The no-contact door opener [Amazon] is a small brassy tool that levers open door handles, can be used to press buttons or as a stylus for payment systems, and is solid enough to subdue hysterical disease-spreading anti-maskers in grocery stores. It's small enough to fit on a keyring and has a wee hole for that purpose. There are many variations on the design to be found, but the one linked above is best because it's metal and many are just flimsy painted plastic.

 

I ordered three six-packs and that's what everyone's getting for their birthday this year. Read the rest

This funny video lampoons the guy in your circle who always, for some reason, has a knife and a pretext to display it. Read the rest

Retired Mythbuster and maker extraordinaire Adam Savage (previously) gave up on finding a bag to carry everything he needed and designed his own, a white, Gladstone-style toolbag that costs $225 and ships in time for Christmas. Read the rest

SOG make excellent knives: I know because I had many of them confiscated by the nascent TSA in the early days of the Global War on Terror, that liminal moment when I was still kidding myself that I would remember to empty my pockets of useful tools before boarding a flight. Read the rest

It's a bottle opener, multidriver, wrench-set, and comes in brass, stainless, blackened or anodized aluminum, and it holds up to 14 keys, as well as a USB stick. Read the rest

Cocoon's Grid-It organizers are flat, rigid boards criss-crossed with tough, strong elastic straps, which let you lay out every small and useful thing you own in a pleasing, knollish layout. Cory Doctorow's carried one for a month now, and can't imagine how he ever lived without it.

Matador pocket-blankets are 90-micron-thick nylon blankets with weighted corners to keep them from blowing away and stitched fold-lines for easy refolding. Read the rest

In the forums, Daneel shares the things that always remain close at hand. What are yours? Read the rest

Fond as all civilized people are of 1980s action movie "gear up" scenes, it is often noted that Mark Lester's Commando contains the genre's highest point of achievement. In the 1985 classic, Arnold Schwarzenegger's protagonist conducts an amphibious landing on a tropical beach. Unbundling his cargo, it is revealed to be an astounding collection of weapons, all of which he attaches to his person in a perfectly edited montage of exaggerated gestures and sound effects. So excellent is it that its influence was felt immediately from B-movies to arcade games — and yet it lasts but 30 seconds.

Thanks to the magic of modern technology, this shortcoming may now be rectified. The above video offers a 12-minute remix of Lester's finest hour; courtesy of Infinite Looper, it may last forever. Read the rest