Cable ties: Only in the past two years have I been awakened to the practical genius of the cable tie, one of those simple, overlooked design triumphs whose full range of possibilities only designers themselves seem to be aware of. It started when a mechanic in Berlin used one to fix a difficult-to-reach detachment in my bike frame in lieu of charging me to dismantle and rebuild the whole thing, and then I began to notice cable ties in use all around me: to rig lighting, to connect two things, etc.