LED lights in the headlamp version especially. anything other feels like walking around with a lit candle now.
NiMH batteries are great for frequently used devices. disposable alkalines are good for battery backup in clocks and smoke detectors and remote controls due to the long lifetime.
Solar hot water for your domestic hot water will pay for itself in maybe 5 years, give or take a year.
Not a chance. Tried this a couple of times and the ingrown hairs were a nightmare.
Yeah, conventional sporks are okay, but if you’re really looking to up your game.
Also, deodorant rocks are cool. I don’t know why they aren’t in greater usage.
All nubile young gals ought to wear them!
Birth control
LED flashlight are relatively new and growing. I don’t bike, but had my wife check my visibility walking at night. If I don’t improve it, she may be a widow.
Moisture cure urethane paint and varnish. You apply it straight out of the can like anything else, no mixing or anything, it quickly dries to a tough, hard finish, matched only by 2 package systems and factory backed enamels. Yes the solvents stink, you do need good ventilation.
Linux
Voltage detectors. I came across the niftiest gadget for trouble shooting, a voltage detector. They work through the insulation of wires. There are several brands. I have a GB Instruments GVD-505A, less than $15 at Home Depot. Touch it to a hot wire, and the end glows red. Find the doodad that lights it on one side, and not the other, and you have the culprit. You do not have to open up housings and expose electrical contacts. You are looking at where your hand is, not where the meter is.
Cotton poly blends. All the comfort of cotton with much longer wear. The cotton industry has sold us a bill of goods.
Wine in boxes. Could use higher quality product.
Dog crates
Anti seize
Fiberglass tool handles
Circuit breaker box interlocks http://www.interlockkit.com/
Torx heads
Tap-Cons
The problem with hats, is all too often this happens. It’s very hard to pull off hats without dressing up.
Aye. Fedoras are good in theory, but they’re currently stuck in a douche ghetto. We need to find a way to get all the douches to stop wearing fedoras, and to not resume wearing them as they become more popular with non-douches.
I strongly disagree. Most polycotton does not absorb perspiration nearly as well, plus a lot of it stinks, no matter how much you wash it. I always wash my clothes before I wear them, and I’ve had enough items that retain the stink even though I put them through the wash several times that I won’t buy anything that’s less than 80% cotton. That seems to be the cutoff point. Also, polycotton usually pills terribly. Oh, sure, the garment is still intact, but either I have to resign it to gardening/housecleaning status, or spend half an hour defuzzing it before it will be suitable to be worn in public. I have several items that pilled badly on the first washing. A pity, because they are attractive in cut and and color/print, but I don’t like spending that much time defuzzing clothes.
[ul]
[li]ISO 216 paper. It’s so easy to reduce or enlarge by a factor of two when your sheet has an aspect ratio of 1:√2.[/li][li]Free software. To quote one prominent proponent, asking about the practical advantages of free software is like asking about the practical advantages of not being handcuffed.[/li][li]Ferrets. The ideal pet—all the best features of both dogs and cats.[/li][/ul]
Got you to look, didn’t I? 
Pandora is unique among recommendation services (as far as I know) because it’s tied to the Music Genome Project, which breaks each song into ~400 constituent attributes and ranks them accordingly. Then it uses your feedback to determine which attributes you like the most and makes recommendations that way.
In my own experience, it’s been more precise than other recommendation services, but maybe only because I’ve been using it longer than the other ones. Pandora’s been around longer than Last.fm and iTunes, and before it, all we had were imprecise things like Billboard and friends. I would argue Pandora’s success pretty much jumpstarted the music recommendation industry and spawned copycats, most of which use “people who liked this song also liked…” rating systems as opposed to identifying the components of music that you liked. Intuitively, Pandora’s method seems like a better and more precise way to do it, but I haven’t seen any studies comparing the actual subjective effectiveness. Pandora works better for me, personally.
Yes!!! Along with metric rulers and all that.
I don’t think this has been answered yet: Can pressure cookers only cook soupy things or anything? I make predominantly sauteed veggies, stir-fry dishes, etc. Would a pressure cooker even be appropriate?
Yes they can. Back in the 60’s my wife’s grandfather gave us beets out of his garden so big they took for ever to cook. She would do one of them in the pressure cooker. That was all that fit. Today, likely the microwave. Anything you would cook in a sauce pan should work in a pressure cooker. Large ones can be used for canning.
See if your cookbook gives pressure cooker directions. If not, your library should have older editions that do.
But they would come out with a steamed-like texture, right?
you can brown the outside of things in the pressure cooker and then seal and pressure cook.
though small amount of material would cook fast. the amount you might put in a fry pan would cook very quickly.
you can cook whole veggies and if they will stay whole if you don’t overcook. things cook surrounded by heat and cook on all sides.
File this under “should be more popular than they are in the USA”. Most of the rest of the world has already been on board with this for years. It’s unbelievably handy. (I believe in Germany, even the toilet paper conforms to this standard, which is perhaps a bit excessive.)
Now if only they had ISO 216 shredder-softeners that turn last year’s budget into luxuriously decorated toilet paper 
I think Happy Straps should be a lot more popular. Got narrow shoulders so your bra straps constantly wander? Happy Straps cures that problem. You have to learn to put your bra on over your head, but it’s so worth it not to have to push the damn straps back into place constantly.
They’re great. Until you get a shitload of ingrown hairs (for me that took a year of consistent use. YMMV). I wish I’d stuck to razors, frankly, considering that removing some of those ingrown hairs led to tiny scars.
Why should every human on the planet know about something that’s only available in the USA?
I think I’ll buy a pressure cooker today.
I am here: Google Maps
So they can lobby our citizens to lobby our politicians to allow global Pandora coverage, naturally. It’s a basic human right.
That, or I simply didn’t realize that requirement :smack:
