Suspension Trainers Can Help Get Less of You Through the Holidays

Posted on November 5, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

Suspension trainers are deceptively simple products: a set of two adjustable nylon straps with anchors, handles and loops for your feet. Hang them over a sturdy door, close the door, and then what? By changing the length of the straps, and the distance and angle of your body position, you can do an amazing number of exercises that work out every part of your body with a little or a lot of resistance.

No need to drag yourself to the gym in the evening post-DST darkness. You can store a suspension trainer in the smallest of apartments; in fact, they are very popular with travelers who put them in their carry-on bags to use in hotel rooms.

Resistance training gives you a triple advantage in staying (or getting) in shape: it burns calories, lowers your body fat percentage and increases the rate you burn calories at rest. Plus it moves the needle on the toned/flabby scale.

Several brands of suspension trainers are available. They all work on the same principle, using your body weight and position to increase or decrease resistance. Because the effectiveness of each exercise depends on the precision of your body position, each exercise also works your core muscles, which must be engaged to stabilize your body and maintain proper form through each series of repetitions. As we’ve all sadly learned with age, core strength was what you used to build and maintain naturally as you hoisted yourself up trees, across playground jungle gyms, and over the various obstacles you climbed rather than avoiding as a younger person. They also seem to be the first to go, and with their demise go your formerly flat abs and willingness to be seen in a swimsuit, while along come back pain and other joint strain that make ordinary activities more stressful. Since suspension trainers work your core with each exercise from multiple angles, they provide a more effective core workout than simple crunches — which everyone hates, and which aren’t really that effective, anyway.

The popular brands of suspension trainers come with DVD instructions to watch and a printed guide to post nearby as a workout reference. The Jungle Gym XT comes in a tasteful shade of Ferrari red and costs about $99 (maybe the price of 3 or 4 months of gym membership). The TRX is yellow and costs about twice as much — $200 (or maybe the price of 6 or 8 months of gym membership). Take a look and decide for yourself.

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How To Stay Plugged In After the Big Storm

Posted on November 1, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

You knew it was coming – you went to the store to get necessary food and batteries, and you saw everyone else there, too. Then the storm came, and you hoped you’d get lucky this time, but you didn’t. The TV and the lights went off, and there you were – back in 1912. It’s dark, it’s cold, the phone’s dying, the food in the refrigerator is starting to go bad, and worst of all, you have no idea whether the power will be back on in 7 hours or 7 days. You don’t feel like packing up and staying with family or friends (and maybe you didn’t hear anyone invite you). You can’t let this happen again. You don’t have to. You just need a way to restore that plugged-in feeling.

AC Inverter for the Car

AC Inverter – These are handy devices that you may never have heard of, if you’re not a limo driver or an RV person. You can take advantage of the fact that your car already has a motor, a gas tank, a 12-volt battery and a way to keep it charged. Connect the AC inverter to your car battery with VERY thick copper wires, plug in a long 3-prong extension cord and you’re back in the 21st century. As a practical matter, you’ll still need to run the motor to charge the battery, but for about 2 or 3 hundred bucks, it’s a clean and easy option. You’ll need at least 1600 watts; 2500 is better. Also, your car has one other key feature: a muffler, so you avoid the racket of a …

Gas Powered Generator

Generator –  Generators are big, expensive, heavy and LOUD, but they are really handy to have in case you lose power for an extended period of time. They are made for the job, with the right circuits and breakers and plugs and switches to do it right. They can power refrigerators, sump pumps, space heaters and lamps – all at the same time. If your neighbors aren’t too close, and you have room to keep it somewhere, they can’t be beat. You never know when civilization may start to break down …

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If You Get A Quality Umbrella, You Won’t Leave It Behind

Posted on October 29, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

As I write this, eastern North America is bracing for a wallop from yet another hurricane with a girl’s name that is tearing up the coast, having somehow gone rogue and escaped from her natural home in the Caribbean. So rain and lots of it is very much on everyone’s mind.

After (and unfortunately during) a major rainstorm, public trashcans tend to have pitiful, broken umbrellas sticking helplessly out of the top. Presumably, the former owner continues on after the catastrophic umbrella failure and gets very wet without it. You won’t mourn the loss or breakage of a $6 umbrella too much, but you’ll still have to get another one. How about a durable, high-quality umbrella that you like a lot and won’t forget?

Perhaps the first question should be: what would the Queen of England do? After all, it rains there all the time. She has people to carry her umbrellas for her, so she’s not going to lose one, so she buys hers from Swaine Adeney Brigg in London. They are beautiful objects, with wooden shafts, handles in bamboo or the wood of your choice and canopies in either nylon or silk. They are most definitely not affordable to most of us, starting at about £250, or a little over $400 US. So let’s keep looking.

If the Wright Brothers were still around in the 21st century, I could see them coming up with something like the Dutch Senz, an asymmetrical wing-shaped design that is darn near windproof. It turns itself around to head into the wind; you can still see under it and the long trailing edge keeps the rest of you dry. It is a great high tech design, but they do look a little odd.

Davek Solo Umbrella

Davek of NY is an American company that makes a line of strong, well-designed umbrellas. It looks as if the gearshift from an Audi TT was grafted directly onto a round, ultra lightweight  version of the convertible top, made to open quickly and easily. If it turns inside out in the wind, you can just press a button and it uninverts itself. Best of all, it has a lifetime warranty and they will pay half the cost even if you screw up and lose it.

I think the Senz is the way to go. Maybe someday all umbrellas will look like that.

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The Pumpkin Gutter Takes the Yuk Out of Pumpkins

Posted on October 25, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

I used to look forward to carving pumpkins the week before Halloween (and I still do), but from year to year I always forgot how much I did not enjoy scooping out the cold, slimy, seedy, stringy insides. The scooping needed to be complete before the fun of carving the pumpkin could begin. No matter what hand tool you used — tablespoon, serving spoon, ice cream scoop — it still took too long and wasn’t part of the fun. Life is short, the life of a pumpkin even shorter, and children can have short attention spans, so why waste time?

Pumpkin gutting tool

The $10 Pumpkin Gutter adds machine power. Chuck it in your household electric drill, and the pumpkin-destroying process starts with the dramatic roar of an electric motor. It helps to have 2 people, so one can hold the pumpkin steady while the other one goes to work attacking the pumpkin’s insides. It’s perfectly safe inside the pumpkin, and while it has five edges, it’s not sharp enough to cut anyone. Move it around vigorously inside, and every so often dump out the loose orange stuff. If the strings get wrapped around it, just take it out and let them slide effortlessly down the handle end. You’ll have it cleaned out in no time at all.

Even better, the Pumpkin Gutter can cut into the pumpkin itself and make the walls as thin as desired. If you want to take your pumpkin carving art to the next level, where you carve away the skin and let the light shine through, it’s great to have a tool that controls the amount of that light.

The Pumpkin Gutter has a nice long handle, so you can use it to carve the largest jack-o-lantern you want, and it’s dishwasher safe, which makes an inherently messy task that much tidier.  Having one might even inspire someone like Daisy, who doesn’t necessarily share my enthusiasm for Halloween and power tools, to carve a pumpkin of her own.

Available from Amazon

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Ten Most “Luxurious” Things About Halloween

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Daisy B

I’ve thought for a long time that “the holidays” are what helps us North Americans (and others in the Northern Hemisphere) fight back against Seasonal Affective Disorder – the holiday lights keep us from getting depressed after the summer sunshine is gone. The holidays start with Halloween, and that’s one of the things I like about it (although there are at least ten more):

Halloween luxury

1. Jack o’ Lantern as an art form – Here’s an art genre for you: carve a hollow vegetable into a work of art that involves light from the inside and typically has a theme of horror, and will start to rot within a week or so. I like to use power tools, like a jigsaw and an electric drill, to add an element of drama (and loud noise).

Children in Costume for Halloween

2. Children in costumes – Halloween is most definitely a holiday for children, but they will come right to your door to show you their costumes (whether you want them to or not).

3. Costumes as an art form – Those of us who have children, or are invited to masquerade parties, get another opportunity to express our creativity. My idea for an adult costume, a bicycle racer with syringes and blood bags hanging off of his arms, has not gone over too well …

4. Candy – Yes, candy.

5. Halloween videos – Can’t, absolutely can’t write this post without mentioning “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” Just can’t. On the big screen, there are movies like “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

6. Seasonal beers – For those of you who are fans of craft beers, you can be almost 100% sure that your local brewery will have a seasonal pumpkin ale or something similar to get you in the holiday spirit.

7. No gifts.  Even department stores haven’t yet started pre-pre-pre-holiday sales, or mounted holiday decorations before you’ve gotten the artificial cobwebs out of your trees.  Your only obligation, should you choose to accept it, is to dole out piles of candy to those sweet little goblins, Avengers, and Spidermen that appear at your door.

8. It’s ecumenical.  Like Thanksgiving, Halloween is a holiday that can be celebrated by everyone.  Though some consider it Satanic, I fail to understand how streets or parties full of children and adults dressed, often badly, as their favorite superhero or Presidential candidate could possibly reflect the worship of evil to any serious person.  Halloween is all in fun.  Try to take it that way.

9. There’s no snow on the ground — at least, not usually.  Hallow’en is celebrated while the air is crisp but, typically, still mild enough not to require a parka or boots.  Leaves are still on the trees, you can just begin to smell wood burning in neighborhood fireplaces.  It offers no lyrical waxing about sleigh bells, silver bells, or jingle bells — just hayrides through scarecrow-guarded fields and an occasional bob for apples.

10. Haunted houses, prisons, or mental hospitals.  Halloween provides innumerable opportunities to have the bejeezus frightened out of you.  If you like to be terrified, now’s your chance, and you can often do it in the most unpleasant surroundings imaginable.  Creaky old mansions, converted penal institutions, places with straightjackets and handcuffs and maniacs — oh, my!  — have been repurposed into sites where ordinary people dress up as zombies, monsters, vampires, and mummies to frighten other ordinary people for a small fee.

 

 

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Brooks Brothers Non-Iron Shirts Free You from the Dry Cleaners

Posted on October 18, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

Let me be clear: I like to wear freshly-pressed clothes, I like to iron a little and I love my iron: the German-made Rowenta DW 8080 from my previous post. However, what I don’t like having to do every week is iron the 4 or 5 dress shirts I need for my day job as a crime-fighting lawyer in a government office. It just takes more time than that particular chore should. The slightly easier alternative is to take them to the local dry cleaners, drop them off, pay $1.75 each and then go back and pick them up, wrapped in plastic to recycle or send to a landfill. That’s a little better, but it’s still time and expense that I’d rather do without.

Although “wash and wear” cotton dress shirts have been around since the Mad Men days in the 1960s, it seems that most of the emphasis was on polyester blends (much too much polyester in the 1970s), and I am most definitely a natural fiber kind of guy. So, starting in the early 1990s, cotton non-iron shirts were finally perfected.

Lots of stores have them now, but I’ve become partial to the ones Brooks Brothers has. They come in an astronomical number of varieties of color, pattern, collar style, cuff size and fit. I can narrow it down pretty easily for me (or Daisy, who enjoys shopping much more): 16 1/2 by 33, button-down collar, slim fit, white or blue. Take them home, wear them to work, stick them in the washer, run them through the dryer, take them out right away and hang them up. Repeat as needed and you’re good to go.

There are some reports out there that they don’t hold up as well as the untreated ones. That may be; as with most things, your mileage may vary. Mine have seemed at least as durable as any other dress shirts I’ve owned. In fact, my experience is usually that it is the dry cleaner who beats the crap out of all my dress shirts, with all the chemicals and stretching and wrapping in plastic that entails. A nice leisurely trip through the washing machine at home is much better. And it’s low stress: if you leave it in too long, just take it out, spray it a little and throw it back in for a few minutes.

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Older Luxury Cars for the Not So Rich

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

I’m going to try to stay away from the word “used.” After all, most of us live in homes or apartments that have been occupied before, and sometimes the age of the house is what gives it much of its charm. So bear with me, and try to keep an open mind about used cars (oops!). OK, let’s start over. I think we can all agree that luxury cars are designed and marketed for rich people – that is, people who can afford to buy brand-new luxury cars (also known as the 1%). Once cars are no longer brand-new, rich people don’t want to pay a lot of money for them.* For that reason, luxury cars depreciate extremely fast, even as a percentage. That gives you and me a chance to own one.

Mercedes SL

This could be yours.

After five or six years, with the price dropping about twelve thousand dollars a year, a luxurious, high-performance car with an interior full of wood and leather, power everything and a great sound system, becomes as cheap as a slightly newer economy car. Another thing about rich people, they almost always have garages and keep their cars parked inside, clean and dry. Also, they can afford to have regular maintenance done. Finally, they usually have more than one car, so they don’t put on a lot of miles.

Since the original buyer absorbed nearly all the depreciation before you bought it, you get another advantage – you can sell it for about what you paid for it, or maybe more. The total cost of ownership will be much less than if you bought a new car.

It’s fun to shop for one of the best cars of the last ten years, rather than just the best car of this model year. As an example, I’ve been fascinated by the Volkswagen Phaeton, the company’s ill-fated attempt to compete with the their own Audi A8. Question: would anyone pay $100,000 dollars for a 12 cylinder VW? Answer: no, hardly anyone did. Conspiracy theorists suspect that Chairman Ferdinand Piech was trying to do some high-end development for the Bentley Continental and charge it to the VW side of the ledger. In any event, they were only sold in the U.S. for three years in the mid-2000s. You can still buy what is essentially the lovely, illegitimate child of an Audi A8 and a Bentley Continental for about the price of a new Honda Fit.

*Except when they do. Neither you nor Ferris Buehler is going to outbid Jay Leno on a fifty year old Ferrari 250 GT California.

 

 

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Comply Tx Foam Earbud Tips – Ear Luxury!

Posted on October 11, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

If you’ve listened to great recorded audio, you won’t have forgotten it. Hearing all the instruments, the vocals, the fingers sliding on the strings, the drum and bass lines the way they were meant to sound – I can’t describe it any better and I don’t need to, once you’ve heard it. If you have a lot of money to spend, you can have this experience whenever (but not wherever) you want. Just spend the money to buy large, well-engineered speakers and the also very large, expensive receivers that are needed to power them.

A more affordable way to get to the same place is to get a pair of high quality headphones. I’ve posted before about how much I like my Shure in-ear monitors (“IEMs”). The only drawback was that to get maximum bass, you have to stick them further into your ears than may be comfortable. Everyone’s ears are different, and your left one might even be different from your right one.

In 1990, Dr. Robert Oliveira, founder of Comply, came up with the answer: super-soft memory foam. You replace the tips on the headphones with the Comply ones, squish them with your fingers and push them in as far as you need. Within a few moments, your body heat expands them back to the ideal shape. You get the ideal combination: good sound and perfect comfort for the inside of your ear canals.

Lots of pros, but a con or two. What you gain in lightness, comfort and softness, you lose in durability. They will tear or break and need to be replaced eventually. They will not last forever, but the good news is that they come in packs of 3 pairs.  You’ll have replacements, and they don’t seem quite so pricey divided by 3.

Spend the extra $5, and get the Tx. The Wax-Guard feature seems to be worth it. The music gets through just fine, the wax does not. Don’t bother agonizing about the fit, either: the medium fits almost everybody. If your ears are extra small or extra large, you probably know that already.

Available from Amazon or from the Comply Web site for about $20.

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Clarisonic Face Scrubber Is the Electric Toothbrush for Your Skin

Posted on October 8, 2012 by admin

After a lifetime of youthful looks and clear skin, you look in the mirror and realize something isn’t quite right.  You’re not as young as you were.  Those days spent in the sun at the ocean’s edge have taken their toll, despite your religious use of sunblock.  Is that . . . a . . . line?  And what are those round things?  How did they get there?

Gasp!

You couldn’t be old enough to look . . . old, could you?  Darn that sun!  Your mother always told you sunscreen didn’t really work. Perhaps if you swear to wear #50 every day for the rest of your life . . . never mind.  The years are gone, and you can’t get them back.  As any dermatologist or make-up artist will tell you, preventive action is the most effective, and now that you’ve noticed the signs that it could actually matter, a good first step is to make sure your cleansing ritual removes as much dirt, debris, and excess oil as possible from the surface of your skin, while exfoliating gently to remove dead skin cells.  For a long time I simply used a washcloth (how novel!).  Then, I combined oatmeal and cornmeal for a homemade scrub.  Now, though, more serious measures are in order.

Clarisonic Face Scrubber

Off to the store I rushed, convinced that I was aging years with each passing moment.  I had to have it NOW:  that Clarisonic Face Scrubber I’d been ignoring as frivolous.  From my chat with the saleswoman I learned that the Clarisonic comes in several models:  the original Classic model and several new, smaller versions.  The Classic is the original, larger model, with two speeds and a base. The newer Mia and Mia 2 are smaller, with one and two speeds, respectively. Models from the Mia 2 and higher have a 1-minute timer that buzzes after the appropriate cleaning segment for each quadrant of your face (forehead, chin, each cheek).  You can purchase them with cleansers, but if you have sensitive skin like I do, you can use the Clarisonic with your own soap for the same result. The Clarisonic Plus comes with brushes for other body parts, and you can buy additional brushes separately.

I have used face brushes before, but I was intrigued by the concept of the Clarisonic.  I’ve had a sonic toothbrush forever, and I’ve been very pleased with its results. The principle is simple: a sonic brush uses a sonic frequency to create hundreds of brush movements per second, and those brush movements provide extra cleaning power to the surface they clean.

So the question is, does it work?  It actually does.  In just under two weeks of twice-daily usage, I’ve noticed that my skin feels cleaner and less oily.  My pores look smaller, and what few blemishes I may have had have disappeared.  All that exfoliation does seem to have reduced the faint lines I had begun to see, and I’m optimistic that persistent use will enhance that result.  Spending that $140 has inspired me to upgrade my skincare routine to include regenerating serum and daily sunscreen, even beyond summer.

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Fenix Bike Mount – More Fun With Your Flashlight

Posted on October 4, 2012 by Maxwell Perkins

Ever since I got my new flashlight, I’ve been looking for chances to use it. I haven’t gotten lucky enough to have a power blackout, have my car break down or lose anything important in the dark, so I thought I could try putting it on bicycle handlebars. I already have an LED headlight with a generator mounted on my old Raleigh, so I appreciate having a dedicated bike light, but there’s something to be said for the temporary setup on a bike you don’t ride regularly at night. The Fenix people are hoping you think it’s a good idea, so you get one of their dedicated bike mounts.

Fenix Bicycle Flashlight Mount

Obviously, it’s the right size for my new Fenix and fits lots of other flashlights with the same basic form factor. It is made of high-quality, UV-resistant plastic and can be installed with just your fingers.   The “just your fingers'” part is important, because you can lock the bike up and take the flashlight along with you anywhere. When riding with the light on the mount, you have total control in the x and y direction. The bottom part, clamped to the handlebars, can be be rotated up and down. You get it pretty close when you first mount it, then use the leverage from the long light to tilt it up or down when you take a test ride. Once you have it where you want it (depending on how fast you want to ride and how bright the street lights are), you can make it as tight as you want. Side to side, that’s much easier. The mount is designed to let you move it laterally with a click or two, no matter how tight the flashlight is. You can adjust that while you’re riding.

All in all, it’s a great way to use a 21st century flashlight.

 

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