Cool tools

Kevin Kelly is one of those sorta-ex-hippie guys who was involved in the Whole Earth Review and went on to do a host of interesting things, most famously including founding Wired magazine. He has an interesting personal website, natch, and I call it to your attention because of the Cool Tools section of his site, rich with unsolicited product endorsements from him and other folks for all different kinds of things. For some odd astrological reason, I have been drawn to Cool Tools by a couple of different people recently.

The nomadics section reminded me of a bloke I spent an odd evening with a few weeks ago who described how he lives the life of a Blank from an episode of Max Headroom: living out of a panel truck without a bank account, pirating electricity from a streetlamp. There's a listing in that section for a catalogue of industrial vehicular supplies. The author of that listing describes this charmingly nutty application:

My Jeep is camouflaged to look like a commercial fleet vehicle. I made up a fake company name, appropriated a 1950s-era logo that once belonged to a nuclear energy mutual fund, painted safety stripes on the back, and plastered a fake vehicle number all over the place. I also added flashing yellow lights in the rear window ...

Seems he can often drive into restricted access roads and park in odd places that way. I'm guessing he's not the sort of bloke who worries whether his date on Saturday night is going to be impressed with his ride.