On Mother's Day my Mum took us to Plattenburg (careful: automatic background sound) - an old castle from the 13th century. Besides eating some good food, we attended a falconry show. It was fun to watch even though some of the birds preferred to roam free instead of doing the tricks they were asked to do . And of course it was a good opportunity to try our new camera:

I initially posted this on Google+, but why not make it a proper blog post?

Yesterday Google IO 2013 started and as usually came with a whole bunch of announcements. My general verdict: nice but often half assed.

Let's have a look at the details.

After I successfully revamped my key ring it was time to have a look at another part of my Every Day Carry: my wallet.

Until now I used a typical leather wallet with a lot of space for cards, coins, cash and whatever else you tend to cram into it. An always bulky thing, not too comfortable to keep in your jeans pocket.

So I was looking for something new. My requirements were simple: the new wallet should be smaller, be able to carry a lot of cards, able to hold cash in bills but not necessarily in coins. However the amount of cards I tend to have with me made it it quite hard to find something fitting. Most minimalist wallets go for 3 or 4 cards only.

This is “Der Mumienkönig” - “The Mummy King”. It is an ancient artifact of unbelievable worth.

Well, actually it's just a somewhat funny looking flint stone I found on our trip to Rügen earlier this year. But I like it and wanted to put it on display.

Of course a king needs to stand upright, so some kind of stand was needed and this is how my evening turned into a new 3D printing adventure…

When I last wrote about my keyring I just had assembled it, so there wasn't any real life use experience on the tools I chose. Now, about one and a half month later I can say that I already had use for every single one of them. The flash light helped me find stuff in the dark trunk of our rental car, I found a faulty RAM block using memcheck on my USB stick and consequently removed it using my Swisstool to open the case.

However there was one tool I severely missed: a good bottle opener. The opener on the Swisstool works, but is just too much hassle to use. I needed a dedicated bottle opener that works without removing it from the key ring.

In the end I tried three different tools:

The Multi Hex is probably the easiest to use bottle opener because it gives you the most leverage, but otherwise it's just too bulky.

The KeyShark works and is so lightweight you won't notice it all. If you just want a bottle opener, that's your tool.

The Leatherman Brewzer is heavier than all the others but also works as a Mini-Prybar which might come in handy and was something I was contemplating anyway. So for now, the Brewzer is my 4th tool on my keyring.