Things I Like

Rademaker’s Hopjes coffee candies are tasty and delicious. They almost have a Werther’s style creamy consistency while tasting like coffee. I first learned about them a few years ago from a Dutch friend of mine who’d brought some to the US from Holland. I’ve since discovered that you can get them in the US if you look in the right places.

If you like coffee, you’ll like these.

If you go camping, touring, or otherwise spend a lot of time outdoors away from civilization, you need a decent fixed-blade knife. It needs to be something that will stay sharp, hold up to some abuse, and not be stupidly Rambo-huge and ungainly. You’ll be cooking with it and doing any number of other chores, not taking over Grenada.

Frost’s of Sweden has been making knives for hundreds of years, and they produce a basic mora-style sheath knife called the Clipper that just can’t be beat. They come in a carbon steel version as well as in stainless, both with about a 4″ blade.

Both steels are good quality, hard (Rockwell 60, or so, a bit less for the stainless) and take an edge and hold it. The carbon steel blades have a slight advantage in both taking and holding an edge because, well, carbon steel is just better steel for edgeholding. You give up some sharpness and hardness for the rust resistance of stainless.

The sheath is pretty no nonsense, made entirely of plastic, with a drain hole in the bottom and a fairly aggressive plastic clip at the top to attach the sheath to your belt or waistband. The whole thing weighs almost nothing.

The thermoplastic handle is fairly grippy, even when wet, and the shape of the handle is comfortable. Both the handles and sheaths come in a variety of colors. The blades themselves aren’t what you’d call detail-finished, but they have clean lines and even grinds, and that’s what’s important.

They aren’t works of art, but they aren’t meant to be. They’re just an inexpensive, durable, high quality fixed-blade knife, and since the knife itself doesn’t look all “tactical” (that’s code for painted black) and scary, The Man isn’t likely to take exception to you having it.

If you want a more traditional wooden-handled Mora or something even fancier, Frost’s makes those as well, but you can’t beat the Clipper for value and utility. There are plenty of cheap, crappy knives out there at the same price point, but why would you want one of those?

You can get a Frost Mora Clipper for between $10 and $15 all day long, so even if you lose it in the river, it’s not really a tragedy.

Moleskine notebooks are slightly pretentious, because there’s this whole backstory to them about how they’ve been the legendary notebooks of legions of deep thinkers, provocative writers and sublime artists for over 200 years. By association, then, if you use Moleskine notebooks, perhaps you, too, are a member of the intellectual and creative elite. You, me, Matisse and Hemingway, all kicking back and having an absinthe after a long day of creative fervor.

But let’s face it. You’re probably not. Lord knows I’m not.

However, there’s no getting around the fact that they are really nice notebooks, regardless of your mental pedigree, despite the Levenger-esque breathless copy on the website.

They come in a variety of sizes, from pocket sized to large format, and they offer both a hard cover (oilcloth, or something similar and durable) as well as a soft cover (flexible cardboard). You can get them blank, ruled, with graph squares or even with musical staves. The binding is of good quality and won’t fall apart, while the paper is equally nice. Acid free, it takes solid or liquid ink well, without bleeding, and it feels good to write on.

One of my favorite features, though, is the expanding paper pocket on the inside back cover of each notebook. It’s perfect for all those little bits of paper I seem to accumulate that I want to hang onto, but can’t find a place for.

I like the pocket sized hardcover notebook, myself. I almost always have one with me to write down notes, directions, phone numbers, or whatever else might come up. I tend to use it for information I’ll want to keep around for a while.

I use the pocket size softcover notebooks for more transitory stuff. Meeting notes from work, shopping lists, etc. They’re cheaper and I have less of a mental hang-up about filling them with boring crap.

There’s a US distributor at Moleskine US.

There’s electrical tape, and there’s electrical tape. Everyone has some, and it gets used for all kinds of tasks, both electrical and not. It’s like the taciturn and mysterious ninja cousin to duct tape, which, by the way, now comes in a clear version.

The stuff you buy at most stores is just cheap vinyl tape, and it usually comes in rolls with a gigantic cardboard spindle, so that you actually end up with maybe 10 linear feet of tape. If you stretch it too much, it tends to snap, and it doesn’t do very well in cold weather. Cheap electrical tape also doesn’t stick very well, either to itself to to other things. It gets hot and it peels up and then it gets cold and it turns brittle.

Not this stuff. It comes in a plastic container, and there’s a LOT of tape on that roll. It’s high quality PVC that maintains that lovely stretchy quality of electrical tape even when it’s really freaking cold out. The adhesive is pretty aggressive, and once it’s stuck to something, it stays stuck.

Once you use up the tape, you have this nice circular plastic container with a snap top that’s handy for holding small bits of hardware.

The thing about electrical tape is that it’s so handy. The rolls are compact, so they’re easy to have nearby. I use it wrapped sticky side out on my bike handlebars as a base layer for the cork tape. It keeps the tape from slipping and gapping over time and since the non-sticky side is against the bar, you don’t end up with chunks of cork permanently bonded to your bars. I also use it to finish the handlebar wrap.

I use it to repair all kinds of things that probably would be more correctly repaired with something else, but it works. In combination with 3M 2242 self-fusing rubber tape, I’ve used it to water-seal and insulate wireless antenna connections. Some of those antennas have been in service for over 4 years with no problems at all. That’s good tape.

I even, on rare occasions, use it to protect and insulate electrical connections, which may shock and amaze you.

Super 33+ is rated for use from 0 Fahrenheit all the way up to 220F, it’s UV resistant, moisture resistant, abrasion resistant and flame retardant. It also makes a decent band aid when you hurt yourself, though I’m sure 3M would balk at that application.

I have a thing for pens and pencils and other things that write. It’s not quite a fetish, but it’s not entirely healthy, either. The problem is that I tend to objectify nice pens and pencils and as a result, they don’t get carried because I might (gasp) mar them and then they don’t get used, and, well, that’s just stupid.

As a result, I’ve ended up with a fair collection of decent pens that sit in drawers. I’ve given a lot of them away to people who might actually appreciate (and use) them, so I’m feeling better about my pen habit these days. And I’m not buying new pens. Mostly. I got a Space Pen a while back, but it writes IN SPACE and UNDER WATER. How could I resist?

But there’s one pen I really really like, and since it’s disposable and plastic, I don’t feel bad about carrying them around and using the hell out of them, and if I lose one, or it ends up in the dryer still clipped to my collar (9 or 10 times, so far, and no collateral damage yet), so what? It’s a disposable pen.

The Pilot V-Ball Extra Fine (in blue) kicks ass. It’s a roller ball pen, liquid ink. It rolls smoothly, without any of the scratchiness I’ve experienced with some other roller ball pens. I write pretty small, so the extra fine tip keeps my handwriting from looking like more of a shapeless blob than it normally does.

It’s easy to tell how much ink you have left, the clip throat has enough depth to clip to most clothing without getting mangled, and they last forever, if you don’t wash them. They generally stand up well to airplane travel, which has caused more than one liquid ink pen I used to leak profusely.

My only complaint is that the ink runs when it gets wet, but that’s true of all liquid ink pens. It’d be nice if they could come up with a waterproof ink that writes as well as the regular kind.

I’m always thirsty, so I’m always dragging a bottle of water around with me. A few years ago, I bought a narrow-mouth Nalgene bottle because I got tired of losing the caps to my reused Evian bottles and I got tired of the damned things leaking everywhere.

Nalgene bottles come in multiple colors as well as a couple different materials, including (transparent) polycarbonate, (opaque) HDPE and (opaque) LDPE. I got the polycarbonate one.

Three years later, my bottle is still going strong, despite being dropped countless times, being carried upside down in a messenger bag, being thrown on the floor of my car, and otherwise subjected to the daily abuses of being around me.

None of this is news to most people, though, as it seems like every third college student has a Nalgene bottle clipped to their backpack, but I guess there’s a reason for that. They’re super durable, and they don’t leak.

You can get them in all kinds of colors and capacities. I prefer the 32 oz narrow mouth bottle, because it’s easier to drink from than the widemouth bottle without embarassing accidents.

In addition to the ubiquitous college student water bottles, Nalgene makes a variety of other containers including travel bottles, jars, bike bottles, hydration packs, mugs, etc. They even provide replacement caps should you lose yours.

You can even submit an idea for a new Nalgene product.

There’s been some recent press about the possibility that certain kinds of plastics leach chemicals into whatever is contained in them. I’m not sure what I think about that, yet.

Hi.

I was talking to someone the other day about sandals. They were looking for a recommendation for a pair of sport-type sandals to wear, and I had a definite opinion, an opinion formed over about 15 years of sandal wearing, the short form of which is that Tevas are uncomfortable and fall apart while Chacos are really high quality, durable and comfy. I’ll get into details some other time.

It got me to thinking about all the other stuff I use, why I use it, and what I think of it.

I’m not a huge brand name guy. I don’t generally buy things because the brand is cool or the brand is somehow fashionable, and I don’t flaunt labels. In fact, I often remove them.

But brand names and labels are useful and they do have some concrete benefits, one of which is that certain brands generally stand for high quality products, and you can often be assured of a good product if you buy certain things made by certain companies. The converse is also true. You don’t buy a GPX brand radio expecting Blaupunkt fidelity. This kind of consumer shorthand is pretty useful, and the marketplace would be very different if nothing were branded.

I’m also a pack rat. I accumulate random things that I may or may not actually need for no apparent reason, and hang onto them for even less reason, it seems. I’m trying to get better about this, and have been working to winnow my possessions down to things I actually need and things I actually use. I’ve been moderately successful. That’s also gotten me thinking about why I have certain things and how I use them.

With all that in mind, here I am. With a blog about stuff.

A blog. Yeah, I know. I’ve been saying for a long time that I thought that blogs were wanky and self-absorbed. I think that’s still true, so I guess I’m being wanky and self-absorbed. But I’ll try to keep this about stuff and not about my cat.

About stuff. Stuff I’ve owned or used and that I really liked for some reason. Some are kind of generic, but many will probably be about specific brand items. Most of them are things I’ve used and abused and found to be of good quality and a good value.