No. 10 · Class of 2026
ToolBench
The KiwiFor services to the outdoors: turns a phone into a level, a compass, a protractor and a sound meter, and knows when the golden hour starts.
Golden hour starts soon
The plaque
- Stage name
- The Kiwi
- Instrument
- A compass: the fuzzy skin is the bezel, the seeds are the scale.
- Day job
- Turns your phone’s sensors into a bubble level, compass, protractor and sound meter, and shows sunrise, sunset, golden hour and the moon phase for any place.
- Signature move
- Doing all the maths on your device, with no outside requests, and wiping your coordinates out of the address bar.
- Plays with
- The sun (it points at it), WhereBench (borrows its places).
- Debut
- October 2, 2026, the day after the onion, the blueberry and the chili
- Inducted
- October 10, 2026
The original
The logo you see on the site, in colour.
- A kiwi slice: the fuzzy skin is the bezel and the seeds are the scale, bigger at north, east, south and west.
- The white core is a compass rose.
- The needle points at the sun rising behind the slice: sunrise, sunset, golden hour.
On paper
The black-and-white version from the blog comics. Model sheet:
- calm
- delighted
- lost
- sly
Biography
Cut a kiwi across and you get a compass for free: a round bezel of fuzzy skin, a ring of seeds for the scale and a pale core in the middle. ToolBench only had to add a needle, and it pointed it straight at the sun.
It turns your phone’s sensors into a bubble level, a compass, a protractor and a sound meter, and calculates sunrise, sunset, golden hour and the moon phase for any place and date. Everything is calculated on your device and ToolBench makes no outside requests; it even removes your coordinates from the address bar.
In the comics the kiwi stands in the back row of the bench and points the way, naturally. For its induction its mouth was moved off the needle, the south half of the needle was shortened, and the compass rose from the logo returned to the centre.
Greatest hits
Where to catch it in the blog comics:
- Our principles: stands in the back row and points the way.
- The Hall of Fame is open: panics at its model sheet shoot: a compass has only one face.
- When the power goes out: warms its hands at the glowing lemon, then checks a sunset that is still on schedule.