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16 September 2020

Buy nice stuff

Want to buy nice consumer products from providers I like? Here are unsolicited endorsements of some of my favorite Stuff, and places to get Stuff.

Other lists

Indices like this one

  • Cool tools — Kevin Kelly’s index of reviews of all kinds of things, talking not just about the qualities of the product, but about how and why it's useful, like tongue depressors or those glue sticks made of post-it note glue; many entries are just tips and tricks that don’t require buying anything
  • Wirecutter — exceedingly in-depth reviews explaining what the best version is for numerous key products — especially electronics — including why that thing is the best and what difference it makes if you go for the best cheap or best spendy alternative
  • The Future Of Stuff Store — particularly resiliently-designed products, especially ones which take advantage of cutting-edge materials; the creator also maintains an open list “some things that are really quite good”: “it’s just amazing how good the quality end of manufactured goods is, particularly compared to the landfill-fodder which is the norm”
  • Better Living Through Design — various kinds of cunningly-designed kit; the bags and desk accessories are my particular weaknesses
  • Pack Hacker — advice for travellers, relevant here because they have a huge library of thoughtful product reviews and recommendations
  • Alex Kwa — the kind of minimalism nerd who has an article about how to wear only black; he has assembled a bunch of fun reviews & guides to one-bag travel, minimalism, and more
  • The Strategist — a bit lifestyle-magazine-ish, but I forgive it because it has pretty darned good taste in a range of products
  • Buy Me Once — many kinds of solidly-made stuff, again described with a bit of lifestyle magazine flavor
  • The Ones — a site maintained by some hip but (mostly) practical industrial designers listing their favorite, rock-solid products
  • The Sweet Setup — a guide to applications for Apple devices, including not just the best solutions but a lot of advice about using them well
  • The Macrumours’ buyers guide — informed guesses about when new versions of Apple products will come out, reducing your chances of getting something and then feeling frustrated to see a spiffy new version released right after you buy it
  • “What life-changing item can you buy for less that $100?” — a wooly but fun and helpful Reddit discussion
  • Kitty Unpretty’s office supply recommendations — some smart eccentric ideas
  • Independent map artists — a list of sellers of good weird maps
  • Typeface lists — what folks colloquially call “fonts”; a bunch of good ones, and a bunch of type foundries which make good ones

Eccentric product catalogues

Stationery & pens

Catalogues

Pens

  • The Pen Type-B — it is a crime that the website does not have a sound-and-video clip of the satisfying pop of sliding open my all-time favorite pen; it is designed to use refills with the ink for …
  • Pilot Hi-Tec C — a very good gel pen available in various colors & formats
  • Pilot G-2 — the Hi-Tec C’s cousin, IMHO the cheap pen best for graceful writing
  • Zebra Mildliners — highlighter-style felt-tip pens in subdued colors, useful for highlighting, structuring written notes, and sketching
  • Pilot FriXion pens — the only good erasable pens I have used, not just spiffy on the merits but also useful combined with …

Other goodies

  • Rocketbook — an array of notebooks and other stationery made with reusable ”paper“ which easily wipes clean with a damp cloth if you use FriXion pens, supported by an app for easily scanning snapshots of what you write; though the “paper“ is plastic-y to the touch it writes very nicely so I love using the index cards for games and the Orbit pad for work meeting notes which I will transcribe into electronic form
  • Chromalabel — an array of color-coding stickers … including kraft paper
  • Studio Neat — a handful of very spiffy office tools; the unique things I recommend are their giant panobook “desk notebook” and matching-size panopad sticky notes
  • The Cortex podcast store — offers a few nifty, unique bits of stationery including my all-time favorite notebook

Computer-adjacent office gear

Brands

  • Anker & Belkin — the two big manufacturers I trust most for stuff like chargers, cables, and other USB accessories (and related kit)
  • Elevation Lab — good cables and device stands; it is worth watching the video for their QuickDraw desk cable clip
  • Twelve South — unique accessories for computers, phones, and other electronics
  • Grovemade — preposterously swanky desk accessories for your computer desk
  • Ergomi — an array of desk tools, especially interesting if one is on the go and needs to be able to bring one’s “desk” anywhere
  • Gustav — when I was working a job which had me running from conference room to conference room with my laptop and other kit, I daydreamed about a specialized Laptop Bucket; too late for me, these folks make one, and a few bits of similar gear (Ikea also makes something similar)
  • Peak Design Mobile — a system of elegant, protective phone cases which lock to various stands and implements; if you use one of the newer MagSafe iPhones, these are compatible, which means that you can combine best-of-breed solutions to pair it with the slightly better magnetic card wallet / mini stand from …
  • Moft — nifty portable stands for computers, tablets, and phones; I carry one of their Snap Flow notepads stuck to my iPhone with MagSafe
  • DTTO — cases for Apple devices, including the iPad Mini case I settled on after a long hunt: inexpensive, protective, grippy without feeling gross, with a stand good for both portrait and landscape use
  • The Magic Sleeve — a cunning magnetic felt gear pocket/desk pad; watch the video to get seduced
  • Conway Electric — nifty, very spendy extension cords and related gear with an Industrial aesthetic.
  • Fluidstance — balance boards for people who work at standing desks plus a line of steel desk whiteboards which I have all over my desk
  • SuperCalla — USB cables with a set of magnets along the length which make them easy to wrap or fold neatly
  • Rolling Square — charging gear and similar; I keep one of their tiny multipurpose USB cables in my go bag, and they have a nifty modular magnetic arm for attaching phones, lights, and chargers to one’s laptop

Input & output

  • Elgato Stream Deck — a highly-customizable “keyboard” with tiny LED displays on each key which knows what application you are currently using to can give you shortcut keys and more; it did so much for my productivity that I eventually upgraded to the XL version
  • TourBox — another programmable input device which knows which app you are using and can give you appropriate shortcut keys; their marketing materials do not explain that the weird button & dial design is meant to make it easy to identify the controls by touch with your left hand while your right hand is working a mouse or trackpad
  • Keyboario & Ergodox — cool weird ergonomic mechanical computer keyboards; I have a few words which may help you decide if you want one of these
  • Folding ergonomic bluetooth “travel” keyboard — this product is available branded a few different ways — I have seen it sold as GoTek Voyage, Targus, iClever, Perixx, Moko, Gomcv, and others — but it is always clearly the same product: compact, very handy, and surprisingly well-made

Videoconferencing

  • Elgato Prompter — if you spend a lot of time on videoconferences, using this widget with your webcam will reduce your stress by enabling you to make “eye contact”
  • On Air Warning — a little ecosystem with an app, dedicated buttons, and a status light for toggling one’s camera and microphone on and off; one can set the app to freeze your video rather than black it out, which I find convenient when doing something momentarily awkward at my desk
  • AnkerWork speakerphones — the voice isolation on the S600 is uncannily good at filtering out all other sound; I presume that other models (and the headphones) use the same tech
  • Logitech H390 headset — this inexpensive headset is surprisingly good

Cable management

  • Wrap-It cable labels — little colored bits of velcro stuff you can write on to identify what cable connects to what; I also like the velcro cable wraps in matching colors
  • Cable Turtles — the tidiest and easiest way to make a long cable shorter
  • BlueLounge — a bunch of well crafted solutions to your cable clutter; I dig their CableBox, though one can find equivalents which are less expensive
  • braided mesh wire looms — the most convenient way to keep a bunch of cables tidy when stringing them all to the same place

Apple ecosystem apps

  • SetApp — a subscription service which provides a big, well-curated catalogue of apps all for one fee, so whenever I need a little utility I start there because they probably have a solution — I have a few favorites:
    • Session — a pomodoro timer with a lot of little advantages, including strong Apple Shortcuts support which I use to automagically start and stop music
    • Bartender — a utility which manages the icons for background apps in the menu bar
    • Mosaic — a utility for tiling windows neatly
    • TaskPaper & Bike — a pair of crisp, simple notes apps made for graceful outlining (from the same developer!)
    • CleanMyMac — a longtime-classic tool for keeping one’s hard drive from getting crufty
    • TypeFace — a font manager for addicts like me
    • NotePlan — a notes app with sophisticated support for time-based organization, tagging, to-dos, et cetera; it has nerdy advantages like having its notes available in the filesystem as plaintext Markdown, and a plug-in architecture for lots of configurability, which I have been migrating to as a replacement for …
  • Agenda — a notes app with comparable organizational tools to NotePlan and a bit more polish
  • Mailsmith — A crisp email app with good support for GMail
  • Things — a very graceful To Do app
  • BBEdit — the classic plaintext editor
  • Bear — a Markdown app really good for composing writing, with a good browser extension for doing clippings from web pages
  • OmniGraffle — a drawing app built for making diagrams which I abuse to do a lot more; it has a Shared Layer mechanism useful for making a big batch of similar images / pages

Other goodies

  • Ergodriven — the weird ridged floor mat I use at my standing desk every day
  • Bellemond — makers of a superior alternative to the Paperlike tablet screen protector; it reduces glare and makes drawing & handwriting with the Pencil a lot better, though if one only writes on the tablet intermittantly, you may prefer …
  • Astropad make a magnetic-removable equivalent tablet screen surface for writing which comes with matching pen tips, Rock Paper Pencil

Travel

Clothing

  • Bluffworks — makers of travel clothing that doesn’t make you look like a cyberpunk shadowrunner or safari nerd; their Gramercy Blazer has cunning pockets and uses a resilient technical fabric which looks and feels indistinguishable from wool suiting (and yes there are matching trousers)
  • ScottEVest — makers of incredibly pocket-rich travel clothing; I like wearing their LightEST Vest under another jacket to keep my stuff handy and organized, there’s even a wacky system for threading cables through the lining so that it is easy to charge devices while they rest in pockets
  • Aviator — makers of a lot of travel kit; I love their travel hoodie
  • Mizzen & Main — another maker of technical fabric men’s clothing; I like their dress shirts
  • Flip My Tie — A brand of reversible neckties, a way to get a few more changes when travelling light

Other travel gear

  • Matador — make a bunch of interesting travel tools; I have one of their nifty pocket blankets and use their unique little soap bags on the road
  • Lifestraw Peak water bottle — a collapsable water bottle with a built-in lifetime filter which will ensure fresh water whether you end up on a hike in the woods or just in a city where the tapwater is nasty
  • Nite-Ize Carabiners — an array of well-designed little clips with a million applications; I particularly like the Microlock S-biners for securing zipper pulls

Luggage

  • Evergoods — my single favorite maker of bags and packs, cunning designers of camping gear who turned their attention toward stuff for civilians with a minimalist look that belies sophisticated organizational details; all their stuff is superb and their medium-size travel backpack is the best airplane under-seat bag I have ever used and their CIVIC Access Pouch 2L, is the best dopp-kit-size organizer I have ever encountered
  • Tom Bihn — simple, superb soft travel gear; their Aeronaut 30 bag has taken me around the world (and the newer laptop-friendly Techonaut incorporates the improvements I daydreamed about when I did that), and their Synik 22 & 30 laptop / travel backpacks have super organization
  • WaterField Designs — their design sensibility straddles classy enough to look professional without looking too fussy in more casual circumstances (especially in their use of waxed canvas); their videos explaining how their bags are meant to be used are worth a watch if only as explorations of thoughtful design; their Air Porter Backpack is a hyper-optmized under-seat carry-on to pair with a rolling case, and their newer Air Travel Backpack is the most professional-feeling one-bag solution I have seen
  • Peak Design — camera gear and bags (and the phone cases mentioned above); I use their Everyday Backpack as the name describes; their travel backpack may be the most clever design of the type — note that Huckberry offers handsome variant versions
  • Piorama — make some interesting eccentric bags; their A10 duffel has a system of drawstrings so one can expand it a pretty-big 30L bag to twice its volume, their giant tote is the best design for that I have seen, and their Omni laptop sleeve has pockets and magnets which transform it into a useful desk organizer for office kit or whatever
  • Aer — intriguingly designed travel & EDC bags a peer to the makers above, though cannot vouch for having seen them in the flesh; I dig their Capsule Pack
  • Babboon To The Moon — bags for people who share my sensibilities about how bags should be structured but want something more colorful
  • Freitag — an array of clever bags, each unique because they are made by upcycling the colorful tough canvas they use to cover trucks in Europe; the groovy stop-motion animations showing the bags in use are a delight even if you don’t want to buy one
  • Mission Workshop — my favorite fancy bicylists’ bags; they also make some interesting technical clothes
  • Saddleback Leather — gorgeous, heavy, sturdy leather luggage; I carried one of their backpacks for years and got compliments on it every day
  • Away — the most inexpensive sturdy rolling pullman cases (or the sturdiest inexpensive ones) I have found; their Aluminum Carry-On is spendy but satisfied my lifelong lust for an unattainably expensive Zero Haliburton
  • Sottos — makers of cases with huge wheels that make it easier to roll over surfaces like grass or cobblestones, and to lever-thump up and down stairs
  • The Ogio locker bag — cleverly designed to organize gym gear and fit into locker just so — for years I had one which I did not even take back and forth, it just lived in my locker
  • Notabag — a simple lightweight bag which folds up small and has a simple, beautiful design which makes it graceful to carry things in one hand, over one shoulder, or as a backpack
  • Nanobag — by far the best packable tiny bags I have ever found; these easily pack down to almost nothing but the material is neither flimsy nor weird; the bag shapes are thoughtfully designed — I recommend the sling, pack, amd XL formats
  • Eagle Creek — my favorite maker of packing cubes; you may prefer to use cubes from the same maker as your bag, but you definitely need packing cubes if you travel

Everyday carry

Keyring

  • Craighill — a bunch of spending, meticulously-designed stuff for a gent’s pockets and desk; check out their Coachwhip carabiner, which competes with the …
  • Key Wrangler — a bulky carabiner keyring which puts keys on a straight bar, which is helpful if one’s keyring has turned into a pocket tool ring; for a compact key solution, check out …
  • Keysmart — makers of a line of super-compact key holders; they also make my all-time favorite keyring multitool
  • AirNotch Pro — a better tracker than the Apple Airtag for one’s keyring
  • RovyVon flashlight — my favorite maker of tiny flashlights, though as Maurice Moves notes, we are embarrassed for choice of little flashlights these days from makers like Fenix and Boruit

Wallet

  • Bellroy — the most thoughtfully designed leather wallets I have found; I carry their Hide & Seek bifold when I need more than just the essentials in my …
  • Peak Design Mobile Wallet — a minimalist wallet which clings to my iPhone via MagSafe and includes a little folding stand for it
  • AirCard — a tracker compatible with Apple FindMy which fits in a wallet card slot
  • On-The-Go Notebook — a tiny notebook which fits into a wallet card slot from Rite In The Rain, using their indestructible paper

Pocket pen

Pocketknife

I have become a devotée of the pocket boxcutter as the right solution — the replacable blades mean one can always have a nice sharp edge despite abusing that handy blade. I have three options I like:
  • Pichi Utility Knife — spendy but worth it as small, elegant, overdesigned, and fidget-y
  • NexTool Explorer E20 — the one I carry most often; the built in “magazine” of replacement blades deploy easily, and the screwdriver & bottle-opener elements are useful despite catching on the pocket just a bit
  • The Gerber Prybrid — the bulkiest, but also the best in the hand for demanding jobs

Sling

Covid safety

  • Breathe99 — a silicone mask with good filter inserts and an integrated cloth cover which keeps one from looking too medical; the one I bring when I know I am going to be popping my mask on and off
  • 3M Aura 1870 N95 masks — my favorite disposable masks, with the boxy Korean-style pleats for a comfy good seal, though one must put up with the dorky 3M logo on the white mask
  • Nukit Torch UV — spendy portable battery-powered 222nm emitters sufficiently powerful to help protect a few people
  • 4Lite Personal HEPA filter — the only personal filter I am confident provides substantial benefit, pointing a stream of filtered air at one’s face; it is a bit too bulky to routinely bring everywhere
  • PureZone HEPA filter — the handiest real HEPA filter I know about; I honestly don’t know how beneficial it is, given its small size

Toys

  • Norman & Jules — toys for actual children with a Montessori sensibility which I find seductive
  • Art Of Play — unreasonably beautiful puzzles, games, and toys for grownups
  • Unemployed Philosophers’ Guild — a range of nifty/cute/clever tchotchkes for intellectuals, if you need something like a Nicola Tesla action figure
  • aroundsquare — simple, beautiful hand fidget stuff
  • Areaware — beautiful toys suited for adults and kids, like wooden Blockitecture blocks, as well as playful home & office stuff

Nerd-ish art

Clothing

  • Outlier — spendy-but-worth-it technical clothing in a mix of plain and eccentric designs
  • American Giant — exceptionally well-made cotton basic clothes for men, including “the greatest hoodie ever made”
  • Mack Weldon — more cotton basics; my enthusiasm for their One Mile Slipper proves that I am a middle-aged guy
  • Quince — a big catalogue which also includes housewares; after a lot of experimentation, they have become my favorite maker of merino wool basics
  • Hollow Socks — made from Alpaca fiber, I like ’em better than wool for the stuff one asks wool socks to do
  • Cleverhood — nifty rain ponchos designed for bicyclists
  • Woobie Coats — simple, very warm hooded coats cunningly designed to take advantage of existing mil-spec blanket material; inexpensive enough that you can buy them in bulk to give to your whole camping crew, or to houseless strangers
  • Gustin — clothes “like they do not make any more”, in denim and other interesting fabrics; they keep expenses relatively low by pre-selling short runs, so their mailing list offers fresh temptations on the regular
  • Vestige — T-shirts with abstract graphics that are just really nice
  • Winkworth Ladies’ Goods — a Brooklyn designer of my acquaintance whose cozy / classy / sexy work I admire (and I gotta say that the models on their Instagram are all dreamy)
  • Katherinesummer — nifty knitwear

Grooming

  • Hairstory — New Wash is a no-shampoo shampoo which will change the chemistry of your scalp; they also have other cool haircare stuff, including a really nice scalp brush
  • Acne.org — a line of good, simple skincare products which are great even if you don’t have acne; I cannot describe what AHA+ does but it is great for your skin
  • The Ordinary: Peeling Solution — if, like me, you sometimes feel tempted to take turpentine to your oily skin, this is the stuff you want
  • The Tangle Teezer — does one thing very well; my hair will start to tangle in five minutes if I just stand still and will quickly turn to ’locs if I let it, but this magic device sets it right in just a few swipes
  • Gilette Mach3 razors — in my experience, categorically better than any other disposable solution, but …
  • Henson Shaving — after giving up on safety razors as hard on my skin while not shaving close enough, these beautiful precision-machined safety razors brought me back; the razor costs more but the blades cost a lot less

Housewares

  • TubShroom — bath and sink filters which catch gunk without clogging
  • Kaufmann Mercantile — a range of well-made housewares and “accessories” and whatnot
  • Ikea 365+ food containers — one can mix-and-match nesting containers made of cheap plastic, strong glass, or stainless steel with lids made of bamboo, latching plastic, or silicone; containers have different heights but only a few different footprints, so there is no heartache matching lids to containers
  • Ikea Kuggis boxes — simple storage boxes in an array of colors & sizes which stack nicely (their Uppdatera bins also stack neatly onto them)
  • Skura — really nice kitchen sponges and related cleaning stuff
  • Ovalware’s cold brew coffee maker is just a pleasing, solid bit of kit
  • Purist Collective — nifty insulated cups & bottles for home or on the go
  • Mighty Mug — the insulated travel cup I use at my work desk; it has clever suction device which keeps it from spilling when set on a smooth surface
  • Gigogne Tumbler — stackable glass tumblers from French makers of classic nearly-indestructible glassware
  • Onsen — waffle-style towels which sucked me in to a Kickstarter; they are really nice
  • The Swag — a cotton bag which one dampens and uses to keep vegetables fresh in the fridge; surprisingly, it works
  • WeatherPro storage bins — they are inexpensive, solid-enough, stackable, and the lids clip on almost-watertight

Consumables

  • Slate Milk — shelf-stable lactose-free not-too-sweet quality chocolate milk in a can; these make such a great afternoon treat that I have a subscription
  • Nickel Dime Cocktail Syrups & Portland Syrups — a treat I have taken to now that I have slowed down enough that I am enjoying soda concoctions more often than actual cocktails
  • U-Haul paper packing tape — so much better than all other box packing tape that it is worth going out of your way; it sticks nicely to cardboard but does not tend to get stuck to other stuff, tears easily by hand, and you can write on it
  • Hydro Seal Band-Aids & Tegaderm Dressings — are two different styles of hydrocolloid bandages which are flexible, comfortable, waterproof, and stay on for several days; if you put one on properly, you can trim the edges as they progressively pull away, at the point the whole thing finally comes off, minor wounds have usually completely healed
  • Spenco’s moist burn pads — an essential adjunct to those bandages; they belong in every first aid kid because for a burn there is no substitute

Everything else

  • Graf Lantz — a bunch of cool things made of wool felt
  • Garrett Wade — such beautiful tools that their gardening implements tempt me to take up gardening
  • Oxford Pennant — camp flags that are just cool
  • Bibliotheca — an exceptionally handsome edition of the Bible, designed for one to enjoy reading; it uses an idiosyncratic Protestant translation which attempts to marry formal literalism with contemporary language
  • Manta — by far the best sleep blindfolds; their Bluetooth sound mask is the most comfortable way to have personal sleep sound
  • Upcart — a sturdy little folding dolly with a wacky triangular wheel design which enables one to use it to carry things up and down stairs
  • PowerTye net — a net made of bungee cord with hooks designed to gather the net into shape
  • Conceirge bell — you can buy one of these cheap and ding it any time you want
  • Guasha massage wand — a useful massage tool which turns out to occasionally have other applications because it is a satisfying lump of stainless steel


Of course the real reason I made this list is so I have a place to tuck cool stuff I find so I can go shopping for toys later. Or if you want to get me a present ….

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