Backfriend Posture Back Support

Backrest and seat base can be used in most any seat or chair

The Backfriend ($170) makes any chair into a back support chair: car seats, desk chairs, stadium chairs, convention chairs, bus benches, a roughly chair-shaped tree trunk… if it has a seat and a back, you can make a comfortable back support chair out of it.

It’s rather pricey, but truly a friend to your back; I’ve been using it for 5 years now and it’s built to last — the only thing that has broken was one of the connectors, but they gave me a spare (and honestly, you could use zipties as connectors).

Basically, the Backfriend consists of two tough, ergonomically molded pieces of plastic covered by a cushion. The pieces are rigid enough that I can even use them in my canvas butterfly chair and I’m still well supported, even though parts of the Backfriend are not. I use it in my car most of the time — it’s well endorsed by truck drivers — but it really shines when I go to a festival, concert, sporting event, seminar or convention. Remember those butt-buster chairs you had to squirm around in the last time you went to a seminar? No more! Just unfold your Backfriend in your seat and you’ll be the envy of your uncomfortable compatriots.

It doesn’t fold entirely flat, because it’s molded, but it ends up being about max 3 inches thick when folded, has a carry handle and a velcro strap so it doesn’t unfold mid-carry, and it’s pretty light.

It’s not inexpensive, but it will serve you well. I’d order it from a place that allows returns, just in case…but I don’t see these come up used on eBay much — once they’ve tried them, people don’t want to let them go!

YKK Plastic Belt Buckle and Plastic Belt

Fully adjustable extra long belt

As I became fat(ter) finding long enough belts started to become a problem. At first, I used cloth belts with military-style metal buckles but as those buckles wear down the belts and cause them to fray so I’d have to replace the cloth belts a couple of times a year. Also getting the buckle to release could be difficult as they clamp down hard on the belt (which also caused the fraying).

Then I read a post somewhere about a plastic belt and buckle that you could wear thru airport TSA inspections… I was leery of “plastic” because my weight really puts a load on my belts. However, I now have 11 months of use without any problems at all; even the belt fraying problem doesn’t exist. I learned the buckles are made by YKK, the quality zipper people. The belt material is some sort of plastic too and holds up very well, no sign of wear at all yet. The black belt I bought was from Drizzte ($15) who also emboss their brand on the buckle.

You can find the same buckles from other suppliers, with other colors, without any brand. Drizzte’s advantage (for me) is they offer belts long enough for my waist; the other Amazon sites didn’t have long enough belts I could use. There are no holes or ratchet positions; these belts are infinitely adjustable as the belt can clamp down at any position along the belt. The belts can be easily modified by cutting off excess length and the end sealed by melting the cut end with a flame (like you’d do when cutting plastic rope). I haven’t flown for a long time so I haven’t been able to verify that original TSA claim. The Amazon page has several pictures showing how the buckle fastens to the belt

Wire Cup Brush and Angle Grinder

Removes light corrosion, rust, and paint

We’re not the most diligent people when it comes to cleaning the built-up char & yuck out of our very nice grill. It’s too easy to put off and then it sorta gets forgotten. But I recently realized that I had the perfect tool to make it all go away in a spectacular way…a wire cup brush $13 on my angle grinder.

So the key, to me, is in the combination of these two things, but the foundation is the wire cup brush. There are lots of them, for drills, for angle grinders, knotted, plain, steel, brass, nylon, so the key is, as usual: Keep it simple. I used a plain, non-knotted (meaning a twisted & stiffened set of wires that’s a lot more aggressive) steel wire brush. The “cup” part means that it’s not a wheel or an end brush but the wires protrude in a cupped format. All of these brushes would, of course, clean your grill, but the cup really worked well. A thinner wire will get into smaller places and leave a lovely patina, too. The grill part of our setup is stainless. I didn’t feel the need to baby it with a brass or even nylon brush but you know your grill and how much work it needs/can stand, so pick an appropriate brush material. I used plain steel.

The second part of this combination was the angle grinder. There are a zillion of these out there. I’d bet the $15 Harbor Freight version would be just as effective on a grill as a fancier version. A truly terrific source of inexpensive angle grinders are pawn shops. Find a pawn shop with lots of tools (not all of them do that well, so hunt around some). I’d take my new brush to try out candidates, and most reasonable pawn shops will let you come back for a return/replacement if you’ve got a dud (but they know not to accept a busted tool in the first place).

Oh, and a drill would work too – but the angle grinder is made for this, and worked a lot better/faster than a drill. Now, using an angle grinder with a wire cup brush on a grill that needs it will throw a lot of carbon all over the place. Use eye protection and a mask, or you’ll be turning Kleenex black for a couple of days (any ideas on how I know that?). Move what you’re working on to someplace besides where it usually is! A leaf blower cleans this up pretty well, too, or a broom. Honeypie was very happy with the appearance of the grill, and the meat she put on it came off even better than usual.

Screw Pliers

Removes stripped out screw heads

The first time I used these screw pliers ($19) I was amazed that I had lived without a pair for so long. These pliers are designed for screw removal in cases of corroded or stripped heads.

Regular pliers tend to have straight jaws. This works if you grab the screw from the side (horizontally), but if you are in a cramped space and attacking the screw from the end regular pliers fail. I have had many pliers slip off a difficult screw because the jaws are straight where contact is made with the screw, which limits the gripping surface area.

The jaws of these pliers are curved with teeth on the inside of the clamping surfaces. Since the jaws have both horizontal and vertical teeth, these pliers will bite into the circumference of the screw head regardless of the orientation – this makes stubborn screws very, very easy to remove.

It won’t handle stripped countersunk screws (those are suited to the extractor bits on the drill) but for other surface screws or bolts it should be fine.

(This is a Cool Tools Favorite from 2011 — editors)

Letterlist/Tascam DR-10L/Flatland

Recomendo: issue no. 148

Sign up here to get Recomendo a week early in your inbox.

Subscribe to newsletters with one click
I’m frequently on the lookout for new newsletters and I found Letterlist to be a great website to discover interesting new content. You can browse their curated collection of newsletters for free, but if you sign up (also free) you can subscribe to the ones you want with their 1-click button instead of having to type out your email address over and over again. — CD

Mobile sound recording
The way professionals record sound in a documentary, theatrical show, mobile podcast, vlogging channel, and even a wedding video, is to wire up the “talent” with a hidden lightweight recorder in a pocket or belt that is connected to an itsybitsy microphone discreetly clasped on a coat, shirt, dress, under a hat or in hair. The least expensive ($200) industry standard for this job is the Tascam DR-10L. It runs on a AAA battery for 10 hours. The sound is sterling, studio-quality, dependable. (Audio is recorded separately from video and easily synced later.)  I’ve been relying on this small device for interviews and podcasts in the field. — KK

My favorite $1.71 paperback novel
Flatland is a novel by Edwin Abbott Abbott, published in 1884. It’s written as a biography by “A. Square,” a two-dimensional creature who is literally a living square, thinner than a sheet of paper. He lives with other two-dimensional creatures on a surface called Flatland. In the book, Mr. Square tells of his adventures in worlds of different dimensions: Pointland (zero dimensions), Lineland (one dimension), and Spaceland (three dimensions) all inhabited with creatures suited for their respective worlds. Abbott does a wonderful job of world building, explaining how the society (a satire of the Victorian society) and infrastructure of Flatland works. Even though the book was written 135 years ago, I found it very easy to read. Amazon is selling the Dover edition of Flatland for less than the price of a cup of coffee. I just bought it for my daughter. — MF

An app to teach you about the fourth dimension
This iPhone/iPad app does just one thing — it gives you a feel for the fourth dimension by moving from 0 dimensions to 4. I’ve had this jewel of an app on my phone for years and still open it from time to time. It’s a great companion to Flatland. — MF

Street food stories
I really love street food, and I’m enjoying Street Food, a series streaming on Netflix. It plays out in the same format as the Chef’s Table series: food and culture are focused into mini-biographies of the cooks themselves. So we see the ordinarily unseen lives of street food vendors in Asia (in Season 1). It’s about the people, not the food; brilliant and delicious. — KK

Shoe cleaning kit
My favorite sneakers are both Vans and have white soles that get really dirty. I want them to last a long time, so once a month I clean them using this ShoeAnew Shoe Cleaner Kit ($17). It’s comes with a brush and a microfiber cloth and it only takes a few minutes to spray and scrub all the dirt off. — CD

Ziya Tong, Author of The Reality Bubble

Cool Tools Show 176: Ziya Tong

Our guest this week is Ziya Tong. Ziya is an award-winning science broadcaster, best known for her work with Discovery’s flagship show, Daily Planet, as well as NOVA ScienceNow and Wired Science on PBS. She is the author of the forthcoming book The Reality Bubble, the Vice Chair of the World Wildlife Fund Canada, and a supporter of the Extinction Rebellion.

Subscribe to the Cool Tools Show on iTunes | RSS | Transcript | Download MP3 | See all the Cool Tools Show posts on a single page

Show notes:

Case of Bass
There’s this guy named Ezra who works out of Portland and several years ago, I ended up getting a speaker system through him and it is just an absolute work of art. Basically, it looks like one of those 1980s boomboxes that he has photographed and placed inside of a sort of ornate frame. But inside and behind this frame is an actual boombox. So, it’s a little bit meta in the sense that you’ve got an image of a boombox that is sort of outfitted with a boombox behind it. But what’s really cool is he’s developed painting skins of these boomboxes. So you can change your art so you’ll have different boomboxes or different images and you’ll still have the physical boombox right there. Another thing that he has been doing lately is he’s been going to vintage stores and picking up old suitcases and old luggage. And the reason why is because he really likes repurposing things that people have kind of given up on and giving them a purpose again.

AFP FactCheck Twitter Feed
This Twitter feed is by AFP, the news organization, and it comes in French, in Spanish, and in Portuguese. What I love about it is, we live in the era of fake news of course as we all know. But not all of us have time when we come across something to immediately go to Snopes, unless we’re super keener nerds which some of us are, but at the same time, it’s nice to have this through your feed. In this instance, you have AFP using reverse Google Image search to look at a lot of the postings that are going through and going viral on all these Facebook news sites that are patently false. So there’s an image that I saw the other day and it was of a pig that is in Hungary. It says, “Here’s how Hungarian border police keep Muslims from crossing their borders.” And they have a giant pig there and a cop holding the pig and a whole bunch of refugees fleeing the border. And it’s just bullshit. And so, right next to it, they’ve got the image and it’s actually a doctored image from the Philippines of just somebody who’s with their pig and some piglets and a sow with some piglets and some people playing in the background.

The Extinction Logo
I think, we’ve all said for a long time that the revolution will not be televised. But I think the revolution is certainly happening for us right now on the internet. We’re in the middle of the sixth mass extinction right now. We’re seeing loss of animals and vertebrate species around the world. At the same time, we’re battling a real planetary emergency. A lot of people are starting to protest in the streets. It’s a real form of joyful resistance and joyful rebellion. And a lot of this sort of emerged around a symbol and this was an extinction symbol that was developed a little while ago. It’s very simple. It’s being called the new peace symbol of our era. The circle represents the planet. In the inside, it looks like two triangles that kind of kiss and that’s the hourglass signifying that we are running out of time. And there are rebellions that are planned and taking place all around the world. People can go to the xrebellion.org website and sign up and find out what’s happening locally or start their own local chapter. And they can go to extinctionsymbol.info and that’s where you can actually download the graphic. And you can make anything you want out of it so long as it’s not for commercial purposes. People are making flags out of the symbol. I have a old sweatshirt that I put the extinction logo graphic on. It’s a lot like the peace symbol of yore but with a modern twist to it.

Signal
Signal is a wonderful messaging app that has end-to-end encryption on it. It’s just a really great tool if you’re talking to other activists because it gives you an opportunity to feel safe and free, and a free space with which to speak. So, a long time ago, think it was Hakim Bey who came up with the term TAZ or Temporary Autonomous Zones, and this notion of free space. And we live in a time now where there’s very, very little free space in the world. We’re not very aware of how little space there really is for us to freely communicate. In places around the world, of course, censorship is increasing, places like America, places like Asia. And so being able to communicate around the world with a tool like this is really wonderful.

Also mentioned:

The Reality Bubble: Blind Spots, Hidden Truths, and the Dangerous Illusions that Shape Our World ($14, Kindle)
It’s kind of been described as a cross between Cosmos and The Matrix in the sense that I’ve been a science journalist and broadcaster for 15 years. So it’s been really wonderful getting to work with scientists and seeing so many different sort of realities that they’re able to see with the scientific lens. Like most recently, we realized that we can see black holes. Now we can see atoms. We can see all sorts of different things from telescopes to microscopes … So, I started to get really fascinated by the fact that what my naked eyes could see and what my common sense perceived was just a real tiny sliver of reality. And we created all these different lenses, especially with science to be able to see a world that I wasn’t able to see with the naked eye. But at the same time, what I kind of started realizing was in the 21st century, we have cameras everywhere, everywhere except where our food comes from, where our energy comes from, and where our waste goes. It’s really strange that fundamentally our society is completely blind when it comes to how it survives. So, I really wanted to get to the bottom of how we became the most powerful species on earth when we don’t know how we survive. That was the initial sort of thing that got me on this journey, and it’s trippy and I hope illuminating. And I’m just very, very excited for people to read it. It’s my very first book, and that’s sort of the entry into that space.

What’s in My Bag? — Mark Slavonia