick up junk and turn it into useful stuff. I like her style, both her style in videos and her style of creations. She is a born teacher, and more than most makers, manages to extract teachable pithy advice from what she does. As just one example: she says the best art pieces come from pairing worn, old junky things with new glossy parts for contrast, so the artifacts are hybrids — slick new knobs on a rust box — which is true but it would have taken me a long time to notice that. — KK

Reset your nervous system

This is a reference card of nine somatic exercises for resetting your nervous system. Three of them made me realize I’ve been instinctually self-soothing for years: the physiological sigh helps me expel anxious energy, situational humming has been happening without my awareness since childhood, and the butterfly hug helps slow me down and relax. I didn’t realize humming was self-regulation until I was an adult, after enough annoyed people pointed it out and I looked into it. If you read through the rest, you might recognize a few things your body already knows how to do. — CD

Travel advisories world map

The U.S. Department of State website has an at-a-glance travel advisories world map that shows the safety of different countries. You can click on any country to see the full travel advisory. I was surprised to see that many European countries, such as Germany, are at Level 2 (Exercise increased caution), while Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan are at Level 1 (Exercise normal precautions). — MF

Copy and paste, intact

Copynpaste is a one-tool webpage for moving text between apps without losing its formatting. Paste in something bolded, italicized, or otherwise styled, choose where it’s going, and it converts the formatting into the language that app understands, all privately in your browser. The tool feels related to another one I’ve recommended before and still use at least once a week: ConvertCase, which does exactly what it says. — CD

Irregular newsletter

Neal Stephenson publishes impossibly long science-fictiony novels. He also is a keen observer and writes an irregular Substack with much shorter essays featuring his eclectic interests. He doesn’t post often on Graphomane, but it is always interesting when he does. — KK

Keychain reading glasses

It’s a hassle to carry reading glasses everywhere I go. I bought some ThinOptics Keychain Reading Glasses that bend in half and slide into a case the size of a car key. They pinch comfortably on my nose, so they don’t need arms. They are nearly flat and incredibly lightweight. — MF

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08/30/26

Gar’s Tips & Tools – Issue #214

Access to tools, techniques, and shop tales from the diverse worlds of DIY

Still Sweet On It

Tools That Continue to Delight Daily

Here’s a new periodic column where I again profress my love for a tool I recommended in a previous newsletter.

I wrote about Sewing Machine Lights in issue #208. These cheap, corded, gooseneck lights on a magnetic base use 36 bright LEDs to give you extra illumination on or near a tool or workbench. They come with six adhesive metal disks that you can mount around the shop so the light can be moved to where you need it. There are battery/rechargeable versions, but they’re more expensive and obviously need regular charging. You can get a 3-pack of the corded lights for $18.

3D-Printer Thread Checker

My friend and former work colleague, Sean Ragan, shared this 3D print on Facebook recently, saying “This NPT thread checker…may be the most useful thing I’ve made this year.” Sean has long been a thread-checker enthusiast. Here he is extolling the virtues of two commercial checkers six years ago on Cool Tools (a wall-mounted checker and one cable-wired model).

For the above 3D-printed checker, on its Thingiverse page, he writes:

This quick 5-minute print organizes 5 pairs of male-to-female NPT thread adapters in every standard size between 1/8” and 3/4”. If you’ve ever worked with this kind of pipe before, you know that the nominal size is only loosely related to the actual size and having a reference like this is a lot faster than breaking out the calipers, taking an OD measurement, and looking it up. You could also laser-cut it from any stock about 3/16” thick. To assemble, just pass the male end of each adapter through the corresponding opening on the front side of the plate, then tighten the female end onto the male threads from the back side.

The Accessible Workshop

Do you have favorite “adaptive tech” that you use in your work and home life? I’d love to hear about it.

Shop Vac Handle

For a healthy wrist, to bend at, say a 30-degree angle to hold a vacuum hose or other tool is not a problem. For a person like myself with arthritis, it’s a literal pain. Woodworker Glenn Frazee put this handle together with scraps from the shop. Not the prettiest solution, but it looks like it gets the job done.

Soda/Beer Can Handle

When I was a kid, my dad went through a phase where he fancied himself an inventor. One of the things he tried to patent was a clip-on soda/beer can handle. It was really cool to watch him sketch out and then create technical drawings (he was a civil engineer), prototype different handle designs, and draw up the patent. At 10, or whatever age I was, this was a great early maker lesson in just doing it (and the value in having developed the skill-sets to do it). This 3D printed ergonomic handle reminded me of dear ol’ dad’s design.

Tools I’d Pay More For

Small tools often come with big compromises. They can be awkward to hold, flimsy, or simply don’t work very well. In this video from the American Electrician, Sparky looks at a collection of genuinely professional-grade mini tools that prove compact doesn’t have to mean cheap.

The clear standout is the PB Swiss Pocket Driver. Sparky admits he thought these palm-sized drivers were gimmicks until he tried one. With a smooth rotating bit carousel, powerful magnet, standard 1/4-inch bits, and impeccable Swiss fit n’ finish, it’s become one of his favorite compact drivers. He’s equally enthused over Milwaukee’s tiny 5-inch pliers wrench, which packs surprising capability into a pocket-sized tool. He also praises Knipex‘s TwinGrip and miniature Cobra pliers, which he considers the gold standard for compact grippers.

Other favorites include Klein’s compact digital angle gauge, Makita’s clever compact socket sets, and Klein’s interchangeable flip-socket nut driver system, all of which save considerable space without sacrificing a lot functionality.

If you’re putting together an EDC toolkit, travel kit, or simply looking to lighten your tool bag load, there are several gems here worth knowing about.

Maker Update Update

I’ve been a devoted fan of Donald Bell’s Maker Update since the first episode. Every week, Donald or Tyler Wingarner (and periodic quest hosts) do something I deeply appreciate: they comb through the vast maker world, find some of the most interesting projects, clever tools, and unexpected, whimsical ideas, and package them into tight, entertaining roundups. It saves me hours of wandering down YouTube rabbit holes (when I don’t have time fo’ dat) while still making me feel connected to what’s happening across the maker world.

This most recent episode is especially strong. The first project features one of the coolest phone-based robots I’ve ever seen. It repurposes an old iPhone, using it as the robot’s brains. Download a $20 app, add some simple electronics and a handful of 3D-printed parts, and you’ve got a surprisingly capable little walking robot. I suspect many of us have an aging iPhone cast off in a drawer somewhere, waiting for a second life as a robot brain.

The next project heads in a decidedly different direction. A maker used recordings of his late grandfather’s voice, along with ChatGPT, to create a talking Big Mouth Billy Bass that lets him continue conversations with a sort of AI analog of gramps. On paper, it sounds like the setup for a Black Mirror episode. In practice, it’s unexpectedly moving, and it raises all sort of interesting questions.

Some will find it unsettling, even staright-up inappropriate. Others may see it as a new kind of memory object, one that preserves not just someone’s image or voice, but a little of the way they thought and spoke (see Rudy Rucker’s lifebox and soft death concepts in some of his writing, especially The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul). Wherever you come down on it, it’s definitely a fascinating project.

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Thanks to All My Subscribers!

I now have well over 10,000 subscribers to this humble little newsletter. And 50 paid subscribers. A million thanks to all of you. Doing this newsletters is a true joy for me and I especially like feeling like I’m connected to a community of fellow makers. Thanks to everyone who’s sent me an email, made a comment, shared a tip or tool. Let’s keep the ball rolling for another 200 issues!

If you want to financially support this work, please consider a paid subscription. It helps keep me in handsome, black Carhartt workshirts. I appreciate you.

A very special thanks to Hero of the Realm subscribers: Moses Hawk, Jim Coraci, Donobster, Peter Sugarman, and Will Phillips for your generous support.

08/29/26

Book Freak #224: Exactly

How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World

Get Exactly

Exactly is a history of precision engineering. It reveals how our ability to make and measure things to increasingly fine tolerances enabled people to create everything from steam engines to microprocessors.

Core Principles

Some Things Are Impossible Without Precision

Precision engineering kicked off in 18th-century Britain with John “Iron-Mad” Wilkinson, who bored cannon barrels accurate enough to make James Watt’s steam engine possible. Before this, mechanisms were one-offs without swappable parts.

Interchangeable Parts Changed the World

Assembly lines depend on matching components. Interchangeable parts made mass production and modern consumer goods like the Model T affordable.

Precision Changes Along with Orders of Magnitude

Each section of the book is labeled with an order-of-magnitude accuracy, starting at 0.1 inches (boring cannons) and decreasing by factors of 1,000 until reaching the atomic level (fabricating microchips with billions of transistors).

When Precision Makes Things Worse

The pursuit of the ultra-precise can sometimes work against craftsmanship, art, and the beauty of imperfection. Japan displays “an aesthetic sensibility wherein asymmetry and roughness and impermanence are accorded every bit as much weight as are the exact, the immaculate, and the precise.”

Try It Now

1. Look at your phone. Consider how its components are built to microscopic tolerances. Look at a door hinge, a zipper, or a ballpoint pen. Notice how smoothly they work because thousands of parts fit together exactly right.
2. Identify one area of your life where you pursue perfection to a fault. Would “Good enough” serve you better? Conversely, identify something you do in your life that could be improved with more precision.
3. What have you dismissed as imperfect that you can learn to appreciate because of its roughness or asymmetry?

Quote

“There are now more transistors at work on this planet (some 15 quintillion, or 15,000,000,000,000,000,000) than there are leaves on all the trees in the world.”

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Book Freak is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We also run Recomendo, the Cool Tools website, a YouTube channel and podcast, and other newsletters, including Recomendo Deals, Gar’s Tips & Tools, Nomadico, What’s in my NOW?, Tools for Possibilities, Books That Belong On Paper, and Book Freak.

08/28/26

Travel Shaving Cream/Best Airports for Deals/South America Prices

Nomadico Issue #221

A Smaller Travel Shaving Cream

I highlighted this product years ago in passing when I first started using it, but it has been in my bag ever since: Bigelow Shaving Cream with eucalyptus and coconut oil. Most home shaving creams are large, pressurized, and utilize lots of single-use plastic, but this one is in a carry-on-sized metal tube that gets smaller as you use more of it. One tube can last a year of trips, even for frequent travelers.

Europe Got a Third of All Vacation Spend Last Year

Now we know where all those tourists who skipped the USA went last year. The full 2025 numbers are out and Europe pulled in a third of all travel spending worldwide, a mind-boggling $2 trillion in expenditures. This is despite heat waves in high season, overcrowding in famous destinations, and attraction prices that can max out the credit card. If there’s a lesson from that article, it’s to avoid July and August if at all possible and try to get into less-visited areas that will be happy to see you instead of destinations that are wishing you would stay away.

Airports With the Best Flight Deals

When Going.com crunched the data for the most frequent flight deals in the USA, Denver and New Orleans had the most domestic deals, thanks to lots of competition. For international flights, you’re fortunate if you live near Boston, New York City, or Orlando. See the details here. A similar study for Europe found that the most frequent flight bargains are to or from airports with a strong budget airline presence: Dublin, Barcelona, Lisbon, Milan, and the non-Heathrow London airports. If you’re flying business class though, the differences flatten out. Dublin, Oslo, Stockholm, and Madrid offer the best fares, but the variance between them and the most expensive (Zurich) is much smaller than in economy class.

South America Travel Prices

I recently updated and republished this post from a few years ago on the cheapest places to travel in South America because political factors have radically changed the exchange rate landscape in some destinations. The U.S. dollar has lost a lot of its value under the current administration, so articles from earlier than January 20, 2025 are likely to be way off base. Then the local political situations in Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia have further influenced what you’ll pay. Same as it ever was in Ecuador though: they use the greenback as their official currency.

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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.

08/27/26

What’s in my NOW? — Jennifer Galloway

issue #268

I’m a wife, mom, daughter, friend, and residential interior decorator. Some of my most meaningful work is creating shelter-room makeovers for families experiencing homelessness through A Lotta Love. I’m also a flea market enthusiast, party planner and hostess, British programming aficionado, and delighted friend to all dogs.

PHYSICAL

• All About Vibe Custom Pillows: We’re in the thick of high school graduation season, with so many friends/kids getting ready to head off to college this fall. I absolutely love these custom pillows, which I’ve been personalizing with photos of family pets and giving as graduation gifts. They’re a fun, thoughtful reminder of home that students can take with them when they leave, and they feel so much more personal than a card with money or a gift card, though those are always appreciated too!
• Topsail Steamer Seafood Boil Buckets: We love hosting al fresco summer dinners, and Topsail Steamer makes it incredibly easy to serve an impressive seafood boil without spending the whole evening in the kitchen. Their buckets include everything you need for a proper feast, and they’re always a crowd-pleaser. We just add a nice bottle of white, my Uncle Allen’s perfectly-worn crab hammers (now a family heirloom), and a key lime pie. Now if they’d just offer a loyalty program (wink, wink)!
• Hidden Gems: My husband and I love these cards. We tuck them into work bags, coat pockets, and unexpected little places so the other person finds a surprise love note later in the day. We mostly use them for fun, but I recently reached for one after a small tiff, and it was exactly what we needed to soften the aftermath. It offered a gentle reminder that beneath all the noise, there is still compassion, kindness, and love.

DIGITAL

• Mystery Show Podcast: I recently revisited Mystery Show, and it remains my number-one answer whenever someone asks about my favorite podcasts. Starlee Kine blends wit, warmth, suspense, and, of course, mystery into an utterly charming little gem of a show. Only six episodes were ever released, which somehow makes me treasure it even more.
• Call it divine intervention, fate, or kismet, but Sister Mary Jo’s uplifting, scripture-rooted messages always seem to find me just when I need them most. You don’t have to be Catholic, Christian, or connected to any organized faith to appreciate her warmth, no-nonsense encouragement, and heartfelt reminders to lead with kindness, compassion, and purpose. Her messages bring welcome depth and humanity to a world that often feels short on both. And honestly, who can resist a habit, cat-eye-glasses-wearing nun who ends each message with a wink and a tongue click?

INVISIBLE

“Healthy Birds Leave the Nest”

Our son and only child is leaving for college in August and spending his very first semester overseas in Rome. We are filled with excitement for him, while our hearts ache at the thought of his absence from our daily lives.

My motherly instinct is to keep him close and safe forever, but I keep reminding myself: healthy birds leave the nest. He is meant to go out into the world, discover who he is and who he wants to become, grow through new experiences and challenges, and begin finding his own way.

We are endlessly proud of the kind, thoughtful young man he has become, and we will always be here, cheering him on from home.

He’s got this. And, eventually, so will we.

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08/26/26

CCCP: True Stories of Soviet Cuisine / Paint by Sticker

Issue No. 132

CCCP COOK BOOK – RECIPES FROM THE DAYS OF SOVIET FOOD PLANNERS

CCCP Cook Book: True Stories of Soviet Cuisine
by Olga Syutkin and Pavel Syutkin
Fuel Publishing
2015, 192 pages, 4.9 x 8 x 0.9 inches

Buy on Amazon

Fuel Publishing, based in London, has carved a niche in the book world by creating books that document the small dark corners of Soviet history. You may be familiar with the series of books, Russian Criminal Tattoos, that revealed the language of body ink and the hierarchies of gulags. CCCP Cook Book uses the same obsessive attention to detail to great effect. When your country is wholly dependent on what the obshchina (collective farm) produces, what you eat is a political act. CCCP Cook Book delves deep into the history of dishes beloved by generations of Russians evolved from both the ideal of equal for all and the realities of planned food production in a country of nearly 170 million.

Visually, CCCP Cook Book adheres to Fuel’s high-minded design aesthetic. The full-page photos that illustrate the recipes are faithfully reproduced in the faded colors and garish contrasts that plagued cookbooks (regardless of origin) throughout the mid-century period.

Knowing that “Soviet” in Russian means “assembly” helps understand that Soviet cuisine isn’t necessarily Russian food. Central planners developed recipes based on projected harvests and preserved foods. Fresh herring wasn’t available in Taskent, but tinned (preserved) fish could be distributed throughout the country. Workers were fed meals at their workplaces that helped standardize recipes, as commissary cooks were required to follow the famed manual, “Book of Tasty and Healthy Food.”

That guide purposefully adapted regional dishes into new, improved Soviet recipes. Vorschmack has its roots in Jewish cuisine, but is easily recognized today as our own deviled eggs. Soviet planners declared every Thursday to be Fish Day as a way to address meat shortages. In response, agricultural scientists, inspired by the 16th-century Rus dish of minced fish shaped with elaborate molds, created a modern meal for the masses: fish sticks!

Soviet food scientists were doing the same work as capitalist American food engineers of the time. For every color-saturated booklet published by Kraft, the Soviet food councils published their own versions. Americans are haunted by the endless variations of the mayonnaise based “toss it all in a bowl “ style salad recipes. The Soviets also had their versions of the “toss it in bowl” recipes. One of my favorites in the CCCP Cook Book, for both the “blech” factor and its advertising campaign, is Shuba, better known by its nickname, Herring under a Fur Coat. The key ingredients are, of course, mayo and herring.

As a practical cookbook, I have neither the will nor stomach to actually prepare any of these dishes, yet CCCP Cook Book is an amazing work of culinary history. The book as an object is a marvel. The heavy quality paper, the purposefully reproduced photos, the exposed stitching binding, all appeal to a collector’s artisanal instincts. It’s my new “You Must Buy This Book” recommendation for my foodie friends. – Christina Ward

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PUT AWAY THE WATERCOLORS AND PAINT BY STICKER

Paint by Sticker: A Magical New Art Form
by Workman Publishing
Workman Publishing
2016, 56 pages, 8.8 x 11.4 x 0.4 inches

Buy on Amazon

Are you done with adult coloring books but not yet ready for adult fingerpainting? Have you considered… an adult stickerbook? I don’t understand how Paint by Sticker got made — it’s such an odd idea — but it turns out that it’s unexpectedly diverting to put these pictures together. The book has 12 unpainted “paintings” on thick perforated paper, each with two dedicated sheets of stickers. The paintings are outlines of some standard subjects: a fruit bowl still-life, a cottage in the woods. Through some creative talent I can’t wrap my head around, the images have been broken down into outlined facets by color, each numbered and waiting for you to apply the corresponding sticker.

I tried Paint by Sticker out on a few guinea pigs. Test subject #1 is a nine-year-old visual artist, and she wandered away before doing very much of her project. Test subject #2 is an adult, enjoys crafts but is not particularly artistic, and got super-duper into this with a glass of wine, a pocket knife for the stickers that wouldn’t come loose, and tweezers for precise placement. The subject had a meditative blissful time putting the stickers on the water towers and matching up the shapes with the numbers, and ooooh it was so satisfying, maybe not as an expression of emotion, but as a soothing and enjoyable treasure hunt with a weird and cool final project. Test subject #3 is a teenager, was also absorbed by the task, and assembled the fox while eating dinner. Test subjects #2 and #3 have decided to save the rest of the book for an airplane flight they have coming up. – Sara Lorimer

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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.

08/25/26

What’s in my NOW? — Jennifer Galloway