The Brooks Review

For most of the summer I wore my Gravitymaster G-SHOCK the GPW-2000 — and it’s a great watch. However, as the weather cooled and I got back into the swing of wearing something more substantial than shorts and a T-shirt it became clear the the GPW-2000 was simply not going to work. It was too big. However, I really like the G-SHOCK line so I looked for a new watch, which lead me to the hard to find GSTS-130C. I’ve now been wearing that watch for a few weeks, so it’s time to talk about it.

Continue reading: Casio G-SHOCK G-Steel GST-S130C

This week is all about Siri Shortcuts, and the new Shortcuts app. I don’t think people quite realize how powerful these new features are, and how easy they are to get to work on. One such shortcut made the news rounds as a shortcut to use when you are pulled over, it does a series of actions which culminate to letting someone know where you are and what is happening and silently recording the event. It’s neat (and sad it is needed), and really only scratching the surface of what is possible.

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Back in spring of 2016 I started writing about traveling light, and chronicling what I had found and tried as better clothing for traveling. I’ve moved to wearing most of this type of clothing full time now, and write about it often at Everyday Wear with my pal Steve. But there’s more to packing light than just buying the right stuff, there’s three particular tips I’ve learned over the past couple of years of doing this.

Continue reading: A Few Practical Tips for Packing Lighter

Facebook recently saw themselves hacked, again, but that’s not what I am here to talk about today — because that’s going to be par for the course with any big tech company now. Instead, we need to talk about something else which seems like a ‘so what’ but is really much more nefarious than it first seems.

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I’ve been impatiently waiting for the day GORUCK released a new kid backpack, so much so I picked up an Echo for my youngest as I couldn’t wait any longer. So when GORUCK brought out the KR1 I jumped at the opportunity to snag one for my oldest daughter. However, it’s expensive at $155, so you won’t likely want to buy it.

But should you?

Yes, I mean clearly, but you already knew that.

Continue reading: GORUCK KR1 (versus the Echo too)

I ran another round of content blocker testing for Mobile Safari in order to take a look at which ones are the ‘best’ right now. To be fair: it’s really hard to find these content blockers on the App Store now, so I grabbed the ones which looked the most popular to me (top lists, and top search results) and then did the testing to see which was the best.

Continue reading: Safari Content Blocker Evaluations – 9/26/18 Edition

During the summer, while I had iOS 12 betas on my devices, I never downloaded the beta of Shortcuts, Apple’s revamp of Workflow. I also rarely use Siri unless I am driving in general. But last week I was playing around with Shortcuts and with Siri settings for Shortcuts and found that I wanted to record some voice triggers.

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I really like smaller backpacks (sub-18L) for a couple of reasons:

1. They are less cumbersome to tote with you, and when it is hot they don’t cause as much coverage on your back, which in turn keeps you cooler.
2. They force you to carry less, which means a lighter bag, and a happier outing. Carrying too much is a disease, next thing you know you’ll be saving all your files to your desktop.

Continue reading: Small Backpacks, How to Pick

Picture for a moment the three leading tablets on a desk. On the left you have an iPad Pro with Smart Keyboard and a Pencil beside it, next you have a Surface Go, or Pro doesn’t matter, with a Type Cover and Pen, then at the right a Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 with the SPen and associated keyboard cover. They represent the state of the art of tablets made to replace laptops, or more generally “the future of computers”.

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Among the Everyday Carry (EDC) community there’s one stand out of multi-tools which everyone seems to own: Gerber’s Dime. Now, before you read any further we need to talk about the price of this little multi-tool because it is an absurd $16 on Amazon at the time of writing. So when it comes to things I talk about on this site, it would be hard to say this is not among the most affordable.

But the Gerber Dime is also a very odd multi-tool. For one, it’s not super high quality, it’s not a piece of shit, but it’s not going to last a life time. It’s also tiny, to the point where it will be smaller than anything you think when you get it — taking up about as much volume as AirPods will.

Continue reading: The Gerber Dime

Last week I chatted with Tim Bradshaw of the Financial Times about the iPad, and more specifically how I use it as my only device and a bit of prognosticating about why more don’t use it. The article, if you can’t read it, gives a good overview of where things are. Of course, reading it, I have many more thoughts I’d like to expand on, so here we are.

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A couple of weeks ago I talked about a shift in the way I am working on my productivity tools. For those who missed it, the crux was that I no longer felt like my systems were helping me to get things done. I love Things, but some how it had become a database of stress, instead of the normal tool it had been for keeping stress at bay.

I turned to my buddy Shawn Blanc, and asked him explain his digital-analog system to me. After talking to him I bought a large Baron Fig Confidant, a little ruler from them (why not?) and set out to give this system a go. I also decided that I need to go back to a standard wake up time.

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It’s September, which means that on average the price of everything GORUCK sells is now 20-30% more expensive than it was last month. This is the first time a lot of the GORUCK stuff is going up in price, notably the GR1 and GR2. Because of this a lot of people have been asking for my thoughts.

Continue reading: GORUCK Price Increase — Some Thoughts

Note: this is a guide and thus much longer than most posts. Some gear in here was provided as review items, others were bought with my own money. See individual gear reviews on each to know which is which.

One of the biggest knocks against my firm stance that there exists no better backpack than the GORUCK GR1 is: “but GORUCK bags have no organization at all and it is so terrible that one should not even consider them.” For those who have emailed, DMed, and tweeted me something along those lines, you likely received a very unsatisfactory answer: ’that’s what makes them great, they are a blank canvas for you to make them whatever you want.’ This is unsatifying because I don’t actually give any advice on how to make them what you want.

Continue reading: GORUCK Bag Organization Guide

I talk to a lot of people who often say a couple of things to me with regards to their smartphone/computer usage:

1. I probably use it way too much.
2. I really don’t think I am not that bad, so I don’t really need to curb my usage.

Most people say both, roughly in that order. I’m guilty too. It seems that in society today, people with data plans and smartphones recognize that they likely use these devices far too much. But by the same token, the usage they deem to be too much is excused away by saying it is necessary for any number of reasons. Thus, at the end of the day, no one actually thinks they should curb their usage of devices because, well, they have really gotten rid of everything nasty in their own usage.

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