Every day, I walk with my dog - summer, winter (it gets -20 F in Saint Paul), rain or shine. The nicer the day, of course, the longer the walk.

I work with a lot of different editors at different publishers and magazines and so on, and having a system of shared folders makes keeping track of things a snap.

I started a funny book from the 1930s called The Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse. Wodehouse is a comic genius.

Some things are better than other things: Google, Gmail, my vintage Montgomery Wards socket set (30+ years, still going strong), my Estwing framing hammer, and my Dremel rotary tool.

In my home office, I built a custom sit-stand desk to which I connected a big, kidney shaped glass top which I got for cheap at Ikea. Kidney-shaped desk tops are, I think, the most efficient of all possible desk shapes.

I specialize in science and history, with a special emphasis on including do-it-yourself projects in the mix. My dozen or so books have sold hundreds of thousands of copies. I'm also a contributing editor at Popular Science and at Make Magazine.

There are interesting scientific and historical connections between these things that I just love.