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micro, books, gear, review

I've found a hand strap to be a useful addition to my e-reader.

I bought the TFY Security Hand Strap for my Kindle Paperwhite 18 months ago. It makes holding the e-reader for long periods of time much more pleasant – especially when reading in bed and holding the device up above my head. No pinch grip required. It doesn’t add noticeable bulk or weight to the Kindle, and I can ignore it completely when I’m not using it. Originally I went looking for some kind of case with a cover that could be folded into a more ergonomic shape to hold, but when this strap appeared in my search results I realized it was a simpler solution to the problem. The strap could probably be made with a wire hanger and some elastic webbing.

Kindle Handstrap at Lunch

micro, bicycle

Virginia Tech rates bike helmets.

The CPSC standard is of limited practicality. It seeks only to test if a helmet can prevent a skull fracture from a direct impact on the top of the head. It was refreshing to find Virginia Tech’s helmet ratings, backed by a test methodology that actually seems to appropriately model reality. I was pleased to see that my Smith Overtake scored 4/5. The Overtake is four years old and still in fine shape, but whenever it comes time to replace it I’ll use these ratings to make a purchase decision.

micro, sleep

Hospital corners are the key to liberating your mind from the tyranny of fitted sheets.

Flat sheets with folded corners are functional mattress covers, and make every flat sheet you own twice as useful as it was before. I believe elastic-bound, fitted sheets are just a conspiracy created by the bedding industry to get us to spend more money.

micro, telephone

I published the repository for my mobile weather solution.

Find it at geoweather. I’ve added support for Windy, but otherwise it is the same as it was back in January.

micro, sleep

I source my linen from recovering communist states in the remnants of the Soviet Union.

Linen is my preferred material for bedding and towels (except for travel towels, where I still prefer synthetic). When purchased through normal channels, it can be prohibitively expensive. I cut out the middlemen and acquire linen directly from Eastern European makers on Esty, where it is much more affordable. My duvet cover is from Belarus. My sheets and pillow cases also hail from Belarus. My preferred towels are from Lithuania.

micro, privacy

Identifying individuals by using a laser to record the vibrations of their heartbeat is a neat idea.

The Pentagon’s new Jetson laser sounds like a simple concept:

A new device, developed for the Pentagon after US Special Forces requested it, can identify people without seeing their face: instead it detects their unique cardiac signature with an infrared laser. While it works at 200 meters (219 yards), longer distances could be possible with a better laser. “I don’t want to say you could do it from space,” says Steward Remaly, of the Pentagon’s Combatting Terrorism Technical Support Office, “but longer ranges should be possible.”

Contact infrared sensors are often used to automatically record a patient’s pulse. They work by detecting the changes in reflection of infrared light caused by blood flow. By contrast, the new device, called Jetson, uses a technique known as laser vibrometry to detect the surface movement caused by the heartbeat. This works though typical clothing like a shirt and a jacket (though not thicker clothing such as a winter coat).

I wonder if they aim center mass, or if they can get a reading off the carotid. If it’s the former, it seems likely to be defeated by wearing plates, which is probably good life advice if the Pentagon is interested in you anyways.

The article also mentions that “[o]ne glaring limitation is the need for a database of cardiac signatures”, but I suspect they can just acquire that data from Apple, Strava, Fitbit, etc.

via Infowarrior

micro, air

Houseplants probably don't improve indoor air quality.

In reponse to the oft-quoted NASA Clean Air Study, The Altantic writes:

[T]here’s nothing especially wrong with Wolverton’s 1989 study. Its results “fall right in line with other stuff that’s been measured in the literature.” But taking its results at face value significantly overstates the power of plants, he said. Wolverton measured whether houseplants could remove VOCs from an airtight laboratory environment. But a home is not a hermetic chamber. It has open windows and doors, drafts and leaks, and much more clutter.

Recently, Waring and his colleagues reanalyzed all 195 studies that have examined whether houseplants can filter the air. They found that some types of plants can remove higher amounts of VOCs than others. But once you factor in the effects of working in a large room, none of the plants are able to do much.

Waring told me to imagine a small office, 10 feet by 10 feet by eight feet. “You would have to put 1,000 plants in that office to have the same air-cleaning capacity of just changing over the air once per hour, which is the typical air-exchange rate in an office ventilation system,” he said. That’s 10 plants per square foot of floor space. Even if you chose the most effective type of VOC-filtering plant, you would still need one plant per square foot, Waring said.

micro

While I appreciate the resurgence of personal email newsletters as an alternative to the toxic walled-gardens of Social Media™, I much prefer consuming that type of content in my feed reader.

For discussion groups, where I’m going to respond to messages and follow threads, email is great. My relationship with the newsletters I subscribe to is that of a consumer, and for that interaction I want good old HTTP and feed syndication. Kill the Newsletter is a free service that generates Atom feeds from the email sent to an address. I use it to keep newsletters in my feed reader where they belong.