The Wirecutter and ‘Inner Vision’

One of my favorite web sites is ‘The Wirecutter’ over at thewirecutter.com

Anytime I’m going to purchase something I run over to The Wirecutter (or thesweethome.com) and look for a review. If I find something there I use their link to purchase the item. 

Anyway, they’ve got a great feature called ‘Inner Vision’ which is an assortment of interesting articles regarding a variety of topics. 

Check out the latest iteration here. My favorite item from this week’s list of items is this article. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

You can find a complete list of their blog posts here.

“The train that saved Denver”

Excellent article about the new(-ish) train based transit system that Denver has been building. More impressive is the idea that the region as a whole has been working together.

I’ve always been impressed by the European model of bike, car, train and plane transportation systems working as an integrated whole. Efficient and easy to use.

See the article from Politico here.

Building a Steinway Piano – Chris Payne

Got this link via Kottke. Really enjoyed seeing the process of building a piano, in this case a Steinway piano.

Last fall my wife and I purchased a used Piano after doing a bunch of shopping. Easy to see why new piano’s have such a cost attached to them. Anyway, we bought a used Baldwin to see how much it would get played. Good decision on our part.

Here’s the link.

NASCAR Stats – winning percentage by team

Poor man’s stat mechanism (see here if you’re a stat nut)

I like to do this every now and then to see what the percentages are. Obviously Win percentage is a pretty hard number. Overall race wins is probably a better statistic and adding in top 5 and 10 positions would be good. 

Championships are the true measure and Stewart-Haas seems to be doing pretty well with 2 in the last couple of years and of course, Penske’s first. 

NumbersScreenSnapz001

How to grow a forest really fast

I’ve always been interested in forests. Spent a lot of time riding around them in Northern Michigan. I think they are peaceful, yet full of life. I just read this article about growing a forest ‘fast’ on medium. 

Microphone technique

I’ve been playing around with doing video and voice over for videos. Here’s a great video from Dan Benjamin at 5 by 5 talking about microphone technique. 

See the video here.

New York Subways in the early 1980’s

See this article.

The subways that I’ve known in New York since the early 1990’s are nothing like this. New York has done a great job of cleaning up the subway system. 

They are my favorite way of getting around New York…other than walking!