I am quite pleased with this. 32GB and no troubles for years ... can't remember how long I've had it.
I will guess the answer is a half an hour, tops, unless you save your pocket lint or you have it attached to a giant keychain or an anvil or something.
One of the things I really like about Kershaw knives is the thumb stud design and they almost always have a locking blade. The thumb stud is really useful because it can be opened with one hand.
I have a Kershaw that I really like, but it's too big for my watch pocket and only is a knife. I normally keep a small multitool in my watch pocket.
I saw these little guys recently. It's a Kershaw design, but it's made in China, so it was like $10.
So, I dumped the Gerber Curve, put this in my watch pocket and moved the Gerber Dime to my keychain. It's less functional then the Curve, but the locking blade with single-handed opening might make up for that.
Ok, so it's a pretty impressive bit of tech, love the bolt action... IMG_0651.jpg
...but it's surprisingly small (100mm total length), and won't stay in my notebook's pen holder.
I knew it was small, because this it's supposed to be pocket size, but it was still surprising. If my hands were bigger, the pen wouldn't be usable, but it's just big enough for me to use comfortably.
The really disappointing part is that the bolt on the side isn't enough to keep the pen in the loop of my notebook - thing just slides right out. So, I'm going to have to find a different place for it, or make something.
Can you see where the tip unscrews? I can only see the seam at certain angles, and just barely. It's fun to use - the both action is deeply satisfying to me, and they picked a good, standard sized ink refill that writes well.
So, happy with the pen itself, unhappy that I have a new problem to solve.
Two new additions to my collection of pocket tools since they were on sale, a pair of gadgets from "swiss tech". First, the micro-plus pocket wrench:
It's a terrific "oh crap I forgot a wrench" tool. I tried to break it and could not - it weighs as much as my cheap x-brand leatherman twice its size. Its little cutter can shear through an entire cat5 cable. I'm not impressed by the wee screwdrivers in the handles but you can't have everything. Next is the Micro-Slim flat wrench:
It's a very nice prybar for paint cans, malfunctioning acer tablets, and little nails. The 1/4" hex hole fits generic screwdriver bits tightly, and the ruler has been handy once or twice. The ruler is faint, because it's etched, not painted. The rest of its functions I haven't had to use yet but the package says they're useful for bicyclists. I begin to suspect this is Swiss Tech's target market, this and the wrench are probably most of what you need to adjust brakes and coerce chains.
This is a microscope lamp, to go with the microscope given to me by a retired professor. It needs some cleanup and work - notably, the cord is probably a fire hazard. This will make the microscope 100% more usable - I tried using a flashlight on a 3d printed mount, but results were subpar. This has both a focus and an iris, so I can dial in the right light. I may even get better results than my newest microscope.
There is a SOG factory store between his house and mine, so I stopped in and picked up this:
It's right between a Leatherman Juice and a Leatherman Rev in size, and has fewer tools than either. The advantage is the SOG assisted (one handed) open, the geared pliers, and the bit driver. I have an attachment for the Juice with a bit driver but it kinda sucks, and the Rev doesn't have a bit driver.
The Juice is still the most useful multitool I have ever owned, with the only problems being No one-handed open and no locking blade. The Rev has a locking blade, but no one-handed open.
Nothing is perfect. I'll try this out for a while and see if it works well.
- The Leatherman Rev is stainless steel,
- the Leatherman Juice is orange,
- and the SOG has the black blade.
On the lower right, this is the Kershaw knife which I've been carrying because it's a one-handed opening knife, and the weird thing on the upper left is a PocketWrench II for scale, I guess.
The SOG broke surprisingly quickly. The opening mechanism malfunctioned such that it wouldn't stay closed unless locked, and it had a tendency to unlock in my pocket.
I got tired of the bulky multi tool (Leatherman Rev) in my pocket, and so I want to switch back to something smaller.
I still like the Gerber Dime for most things, except for the inability to open it one handed, and no tools locking. That caused me to buy a tiny Kershaw locking blade. It's pretty functional, but the steel is super cheap and it didn't hold its edge very well.
So, I went looking for something a little nicer that has one-handed opening and a locking blade. I found two: A Spyderco "Ladybug" and a Browning "Mountain Ti". Both these knives have a < 2" blade, so they're the size I'm looking for.
Now I have to decide which to carry. The Browning is a classic style, it's 100% metal and has a frame lock and a pocket clip. It's ambidextrous in design, but the thumb stud on the opposite side seems to catch in my hand and it makes it hard to open sometimes - a side effect of the size of the knife.
The Spyderco might be the best quality knife of the three. (It was also the most expensive.) It's got a Nylon handle, which makes it very light, but it feels cheaper. It's got an interesting design, but I don't think it's attractive. It also is ambidextrous opening with a back lock, but no pocket clip.
The Browning can be both opened and closed with one hand. The Spyderco can't be (reasonably) closed with one hand.
I really like the style of the Browning, but I think I'm going to try out the Spyderco for now.
That site falsely claims I've browsing in private/incognito mode. So I had to open it in another browser. So I may have been biased towards annoyance when I read that bit about science fiction only predicting flying cars, not brain augmentation.
wtf? Does "this surgeon" not read? William Gibson, Iain M Banks, any number of others.
Sure it's a hacking vulnerability. And the internet already affects our brains, cars kill millions, newspapers and books spread unwanted ideas, even spoken language allows others to coerce us. They should all be approached and used with extreme caution.
The thing that interests me is the potential of augmenting humans to beat / match the advance of AI.
Join them in the singularity! I for one welcome the chance to become one with our robot overlords.
But look at how far non-connected technology has advanced, and how little of that is available for unfettered access for regular people. Smart phones are powerful computing devices, capable of some pretty impressive tasks, but they're crippled and locked down to the consumer, so people are dependent on the manufacturers for access to those capabilities, and they don't provide that unless they're getting something out of it.
I'm sure Elon Musk could get a pretty cool brain implant if he wants one, but everyone else is getting some malware-riddled influencing machine, just like paranoid schizophrenics have been warning us for centuries.