09FEB25: Rooting for the snacks
Sweet mindfulness tech, a multipurpose smart lamp, a hot new feed reader and launcher, and TLC for your camera gear...
Happy Sunday, everyone!
This week, I’ve been really enjoying this excellent long-form piece from DieWorkWear on building a classic shirt wardrobe, laughing my backside off rereading the insane scribblings of Joshua Allen in his short story collection Knife Fite*, playing around with Matt Birchler's excellent, newly launched Quick Reviews app, and marveling at the paradoxes and engineering behind this cassette-shaped MP3 player, which has a digital display yet still fits in cassette players (h/t Doc Pop).
But the big thing I worked on this week is…
Launching 17 February, this informal photo challenge will give enrollees one composition technique to focus on each week for five weeks. It’s a great way to level up our collective photography fundamentals, and it’s totally free. We’ve already got nearly a hundred intrepid souls signed up and would love to have you join us!
On to the good stuff:
- 🙂 Unhinged Mood Tracker for iOS - Beyond meditation, one mindfulness practice that’s been really helpful for me is simply pausing to acknowledge what I’m feeling in a given moment. Maybe it’s just me, but I easily get carried away by my thoughts or emotions without realizing how much they shape my actions and experiences. Unhinged is a delightful app that facilitates this practice—cheerfully pinging you throughout the day to ask what you’re doing and how you’re feeling. This serves the dual function of keeping you mindful of your emotional state while also creating a fun micro journal of your day.
- 💡 Hue Signe Table Lamp* - I picked up an earlier generation of these a few years back and have them set up all over my office. They kick out a great amount of soft light with customizable temperature and color options via both the Hue app and Siri/Apple Home. I find them particularly great as fill lights for video calls (supplementing the Elgato Key Light*) and for adding fun accent lighting when pointed into a corner or placed against a wall. They’re pricey but have been rock-solid reliable for me.
- 📰 Tapestry for iOS - I’ve been beta testing this new unified timeline/reader app from the indie app legends at The Iconfactory, and am excited that it's finally live for everyone. It’s a great-looking, highly customizable universal feed reader that lets you curate a fine-tuned feed of RSS subscriptions, social media accounts, Reddit subreddits, and more—all centralized in one easy-to-scroll interface. This saves you from hopping around between apps to get all the content you love. I particularly appreciate the ability to mute keywords and terms you don’t want to see (e.g., if you’re exhausted from the news cycle, it’s easy to filter out certain controversial personalities). All of this is wrapped in a lovely, very Apple-native UI.
- 🥧 Pieoneer for macOS - This fun new app launcher/switcher brings a unique circular interface to macOS. At the press of a button, it pulls up a wheel of your favorite apps and folders, letting you quickly launch them with a click and then get back to work. What sets it apart is the beautiful UI/UX and sound design from Martin Lexow, who makes a number of stunning utilities like this. I also use his Keystroke Pro anytime I’m doing a screencast.
- 📷 Camera + Lens Cleaning Kit* - In preparation for the photo challenge, I wanted to get my cameras cleaned up. At the risk of oversharing, I had some gross dust and schmutz building up between the shutter and exposure comp dials that I just couldn’t blow off* or swab away with Q-tips. A frustrated bout of web searching led me to this kit from K&F Concept, and it’s exactly what I needed. Three minutes with the combination of a bulb blower, soft brush, and smudge remover, and my two main camera bodies are looking nearly brand new.
That’s it for this week! For those of you eyeballing this issue between downs during the Super Bowl, may your favorite team win! I love watching the game but don't really follow sports, so like most years, I’m mostly just rooting for the ads and the snacks this year.
*Asterisks indicate an affiliate link that may generate a small commission for the site if you use it, at no additional cost to you. None of these are sponsored.