If you do soldering work, I recommend getting a pair of these Hakko micro cutters. They’ll cut copper wires flush with the blob of solder, making your work look tidy. And they cost just $7.60 on Amazon. — MF

One of the most effective visualization techniques to quickly destress is to imagine I am a mountain and every annoying, stressful thing is just floating past me like clouds or momentary bad weather. I remind myself that I am a mountain and my purpose is to just sit and be myself and nothing can sway me. You can find a lot of these “mountain meditations” on Youtube. Here is a short example I like and found on Aura. — CD

In China, Li Ziqi is a huge online star. She is sort of a hippy young Martha Stewart — a DIYer and maker, as well as ancient lifestyle guru. Dressed in traditional garb, Li Ziqi posts hundreds of videos about making traditional Chinese rural things from scratch with traditional tools — in an extreme way. She’ll make a silk comforter by first raising silk worms. She’ll make her own soy sauce by first growing soy beans. She’ll make some bamboo furniture in a day, starting with harvesting the bamboo. Plus she plays guitar and sings! To her 50 million followers in China, her idyllic and blemish-free videos are soothing and an antidote to their overworked urban lives. She delivers nostalgia for the country life they left — without the drudgery and starvation. To her 8 million foreign followers, like me, watching her on YouTube, her impossibly romantic videos are cinematic glimpses of vanishing arts and crafts, of amazing and ingenious ways millions of people thrived in the past. I could watch them for hours. — KK

One reason I like traveling to Japan is that no one there has ever tried to pull a scam on me. Not so in Europe, Mexico, and the United States, where I’ve experienced at least a few of the 40 scams presented in this infographic. A few are obvious, but there are always some surprising scams worth knowing about. Read this list to prepare yourself the next time you travel. — MF

I produce one or two books per year. I use a print-on-demand (POD) service so the books are printed one at a time when needed. The best/easiest print-on-demand is KDP (formerly CreateSpace), owned by Amazon. Their quality is indistinguishable from a bookstore book (in fact many books from NY publishers are printed POD), and they have the added virtue that you can sell the books on Amazon, and it integrates with making digital books for the Kindle at the same time. I can have a standard softcover book printed in B&W at KDP for around $4. Small run books make ideal gifts. — KK

The Sakura Pigma Manga Basic Set comes with 5 pens: 4 Pigma Microns (sizes 005, 01, 05, 08) a black brush pen, and a white ink gel pen. The ink is waterproof and very dark. At $8, it’s a good deal. — MF

Anyone 62 or older can get a senior lifetime pass to the US National Parks for $80. That’s the cost of a regular one-year pass, so it’s a great bargain, and a great gift for a relative or friend if you are not 62. — KK

Tiny Spells is a daily self-care email that feels like it’s sent from your best friend. Every day Joan Westenberg sends out three simple things you can do for yourself to make your day and self better, like reminders to take a stretch break, make the doctors appointment you’ve been avoiding, buying yourself fresh flowers, or finding something that makes you laugh. It has a magical effect and I look forward to it every day. — CD

Tom Whitewell put together a list called “52 things I learned in 2019,” and I was interested in all of them. Examples: “Each year humanity produces 1,000 times more transistors than grains of rice and wheat combined” and “Worldwide, growth in the fragrance industry is lagging behind cosmetics and skincare products. Why? ‘You can’t smell a selfie.’” — MF

I’ve just started taking my 1-year-old puppy on hikes and I wanted the easiest/fastest way to feed him water on the trail. This lesotc Pet Water Bottle for Dogs ($15) has a lid that is also a foldable bowl, so when I open it I can squeeze the water into the bowl and my puppy can lap up as much as he needs and the rest of it will flow back into the the bottle. No more wasted water. — CD

Here are a few quotes that are helping me look at life differently. — CD

• “The most courageous decision that you can make each day is to be in a good mood.” — Voltaire

• “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” — Rainer Maria Rilke

• “A good marriage is one in which each spouse secretly thinks he or she got the better deal, and this is true also of our friendships.” — Anne Lamott

• “Things usually happen around us, not to us.” — Unknown, found on Reddit

• “We suffer more in imagination than in reality.” — Seneca

This LPT was a housekeeping game changer: Use a seam ripper to easily clean out hair tangled in a vacuum brush. My hair is long and everywhere and before I use to struggle with scissors to cut it out of the vacuum, but it turns out a seam ripper is the perfect tool for the job. — CD

I wanted a way to open my garage door remotely, so I bought the Meross Smart Wi-Fi Garage Door Opener Remote ($30). It took just a few minutes to install and configure. Now I can open and close the door with my phone, and get an alert when someone else opens it. It also works with voice assistants. — MF

The Noun Project is a huge searchable database of icons you can use in PowerPoint slides, websites, signs, or for any project requiring symbols. As a test, I searched on the word “chicken” and got hundreds and hundreds of chicken related icons. Most of the icons are free under a Creative Commons license, and if you pay a small fee, you don’t have to credit the creator. — MF

I am a huge fan of spending big bucks to explore space scientifically. But I bet humans won’t settle (live long-term) on Mars, or the Moon, or in space willingly. To get a glimpse of why not, watch the Netflix mini-series, A Year in Space. This documentary follows two astronauts as they subject themselves to the harsh punishment of living off our planet. We’ll keep improving the process of space fitness, but this documentary is very sobering about the steep cost of doing without the things we get for “free” on this planet. — KK

I’ve recently discovered magswitches. These are magnets you can turn off and on. I use them in my workshop to hold down fences, stops, and featherboards. When they are turned on, you can’t move them. When off, they lift off instantly. They are non-electronic; the switch is an ingenious mechanical contraption hidden inside a very tiny case. You can buy fixtures with magswitches built in, or you can buy the switches to make your own devices. I found that even a single magswitch alone, such as the small MagJig 95 ($26), is a useful stop in the workshop because you can position it anywhere quickly on a metal surface and have it instantly hold. — KK

This year for my Cool Tools Gift Guide, I picked past Recomendo favorites that I think would make great gifts like the the Sanuk Yoga Slings or the Philips Wake-up Light Alarm Clock. Although my absolute favorite gift (under $20), which I think every friend should have, is the Sweese Butter Keeper Crock. You can see the rest here. — CD

It’s wintertime, which for me means my skin and scalp get itchy. Lotion helps my skin, but I don’t want to put lotion in my hair. Instead, I’ve been using a J.R. Liggett’s Tea Tree & Hemp Oil Shampoo Bar ($7) and a $6 hair scalp massager to thoroughly shampoo my hair. This shampoo doesn’t seem to remove all the oil from my hair, so my scalp doesn’t get dry and itchy. — MF

If you find an iPhone and want to know whose it is, who lost it, use that phone to ask Siri: “Siri, who’s phone is this?” and it will tell you. — KK

I often need a quick way to find the best time for meetings with people in other time zones, and I find World Time Buddy is the best time converter visually. All of the overlapping business hours between two time zones are highlighted yellow, so I can easily decide the best hours to suggest. — CD