When You Lose Your Aglets

You do know that aglets are the little plastic pieces on the ends of shoelaces that make it easy to put the shoelaces through the tiny holes in your running shoes (or in my case, walking shoes), right?  They never last as long as the shoelaces for me.  Once they have broken off, getting your shoelaces through the holes becomes downright impossible.  While trying to get the shoelace through the top holes this morning, I was inspired.  

1. Grab some small tweezers.

2. Grab the very tip of the shoelace.

3. Push it through the hole.

4, Grab the shoelace on the other side.

5. Release tweezers.

6. Pull tweezers out.

You may need to enlarge the hole with the tweezers first to get them through the hole.

Protecting Camera Lenses

I cannot remember who first told me to do this, but I'm glad that he did: screw a UV filter onto the front lens of any SLR camera to protect the lens from scratches, dust, and other injuries. I have always done it with all of my SLR lenses, and today I had the proof of its utility. The other day, I dropped the camera case a short distance onto concrete. Today, my wife noticed that the front UV filter is cracked. We took a whole bunch of pictures while on our recent trip to Reno that were not impaired by this crack, but it is nice that the UV filter to the damage, not the Tamron 70 – 300 X zoom lens.

I just ordered two replacement Tiffen UV filters. At about $13 with shipping each, this is far cheaper than replacing the zoom lens.