Feel Good Friday - what are your favorite tools?

[Dave Liao]

What are your favorite tools, and why?

They could be for being creative, or cooking in the kitchen, or grooming yourself in the morning. What tools meet a need so perfectly, are well-crafted, or just are plain awesome?

I'll start!

For me, keyboards are important to me. Sure, I use them to earn money, but seeing an old keyboard reminds me of simpler days. Especially "retro" ones! Pictured below is one of my favorite devices, a recreation of an IBM Model M keyboard.

It's utilitarian, and each key press feels sure and confident.

Using quality tools just makes my day better.

So, what are your favorite tools, and why?

Leave a comment - and please have a wonderful Friday!

[James O_Connor]

Great question Dave! The good old label-maker is a favourite of mine at the moment. I may be going a little crazy with labelling everything in the house lately but at least I know where everything is...

[Dave Liao]

@James O_Connor - I LOVE a quality label maker! I used to have one that would print raised letters on black tape. When I owned more things, being able to mark what was in all my boxes was mandatory. 🤣

[Darryl Lee]

Oh man, so very late in the game I've gotten into keyboards. 

I mean, ages ago, THIS Switchboard keyboard was my daily driver, and I loved it, despite never switching the modules. (I believe I have the trackball module somewhere.)

(Bonus points if you can identify where the stickers are from.)

Unfortunately after buying an ADB->USB converter that didn't work, then building my own with an Teensy 2.0, and THEN just buying a dumb PS/2 to USB converter, I learned that some of the keys don't work at all. Sad. It's so clicky.

Anyways, later on, found a Keychron K8 on sale, not hot-swappable, pretty loud brown switches, battery is toast (I'm too lazy to replace it, just run it wired) but oh man, it looks pretty good with this Scrabble keycaps set:

More recently, I got really really loved the look, volume roller bar, and cheap(ish) early Kickstarter backer price of this Lofree Flow Lite, but a combination of the really low actuation force + short travel + super-wide keycap surface resulted in me making TONS of typos or just errant keystrokes while resting my fingers on the keyboard. A pretty awful Frankenstein hack using keycaps from a spare Royal Kludge F68 (the first one I ordered had a faulty switch under the N key, so they sent me a new one and said I could keep/dispose of the old one) reduced the typos, but I still had problems with accidental resting keystrokes.

(That's right, I'm mixing keyboard profiles, which is gnarly.)

ANYWAYS, my family wisely forbade me from buying any more keyboards, but uh, if the money you spend is from a gift card for a usability study, it doesn't really count as buying, right?

So then, freshly unboxed TONIGHT, I have the bargain basement ($40!!) AJAZZ AK820 MAX

It's got a great feel, no accidental keypresses while resting my fingers. Love the volume knob. My only gripe is the software can't customize the Mac configuration, and I've moved keycaps for Home/End and PgUp/Dn in the right order because their stock config is stupid. (Home->PgUp->PgDn->End? Ridiculous!)

So I'm using the Win config, which means the media keys are in weird places, AND require the Fn key. I suppose I could always get Karabiner-Elements to fix things.

But let's see how it goes. I should really give this habit a rest. I mean, I'm not even serious enough build my own keyboard by hand. (Ugh, lubing switches? Who's got the time.)

[Jack Graves]

@Dave Liao

Great post! Is that a Unicomp Model M? 🤔

I’ve got a pretty big keyboard collection myself!

For daily use, my ErgoDox EZ has been a game-changer for RSI:

On weekends, I might switch things up with a different kind of keyboard 🤣:

[Jack Graves]

@Darryl Lee Fascinating journey - but after all that meticulous keyboard tuning, you’re still wielding an Apple Magic Mouse? 😋 I’d love to hear why!

[Darryl Lee]

@Jack Graves Ha - I knew somebody would call me out on my mouse.

I just can't get away from the feel of swiping up/down/left/right, I guess because I still spend a good amount of time just on the MacBook Pro with it's built-in trackpad.

(Especially with Confluence's problematic table width issue, I really need a left/right scroll, and I think a cursory search didn't find any non-Apple mice that had such a feature. Would happy to hear about alternatives though.)

[Dave Liao]

@Darryl Lee - the whole trackpad-ish feature on a Magic Mouse is one of the features I miss about it. Charging from the bottom always bothered me, though!

And dang, that Switchboard looks awesome! A real Mac command key? Yaaaaas!

@Jack Graves - yep, it's a Unicomp! I didn't want to give them free advertising, also because it's not as good as my old IBM Model M (which I still have and use when I'm just typing prose!). Having modifier keys is KEY to getting work done these days, though.

I should probably clean my IBM keyboard, now that Darryl mentioned maintenance...

[Jack Graves]

That's a good point @Darryl Lee I do find the left/right scroll inadvertently going back/forwards in my browser a bit painful!

[Dave Liao]

Ha! If you want to geek out on keyboards, see this past Throwback Thursday post!

[Barbara Szczesniak]

My favorite tool is a George Foreman grill with removable plates for easy cleaning (can even go in the dishwasher!). I can cook a variety of meats in half the time, since it cooks both sides at once, and not make a mess of my stovetop. I am also not constrained by the weather, as I am with an outside barbeque grill.

[Amanda Barber]

Lately, my 3D printer has been a favorite household "tool." I love being able to print something for fun or to solve for a need quickly. A few weeks ago, my kiddo had a presentation and was using a foam board. It was just the flat kind, not a trifold, so I quickly printed some "feet" to allow it to stand freely. 

We've recently jumped on the Severance train and I added this to our coffee station yesterday. It's the small joys, haha.

[Andy Gladstone]

I have no culinary skills, but my 11 year old daughter and I have been bonding over the Betty Croker in recent weeks. We started a Saturday night tradition of making sourdough pizza in the Betty Crocker and some heavenly hot cocoa and eating together at the dining room table with some music and candlelight. She looks forward to it and enjoys every aspect of the preparation, setup and meal. So, the Betty Crocker has become my most recent tool of choice!

Second place is my is my Grabber Reacher Tool.  We live on a dead end street with an empty lot across the street from our house. The wind patterns (and kids on the block that need to learn that the world is not their trash can!) deposit a lot of garbage and debris along the fence and street. I do a weekly tidying up and this tool comes in very handy - helping me avoid having to touch the trash and saving my back and knees from all of the bending over!