This is loads of fun, and a way to get the kids out of the house during the winter. It's also a way to make a cheap two- or three-person ice fishing house that doesn’t require transport at the end of the season. Any type of snow can be compacted into this nifty device, which will create, quickly, hundreds of perfectly formed, slanted, and stacking igloo building blocks. The Eskimold is different from other snow block kits in that one block edge is concave, the other is convex, allowing them to fit together, almost like puzzle pieces, edge to edge. The blocks also curve in slightly (picture an igloo's interior walls). The last block on each row has to be trimmed, and a plastic snow knife is included in the kit for that purpose. It works well, since the igloo gradually leans in as it's built, and the diameter shrinks with each row. A skilled builder could mimic the traditional half-sphere igloo design, and the casual builder (or parent working with kids) will end up with a more pointed, and taller, beehive design, which one can actually stand up in. Unlike the previously reviewed Icebox, the Eskimold is oriented toward play more than serious shelter construction.

If you have a couple of kids, it works best to get two of them, to avoid fighting between the kids. These plastic buckets are durable, and will last for years. You can make the blocks in advance, if you wish, and let them freeze overnight on a scrap of plywood. It's simple, but time consuming. We spread it out over two days, with hot chocolate breaks. You do not need to haul the snow to the igloo site (it takes a lot of snow); you can use a shovel to make the blocks a distance away from the site, stack them on a piece of plywood on a sled, then haul them to your building spot. Once you make a block you need to stick it on the igloo, or on a smooth board. If you leave it on the ground, it will freeze there overnight, and you will not be able to use it.

My teenage son actually slept in his own igloo creation one night, and was comfortable in -15 degree F weather. He and a group of his friends used it to make a circular shelter, without a roof, about 15 feet in diameter, and about 5 feet tall, with our metal firepit in the center. This created a nice sheltered bonfire site in the backyard, out of the wind, where they could have adult-free discussions, with food.

Eskimold Kit
$22

Manufactured by and available from Tundra North Manufacturing LTD

As literature, the biblical book of Genesis has it all: sex, violence, angels, war, murder, heroes, incest, world-wide disasters, spooky mystery, and a timeless story. All it needed was illustrations by the comic genius R. Crumb and you'd have a underground manga hit. And that's what this book is. Crumb brilliantly did not alter or omit any words from the scriptural text, and even toned down his drawings to a PG-13 rating. But man, is this strong drink. It will burn your eyelashes. Like it must have done 2,000 years ago. Now you have absolutely no excuse not to read the first book of the Bible.

The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb
R. Crumb
2009, 224 pages
$15

Available from Amazon

Sample Excerpts:

Every once in a while a science fiction book unleashes a vivid, important alternative vision of the future that has not been fleshed out before. Daniel Suarez does that with Daemon, a fasted-paced thriller about a world in which a virtual bot takes over. Sort of a digital Armageddon, only worse. It's a techno-thriller more informed than a Tom Clancy novel, more plausible than The Matrix, more graphic than War Games, and more thought-provoking than Neuromancer -- yet it introduces a science fiction future new to all of them. Here the ghostly bot upends the world by using technological blackmail to take control of more everyday infrastructural systems. Suarez, an information technology and security consultant in real life, makes this scenario entirely plausible even to a technology booster like myself. In fact his scenario is now being seriously considered by the intelligence and security agencies. In a stroke of genius, Suarez shows why this takeover by the bot might be something we choose to allow! The story is not a bit academic or abstract. Instead it is an action-packed made-for-Hollywood script. Warning: the ending is a cliff-hanger, concluded in the second book, Freedom(TM).

Daemon
Daniel Suarez
2009, 640 pages
$10
Available from Amazon

Freedom(TM)
Daniel Suarez
2010, 416 pages
$18
Pre-order available from Amazon (due out January 7, 2010)

Book website

Sample Excerpts:

Gragg's script also installed a keylogger, which gave him account and password information to virtually everything the user did from then on, sending it to yet another compromised workstation offshore where Gragg could pick it up at leisure.
What sort of idiot hung the keys to his business out on the street- and more than that, broadcast a declaration from his router telling the world where the keys were? These people shouldn't be left home alone, much less put in charge of peoples' investments. Gragg cleaned up the router's connection log. More than likely the scam wouldn't be detected for months, and even then, the company probably wouldn't tell their clients. They'd just close the barn door long after the Trojan horses were gone. So far, Gragg had a cache of nearly two thousand high-net- worth identities to sell on the global market, and the Brazilians and Filipinos were snapping up everything he offered.

*

But Decker was in no hurry. He finally placed his hand on a dis-connected rack server sitting on the nearby counter. "They tell me this computer killed two men earlier today." The shock took a while to work through Ross. He had expected some sort of child pornography ring, or a credit card scam.
"Killed? How?"
"I was hoping you could help us explain that."

*

Larson pointed to a network port in the side of the black box, then traced his finger to a smaller circuit board attached to it. "Check this out: it's a Web server on a chip. It's got a tiny TCP/IP stack. They're used for controlling devices like doors and lights from an IP network. I checked. They've got them all over the building." Larson slid his hand along a CAT5 cable extending from the board into the darkness. "This box is linked to their network, and their network is connected to the Internet. It's conceivable that someone with the right passwords could have activated this switch from anywhere in the world."
"Could the switch be set to activate when a certain person swiped their access card at the security door?"
"Probably. I just don't know enough about these cards yet."
"How long has the switch been here?"
Greer looked at the back of the enclosure. "It was covered in dust when we got to it."
"So that vestibule door has probably been used thousands of times without incident-then suddenly today it kills someone. ."

Disguised as a biography of mathematician Bertrand Russell in graphic novel form, this comic book is really about the nature and limits of logic. It takes heady, heavy, and key ideas in logic and renders them witty, visual, and dramatic. You'll learn a lot. The fact that many of the original logicians were mentally unbalanced and irrational, adds a dash of delicious paradox and spice to this entertaining book.

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth
Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou
2009, 352 pages
$14

Available from Amazon

Book website

Sample Excerpts:

*

*

Someday you will be able to continuously measure your body in a hundred ways, and this constant data will transform your health. For the past few years David Duncan has been trying out this experiment. Although he is healthy, he's subjected himself to every quantitative test he could find: multiple varieties of genome sequencing, measuring compounds in his blood, getting his brain scanned, tracking body pulses -- and then he tried to correlate all this data. He calls himself the "experimental man." The most fascinating part of his project was his attempt to measure the traces of environmental toxins left in his blood. I believe we will be following in his footsteps in the coming years. I started the site The Quantified Self just for this reason: in order to preview and discuss the tools for this kind of self-tracking (and I make a minor appearance in this book). Duncan's account covers the plus and minus of this technology. He also gives us a clear sense of the potential for self-tracking and the immense difficulties we'll have dealing with the data. I consider this book a very helpful and sobering glimpse of the future of health tools.

Experimental Man: What One Man's Body Reveals about His Future, Your Health, and Our Toxic World
David Ewing Duncan
2009, 384 pages
$18

Available from Amazon

Book website

Sample Excerpts:

Chris Austin believes that a much larger effort is needed, something akin to the Human Genome Project: perhaps the Human Envirogenomics Project? He and others believe that the only way to create meaningful envirogenetics data is through a large prospective cohort study, collecting DNA samples and information about exposure to a variety of environmental factors from five hundred thousand to a million participants who are followed for a number of years.

*

Hillis told me they took a picture of my proteome using the mass spectrometer--or, at least, a picture of the proteins swirling around in my blood on a certain day in April 2008, when I had my blood drawn. But it was a picture that included measurements at the atomic level of such complexity that it took about 24 gigabytes of storage space to hold all of the sample data (the picture I saw represents only about 1/24th of the total data from the sample)--that was fourteen hundred times the amount of digital space it took to store this entire book.

"It's a high-res picture of your whole proteome," said Ruderman.

We got up and walked over to an enormous flat-screen monitor on a wall of the lair, a TouchTable device invented by Hillis that models complex three-dimensional shapes on a flat screen--aircraft, buildings, cars, and proteomes. Ruderman clicked on my proteome file using his fingertips and pulled up functions that zoomed up and down the screen like an iPhone--although the touch-table technology had come first. Up popped a field of yellow dots that looked like a 3-D star field from outer space.

*

Meanwhile, huge chasms in our knowledge need to be filled before the Experimental Man will be complete down to every SNP, copy number variation, and synapse. Perhaps the biggest gap is the affect of the environment on our DNA, cells, organs, and bodies. Few of the tests I've taken for the Experimental Man project provide much useful information about how the environment interacts with genes, neurons, and proteomic systems and pathways. As cardiologist Eric Topol of Scripps told me, "You could almost say that giving genetic results without environmental data is inaccurate." The same is true about any system in the body, since the whole point of evolution has been to create defenses inside organisms to fend off the daily onslaught of the environment, from natural challenges such as UV rays and flu viruses to the thousands of toxic chemicals that we humans have unleashed into the air, the water, and the earth.

Stewart Brand inspired Cool Tools. This blog is a continuation of the user-generated recommendation mechanism that Brand invented in the Whole Earth Catalog (which I worked on in its later years). Brand has spent his long career successfully changing people's minds by offering them tools. The tool he offers here is simply the tool of "changing your mind." How do you do it rationally, smartly, wisely? What kind of evidence do you need? What is more important, principles or pragmatism?

This book can be seen as a challenge to green theory and green dogma, but it directly challenges ideology itself. I think this is Brand's best book yet. As you follow his arguments, you get a great education in following science and data rather than righteous assumptions. Instead, says Brand, assume much of what we think is true isn't, and then go from there with a fresh look at the evidence. Being pragmatic about something as complex as a technological planet can lead you to unconventional ideas for dealing with planetary woes -- even if they seem contrary to cherished beliefs. Some of the solutions -- like nuclear power and genetically modified crops -- will be dismissed as outright heresies among greens. But you get to watch a great mind change his mind. As Brand's education continues he makes as good a case for these heresies as you'll hear anywhere.

This book may change your own mind about things you thought you believed. What more can you ask of a book?

Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto
Stewart Brand
2009, 336 pages
$18

Available from Amazon

Annotated version and website

Sample Excerpts:

When roles shift, ideologies have to shift, and ideologies hate to shift. The workaround is pragmatism -- a practical way of thinking concerned with results rather than with theories and principles. The shift is deeper than moving from one ideology to another; the shift is to discard ideology entirely.

*

Forty years ago, I started the Whole Earth Catalog with the words, "We are as gods, and might as well get good at it." Those were innocent times. New situation, new motto: "We are as gods and have to get good at it." The Whole Earth Catalog encouraged individual power; Whole Earth Discipline is more about aggregate power.

*

The three broad strategies for dealing with climate change are mitigation, adaptation, and amelioration. Mitigation, cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions, has been called avoiding the unmanageable. Adaptation, then, is managing the unavoidable -- moving coastal populations to higher ground, developing drought-tolerant agriculture, preparing for masses of climate refugees, and keeping resource warfare localized. And amelioration is adjusting the nature of the planet itself through large-scale geoengineering.

Civilization is at risk, but civilization is the problem. The key positive feedback in the current Earth system is us. Accelerating wealth (especially in developing countries these days), a still-growing human population, and accelerating industry are pouring overwhelming quantities of green-house gases into the atmosphere. As Australian biologist Tim Flannery puts it, "The metabolism of our economy is now on a collision course with the metabolism of our planet."

*

Once upon a time, I dreamed that economics would eventually swell up and include ecology, and we would no more be misled by notions of "externalities." Now I'm not so sure. I recall a friend leaning on me to admit that ecology and economics are the same thing. "No, damn it," I said. "Ecology is devoid of intention, and economics is made of little else." (I suspect that my friend was on to something, though, because economics enthusiasts and ecology enthusiasts share an affliction. Conservative think that the self-organizing properties of a market economy are a miracle that must not be messed with. Greens think that the self-organizing properties of ecologies are a miracle that must not be messed with.)

*

The emphasis of the vigilance principle is on liberty, the freedom to try things. The correction for emergent problems is in ceaseless, fine-grained monitoring, which largely can be automated these days via the Internet, by collecting data from distributed high-tech sensors and vigilant cellphone-armed volunteers. (Wikipedia, for example, is an orgy of vigilance: A cluster of diligent amateur watchers and correcters actively surveil each entry, with a response time of seconds.) Managing the precautionary process in this mode consists of identifying things to watch for as a new technology unfolds.

I've been using these for a dozen years to start seeds for annual flowers and a vegetable garden. They are superior to most methods when it comes to reducing transplant shock and simply make transplanting easier. Additionally, they allow me to save money on supplies at the expense of a little extra labor.

Soil block makers are hand-operated presses that make a compacted soil cube. You start seeds directly in the cube of compressed soil; no container is necessary. Since the cubes' sides are in contact with air, roots will stop growing when they reach the side of the block. Contrast that with seedlings grown in the typical retail greenhouse's flimsy plastic tray, in which the roots wrap around the space between the soil and plastic, becoming pot-bound.

When it comes time to transplant the cubes formed with soil block makers into the garden, just drop the block into the prepared hole. There's no prying a pot-bound seedling from a container; no accidentally damaging the root system. I've tried various biodegradable containers designed to go right into the garden soil, including peat pots, peat and coconut blocks, even small paper bags designed to hold potting soil and seedlings. None of them decompose as quickly as advertised; this results in slower root growth after transplanting. Plus, buying new containers each year is an added expense. I also tried a tray system that's sturdy, designed to be easy to water, has a better shape than greenhouse trays, and an integrated greenhouse cover. While it's the best tray system I've ever used, buying enough of these trays to start all my seeds would be several hundred dollars in up-front expenses, and they’re a pain to store when not in use. My block maker is less expensive and only takes up about the space of a hardback novel.

Block makers come in several sizes, designed to handle different sized seedlings, or to allow potting-on from one size to the next. I've found the two-inch size covers most of my home-gardener needs.

The only downside I've found is you must water the blocks frequently or they dry out. I put my blocks on disposable foil cookie baking sheets, placed on shelves. Some people put the blocks on capillary mats, which stay wet and wick water into the block bottoms, so you don't need to water as often. I've found that you still need to mist the blocks, and worse, plant roots can grow into the mat, causing the very root trauma you are trying to avoid. When it's time to transplant, I slide the foil sheet onto a piece of plywood and carry it out to the garden.

The block maker I have is the Mini 4, by Ladbrooke. You can also purchase them, as well as soil block mix, or find more soil recipes and instructions for making your own soil blockers at Pottingblocks.com. Great advice and instructions for homemade blockers are here.

Soil Block Makers
$30 (2" blocker, 4 blocks)

Available from Peaceful Valley

Also available from Johnny's Selected Seeds

We asked our readers what cool tools they are giving to their friends and families this year. Here are the final three in our series this week of suggested gifts mentioned in the comments that we are highlighting on the front page. Submit your own recommendation in the comments. -- ES

***
MSR MugMate

Bought this for my grandmother-in-law after she saw me using mine. Great for brewing single cups of coffee or tea. Easy to clean. Mine's in excellent condition after 6 months of regular use.

-- Steven Leckart

MSR MugMate
$17
Available from Amazon
Manufactured by Cascade Designs

***

Gimlet Set

I'm giving gimlet sets to a few lucky in-laws this year. I've found them to be a great time saver whenever I need a hole drilled and precise placement is critical. A few twists and a lovely pilot hole is exactly where you need it.

-- Paul Steger

Set of Auger Gimlets
$9 - $16
Available from Garret Wade
Also available from Lee Valley

***

Hohner Little Lady

The Hohner Little Lady is made in Europe from brass and pear wood. It will play a full scale. Learn 13 songs here.

-- Tim McKinney

Hohner Little Lady Harmonica
$13
Available from Amazon
Manufactured by Hohner

All the adults in my family agreed this year that they don't want any more stuff in their lives at this point. So instead of buying them gifts, my Cool Tool for the holidays is Oxfam’s Unwrapped project: I buy a gift in someone’s name, they get a card, I get a tax deduction, and someone in a developing country gets a goat, some chickens, a school desk and chair, some text books, or something else they really need. While I imagine a portion of my donation goes to fund overhead at Oxfam, they are one of the more efficient charities around. Based on what I've read, and heard from acquaintances who work there, most of the money I give them is being put to direct use.

[We asked our readers what cool tools they are giving to their friends and families this year. Here is one in a series this week of suggested gifts mentioned in the comments that we are highlighting on the front page. Submit your own recommendation in the comments. -- ES]

Oxfam America Unwrapped

My daughter loves pickles and has expressed some interest in making her own, so I'm thinking of getting her the Leener's Pickling Kit, which can be used to make either dill pickles or sauerkraut, and includes a 2-gallon lead-free ceramic crock made in the U.S.

[We asked our readers what cool tools they are giving to their friends and families this year. Here is one in a series this week of suggested gifts mentioned in the comments that we are highlighting on the front page. Submit your own recommendation in the comments. -- ES]

Leeners Pickling Kit
$35

Available from Leeners

For Christmas this year I gave my parents a personalized puzzle featuring a custom map of the area around their lake cabin. "From any starting point, we'll create a 400-piece puzzle of a six-by-four-mile area using U.S. Geological Survey maps. A house-shaped piece in the center represents the address you choose. Shows main roads, contour lines, water features, vegetation, and notable buildings. Arrives in a presentation box with space for a personal message." If you search for a promo code, you can save 20%. (Order by 12/14/2009 for Christmas delivery.)

[We asked our readers what cool tools they are giving to their friends and families this year. Here is one in a series this week of suggested gifts mentioned in the comments that we are highlighting on the front page. Submit your own recommendation in the comments. -- ES]

National Geographic Store Hometown Puzzle
$40

Available from National Geographic

We're looking for recommendations for the following:

What is the best (cheap and great interface) domain manager if you have one or two dozen (not one or two and not a hundred or more) domain names to keep going?

Best field guide to insects (North America)?

Best single AA battery flashlight (torch)?

A great how-to site you just discovered?

Also, we're still accepting holiday gift ideas for a Cool Tools guide coming later this week. Leave your input in the comments or e-mail me directly: elon {at} schoenholz dot com.

The common paper napkin found in every restaurant in the U.S. is a rarity in the rest of the world. When traveling, I’ve found cafes and cheap restaurants often offer only small squares of tissue that I could dab my lips with, but won’t do a thing to keep protect my lap from dropped food. My solution is the Campack towel. It’s a small (15x15 inch) very thin microfiber towel with a clip on one corner that keeps it attached to its little pouch even when you are using it. The pouch, in turn, has a small carabiner that clips to a belt loop. (Stuffed in its pouch, it measures about 3x2 ½ inches.) The Campack towel is just large enough that I can use it like a regular cloth napkin, keeping it in my lap and lifting it to wipe my hands and face, without detaching it. It seems very similar to the previously reviewed Aquis Microfiber towel, just smaller, less expensive and with the added small clip on the corner.

Because it's always at hand, I find a million uses for it. I can dry my hands with it in the many public toilets that don’t provide paper towels. Once it’s saturated, I can wring it out and it's ready to soak up more water. It's very soft, making it more pleasant to use than paper alternatives.

On a recent trip to Japan and Korea, I became so attached to it that I left it on my belt when I came home.

The Campack has a few more thoughtful features: One side of the pouch is made of mesh, allowing the towel to dry when it's not in use. It's bright orange, so you're not likely to leave it behind if you've hung it up to dry in your hotel room. The manufacturer also claims that it has an anti-microbial, anti-fungal layer. I can't say whether this is really necessary, as it takes only a minute to wash it in the sink and it dries quickly, so most of the time it's clean and dry. MSR makes a similar product, but it's slightly more expensive and doesn't come with the carabiner.

Campack Medium (15.5"x15.5") Towel
$7

Available from REI

If you ever had occasion to use expanding polyurethane foam to mount a window or the like, you may have thought like me “Great stuff, wonder what else I could use this for?” But standard polyurethane foam cans are only good for a short while. Once used, the valve and application tube glues itself shut within a few hours, regardless of how much product was left in the can. Keeping a can around for those odd jobs and bright ideas is just not worth the waste.

Enter foam guns. The point of foam guns is right up front, so to speak. The exit valve is right up at the very tip of the rigid application tube. When you mount a can to the gun, the whole inside of the gun is pressurized with product just like the can. There is nowhere inside where the foam can expand or harden.

That’s the theory, at least. In practice it still won't keep indefinitely. On first try mine hardened right trough in two weeks, and I had a nasty job cleaning it out mechanically. Subsequently, I have taken care to store it with the can upside down, and I tested it every few days for a while, and now it seems to keep fine for at least two weeks. Perhaps it just needed to self-seal.

I don't have a particular brand to recommend. I just got the cheapest all-metal model on eBay at the time, which I've seen since both branded and unbranded, and at wildly different prices. My experience seems to indicate, though, that staying away from the plastic models was a good idea, as I had to use considerable force to disassemble the gun for mechanical cleaning.

With these caveats, I'm still pretty happy about this discovery of mine. Only this week I used it to assemble a life-size doll my girlfriend made, and fix it to its plastic pipe skeleton. It really feels like I've got a whole new material in my kit.
Discovering what else it’s good for is going to be fun.

Polyurethane Foam Gun
$30–$125

Available from Amazon

Also from eBay

This is the simplest, least expensive tool for reproducing accurate color in digital photography. I insert one of these 6-inch-long cards into a scene that I’m photographing as a reference with an absolute value. Back in front of my monitor, with the click of an eyedropper tool I’m able to indicate to Adobe Lightroom (my favorite imaging software) that the gray on this card is a neutral gray. In Lightroom, as with any worthy photo program, a “gray balance” click on the card tells the software to identify this gray as neutral; the software then calculates the color temperature of the light hitting the card, adjusts the values accordingly, and the overall color of the scene falls into place.

In situations where there are multiple light sources with different color temperatures (say tungsten indoor lighting and daylight entering a window), I’d take two or more separate exposures with the QPcard positioned to catch each source.

I haven’t tried DataColor’s SpyderCube Calibration Tool, which performs a similar function, as it’s considerably more expensive, and offers much more than I need, which is really just a little touch of neutral gray. The SpyderCube does have two separate gray surfaces, but they’re at fixed angles relative to one another and won’t necessarily catch different light sources in a single exposure, anyway.

The minimal QPcard is inexpensive because it’s just a flimsy adhesive-backed piece of paper. I’ve been able to keep a card alive for a long time by sticking it onto a piece of sturdy cardboard and stowing it securely in my Domke bag.

QPcard 101 v2 (3 pack)
$16

Available from Calumet Photo

Manufactured by QPcard AB

Several years ago, I was at a trade show and I saw and tried an early-generation Kinesis keyboard. I was hooked. As a starving college student, I certainly couldn't afford one then, but once I entered the workforce one of the first things I did was acquire a Kinesis, and I have now been using it for about four years.
I've used a variety of ergonomic keyboards in my time, but none was as comfortable to use as this one.

I’m a decent typist, but once it arrived, it took me about two weeks of hunting-and-pecking to figure out where all the keys were, and another week to get proficient with it. During this time, I kept a standard keyboard close at hand, in case I got too frustrated, or needed to type something quickly. However, once I mastered the keyboard, I found that my typing speed went up by about 15 wpm. The reason for this is that the Kinesis doesn't enforce any unnatural motions on your hands or fingers. Hold up your hand, make a loose fist, and then open your hand naturally. That motion encompasses 95% of the motion required to operate this keyboard. It's a remarkably stress-free way to type; very comfortable, and well worth the investment.

I don’t have any specific pain or injuries associated with typing. Like just about anyone who uses a keyboard regularly, I'd occasionally get tired or sore hands or forearms (and I still do, when I have occasion to use a non-Kinesis keyboard at length). But since switching, I've found that that kind of pain has dropped off significantly.

The downsides are minimal but worth noting as this is, after all, a very expensive keyboard. The keys are a trifle loud for my taste; I'd definitely prefer a quieter version. Also, the default keymappings are a little odd; the left and right curly braces are in a strange place. While I'm not a coder by trade, I could definitely see that being an issue for someone who does a lot of programming. But it's never bothered me enough to do any remapping. Also, one caveat: you pretty much have to be a touch-typist to be able to use it -- one-finger typing on this keyboard will only end up frustrating you.

What I like best about this keyboard is the natural fit of the keys. The curved cups that the keys rest in are shaped just right for my hands, so the uniquely comfortable typing position is consistently reinforced and supported. I would strongly recommend this keyboard to anyone looking for a comfortable typing experience.

Kinesis Advantage USB Keyboard
$270

Available from Amazon

Manufactured by Kinesis Corporation

This pack is truly a cool tool. It's the size of a daypack, yet zips open into a child carrier backpack. It’s so cool because it's small enough to use as your everyday diaper bag, and then when your little one's legs get tired (or you get tired of chasing your little one), you can put her in the pack.

I highly recommend Deuter’s Kid Comfort II for hiking with a toddler on board, but frame packs are about as portable as strollers - not very. The Kanga Kid, however, can really go everywhere with you. It has an internal frame (more of a shaped metal wedge) and a lumbar belt, so it's strong enough to hold a child up to about 30 pounds (total recommended capacity, with cargo, is 33 pounds) without killing your shoulders.

We bought this pack when my son was about six months old. It got a bunch of use until he was about 18 months. Included in that time were a few short impromptu hikes and innumerable trips to the grocery store. Use started to taper off mostly because my son preferred walking when we went out. He’s tall for his age and after about 20 months was too tall for the Kanga. Smaller kids could maybe push it up to two years. But the Kanga was really golden when he was just starting to walk (at about 1 year) and would get tired and need to be carried when we were out on the town. Since I used it as my diaper bag, and therefore always had it with me, I never had to worry about going back to the car for a stroller. I just packed him up and kept on going. It’s not easy to get a child into this pack without the help of another adult, but I managed to do it.

Kelty’s TC 2.1 is a very similar design, though I haven’t used it for comparison. Both companies have a number of backpack styles at parallel price points with comparable features and quality construction. I’m tall, and have found Deuter packs, both the Kanga Kid and the Kid Comfort II, fit me well.

Deuter Kanga Kid
$145

Available from Amazon

Manufactured by Deuter

Written by you.

Here's how. In the comments of this entry describe a cool tool you are giving as a gift this year. To a family-member, co-worker, or friend. It can be a previously reviewed Cool Tool, or even better, a new one we don't know about. We'll comb through the submissions in a week or so and then highlight the best of suggestions collected into a full-fledge roundup on the front page.

So what cool tool are you planning to share with others? And why? It can be anything useful (and, okay, even playful). Keep it real. Bonus points for including a link.

This is a heavy-duty cast aluminum garden hose reel. It costs about twice as much as the plastic reel I replaced and is at least four times the quality and longevity. The materials used are thick cast aluminum, powder-coated, with real stainless steel fasteners and brass fittings. The fittings and bearings are replaceable and heavy duty. The term bulletproof comes to mind.

The reel is configurable as a parallel or perpendicular mount with either a right or left hand hose mount. The design is modular and well thought out. Even the included hex wrenches are well thought out and long enough to reach easily and are of high quality. As a mechanical designer myself, I am able to appreciate a nice robust design and execution.

Rapid Reel Wall Mount Garden Hose Reel
$122

Available from Amazon

Manufactured by Rapid Reel

After breaking two glass carafes while living in the middle of nowhere, I knew there had to be a better answer to the standard French press. The Frieling is; made of all stainless steel parts, it's insulated and has no plastic anywhere. It is awesome.

Some people think that allowing the grounds to sit in the bottom of the Freieling for an extended period of time (because the water stays hot) will make the coffee bitter. My experience is that it doesn’t. Even if you choose not to let coffee sit in the press for the two hours that it’ll remain hot, the insulation still makes a difference in the initial four-minute brewing period. Though the temperature of the water in a typical glass French press will decrease immediately, the water in the Frieling retains its heat while my coffee is brewing.

The only downside of this outstanding pot is that I don’t get to watch the brewing process. I’ve found it well worth the trade-off. It’s beautifully designed and not easily broken - dishwasher safe, too. I've had my Freiling French press for almost two years now, and the mirror finish still looks great except for a dent or two. It doesn’t scratch easily, and it still looks and performs just like it did out of the box. It’s the best investment for my kitchen I’ve made in years.

Frieling 0103 5-6 Cup French Press
$60

Available from Amazon