Category: Things

Categories
Hipster tools Trends

A Manly Thing

An axe is a manly thing.

Axes have been used by homesteaders, loggers, folks living with fireplaces or wood burning stoves, and even executioners. The axe has been around for a long time, starting with our early ancestors chipping pieces of flint and fastening an axe head onto a sturdy stick.

Now guess what? There’s a more recent trend of selling axes to (usually, it seems) urban hipsters. I’d kind of noticed the trend on the internet awhile back out of the corner of my eye and was transported back in time. I felt like I did when I was eleven and saw an ad in the back of Esquire magazine for latex dresses. I wondered, “Umm that’s weird… I think… oh, I don’t know what I’m looking at or why someone wants to buy those.” I turned the page. Years later, I realized there were fetishes and latex clothing is one of those, I didn’t really get the “why” of latex, but I could see there’s a market for those people in need.

Several months ago, I was in New York City on vacation and came across a surf shop in SoHo. Being a surfer I went in to see what the big city guys surfed on. I knew there was surfing to be  had around New York City on occasion. There’s sometimes surf out at Far Rockaway near Coney Island and at Montauk on the tip of Long Island.

What I saw in the shop were some nice surfboards with strong nostalgic designs. And the prices were surprisingly good too.

I went a bit deeper into the surf shop and there they were: a whole rack of axes! They were colorfully painted and expensive.

Axes in a surf shop who’d have thunk? So now they were definitely on my radar. Sort of the latex dresses of the tool world. As I’ve said before, I’m always fascinated by subcultures. What was this about? And how did it start?

Here’s something similar. Several years ago big city hipsters started riding fixies (track bikes without brakes). Fixies have been ridden by bike messengers for years and so that type of bike was part of the big city environment. Fixes have street cred. But it’s hard for me to get a handle on the big city genesis of an ax fad.

I recently wrote about people striving for a minimal list of 100 or less personal items in A Jockstrap And A Bowie Knife. Someone with a designer axe probably is not a minimalist. Not that minimalism is the standard, but this represents a step in the other direction, towards extravagance. Fetishizing an actual tool.

I’m still not sure how the hipster axe trend began. They’re available at Best Made Company if you’re keen to check them out. Their site is where the photo above comes from. There’s even an elaborate sling for carrying an axe around on your back, if you’re so inclined.

Why this started is a guess too. Is this an overcompensation for some one who lives in a large city and is removed from a rural existence that’s out of reach? I don’t know. Could be that an outlier on the coolness spectrum bought one. And then since an axe is an unusual thing to own in a city and scarce, axes became cool.

Maybe in the ensuing years it’ll become more apparent to me, like the latex folks’ kink. Or maybe you’ll be able to buy a $200 axe at an aging hipster’s garage sale for under $5.

Categories
Happiness Ideas People Sites Streamlining Time Savers

Teashop Takeaway

Recently, I watched a video of a panel disscussion that was shot in a San Francisco teashop. It was a public talk about “life management” featuring the shop owner and three guest speakers. Two of the guest speakers were Leo Babauta and Tim Ferriss and they provided the bulk of the interesting ideas.

Both of these guys have very popular blogs, generally addressing how to optimize your life, although each has a different presentation style. Looked at from a high school yearbook voting perspective, Leo would’ve been voted most likely to become a writer; and Tim would’ve been pigeonholed as most likely to succeed. You could imagine one is a tea drinker and the other a coffee drinker.

With success, they’ve risen in prominence and demands on their time have increased forcing them to more tightly focus on what works best to enable them to be productive while living non-harried lives.

Leo recently moved to San Francisco from Guam with his wife and six kids. Tim is a single San Franciscan and self-described as hyperactive in many endeavors with a penchant for traveling. They manage very different lives, plus each has to control their time eaters.

The video is an hour and a half long and most people won’t geek out for that long; so I’ll present what I think are some of their top takeaway ideas for making their lives better.

-Low Info Diet – To confront information overload, Tim deals with info on a “just in time” (only when info directly affects him) basis. This is in contrast to a  “just in case” style (taking in as much info as possible). Most situations covered by  high info consumption rarely arise. He says he “tries to get to the bottom of things, not stay on top of things.” If they miss something that’s important,  it’ll be brought to your attention as it bubbles to the surface in conversation.

– Keeping Up – The need to keep up with everything and everyone is self-created. If the expectation from other people is that you probably won’t get back to them generally they will not harass you unless it’s important.

-Single-tasking – You will have a saner and calmer life if you single-task. Do one thing end to end.

-Prioritizing – On getting things done, they both single-task, concentrating on getting the one, most important thing for that day done before doing anything else on their to-do-list. What is the most important thing to do? Probably the most uncomfortable one. Another test for importance is: if that one thing is the only thing you get done, you’ll feel your day’s still a success.

-Worrying – Worrying is not the same as preparing. The things most people worry about don’t usually even happen.

-Control – Everything is always changing, so try to give up trying to control things and be flexible instead.

-Slowness – Build-in or schedule slowness into your week and have those blocks of time become fixed, with other activities coming second. For example, Tim will not change a hike or dinner date if there are three or more friends getting together. These built-in times also act as a bracket, creating an ending point for the day.

-Big Shots – With success, Tim found he’s been welcomed into rarefied business circles,  there he’s been surprised how most of the hyper-successful individuals are relaxed and casual in most of their life dealings, able to concentrate on “the one most important” task in a day and accomplish it. These people weren’t the frazzled people you might imagine; being overwhelmed doesn’t fix anything, you need to have clear priorities.

-Routines – Develop routines, rituals, and routines to simplify your life. Routines will save your limited decision-making time since you won’t have those routine decisions to make.

-Habits – You’ll need to do something new at least five times before it will set in  as a habit, and stop just being an experiment. People generally respond to a better habit.

-Motivation – Rather than having to depend on discipline, motivation works as a better incentive. If you know your friend is waiting for you to go for a walk, you’re more likely to do it.

-Focus – Focus on your breathing to help you see what’s going on right now since your breathing is a constant and an easy thing to latch onto to bring yourself back to the present.

Lots of good stuff here I think. Too much for one post, so Tuesday I’ll post the second half.  If you like the ideas so far, give the video a look in case I missed some points that might mean more to you.


Categories
Health Things Time Savers

What? An Electric Toothbrush?

I visited Africa once and saw Kenyans in the bush massaging their teeth with small twigs. I asked a guy about it and he said they use a twig from the olivewood tree as a toothbrush. Their teeth looked pretty good. I tried it and it seemed to work well enough. But an olivewood twig is tough to come by in these parts. Also, it could’ve just been they weren’t eating lots of sweets.

Enter the electric toothbrush.

When I first heard about it I thought what could be more bourgeois and useless. Was it like the electric carving knife of personal hygiene? I mean, how difficult could it possibly be to slice a turkey? And you only need to do it twice a year, tops.

The concept of an electric toothbrush reminded me of Canadian columnist, Heather Mallick, commenting  that “… the (increasing number of) devices have one aim: to make even the smallest movement unnecessary.”

Then I was given an electric toothbrush many years ago as a gift… Jesus, an electric toothbrush! What’s next the AAA battery-powered toothpick?

But I have to cowboy up and admit I was wrong. I tried it and it worked much better than manual brushing and I grew to enjoy using it. Plus I cut back on dentist visits since my teeth and gums became healthier.

I’m still using an electric toothbrush. As a mater of fact I’ve gone through two of ’em over the years and am now onto my third. I use it at least twice a day. It’s not because I’m too lazy to  manually brush. Actually, I used be a religious little brusher for years before switching over. And when I travel, it’s back to manual, it’s like riding a bicycle, you won’t forget how to do it.

The picture on this post is of my friend Chris who was visiting us in Mexico. After getting ready for a party he decided to brush his teeth before heading out. As you can see, he likes his electric toothbrush so much he even travels with his.

So you never know.

Bob Dylan went electric back in the Sixties and his music changed for the better. I went electric in the nineties and my teeth are whiter and stronger.

Categories
Exercise Health Ideas Simplifing Sites tools

Useful Exercise

This is my first post about exercise. I’m only going to be presenting exercises I do and have found to be worthwhile.

But here’s the thing – the best exercise is, really, the one you like to do and that you’ll do (consistently). I’m starting out with an exercise that I think is useful and fun.

OK, there’re people exclusively doing  just this exercise and getting good results. I like it because it’s easy, quick, cheap, and leaves you prepared for real world activities like shoveling your driveway. All you really need is a sledgehammer. That’s right, a sledgehammer.

If you don’t have one, you can buy one easily enough. Better, borrow one from a neighbor who has lots of tools. A sledgehammer is a tool most people don’t use very often and so your neighbor probably won’t mind lending it to you to try this out.

Commonly, sledgehammers have heads ranging from eight to twelve pounds. Err on the light side. Eight or ten pounds is plenty. The ten pounder I use is pictured above. I painted bands on the handle so I could easily put my hands in the same position when switching sides.

Before I get to the particulars, I want to say I also like the way sledgehammers look and since they stand on their head with the handle up – they have a small footprint. So, in your office, spare bedroom, or garage it can be set in the corner when not in use; it looks cool and is easy to grab for a little workout. Of course it easily lives in a closet too.

The site shovelglove is the site I credit with putting me onto using a sledgehammer for exercise. Shovelglove’s Reinhard Engels says the genesis of using a sledgehammer workout began with this memory: “I remembered reading something in some French novel about coal shovelers having the best abdominal muscles of anyone the author had ever seen.”

His workouts consist of a 14 minute (timed) session Monday through Friday during which he uses his sledgehammer to mimic shoveling, paddling, hammering, and butter churning motions to name a few. You can make up your own motions. Do it on both right and left sides. And you’re done in less than 15 minutes which he sees as the shortest normally scheduled chunk of time. Checkout the shovelglove site to see videos.

You can listen to music, watch TV, wear whatever you like, and you’re done in a short time.

I use the sledgehammer this way too. But I enjoy other types of exercise (Engels doesn’t) so to be transparent, I want to say I use a sledgehammer workout to augment other exercises. For me, it’s part of a mix. But I think as a stand alone routine it’s great.

You might ask, what about actually beating on things with a sledgehammer, that’d be fun? You can and people do. Get an old tire and get medieval on it. But you’re going to need more room, have to do it outside and since it’s a faster motion you run a risk of injury.

And soon when the time arises that you need to shovel your driveway or drive a stake into the ground for the big top you’ll be ready.

Categories
Ideas People Sites Things

Good Business, Bad Business

Lots of articles, blogs, and books have been written about business. I’ve read some of them and the “takeaway” message from most investigations boils down to this: cheerfully give people more than they expect. This seems to be the foundation of successful businesses large and small.

Here’s something that happened to a good friend of mine, Rick. His laptop PC was old, underpowered and overloaded – time for an upgrade. Planning on being in rural Mexico for the Winter, Rick was trying to sort out a new laptop to buy before heading South .

There’s an Apple store near his house in the States and after a few visits he became enchanted with MacBooks.

But, when he finally pulled the trigger, he reasoned a $700 PC laptop would do the trick. So he ordered one online. It showed up and he unpacked it. He studied it for a couple of minutes and putzed around on it for a few more. Then he repacked it, sent it back, ate the $70 restocking fee, and bought the MacBook he’d been eying.

He’s happy now. And as always, I’m sure quality will be remembered long after the price is forgotten. So far, he feels like he was cheerfully given more than he expected. He’ll be heading to Mexico soon and his computer is something he doesn’t have to worry about.

I use a Macbook too but am in no way associated with Apple. And I know folks who’re happy with their PC’s. I’m just trying to provide an example. Sure, Apple is known for its catchy ad campaigns and innovative products, but I think the true key to their success has been consistently providing their customers with more than promised.

Here’s an example toward the other end of the customer satisfaction spectrum. Generally speaking, when surfing the internet, we expect free content. So having to pay to look at content drives traffic away and reduces the spreading of that site’s ideas, and restricts the site’s following too.

Arthur De Vany is an accomplished academic in economics and an early proponent of a lifestyle based on an evolutionary perspective. If you go to his website you’ll be frustrated by having to pay $39/yr to see most of his site’s content. Maybe he has lots of subscribers but he’d have a much larger following if it were free. And now, from what I could see, he has a book coming out. He’d wind up selling a lot more books if his site was free because he’d have tons more traffic. I’d guess selling more books would generate more income than charging $39/yr for content on the internet.

There’re probably some people paying to see Art’s material. And maybe his site would exceed my expectations, unfortunately, my expectation is free content so I guess I’ll never know.

Categories
Clutter Ideas Sites Things tools Trends

My Latest Time Sink

My latest time sink is a site called EDC. That stands for “everyday carry.” The site is a Tumblr style blog of photos and comments on what people carry around in their pockets. The photo above, which I put together, shows what the EDC posts generally look like. I don’t carry all that crap around but if you’re to believe EDC, some people do tote around lots of things in their pockets. I’m not sure why but I think you’ll get sucked in, voyeuristically viewing similar yet different collections of gear sent in by who knows who.

There’s a not too subtle butch overtone to the items depicted. My guess from looking at the gear displayed, is that it’s mainly a dude thing. As one commenter on the site said    “… it seems like every other contributor is a sneak-attack-ninja-catburglar.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. But I’m drawn in anyway and maybe it’s because of that element, I can’t tell.

There’s a reoccurring pattern to most of the photos – usually at least one knife, a wallet, keys of some sort, a cell phone, a wrist watch and a flashlight. Sometimes there are shockingly large knives. Judging the owners based on the photos they send in, I wouldn’t think they’d be the type to use a man-bag but I can’t imagine how else they’d move through daily life with the arsenals on display in the pictures.

I’m always fascinated by subcultures and within this one there are sub-subcultures to be found and explored. One of those seems to be an obsession with small LED flashlights bordering on fetishism. These flashlights are anodized (usually black), beautifully machined,  powerful little masterpieces. They cost between $50 and $200. But really, wouldn’t a headlight be better, leaving both hands free to engage in your “sneak-attack-ninja-catburglar” thing? To be fair, I do remember one submission that was practical showing just a knife, wristwatch, and headlight (with a night vision saving red lens!). He struck me as the real deal.

I’m not sure what it is, but my guess is the feature photo of  the EDC site is a picture looking into the reflector cone of a flashlight.

There’s also a sub-subculture revolving around pens. And of course there’s the focus on (usually folding) knives for everyday carry. Some of these “pocketknives” are so expensive it’s hard to imagine the owner using his damascus steel blade to pry out a box staple or slice into a UPS overnight envelope containing the latest mini-flashlight model. It’s a little like saying “I’m taking the Lamborgini over to pick up the kids from school.”

It turns out there are other sites covering more or less the same genre. There’s something for everybody on the internet. I prefer this one, maybe only because it’s the first one I stumbled across.

I’ve always said “time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” If you’re interested, visit  http://everyday-carry.com/ but be prepared to waste some time.