7 Things This Week [#172]
16 March 2025 | 11:38 pm

A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.


1️⃣ I’ve long wondered how folks did bold and italic text on sites like Twitter that didn’t support formatting. This website does it for you using (unfortunately not very accessible) ✨Unicode✨. (Micro.blog, my social media of choice, does it using HTML, which is better, but isn’t supported everywhere — though most Mastodon servers seem to display it correctly.) [🔗 yaytext.com] (Via Dave Winer)

2️⃣ Such joy. Such power. Such precision. Such talent. Wow. [🔗 instagram.com]

3️⃣ Bluesky CEO Jay Graber subposts Mark Zuckerberg with her own Latin shirt reading A world without Caesars”. [🔗 theverge.com]

4️⃣ Sindre Sorhus just can’t help but put out these awesome little apps. His newest is Googly Eyes which puts, well, googly eyes in your menu bar that follow your cursor around the screen. 👀😆 [🦣 mastodon.social]

5️⃣ For my fellow Shortcuts nerds, Joe Steel has a tip on setting the order of items passed into a shortcut. Photos always wants to do newest first, but using the Filter Files’ action, you can make it do oldest first. But not without some shenanigans, as Joe found out. [🔗 duck.haus]

6️⃣ Want some unofficial Severance-inspired Lumon merch? Adam Selby’s got you covered! [🔗 adamselby.gumroad.com]

7️⃣ Nathan Longhurst is a guy to keep an eye on. He just summitted 100 peaks in New Zealand over a summer by using a paraglider to get down. Seems like these massive challenges are his deal. [🔗 climbing.com]


🔗 Take a Chance

Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.


HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts, shortcuts, wallpapers, scripts, or anything — please consider leaving a tip, checking out my store, or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated!

I’m always happy to hear from you on social, or by good ol' email.


7 Things This Week [#171]
4 March 2025 | 5:08 am

A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.


1️⃣ @tinyblocks_ on Threads put together a clever iPhone setup that uses Shortcuts in the Dock to swap focus modes tied to specific Home Screens. Rather than launching actions, they bring you to a dedicated dashboard of sorts. [🧵 threads.net]

2️⃣ @robexplosm imagines a truly evil use of the Severance technology. [🧵 threads.net]

3️⃣ Merlin Mann encourages us to notice the good stuff. [🔗 merlin.ghost.io]

4️⃣ Google’s insistence on a privacy policy for an app that collects no user data, unlike Google itself, led to this gem of a webpage. [🔗 jwz.org] (Via Matt Fantinel)

5️⃣ Gina Trapani’s My Life in Weeks’ is so cool and very similar to a Timeline project I’ve had in mind. [🔗 weeks.ginatrapani.org] (Also via Matt Fantinel)

6️⃣ Birchtree, one of my favorite blogs, by Matt Birchler has a fresh redesign. It’s much more web-app-y, which I’m not sold on, but certainly provides more utility. I generally read everything via RSS anyway, and clicking through to the post on the site is still a good, clean reading experience. It’s a good site, check it out! [🔗 birchtree.me]

7️⃣ Vsauce on YouTube built a nifty machine that helps show off words that are palindromes (same word when spelled backwards and forwards) and emordnilaps (different words when spelled forwards and backwards). [▶️ youtube.com]


🔗 Take a Chance

Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.


HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts, shortcuts, wallpapers, scripts, or anything — please consider leaving a tip, checking out my store, or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated!

I’m always happy to hear from you on social, or by good ol' email.


The Keen is pricy, but exactly what I wanted
26 February 2025 | 1:04 am

It’s a Studio Neat product, so it’s no wonder that this little auto-retract utility blade is so svelte, so handy, so handsome, and so unassuming. I tried cheap, similar solutions while waiting for my Kickstarter’ed Keen to ship and they’re clumsy and bad. Keen rocks and is very good!

Box-shaped utility knife placed on a wooden surface. Initially inside packaging labeled “Keen by Studio Neat,” the knife is later shown in use with a hand holding it.
I mean, come on, they even nailed the packaging.

I leave it magnetically attached to my fridge, ready for opening boxes, bags, and envelopes. Now I’m never digging around to find a box opener.

A refrigerator door with several items attached to it. There’s a magnetic dry erase board with a marker, a round metal recipe measurement divider with metric and teaspoon conversions, and a green Keen utility knife. There’s also a piece of paper with steak cooking instructions, secured by a leaf-shaped magnet. A green holder contains a few dry erase markers on the right side.
Ready for action. Never lost in a drawer.

Do I love the price ($95)? No, of course not. But I do smile every time I use it, and I don’t regret making the purchase!


HeyDingus is a blog by Jarrod Blundy about technology, the great outdoors, and other musings. If you like what you see — the blog posts, shortcuts, wallpapers, scripts, or anything — please consider leaving a tip, checking out my store, or just sharing my work. Your support is much appreciated!

I’m always happy to hear from you on social, or by good ol' email.



More News from this Feed See Full Web Site