We find ourselves spending a lot of time sifting through product review websites as we try to make smart purchases. This can be a tedious process, and often we end up more unsure of what we’re looking for than when we started. That’s why we were really excited to discover The Wirecutter ,”a list of only great technology”. Run by Brian Lam, a former Gizmodo and Wired writer, the site lists “the best” in gadgets, from phones and TVs to cables and wireless music, to vacuum cleaners and electric toothbrushes.
We came across the site while researching portable hard drives, and really loved the layout of Lam’s reviews.Lam names the Lenovo Thinkpad USB 3.0 Secure Hard Drive as the best, but gives a thorough explanation of his choice and offers a couple of cheaper options that he still recommends. At the end of his write-ups, he includes a list of the “best sources” on his product choices, so you have easy access to a few other reputable reviews and his evaluation process.
Best of all, we like the way he thinks. read more…
Lately we’ve been wanting to expand our fields of vision a bit. We’re always on the lookout for new inspiration for the blog, but also just for shaking up our own thoughts and routines. After asking a couple of friends for some book and blog recommendations, we realized that we have the greatest resource in our own readers!
So tell us: what are you reading that inspires you? Whether it’s a new favorite book or one you return to often, a blog you keep tabs on or one you just discovered we want to hear about it. read more…
Recently we wrote about the ins and outs of selling your books online; one comment inquired about our collection of old art books and whether or not we would sell them directly to readers. While we can’t delve into the world of online sales right now, we DO want to point you to this great FREE online art resource: the Guggenheim has put 65 gorgeous modern art books online for anyone to access.
We recently stumbled on a cool Japanese site that will instantly transmute any photo you upload to an aged version “like over 100 to 150 years old.”
On the upper right corner of the site you can ‘English’ to see a translation. You choose the file where it says to, and then click the blue box below it to upload. Wait a minute and you’ll your photo transformed.
The photo above is the vintage-ized version of this one we took of Palais Royale in Paris a couple of years ago:
Like everyone we know, we have a growing pile of books that we’ve been wanting to sell, to cut down on clutter and make a few bucks in the process. We recently discovered BookScouter, a website that tells you how much your used books are worth to a variety of online retailers.
The best part is that they pay for shipping (book rate) and provide labels, making selling books fairly simple—you just have to pack them up and drop them off when you are making a trip to the post office. We decided to test the process out to see if it’s really that easy. If you’re looking to sell, here’s the deal, start to finish: read more…
Recently, we’ve been on the hunt for great lighting, that is, lighting that is cool looking and gives us the option of as much light as we want to adjust hi-or-low with a dimmer. We keep finding wonderfully designed lights with really low wattage bulbs, like 40 or 60, which rule them out. We want at least 100 watts worth.
As always when we can’t find what’s in our heads (which is surprisingly often), we look around to see if we can make it ourselves. For a while now, we’ve been a fan of lighting designer Lindsay Adelman’s free d-i-y lighting plans (there are four on her website) which give you a basic plan, parts, where to buy them, and how-to’s - information that makes it possible to improvise. A note in the You Make It section of her site says:
“Experimenting with off-the-shelf parts is how Lindsey got started before designing and manufacturing the custom system for the Bubble Series.”
We’re inspired. We’re already looking into read more…
Art Director Gustavo Vieira has created a an Is Life Good tumblr where you can download this sign in different resolutions customized for your computer, tablet or phone, to use as wallpaper FREE…
Waylon Lewis, creator of the megablog Elephant Journal has long been a champion of ‘the improvised life’. We were thrilled when he invited us to post regularly over there…our first post ran yesterday. Elephant is, well, like an elephant: BIG. It’s worth scanning the homepage of this online ‘guide to a mindful life’ to find nuggets that resonate with your interests. We’re happy to link our growing community to Elephant’s. (Who knows what might happen.)
Ever since we discovered radio station WKCR’s annual Bach Festival years ago, we’ve can’t get through the holiday season without a big dose of the great composer. The festival features music of Johann Sebastian Bach exclusively from 3pm on Thursday 12/22 till midnight on Saturday 12/31, streamable live at the top right of their site…full of fat joy for a week, whenever you want it…
(Video link.) We recommend checking out “One of the Nicest Places on the Internet”, a website doling out virtual hugs. It’s mission: “turn the sad into happy and the happy into celebration.” We find it brilliant, curiously heartwarming, beautiful, strange, sweet, healing, sometimes a bit creepy, effective, and finally, if we stay too-long, overwhelming. But what’s amazing is: you can feel the hugs.
You can have as many hugs as you want and you can also post your own hug. On YouTube, you’ll find an endless, ever-growing chain of hugs.
When I saw ‘the improvised life’s recent post about christopher niemann’s fab color-tiled bathrooms, I immediately thought of the Metro Wine Map of France, created by architectural historian and wine buff Dr. David Gissen, which was introduced this past summer by De Long, a favorite resource of mine for beautiful wine region maps and clever viticultural charts.
I love how it riffs on the classic city subway map, and neatly organizes the mind-numbing number French wine regions and their myriad subregions, shown clearly in their relative positions. It also features major grape varieties shown in context with their corresponding appellations (think: place names, i.e. Rhone, Condrieu, St-Joseph), as well as major geographical features and architectural landmarks, too. read more…
Over many years of sifting through flea-markets and junk stores, one of our happiest and most inexpensive finds have been single plates, bowls and cups of fine china. Drinking tea out of Limoge cup, with its perfect proportions and translucency, gave us pleasure during many years of writing. One chipped, shallow soup bowl of unknown origin became the fall-back dish at photo-shoots we worked on. A stack of mismatched dinner plates, each with its own beauty, became a charming way to serve a crowd.
Which is why we’ve found Dish, 813 Colorful, Wonderful Dinner Plates by Shax Riegler so unexpectedly helpful and illuminating. In addition to using it as a reference for plates we’ve collected or seen, we use it a guide to plates we’d like to find, keeping our eyes peeled for them in our wanderings, or setting up a “search” on Ebay to notify us when one is for sale.We’ve found the warning in it’s opening chapter to be true: THIS BOOK MAY INDUCE MANIA. read more…
We have a fondness for rusted and/or corroded bits of steel, aged into a patina that no artist could produce (well…maybe Richard Serra). We find them lying in the street, along railroad trestles, near construction sites. They are sculptures unto themselves that often have great uses, like this stunning vintage nail – a railroad tie perhaps – used as a paperweight, spotted in a from recent photo-story from the Selby.
Our favorite rusted treasure is a three-sided box we found in the street (below, left); read more…
A clear sign of our economic times, the Wall Street Journal recently published an article about the growing trend of folks who attempt home repairs before throwing out a broken appliance. The article cites notable increases in customer service calls for help with do-it-yourself home repairs, and increases in the sales of replacement parts.
We love that “fixing” is trend now, since we’re advocates for creative home repairs (you might recall our taped-up headphones, or the floss-mended sneakers). It also cools out the part of us that cringes at waste and the endless buying of more and more things.
But we also know that home fixes can be overwhelming, read more…
In October, 2010 I had just started graduate school and was in a bit of a panic about my choice. I was setting myself up for somewhat limited career options and would graduate with a sizeable chunk of student debt. So when I was asked, at a conference I attended that fall, to write myself a postcard that would be mailed to me three months later, I thought hard about the message I wanted to receive.
Of course I forgot all about the postcard. I came home three months later to find it waiting for me, declaring confidently: “Keep calm. You made the right decision.” And indeed, I had.
Sometimes there is nothing more comforting than our own reassurance or words of wisdom, but for whatever reason we’re often not able to hear ourselves clearly in the moment. That’s what makes FutureMe such a great idea: you can write yourself emails to be delivered at any point in the future. read more…
