I’ve been using mechanical pencils for years – mainly an orange Parker Jotter style one. However, one thing I disliked about the pencil was that the lead wear down and become smooth on one side, and you’d often have to rotate the pencil in order to keep on the sharp side of the lead. The pencil in this review, the Uni-Ball Kuru Toga, does this automatically. Each time the lead hits paper, the lead is rotated, ensuring that your lead is always sharp.
The VPN market is a crowded space, with thousands of different apps offering different pricing structures, features, security levels and speeds.
If you know of ProtonMail, chances are you know of ProtonVPN, by the same developers. Privacy is now a big thing, with many people becoming more aware of the dangers of the internet, and more and more people wanting to have more privacy when they are online.
Offered for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS, you can use ProtonVPN on all your devices. ProtonVPN is a great free, and paid, VPN service. It’s secure, reliable, has good terms and conditions, and is made by a trusted company. However, there are also drawbacks, which will be looked at in this review.
I used to be an avid user of Todoist. The app was available on all platforms, even web, and I liked the ability to set smart filters to see the tasks I wanted to, and also the karma feature. However, Todoist was missing one vital feature that I’ve covered in both my Things 3 review, and in my post on how I use Things 3.
If you want to read an in-depth comparison of Things and Todoist, you can do so here.
Todoist and Things 3 are some of the most popular todo apps on the market. Both have their pros and cons – Todoist is available on all platforms and has powerful sorting features, whilst Things 3 is beautifully designed and has a great interface.
So, which one is right for you?
Since I began using my KeySmart around a month ago, I have added two accessories sold by KeySmart to it. The pliers, as they are always handy to have, and the KeySmart expansion pack. These allow you to expand your KeySmart so you can fit more keys onto it, or in my case, have an easier time fitting a Chubb key into the KeySmart.
Ads have now been added to the site to generate a little revenue and help the site stay online.
Only one ad shows at the top of the site, as I don’t want the site to become a cesspool of ads. Therefore, if you wouldn’t mind whitelisting the site it would be great.
If you spot an ad that should not be there, please contact me at thenerdystudent@gmail.com and report the ad.
Thanks for understanding!
In addition to this, I have updated the site, which now takes advantage of the AMP plugin and a few other features. If you have any issues, please do not hesitate to contact me and report them.
Trakt is a service I began using at the end of last year in order to keep track of the TV shows and movies that I watch. I have previously reviewed Watcht, an app that uses Trakt as it’s backend, however I haven’t actually looked at the Trakt service online. It allows you to search a huge database of movies and TV shows, and add them to your watched playlist, track episode releases, rate them, and so much more.
If you watch any amount of TV shows or movies, and have trouble remembering where you left off, Trakt is an amazing choice. If you watch a lot of airing shows, Trakt is also great – you can view a calendar to see what’s coming up and where. And best of all, it’s all completely free, with an optional VIP tier that lets you support Trakt and unlock a few cool features.
I’ve always been a big fan of Adonit ever since their stylus making days, and it’s been interesting to see how the company has adapted since the release of the Apple Pencil. I was recently sent the PhotoGrip Qi, an interesting product designed to make your life easier when taking photos with your phone. As phone cameras are getting better and better, less people are using DSLRs and stand alone cameras to take their photos, so it’s interesting to see how the PhotoGrip Qi will make taking photos.
One of the standout features of the PhotoGrip Qi is the wireless charging, that you can turn on and off to keep your phone juiced up with the 3000 mAh battery built into the grip. The grip also comes with a mini tripod, and a travel pouch.
Taskade is a simple web application that allows you to easily manage lists, and also offer powerful collaboration features that allow you to work on lists together. You can also create lists without even creating an account or logging in. The interface is simple, and you can change the bullet points to various forms of checkbox, and different forms of bullet points. The app is simple, however it makes it easy to manage tasks, and also has strong collaborative features.
Taskade is sort of a mix between Trello, Things 3, and Omnioutliner.
Cloudflare recently released 1.1.1.1, their public DNS service, designed to speed up your internet connection. Whilst OpenDNS and Google DNS do exist, Cloudflare place an emphasis on privacy, promising to wipe all DNS query logs in 24 hours. So, what is a DNS? In a nutshell, a DNS exists to point a URL, like thenerdystudent.com, towards an IP where the website exists. However, DNS’ that are provided by ISPs are often unreliable, and that is where Cloudflare comes in. It offers better performance than your ISPs DNS server, and better security and privacy.
Cloudflare allow you to use their 1.1.1.1 public DNS services on your desktop, and on your mobile phone with free apps. These then install a profile which routes your traffic through the DNS, allowing you to get faster searches and site loads.
