I learned a few knots and even now when I buy a new pair of shoes I consult the site to see what lacing style would suit the shoe and my foot. (since different styles put different tension on the wearers foot).
I have to say, I'm happy it exists, it enriched my life in such a subtle way, this is the kind of content that the internet was made for in my opinion.
Fun fact: searching for 'shoelace' on google puts this site on third place for me, right after shoelace.com and the wikipedia entry.
edit: Ian Figgen is the inventor of the Ian knot that somebody else has posted here. He has to be _really_ into shoelacing!
I see there's a page about this on the site: http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknot.htm
But on that website I clicked almost all the banners.
This website is awesome. Designers, "content creators" and advertisers should learn from him.
This is fascinating: Coldwar era CIA agents lacing their shoes as "a form of covert signalling, using straight segments interspersed with one or more visible crossovers at different positions."
http://phineasandferb.wikia.com/wiki/Tip_of_the_Day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Evcsj1gx1CE
I'm doing exactly this. Would you mind sharing some of the other alternatives you discovered?
I personally don't use them (too expensive) and use a knot instead.
I haven't noticed a difference in fit or comfort for casual shoes.
Until, at the ripe old age of 32, when a friend tipped me about Ian's shoelace site, and I finally learned how to tie my shoelaces properly.
It's a great example of not knowing what you don't know, because shoelaces, right?
1. start with left over right starting knot
2. hold loop in left hand, thumb and index finger
3. feed other lace round the front, holding it with right thumb+index finger, then round the back, then through the hole, so it lands on the pad of your left thumb
4. use left thumb and right index finger to push/pull loop through hole, then grab it with left middle finger as it comes through (your thumb can remain in place)
5. use right thumb and 2nd/3rd phalange of right index finger to hold other loop (you'll probably be in roughly this position already by now)
6. well done, you've caught the rabbit :) (In this story, it does not escape.) Now pull its ears.
(If you'd rather have the loop in your right hand, no problem, but start with a right-over-left knot in step 1 I suppose.)
This is a superior approach, I think, because of how the lace meets your stationary thumb at the end of step 3 rather than your stationary finger, allowing a smoother step 4. I'm struggling to explain this coherently but basically you need multiple digits on the other side in order to quickly move your grip on the loop from one side of the main knot to the other. But if it's your thumb on the other side, you've only got the one digit...
(Maybe I just got it wrong while trying it out, though? This is after all literally the habit of a lifetime. The above is just based on my trying to figure out why the other way round felt inefficient, even after taking into account the basic difficulty of actually doing it in the first place.)
-Cleaning my entire apartment very thoroughly and keeping it that way. Makes me feel a lot better overall.
-Positive mental attitude always and trying not to stress about things as much. I am a very cynical person and I believe trying to think about things differently is important.
-Constantly analyzing what I am doing and thinking and asking people what I could have done differently, even if I don't see it as a failure there is always something to improve. The key is thinking objectively and not worrying about those mistakes, but keeping those things in mind in the future.
-Really pushing myself to do things out of my comfort zone every single day.
-Focus on making progress on something non-work related every single day.
It seems silly, but learning an improved lacing method has not only saved me a lot of time in a given day, but its prevented unnecessary stress. The method gives a fantastic, tight fit that's incredibly easy to loosen.
[1] http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknottingcelebs.htm
Quite a lot of sailing has given me a good appreciation of knots. It's amazing how (when you're doing a lot of rope work) you can get a real instinctive sense of the pressures on a knot and how to create the best knot for the situation. In ocean racing there are places you have unusual needs (like tethering the running backstays to the cars while you adjust the angles).
Believe it or (k)not, there a branch of mathematical topology dedicated to knot theory.
The Surgeons Knot is just a standard shoelace tie with 2 slight modifications - when you overlap the 2 sides of the lace you tuck the lace under twice. This, like a Timber Hitch, creates much more contact area and thus much more friction.
I have (not from that site) switched the way I tie a standard knot as I was doing grannies instead of reef-knots. This seems to have prevented unwanted unties.
Maybe I'll try to do it symmetrically more often.
To me it's fascinating as it's something taught at a very early age, something used nearly every day, yet something a lot people seem to do "wrong" (inefficiently) by habit or ignorance.
But now my kids know and can suffer less unties, so that's good.
Similar thing for me, the "use a food packet as a bowl" trick (eg for crisps/potatoe chips).
It's almost exactly like the "standard" shoelace knot I've used most of my life, but with just an extra tuck, and it virtually never unintentionally gets untied. It's fast, easy to put on and easy to take off. Highly recommended.
I also like Perry's Perpetual Knot.[2][3][4][5][6]
The idea behind it is that you only ever tie it once, and then only ever have to loosen and tighten it rather than re-tie it.
On one pair of shoes, I had Perry's Perpetual Knot adjusted so that I never even had to loosen or tighten it either. From then on I'd just slip my shoes on and off without needing to adjust it or re-tie it.
[1] - http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/turquoiseturtleknot.htm
[2] - http://web.archive.org/web/20051203081429/http://web.ukonlin...
[3] - https://s24.postimg.org/ng1fp6lj9/perrys_perpetual_knot.png
[4] - https://i.imgsafe.org/bee20e4850.png
[5] - http://i.imgur.com/mzyXuet.png
[6] - I'm uploading the instruction image to a bunch of image hosting sites, so hopefully the instructions will be available "perpetually", since archive.org doesn't even seem to have saved them.
Why? Because I learned to tie my shoes at the age of 5 or 6. It's something that was ingrained into my bones. A physical memory, an act that was undeniably of the flesh, not of the mind.
Changing muscle memory is really tough, especially when it's 30 year old muscle memory. But the double Ian knot was so compelling and easy, I actually made the effort over the course of about a year to make it my standard knot. It was really hard at first. I felt like a 3-year-old trying to learn how to finger paint for the first time. It got easier over time, but it really was one of the most difficult things I've had to change about myself, ever. It was like changing from brushing your teeth with your dominant hand to your less dominant hand.
And yet, it was worth it. The double Ian knot is incredible. Something so simple and yet made such a change in my life...
For single sheets, you can cut along the sides of the left and right edge which allows you to put your hands through and pull the duvet into the sheet, super easy and makes swapping the sheets easy.
There was a whole bunch of stuff, it's all incorporated into my lifestyle now so picking it out is difficult.
You can still grab the sheet "through" the corners though.
When I learned the ians knot from a friend, it took me around 15 minutes of simply not getting it. But once it clicked I haven't tied anything else since.
Orthogonal to shoes and such, I find that I end up searching for recommendations for products on reddit as opposed to a store or review engine. I prefer to know what enthusiasts think rather than a bunch of randoms who have voted based on a star system.
Are there are sites that just list products and have only a single recommendation for each category? "This is _the_ boot to buy if you are looking for cold weather boots. It's a good combination of warm, waterproof and stylish." That's basically what I was after and exactly what reddit delivered after some searching through relevant subreddits.
It's the most secure of the knots and is visually appealing, but is somewhat tricky to tie. I've got a fair amount of experience with knots, but it took me about an hour of practice to be able to tie it reliably and (relatively) quickly.
I'm not necessarily recommending this to other people; in the effectiveness-difficulty tradeoff, it carries a fairly substantial difficulty penalty that probably isn't really worth it. But there's something about using the ultimate shoelace knot that appeals to me, so I thought I'd mention it.
Its really secure and, from my point of view, really easy and simple to do. However, Im trying to tech it to my wife and for some reason it seems really hard for people not used to it to grasp and be able to make it in a competent way.
T-shirt folding. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5AWQ5aBjgE
Gift wrapping. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qi8ZXUH_wY
the consistency in the images, and the seemingly exhaustive quantity, implies they were algorithmically generated
i would love if each image had a build array that documented how to draw the laces using a minimalist(i) notation representing connections and nodes
this paired with simple client side code could have the images created dynamically with less work for the server and less data being sent across wire.. a random photo(ii) from the 'dis' method(iii) was 2.7K
instead it seems the server either stores or creates html with the images hard coded and serves up the images associated with the method, though the image file names are encouraging of a meticulously normalised underlying abstraction
i think an appreciation, either conscious or unconscious, for this underlying abstraction is part of the attraction to this project
(o) http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/2trillionmethods.htm
(i) http://www.fieggen.com/software/info.htm
Both of these sites are so popular that their recommendations are usually the top seller in their respective Amazon categories.
Thanks for the recommendation. This looks great.
Anyone know something similar for any other type of clothes?
I can vouch for Wirecutter's audio equipment reviews in particular. I am a bit of an audio enthusiast, and they do quite well in this area. Their reviewers are well respected in the industry and they are, well, the total opposite of reviewers who recommend snake-oil crap like expensive speaker cables.
If you really want the full dress boot option and are prepared to spend a lot, there's always RM Williams[2] of course. However, I've heard reports their quality has suffered in recent years. I have three pairs of Yearling Craftsman boots now between 15-25 years old. They've all been re-soled multiple times and the older ones are looking a bit worse for wear, but I've certainly had my money's worth out of them.
[0] http://baxterfootwear.com.au
The NYTimes wrote up a fairly lengthy article about her in July 2016, which I've been meaning to read: "Marie Kondo and the Ruthless War on Stuff". [0]
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/magazine/marie-kondo-and-...
EDIT: link information
A quote from my well-worn copy:
| I tried to call up some sample memories of shoe-tying to
| determine whether one shoe tended to come untied more often
| than another. What I found was that I did not retain a single
| specific engram of tying a shoe, or a pair of shoes, that dated
| from any later than when I was four or five years old, the age at
| which I had first learned the skill. Over twenty years of empiri-
| cal data were lost forever, a complete blank. But I suppose this
| is often true of moments of life that are remembered as major
| advances: the discovery is the crucial thing, not its repeated
| later applications. As it happened, the first three major advances
| in my life--and I will list all the advances here--
|
| 1. shoe-tying
| 2. pulling up on Xs
| 3. steadying hand against sneaker when tying
| 4. brushing tongue as well as teeth
| 5. putting on deodorant after I was fully dressed
| 6. discovering that sweeping was fun
| 7. ordering a rubber stamp with my address on it to make bill-
| paying more efficient
| 8. deciding that brain cells ought to die
|
| --have to do with shoe-tying, but I don't think that this fact is
| very unusual.
The novel is fantastic if you enjoy meditative digressions regarding everyday inventions. I recommend it highly.
EDIT: add recommendation, fix OCR mistakes, punctuation.
In the meantime, I do indeed need to resort to some 600+ individual .png images in order to render each of the 50+ lacing methods with their many variations and multiple numbers of eyelet pairs.
- Taking to heart how chance plays a large role on short term success but doing things right plays a large role for long term success (playing backgammon taught me lot about this).
- Exploring the unwritten rules of small talk and common courtesy.
None of these have come naturally to to me, nor have I fully mastered them. I see them all as processes, not goals.
Also:
- Having kids. An everyday crash course in many things.
Here is a video (she uses a magazine, but you just need a single sheet) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yaMc9Sz-YE
Probably not as fast but very effective if you need to travel with a couple of shirts.
The Shoelace Book: A Mathematical Guide to the Best (And Worst) Ways to Lace Your Shoes
https://www.amazon.com/Shoelace-Book-Mathematical-Guide-Wors...
Because of you, and people like you I'm proud to have grown up not in any one country, city, block or street; but on the Internet.
honestly, i think you should consider working on some indirect educational material
it seems your shoelace site encourages appreciation for mathematical abstractions in both those that study them and those unaware
you've created one of those rare works wherein anyone who encounters it speaks highly of it
great work on the site!