Issue 46
  1. A mug against procrastination
  2. A beautiful calculator app for iOS
  3. A flexible power strip
  4. A colour picker with a history
  5. A lap-desk for the road
  6. A new mixtape every week

Ho ho ho, friends!

I'm back in Germany for Christmas with the family, but the temperature over here makes it feel more like Spring than Winter. It's the flu season, still, and I was welcomed with a cold that kept me inside drinking tea and feeling sorry for myself for almost two weeks – hence why there was no issue of TMD last week.

Today, I'm back with another guest-editor! Femke from Amsterdam has picked six great items to send you off to the holidays.

If you do celebrate Christmas (or at least use these days for some time off like me), I hope you get a chance to relax and unwind. And because I don't want you to check your emails next week, there won't be another issue until next year. Have a serenely disconnected end of 2015! Thanks so much for subscribing and sticking around! :)

Kai

 

Our Guest Editor

Femke van Schoonhoven

Femke works by day in marketing and communications at Atomic in Amsterdam. When she’s not at her desk, she’s either freelancing and writing thoughts as a digital designer or recording podcasts for her Design Podcast show. She loves Twitter, riding her bike along the canals and cooking.

 

This Weekʼs Line-Up

A mug against procrastination
01

As an advocate for side projects I’m usually always in hustle mode. But my productivity slips when I start scrolling through Twitter or watch the boats go by on the canals in Amsterdam. Procrastination can be hard to fight. If you procrastinate a lot, grab yourself one of these motivational mugs. Every time you feel the urge to check Facebook, take a glance at the mug and you’ll be back on track in no time.

 
A beautiful calculator app for iOS
02

Featuring a very minimalist design, Numerical is an iOS calculator app that doesn't require an 'equal' sign. I love that you can choose a theme, see your history and edit your calculations. This has been my go-to calculator app for about a year and it’s still great to use.

 
A flexible power strip
03

The placement of wall plugs in my house is super peculiar. This power strip lets me navigate around the corners and tight areas of my house where I need power and extra ports. The strip has a nice flat-head plug so you can use its neighbouring plug too. How nice of it.

 
A colour picker with a history
04

A friend introduced me to this handy colour picker and I think I’ve used it every day since. Sip lives in your menu bar. When you click on a colour/pixel it saves the HEX code to your clipboard, including your history of past picks. It also attempts to name the colours for you: my history includes Carmine Pink, Lavender Indigo and Caribbean Green.

 
A lap-desk for the road
05

As a remoter, I mostly work from home, but it also means I like to get out of the house and work from different places as much as I can. On summer afternoons I tend to sit in a park with my laptop burning my lap. This beautifully designed lapdesk helps stabilise the laptop and provides good air ventilation at the same time. It fits any laptop up to 17”.

 
A new mixtape every week
06

Every Monday, I open Noon Pacific while tackling my to-do list and organise the week ahead. Noon Pacific releases a carefully curated playlist of ten songs at the beginning of every week and they are so good. I’ve been listening for weeks and am yet to come across a song that I’ve heard elsewhere before. It’s a great way to discover new music and 100% free to listen.

 
No matter how much falls on us, we keep plowing ahead. That's the only way to keep the roads clear.
— Greg Kincaid