Shimano Alfine Internal Gear Bicycle Hubs

If I were still riding a bike, I would definitely be interested in an internal gear hub and a belt drivetrain. Take a look

Playing games to help research

TAKE PART IN GAMIFIED RESEARCH

Gamification motivates people to participate in experiments through competition, fun and the opportunity to learn about themselves. Here are some games to try out:

• Which English? A viral grammar test that tries to identify which “world English” someone speaks, as part of language research.
• Are you a Super-Listener? A citizen-science experiment in which participants try to detect musical harmonies in scrambled tones.
• Glyph: An online gaming applet to explore the shape of letters in the world’s writing systems.
• Moral Machine: A platform for gathering a human perspective on moral decisions made by machine intelligence.
• Visual Vocab: An online assessment of vocabulary knowledge across the lifespan.

Four good pieces of advice

Oliver Burkeman at The Imperfectionist has four very good thoughts. Here’s one:

“I’m fully committed.” This phrase, which comes via Jordan Raynor, may win the prize in the long-running quest to find the right form of words for saying no to a request for your time – without leaving any wiggle room, but also without being needlessly unpleasant to the asker. Of course, now I’ve mentioned it here, I’ll be self-conscious about using it, but never mind. Just look at how elegant it is! “I’m sorry, but I’m fully committed” brooks no objection: it’s stronger than merely saying you have lots on your plate at the moment, which leaves open the possibility of adding something more. But it takes responsibility for the situation, too; it’s not that the other person’s request is low in value, just that my schedule happens to be full. Finally, it’s so obviously true: who isn’t “fully committed”, in some sense? There’s no need for the subtle self-aggrandisement of claiming you’re “really busy at the moment”. You’re just fully committed – a fact that the asker will probably recognise as being true about their life as well. (If you want some alternative scripts, there are a whole lot of them here.)

Another explores the truth of “Almost every experience in life can be categorised as a good time or a good story.”

Tiny bubbles, in the brine

After starting a vegetable ferment — like yesterday’s potato-carrot batch — it’s always a great pleasure the following morning to see the thread of tiny bubbles ascending when the jar is tilted. The little guys are alive and well and getting to work.

Grooming Dept will have new items for sale on Friday!

I like Grooming Dept products a lot — high-quality and also interesting — but they do tend to sell out quickly. He has a bunch of new things that will become available on Friday, January 20, at 11:00am PST. (I put a popup reminder in my calendar so I can order before things are sold out.

Scroll down here to see what will be available. The Aion Hydrating Gel and Nourishing Balm are available now, as is Grooming Dept Rejuvenating Serum (which also serves as a nice aftershave balm).

More Wee Scot, with a shave stick

I used my pre-Vulfix Wee Scot this morning, along with a shave stick. I did use Grooming Dept Moisturizing Pre-Shave. At first I avoided using it if I were going to use a shave stick, but with the current formulation one uses so little — plus there’s a quick rinse after applying — that I thought it would work.

And it did: no problems at all. La Toja makes an excellent shave stick, perhaps (as they claim) from the excellence of the springs. My Wee Scot quickly produced a great lather from the soap my stubble had scraped off the shave stick.

Gillette’s Heritage razor uses a clone of the Edwin Jagger head on a handle modeled after the one used on the Gillette NEW. The razor does an excellent job — Mühle and Edwin Jagger’s design is first-rate, which I imagine is why Gillette simply copied it instead of trying to come up with something of its own.

After the three passes, I continued to lather my face and then rinse, curious as to how much lather the little guy held. So enough lather for a 4th pass; a 5th; a 6th — and I decided to call it quits. The lather was ample, and I’m sure the brush held plenty for at least two more passes, but I decided six passes of lather is more than enough for any practical need. As I’ve said, I think the enormous capacity is because this brush has extremely fine bristles, and to make the knot it uses a lot of them. The total wetted surface brings about the surprisingly large lather capcity.

A splash of La Toja’s Hombre after shave lotion, which is actually very nice on the skin by itself (the springs! the springs!), but I also added a couple of squirts of Grooming Dept’s Aion Hydrating Gel. My skin feels very nice indeed.

The tea this morning is Murchie’s No. 22 Blend: “a superb blend of green Gunpowder and Jasmine, as well as Keemun and Ceylon black teas.”