Weighty matters

"What is making my purse so darn heavy?" I wondered. "I know what I'll do. I've got that dandy electronic kitchen scale. I'm gonna weigh every last thing in my purse to find out the answer."

So I did. Here's what I found:

The purse, laden, weighed 4 lb. 11 oz. (2.13 kg). Okay, so I wasn't imagining things; that's kinda heavy.

camera	11 oz.	310 g
purse itself	8.5 oz.	240 g
Blackberry	7 oz.	200 g
iPod	5.5 oz.	160 g
moleskine notebook	5 oz.	140 g
wallet	4.25 oz.	125 g
medicine/makeup bag	4.25 oz.	120 g
agenda book	3.75 oz.	105 g
special red “ideas” notebook	3 oz.	90 g
keys	2.5 oz.	75 g
phone	2.5 oz.	75 g
Weight Watchers member book	2.25 oz.	65 g
loose change	2 oz.	55 g
2 fountain pens + case	1.75 oz.	50 g
ID badge & lanyard	1.5 oz.	40 g
loyalty cards on keyring	1.5 oz.	45 g
hairbrush	1.25 oz.	35 g
earphones in a tin	1.25 oz.	35 g
gum	0.75 oz.	20 g
packet of tissue	0.75 oz.	20 g
lip balm #1	0.5 oz.	15 g
lucky bauble	0.5 oz.	15 g
exercise band	0.5 oz.	20 g
tube of hand lotion	0.5 oz.	15 g
ballpoint pen	0.25 oz.	10 g
lip balm #2	0 oz.	5 g
2nd pair of earplugs	0 oz.	0 g

I can see a few things that I can do without, at least for everyday commuting (hello, two fountain pens?). And I can certainly choose lighter versions of other things. But can I use this as an argument to get a different small camera? And if I got a smartphone, could I really bring myself to leave out the camera and the agenda book and the iPod? 

It makes me think of Steve Martin in "The Jerk":

"Well I'm gonna to go then. And I don't need any of this. I don't need this stuff, and I don't need you. I don't need anything except this. [picks up an ashtray] And that's it and that's the only thing I need, is this. I don't need this or this. Just this ashtray. And this paddle game, the ashtray and the paddle game and that's all I need. And this remote control. The ashtray, the paddle game, and the remote control, and that's all I need. And these matches. The ashtray, and these matches, and the remote control and the paddle ball. And this lamp. The ashtray, this paddle game and the remote control and the lamp and that's all I need. And that's all I need too. I don't need one other thing, not one - I need this. The paddle game, and the chair, and the remote control, and the matches, for sure. And this. And that's all I need. The ashtray, the remote control, the paddle game, this magazine and the chair."

Favorite tools: Snagit screen capture utility

I don't intend to make a habit of endorsing products, but I do have a few favorites. Remember how Douglas Adams described the Babel Fish as "mindbogglingly useful"? Well, Snagit is like that for me. It does a simple thing better than any other utility I've tried: take a screen capture. (If you haven't heard the term before, it just means taking a picture of what's on your computer screen.)

Yes, I know that my computer comes with that inscrutable PrtSc key (Print Screen), which I can use to copy a picture of my entire desktop onto the Clipboard (more info here). But Snagit is better.

1. Snagit has a simple interface, even after countless versions (please heed this, Techsmith!)
2. You can easily choose what you want to take a picture of (the whole screen, just one window, a region that you draw with your mouse)
3. You can do the things you're most likely to want to do with the image you've captured: paste it into an email, save it as a file, print it.
4. You can even add stuff to your snapshot, like highlighter yellow or big fat red circles and the words "click THIS BIT RIGHT HERE"
5. There are some nice bells and whistles, too:
   - capture a scrolling window all at once, rather than screenful by screenful;
   - magnify or shrink what you're capturing
   - choose what file format you want to save the image as
   - automatically name a series of captures
   

Although I don't use it every day, it is exactly the right tool for some things.

• Illustrating instructions for some process on the computer (e.g. saving Word documents without the prior edits available in them)
• Documenting problems (error messages) or odd behavior of my computer ("See? My monitor has this line of schmutz running across it. That's not right!")
• Printing a web page exactly as it appears, so that I can do a paper-based usability test) or mark it up with edits
  
• Putting a picture of your website or software in a newsletter or promotional materials

There are just enough post-production editing tools that you could get away without a fancier image editor. I've used Snagit for maybe ten years. The colleagues I've recommended it to are now acolytes.

As of this writing, it costs $50, with discounts for education, nonprofit, and government. There's a free trial (fully functional, 30 days), so you can see if it becomes one of your favorite tools, too.

Favorite tools: Neoprene face mask and other stay-warm clothing

Today is very cold. It was minus 18 F (-26 C) as I waited for the train. About minus 10 as I trekked the mile across the Loop to my office. But I was toasty warm, thanks to my four favorite tools to combat the cold (two old-fashioned, two from new-fangled materials).

Neoprene face mask - Sure, I look like a bank robber when I wear it, but it keeps my face warm and lets me breathe. Yes, I could achieve all that with a tightly wrapped muffler, but here's the significant advantage: my glasses don't fog up and ice over. The design directs my exhaled breath down and away from my face, and I can proceed confidently instead of viewing the world through an admittedly artful icy haze. ($11 from Campmor)

Silk long underwear - This stuff is fantastic. It is gossamer-like, as thin and elegant as a white lie. It lies unconspicuous beneath a pair of slacks or jeans, and your legs are miraculously warm. Much more comfortable than nylons.

Polarfleece - Yum! I have a couple "fuzzies" that are stylish enough to pass as casual office wear. They're light and warm and wash with no fuss.

Down - God bless the geese who gave their downy bottoms to keep me warm. (Down doesn't make me feel as guilty as fur does, though maybe it should.) I just got a very long down coat from LL Bean, and it is "ultrawarm" as promised. After a few blocks' walk, standing on the corner waiting to cross, I sense that I'm enveloped in a column of warmth.

In French you could say "Je ne crains pas le froid," (literally, "I don't fear the cold") for "I'm staying warm."

Favorite tools: The I.P.A.

When I studied linguistics in college, I had to take courses in phonology and phonetics. And I learned that despite having the sound "fun" in its name, phonetics was pretty darned dull. Though I did learn that any healthy human is capable of making the exact sounds of any language, and that was encouraging. (It's not that you can't make those sounds, you just don't make them on purpose yet.) Phonology was somewhat better, because it went into how sounds are used in a given language, and that was a welcome departure from the pure mechanics of speech production.

Although I was ambivalent about these subjects, they did give me one excellent tool that has stood me in good stead ever since: the International Phonetic Alphabet IPA), used for phonetic transcription.

Just as you can use musical notation to record a melody on staff paper, IPA lets you transcribe the exact sounds of any language. Once you have a good command of it, you can accurately record anything you hear on paper. Very low-tech, and very handy.

• IPA chart (PDF, 1pg, 58K) from the International Phonetic Association
• A nice explanation of that chart from Omniglot

I've used it for transcribing songs before I understood all the words. I've used it to improve my accent in French. I've used it to get a handle on how people from different dialects of Irish pronounce the same word.

The lack of it in my first Irish textbook ((See if you can) Teach Yourself Irish by Myles Dillon and Donncha ó Cróinín, 1961) convinced me that I could not learn the language from a book because I would never be sure how to pronounce anything. (The book did have a pronunciation guide, but it described the symbols it used in terms of sounds in common English words, probably in an Irish English or British English accent, which was useless to me. I come from a place where we actually say our r's, and I make no distinction between the vowels in the pairs tool/tune, do/duty, noon/new, loose/lure. And if you give me weird words, it's as good as no help at all: good/gules(??) Another odd thing about that book: it used IPA in the glossary, but this other odd system throughout the chapters.)

Once you have a way to describe what you are hearing, it improves your ability to hear the fine distinctions, and it's a great help toward actually producing the sounds intentionally yourself. Once you have a target to aim for...