How does this happen in 2015? If someone told my left-handed daughter that she was “evil” if she used her left hand, I would be raising hell.

I made a book that explains things. It’s called Thing Explainer. It will be out soon! It’s a big flat book full of pictures of things with lots of parts. There are also little words that tell you what all the parts do. You can read more about it here!

When my book comes out in two months, I’m going to visit a lot of places with it! I’m going to New York, Seattle and Portland, San Francisco and Berkeley, Houston, Chicago and Naperville, and Toronto. If you live near one of those cities, maybe you can come see me!

In each city I visit, I’ll be standing in a big room and talking to people. I’ll also be writing my name in people’s books, but only if they want me to.

Here’s how you can come see me in each city. (This part doesn’t use simple words, but that’s because I like the people whose buildings I’m visiting and don’t want to make problems by using different words from the ones on their signs and stuff.)

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 24
NEW YORK, NY
BARNES & NOBLE UNION SQUARE | 6:00pm
33 E 17th Street
Note: A limited number of wristbands and seats will be available to those who provide proof of purchase of Thing Explainer from a Barnes & Noble retail location or BN.COM. For details, click here.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 30
SEATTLE, WA
TOWN HALL SEATTLE AT THE GREAT HALL | 7:30pm
In Conversation with Hank Green
1119 8th Avenue
Tickets: $5 includes admission. Seating is limited. A portion of proceeds from ticket sales will be donated to Zeno: Math Powered. To purchase tickets and for details, click here.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1
BEAVERTON, OR
POWELL’S BOOKS AT CEDAR HILLS CROSSING | 5:00pm
3415 SW Cedar Hills Boulevard
Note: Book signing only. Purchase of Thing Explainer from Powell’s is required for admission. Space is limited. For details, click here.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
THE BOOKSMITH AT THE RICKSHAW STOP | 7:00pm
155 Fell Street
Tickets: $35 includes one book and admission. Seating is limited. To purchase tickets and for details, click here.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 3
BERKELEY, CA
BERKELEY ARTS & LETTERS | 7:00pm
First Congregational Church
2345 Channing Way
Tickets: $35 includes one book and admission. Seating is limited. To purchase tickets and for details, click here.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 7
HOUSTON, TX
SPACE CENTER HOUSTON | 11:00am
1601 NASA Parkway
Tickets: Free with the price of admission to Space Center Houston. Seating is limited to those who RSVP here. To purchase tickets and for more information about Space Center Houston, click here.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 9
NAPERVILLE, IL
NAPERVILLE READS | 7:00pm
North Central College at Pfeiffer Hall
310 E Benton Avenue
Tickets: Free, but required for admission. Seating is limited. To get tickets and details from Anderson’s Bookshop, click here.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10
CHICAGO, IL
ILLINOIS SCIENCE COUNCIL AT 1871 | 6:00pm
222 W Merchandise Mart Plaza
Tickets: $43 includes one book and admission. Seating is limited. To purchase tickets and for details, click here.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11
TORONTO, ON
INDIGO BOOKS & MUSIC AT THE ISABEL BADER THEATER | 6:30pm
In Conversation with Ryan North
93 Charles Street W
Tickets: $40 includes one book and admission. Seating is limited. To purchase tickets and for details, click here.

Other places

Can’t make any of these events, but still want a signed copy? A limited quantity of signed Thing Explainers are available to pre-order from Harvard Bookstore, Porter Square Books, and Brookline Booksmith.

Already pre-ordered your copy? Email your proof of pre-order for the print edition of Thing Explainer—either a copy of your e-receipt or photo of print receipt—and mailing address to trademarketing@hmhco.com by November 15, 2015 and you’ll be entered to win one of 300 signed bookplates, which look like this:

Winners will be chosen at random. Winners will be notified and bookplates will ship the week of November 23, 2015. (U.S. participants only—sorry!)

sandandglass:

The Nightly Show, September 15, 2015

There aren’t enough treats in the world to get my dog to sit patiently through the process of building this Toothless costume (or wear it for that matter). It’s a real How To Train Your Dragon Dog kind of situation.

However, if your dog is cool with it, the results can be pretty spectacular.

Check out more pictures after the break…

Check out the full build process on Instructables.

Want to try writing using only simple words? Here’s a writing checker you can use: xkcd.com/simplewriter.

To help me write the words in my Up Goer Five picture, I taught my computer to watch my writing and tell me when one of the words I used wasn’t in the top ten hundred. After I put up my Up Goer picture, other people made things to check writing, too (like this one).

When I decided to write Thing Explainer, I went back to the writing checker I had used and made it better. Now, I’m happy to be able to share it with everyone!

To use it, just touch here and start writing. If you use a word that’s not in Thing Explainer’s set of the ten hundred, the word will turn red. (I usually count all forms of a word, like “kick” and “kicked,” together as one word, although there are a few special cases where I don’t.)

Have fun explaining things!

A note on the words: Some words are used more often in certain kinds of writing and talking than in others, which means different ways of counting words will give different answers for which ones we use the most. The set of ten hundred words in Thing Explainer comes from putting together many ways of counting how much people use a word to come up with a single set of ten hundred words that should sound familiar and simple to lots of people. 

Thank you to James Zetlen, who helped make the word checker work on other people’s computers and not just mine.

If there was ever a fashion option designed specifically for programmers, this would be it.

Indeed, Aria Wear has created a hoodie that can give you a massage when you sit down. We’re talking massages while your coding! Massages while you’re commuting! Massages while your napping on your computer while commuting!

Naturally, the hoodie massage functions can be controlled via a smartphone app, so you don’t have to worry about any cords or unwieldy controllers.

No pricing information has been released thus far, but Aria insists that the hoodie will be affordable, stating that it will be “less than half the price of a smartphone”. The design has also passed the prototyping stages and should be available sometime in the coming months.

Keep tabs on the Aria Wear website for more info.

(via Fast Company)

Khoi Vinh:

I’ve been kind of neutral on all of the hubbub around Apple’s new ad blocking technology in iOS 9. But then just this morning I tried to read this New York Times article on my iPad — not just any article, but one that’s specifically about reactions to Apple’s introduction of ad blocking in iOS 9.

In maybe the sweetest bit of irony that ad blocking advocates could ever hope for, the article itself, as it was served to me, was so beset by a crippling ad position across the top of the page that I could not scroll it.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Perfect for bringing out your inner animal!

Am I too old to be excited for this game? Well, I am anyway.

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sj2iQyBTQs)

fuckyeah-nerdery:

kane52630:

Old Wounds
The New Batman Adventures

BTAS Alfred is the best Alfred outside of the comics and even then, it’s pretty close.

Rock out with your cock out cranium cozy, hands toasty, and threads stylin' in this Bluetooth audio beanie and touchscreen glove bundle from TRNDlabs.

Did you know that up to 50% of body heat escapes through your head? And did you also know that your head is where your ears are located? Wearing a hat that pumps jams is really the only logical thing to do when leaving the house this winter. Unisex and one-size-fits-all, the Bluetooth beanie can play music and serve as a speaker phone within a 33' range of the transmitting device. Controls at the side of the hat enable play/pause and skip song functions for around 6 hours per battery charge. Charge time is 2-1/2 hours .

Likewise, fingers get all cricky and typing-averse when they get too cold, but standard gloves nullify a touchscreen's responsiveness to them. This pair of double-layer gloves includes touchscreen compatible fingertips for hands that remain functional in terms of both warmth and sensitivity. Gripping material on the palms reduces the chances of dropping your device while tapping on it too.

Get your Bluetooth beanie and touchscreen glove bundle for just $39 for a limited time from Dude Exclusives.

The new 7" Amazon Fire tablets are up for pre-order today. Just $49.99 apiece. Or...OR! $249.95 for a 6-pack. Yes, that's right. A 6-pack of hot ones. I don't think Amazon expects you to go through them as fast as your Bud Lights, but I'll be curious to see how fanatical people are about Christmas shopping in September, getting 6 Fires for the price of 5 so all the good little boys and girls in their family find one waiting for them under the tree this year.

Even singly, the tablets are a damn good deal. The 7" IPS display isn't HD (that one's 8" and runs around $150) but the Fire does have...a $50 price tag. And its internal storage capacity is a pretty measly 8GB, but on the bright side...it only costs $50. A 6-pack of 7" Fires will also get you:

• A 1.3 GHz quad-core processor. Times 6.
• Rear and front-facing cameras. Times 6.
• The new Amazon Underground App store. Times, you know, the number of PBRs I drank while writing this.
• Free unlimited cloud storage for all Amazon content and photos taken with Fire devices.
• Up to 7 hours of usage time, good for reading, web surfing, video watching, music listening, and surrounding yourself with a Big Brother wall of 6--six!--Amazon Fires.

Sometimes white people vex me. Maybe they confuse you, too. Maybe you’re a white person who is sometimes confused by white people. A lot of white people have told me they’re befuddled by the actions and perspectives of other white people. I hear you.

In a world with Google, where our searches and Google Docs can be transcribed from our speech, the necessity of typing or physically writing things down is diminishing rapidly. But there are countless situations where writing is still absolutely necessary. We can’t vocally take notes on our phones or computers during a lecture. We can’t always be typing our notes down on our phones in the middle of a meeting, it’s distracting and unacceptable. Also, some people just aren’t comfortable or have difficulty being understood by our listening mobile devices. Do these people just get left behind in our ever advancing world of technology? Absolutely not. Smartpens are the real deal and are here to bridge the gap between the pen and paper and digital storage and sharing.

The Pen

The Neo smartpen N2 is NeoLAB’s smartpen solution for the world. It is the result of a successful Kickstarter campaign and is now available to anyone online. The N2 is simply a pen with a camera that watches and remembers or passes on what you’re writing to a mobile device. The camera watches at 120 frames per second and the pen can sense the pressure you’re using to write. To work, the N2 currently requires special paper with Ncode technology, paper with little tiny character patterns that tell the N2 and the companion app where and what page you’re writing on. It uses Bluetooth to connect with either Android or iOS. Nothing has been officially released yet, but we have been told by representatives of NeoLAB that a free paper printing program will be debuted within the next few weeks. So that’s pretty cool news.

Like any decent smart device, the Neo smartpen N2 has hardware. Yeah, this pen has specs. Here they are:

CPU : Dual Core ARM9 Application Processor
Connectivity : USB 2.0 (Micro USB) / Bluetooth 4.0
Size : L 156mm / W 11.5 ~ 11.8 / 22g (Without pencap)
OS : Android Jelly Bean 4.1.2 or higher / iOS 7.1 or higher (iPhone 5 or higher)
Battery : Li-Polymer / 3.7V (Full charage : 2 hours)
Memory: 90MB Nand Flash
Display : Dot-LED Indicator (Full color)
Required Bluetooth Connectivity : Android Bluetooth 2.1 or higher / iOS Bluetooth 4.0 LE
Pen tip type : Standard D1 type
Usage time : Constant (5 hours) / Normal usage (3 days) / Standby (125 days)

The Experience

The Neo smartpen N2 comes with a companion app that can be found in the Google Play Store, Neo Notes. Through the app you can “register”, or connect, your N2 with your device. It requires Android 4.1.2 or higher. When we first got the N2, my wife was super stoked about it and tried to connect it with her Galaxy S6 and had trouble with pairing. After a few tries, she decided it might need to be charged first and we haven’t had any issues with pairing or connection since. My registering experience with the pen with my Nexus 6 went extremely smoothly. Since then, I have looked through the manual and it does suggest charging the pen before pairing.

The N2 has a button on it that allows one to turn the pen on and off as well as pair the pen. It additionally has a full color LED light that tells you when it’s on, in pairing mode, and running low on battery. Once the pen is charged and on, using it is as easy as writing with a pen and paper. The pen has internal memory, so even if you’re not around your phone or not paired at any given time, the pen will store what you are writing so it can be transferred to your device and saved later. Neo states the pen can hold up to 1000 pages on A4 paper of offline writing.

Unfortunately the Neo smartpen N2 requires special proprietary paper for the pen to work. In short, the N2 uses Ncode technology that is simply “a combination of lines and symbols printed so small they are difficult for the eye to perceive. Each line and symbol constitutes a pattern to express a unique code for each location on the page.” It’s really cool how well this technology works. The camera on the pen takes pictures or what you write and figures out where you wrote it from the Ncode. It even records the pressure of your stroke. If you have the pen connected to your phone, you can watch what you are writing immediately appear in your notebook in the Neo Notes companion app. The N2 and app even know when you’re using a different notebook and when you change pages. It just moves to the next page and doesn’t skip a beat.

Other than needing special paper, as a technology device, I haven’t been blown away with battery life or battery management for the N2. On the Neo smartpen N2 website it states that the pen is able to auto-shutoff and there is a setting for that within the Neo Notes app, but I haven’t found that setting. So, I don’t know if my pen is currently auto-shutting off. And a lot of times when I go to use it if I haven’t been charging it, it’s not charged. Additionally, I just wish it had better battery life. It’s one more thing to have to worry about having charged and it would be nice if I felt like it didn’t need to be charged daily.

Other than battery life, the pen is super easy to use. My 4 and 6-year-old kids have gotten a kick out of the pen and have been drawing me pictures and writing me stories with it. Within the app, you can change the color and thickness of the strokes with what you are writing. A preschooler can do it, so can you.

The feature that I think could be the most useful to me is transcribing. Being able to digitally store my hand written notes and easily share them is one thing. But the ability to transcribe and make my notes searchable sounds like it could have saved me lots of time in college. Heck, it could save me time now. I spend lots of time trying to find that one little thing I wrote down that one time. Searchable notes sound amazing. The transcribing didn’t handle bullet points that well, but I think it wouldn’t take long to get along great with the Neo smartpen N2 and the transcribing feature in Neo Notes. You can also sync your notes with Evernote and Google Drive.

The Bottom Line

I already told you about the catch of the special paper. What about the price? Well, the Neo smartpen N2 isn’t cheap. The N2 comes in two colors, Silver White (what we reviewed) and Titan Black, and will set you back $169. It’s available from neosmartpen.com or you can get free shipping in the US via Amazon. In addition to the pen, the special paper comes in several different varieties and the cost isn’t as bad as I imagined it could’ve been. For example, you can get a 5 pack of 100 ruled A4 paper pads for $21.90. It’s obviously more expensive that regular paper, but it’s not terrible. Also, as expressed earlier,  a free paper printing program will be debuted within the next few weeks. So keep your eye out for that announcement if you’re on the fence about the N2 because of the special paper requirement. I haven’t personally used smartpen competitors like Equil and Livescribe, but the N2 seems very competitively priced for the smooth online and offline experience and features offered.

Overall, I’ve been impressed with the experience of the N2. The pen and app are super easy to use. After having the N2 for a couple of weeks, I don’t feel like a smartpen is something that I can’t live without. But if you think a smartpen would be amazing and a great fit in your schooling, business, or lifestyle I definitely think the N2 should be considered. It could even be a great gift for your hard working gadget loving college student because they probably can’t afford to buy it themselves.

What are your thoughts on the Neo smartpen N2? What are you thoughts on smartpens in general? Do you think the N2 is missing any must-have features? Have an N2 and have thoughts you’d like to share on it? Let us know what you think by commenting below.