This cushion ($8) protects my knees anytime I have to work on anything close to the floor or the ground. I’ve had it since 2011 and am grateful to have it every time I use it. — MF

I can’t handwrite for long periods of time without some discomfort. These pencil grips are designed for kids and adults with arthritis, but they help me out a lot too. I bought a 6-pack for $11. — CD

Several power users of the Kindle turned me on to a great tip: load up your Kindle, or phone, with free sample chapters of any and all books you are interested in. Read the sample (usually the first) chapter and then decide if you want to buy the book. In fact, don’t buy any book until you’ve read the sample chapter. The “Send free sample” button is under the “Buy Now” button on the book’s Amazon page. — KK

It is easy to mock the importer Harbor Freight for their insanely cheap Chinese-made tools, but in fact I’ve had great success with the tools I’ve bought from them. I may only use them a few times a year, and for that frequency their quality is more than sufficient, and their self-proclaimed “ridiculously low prices” are in fact a tremendous bargain. Over the years I’ve bought a welder, a larger sanding wheel, a buffer, and recently a new compound miter saw for less than $100. – KK

I used to love the old Infocom text adventure games. They were interactive stories where you affected the outcome by making decisions and doing things as you moved around a world described in words only. A friend told me about a free web-based text adventure called Spider And Web and I am enthralled by it. I don’t want to say anything about the plot. Just give it a try. — MF

I love playing this geography game. Go to Geoguessr.com. It will place you on a random spot in the world in Google Earth/Maps, and you have to figure out where you are by walking around in Street View. Easy clues like words on signs are usually blurred out. Might be hard to even locate the right continent. You get points for how close your guess is to your actual location. Was your guess five miles or 5000 miles away? It probably appeals to world travellers like myself, but I enjoy the hunt for telltale signs of a different culture. — KK

Footpath is ridiculously easy to use. I missed my weekly hike recently and wanted to find an alternative walking route nearby. I downloaded Footpath for free and traced a route with my finger from my location to the nearest park. The line you trace snaps to roads and trails, and you can choose between a loop or out and back route, and then it displays the distance and elevation if any. I figured out that I would have to walk around the park ten times if I wanted to get 5 miles in. – CD

I use this $10 head-mounted magnifier at least once a week. It has two levels of magnification and LED illumination. It’s great for soldering or most other kinds of detail work. — MF

When starting to read a new author, or trying to recall a favorite author, I use the quote search function at Goodreads to surface the best quotes of a writer. The quotes are ranked by the number of times Goodreads readers “like” them. (This only works for books.) — KK

I work from home most of the time and when I do I have a 4-month old puppy keeping me company. When he’s not sleeping he’s getting into trouble, so I’ve already spent a healthy amount of money trying to find things that’ll distract him. This burrowing toy by ZippyPaws works best so far. He doesn’t rest until all the squeaking giraffes are out from inside. ZippyPaws makes a lot of adorable dog toys, it’s hard not to buy them all. I just ordered this bucket of fried chicken. — CD

If you use Google Docs, Sheets, Forms, Slides, or Sites, here’s a tip. Just enter doc.new, sheet.new, etc. into your browser and it will instantly create a new, blank version. — MF

Crazy ideas sometimes become everyday and obvious. No book I’ve read has had more crazy economic ideas than Radical Markets by Eric Posner and Glen Weyl. Their ideas — which rethink the idea of property and taxes — are intriguing, and even if wrong, might be productively wrong. It is dense reading, but exhilarating. — KK

Trim is an online service that negotiates with your phone, cable TV, and Internet providers to reduce your monthly bill by asking for a discount. Sure, I could do this myself, but I’m happy to pay someone else a 33% commission on the money they save me. So far they’ve successfully reduced my annual bills by $543.24. — MF

Practicing mindfulness is easier said than done. This chart breaks it down into six easy steps to make sense of your difficult emotions. I find that visualizing my emotion as a little tangled mess that lives outside of my body makes it less likely I will react impulsively. — CD

Most board games have a winner and a bunch of losers. But there are a number of games where users must work with each other to achieve a goal. One of the best is cooperative games is Forbidden Island ($18). The goal of this attractively designed card and token game is to recover four life-saving treasures from an island before it sinks into the ocean, drowning all the players. Achieving victory requires players to formulate plans, agree on strategies, and make sacrifices. — MF

Shorebreak is a fast 60 minute doc on Amazon Prime about this surfer who found a special niche in photography. His thing is standing at the scary point where giant waves break onto the beach while he photographs whatever crazy surfers are in the wave, before he ducks under the pummeling mountain. The doc is well done, his photography is stunning. But what I love is the lesson of focus, enthusiasm, mastery, and foolish individualization. His relentless enthusiasm, going back to the shorebreak day after day to see if he could make something new again and again, has improbably earned him a living doing this. What a treat! — KK

Below are some enlightening things I’ve read lately. — CD

“Loneliness is a sign you are in desperate need of yourself.” — Rupi Kaur

“When you say something unkind, when you do something in retaliation, your anger increases. You make the other person suffer, and they try hard to say or do something back to make you suffer, and get relief from their suffering. That is how conflict escalates.” — Thich Nhat Hanh, Taming the Tiger Within

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.” — Isaac Asimov

“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” — Henry David Thoreau

“We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.” — Charles Bukowski

I’ve become of a fan of Inside newsletters. Once a day I get a brief summary of what’s been reported in a narrow specialized field, like AI, or VR, or Space, or Robotics. Succinct, select, in depth, and free. Inside also offers newsletters focused on each of the big tech companies, like Amazon or Google. And they now offer inside industry news on fashionable sectors like Cannabis or Beer. – KK

None of us have as many followers as we think we do. Up to half may be bots or shills. Every now and then I give myself a reality check by seeing how many fake followers I have on Twitter. I enter my twitter handle into SparkToro. Ouch, 21% are fake. — KK

Shortbooks.co is a search engine for books that estimates reading time to help you find the shortest book on any subject. It’s not flawless, but you can never have too many book search tools. — CD