16MAR2025: Uh, is our air ok?

Happy Sunday everyone!

It seems like the weather has been particularly weathery for everyone this week— I hope you're all staying warm or cool, or whatever you're supposed to be experiencing in your current season and location!

This week, apart from having a blast at the Fediverse House at SXSW and visiting the Renaissance Faire, I've been marveling over the beauty and clever design of these mugs with 3D printable attachments, actively trying to avoid buying this upgraded 1980's Sony Alarm Clock, admiring the web design for Hiroshi Yamauchi's private family office (h/t Andy), swooning over this turntable-inspired watch, and seriously contemplating grabbing one of these incredibly small Pico Micro Macs, a vintage Mac 128K emulator running on a Raspberry Pi Pico.

On to the good stuff!

🖊️ Uniball Zento Signature Pen - I feel kind of bad for linking to this pen because it's basically impossible to get. It just launched a few weeks back in Japan, and it's sold out across the country. The only US retailer I could find that carries it (linked) is also sold out. The Zento Signature is a premium-ish (~$30) version of Uniball's new Zento line of ink/pens. They reportedly spent 5 years developing this luscious water-based gel ink that writes ridiculously smoothly while also drying quickly without bleeding/feathering. The Signature version comes with a cool metallic body design and a satisfying magnetic click when posting the cap. If, like me, you can't wait to get your hands on the Signature version to try out Zento, you can grab a two pack of the standard Zento pens* for cheap— I just got some and love how they write.

⏰ Remind Me Faster for iOS/MacOS - While the Apple Reminder's app has made big leaps bringing it closer to being able to act as a full GTD system, one sticking point that lingers for me is reminder entry— it's just too fidgety. Enter Remind Me Faster, which leverages natural language processing to let you very quickly create reminders and add them to any list with any qualifiers right from your keyboard. It's also got a really polished design that I appreciate.

📷 AgBr for iOS/MacOS - The long-teased iOS and MacOS black and white photo editing app from Nuevo Tokyo and Heliographe finally released this last week. I have to say it's really impressive. Apart from offering a bunch of stunning black and white film emulations that you can quickly apply to any of your photos, I particularly love that it randomly generates its grain effects, so that you get unique photo grain patterns on every single photo. Highly recommended if you want to experiment with shooting more black and white.

😶‍🌫️ Aranet4 Indoor CO2 Detector* - We had the original windows replaced on our old home last year, and while we have appreciated the energy efficiency and having less road noise and dust in the house, we've also noticed the house getting stuffier after the change, correlating with what's felt like more headaches and worse sleep. My brilliant wife had the idea of getting some indoor air quality detectors to check out what's going on. We wound up getting this Govee PM2.5 monitor* to measure ultra fine particulates in the air and the Aranet4 CO2 detector to measure Carbon Dioxide. I'll spare you all of the sordid findings (although I will say they were shocking), but I've been super impressed with the Aranet4 in particular. It is pricey but is apparently very highly regarded and was effortless to set up. I particularly like the super legible e-ink display.

🌬️ Paku for PurpleAir for iOS/MacOS - Speaking of air quality, I am a big fan of Paku for hyper local air quality monitoring. Paku lets you get readings from PurpleAir sensors in your neighborhood, often giving you much more accurate results than you can get through generic weather apps. If you live in a high pollution or pollen area where air quality can have a big impact on your plans, I highly recommend grabbing the app.

That's it for this week! Wishing you and yours at least one epic belly laugh in the days ahead.

*Asterisks indicate an Amazon-Affiliate link which helps support the Hiro Report's hosting fees at no additional cost to you!