{"id":36661,"date":"2020-07-26T09:00:59","date_gmt":"2020-07-26T16:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=36661"},"modified":"2020-07-20T11:34:06","modified_gmt":"2020-07-20T18:34:06","slug":"cable-coiling-tip-boombust-text-expander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/cable-coiling-tip-boombust-text-expander\/","title":{"rendered":"Cable coiling tip\/ Boom\/Bust \/ Text Expander"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Custom coiled cables<\/strong>
\nI\u2019ve been making my own coiled cables thanks to a tip I learned from\u00a0Gareth Branwyn\u2019s Tips newsletter<\/a>\u00a0(which we co-publish). Gareth pointed me to a\u00a0John Park\u2019s YouTube tutorial<\/a>\u00a0on heat treating ordinary USB cables into expandable coiled cables, like the ones on old telephone handsets, or headphones. (Jump to the 23-minute mark.) The hack really works and results in much more manageable cables for audio, photography, and desktop gear. \u2014 KK<\/p>\n

The story of the once-viral trivia app<\/strong>
\nI binge listened to all 8 episodes of\u00a0Boom\/Bust: The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia<\/a>\u00a0in one day. I was obsessed with the viral game back in 2017, but eventually lost interest and didn\u2019t follow the demise of the trivia startup. This documentary podcast series gave me an insider glimpse into what really happened and helped me better understand the very fickle attention economy. \u2014 CD<\/p>\n

Speed for slow typists<\/strong>
\nI\u2019ve been using\u00a0TextExpander<\/a>\u00a0for at least 10 years and it has saved me hundreds of hours of typing. It\u2019s a global utility that converts short snippets of text into canned text. For instance, when I type \u201cmf\u201d it changes it to \u201cMark Frauenfelder.\u201d When I type \u201cadr\u201d it changes it to my home address. \u201cBio\u201d spits out my biography and a link to my headshot photos. I have a lot of canned boilerplate for email responses that save me a ton of time. It can also add anything that\u2019s saved in my clipboard to a chunk of boilerplate. It also corrects frequently misspelled words. The Mac OS has snippet expansion but lacks many of the features and the snap of TextExpander. I can\u2019t stand using other people\u2019s computers to write or do email because not having TextExpander slows me way down. \u2014 MF<\/p>\n

Ultimate refrigerator containers<\/strong>
\nMy second favorite activity in the kitchen (after eating good food) is to stowe leftovers in our trove of\u00a0Snapware Glasslock containers<\/a>\u00a0with snap-on lids. Glass makes the leftovers clearly visible, and re-heatable in their container, and the snap lids with gaskets create a nearly vacuum seal, and their sturdy flat tops can be securely stacked in the refrigerator. They will never spill, and are superior to all the other systems we\u2019ve tried in the past. Snapping them shut on all four sides makes me really happy. By now there are 10 different brands of glass with snap lids (including Amazon Basics), all with the same design, though they are not interchangeable. I have not tried other brands; we are still using the original Snapware\/Glasslock ones from a decade ago and they seem to last forever. \u2014 KK<\/p>\n

Low maintenance label maker<\/strong>
\nI bought this\u00a0DYMO Portable Label Maker<\/a>\u00a0($23) because it was an Amazon best seller and I didn\u2019t want to put that much research into it, but now it\u2019s been almost a year that I\u2019ve owned it and it\u2019s still incredibly useful and has not let me down. It\u2019s so intuitive that months have gone by between use and I don\u2019t have to remind myself how to work it. I love that it\u2019s so light. I can walk around with it, type on it, print and cut my label and put it back in one fell swoop.\u00a0\u2014 CD<\/p>\n

The 1913 dictionary is better<\/strong>
\nI found out about\u00a0Webster\u2019s 1913 Dictionary<\/a>\u00a0from David Perell\u2019s excellent\u00a0Friday Finds<\/a>\u00a0newsletter. Perell uses this 107 year old dictionary because he thinks \u201cmodern dictionaries have lazy definitions that focus too much on simplicity at the cost of precision.\u201d I also love the extreme Simplicity of the interface. it\u2019s worth bookmarking. \u2014 MF<\/p>\n

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Recomendo: issue no. 210<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13684,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[2323],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36661"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13684"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36661"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36663,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36661\/revisions\/36663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}