bookofjoe

Byredo Candle Hack

60 hours estimated burn time.

But what if you could enjoy the wonderful scent of these candles indefinitely?

I decided to create a way to hack this problem and I succeeded.

Watch the video up top: if I can do it, anyone can.

Bonus: free (of course, you have to pony up for a candle, not a small expense).

But, amortized over hundreds of hours as opposed to 60, suddenly it's not so outlandish.

Gamma-Ray Sky

YouTube description:

Watch a cosmic gamma-ray fireworks show in this animation using a year of data from the Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.

Each object's magenta circle grows as it brightens and shrinks as it dims.

The yellow circle represents the Sun following its apparent annual path across the sky.

The animation shows a subset of the LAT gamma-ray records now available for more than 1,500 objects in a new, continually updated repository.

Over 90% of these sources are a type of galaxy called a blazar, powered by the activity of a supermassive black hole.

More here.

Can't stop won't stop?

I hear you.

Your wish is my demand.

Read the original paper, "The Fermi-LAT Lightcurve Repository," published March 15, 2023 in the Astrophysical Journal, in its entirety here and here.

Wait a sec — what's that fantastic 1982 movie that suddenly comes to mind?

No, not that one, besides which it's from 1972; this one.

Anti-Bunch Laundry Tool

From Core77:

Inventor Designs Highly Profitable 'Wad-Free' Laundry Aid

 

It keeps sheets from getting tangled, and sounds like 'cha-ching'

 

This humble object will never make it into the MoMA, but it does solve one of life's minor annoyances. That annoyance is when you're washing bedsheets, and they tightly spiral into a rope inside the machine (occasionally trapping other clothes inside), or into a wadded ball that occasionally unbalances the machine and causes it to pause. Both must be unfurled before they can be dried.

 

Minor as it is, several years ago this annoyance prompted Denver-based Cyndi Bray to devise this doo-hickey that keeps the corners together, preventing wadding.

Apparently by effectively shortening the overall dimensions of the sheet, it also prevents the rope thing from happening, and keeps the sheet loose enough that other clothes don't get trapped inside.

Bray, who holds an MBA, wisely assumed there was a market for it and managed to get the Wad-Free, as she named it, into production. It was already for sale in Walmart and Amazon by the time she went on "Shark Tank" a couple years ago to secure additional funding. Since then Bray has reportedly cleared over half a million in sales and has a healthy 38% profit margin.

You may not have an MBA, but a fair number of you reading this have degrees in ID. So here's a reminder that if you can use your skills to solve a small, humble problem that lots of people experience, there might not be much glory in it, but there's a pathway to success like Bray's.

Set of 2: $19.99.