The Brooks Review

Last year I wore what I thought was a well broken in pair of Clark’s Desert Boots to WWDC and found out they still had some break in to them. I started to get a couple hotspots and ducked into Walgreens to find some relief. That’s when I discovered Compeed Blister Cushions.

Continue reading: A Quick WWDC Tip: Compeed

I’ve been able to pick up a few of the County Comm items lately, so I thought it might be beneficial to go over some of them as this company really has some gems hidden away.

Continue reading: County Comm Goods

This week I want to talk about the Surface Pro and how it plays into the evolving transitional period we are in with computing — the move from “traditional” computer like MacBooks and iMacs, to things like Surface Pros and iPad Pros. (Realistically, many might even suffice with only an iPhone, and an argument could be made that most people almost do this already without giving it much thought. Another post, perhaps.)

First, let’s look at the new Surface Pro, which has dropped the numerals, and the bundled accessories, and pivoted its own marketing.

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A few weeks back, I snagged a new pen from Massdrop to fit with all the brass things I’ve been adding to my collection. The Machine Era Brass Pen, which takes a Pilot G2 refill and weighs about 20-30lbs.

I bought this pen to kick around on my desk, and my lovely coworkers refer to it as “Ben’s gold pen” which is charming — SINCE IT IS BRASS FOOLS. Anyways, I love brass for a few reasons: it patinas well, it is durable, and there’s some mystical anti-bacterial shit which goes on. All of which seems like it makes for a pretty great pen to have kicking around my desk.

Continue reading: Machine Era Brass Pen

(The following interview took place over Slack DMs on 5/22/17. Light editing for clarity and spelling was done, mostly on my side.)

Ben: Manton, thanks for taking the time today to chat. Before we get going, could you give me a little bio on who you are — for those two readers who aren’t aware of you just yet?

Manton: Sure, I’m a long-time Mac developer — from the 1990s when Apple was doomed — but these days I mostly do iOS and web development. A couple years ago I quit my regular job to work on my indie software company Riverfold Software full time, where I’ve shipped a few Mac and iOS apps, as well as web services like the Tweet Marker API. My latest project is Micro.blog.

Continue reading: An Interview with Manton Reece

Editor’s note: Arcido provided me with this bag at no charge the purposes of this review.

Some time ago I was contact by Arcido, I have reviewed a travel bag of theirs previously and left it with rather mixed feelings. A good bag? Yes. A great bag? Not for most people. I don’t have that bag anymore, but my recollection of it is threefold: it was heavy, it was large, and the material was awesome.

I remember wishing it was lighter, and it was smaller. So Arcido reached out to me and asked me to check out their new bag, the Faroe. They told me they listened to what people were saying, and created this bag with much of that feedback in mind.

Continue reading: The Arcido Faroe

This week I want to talk about task management apps — something I used to cover in depth at the outset of this site, but which has only been of passing interest to me of late. What is spurring this is Things 3 (iPad, iPhone, Mac), which is made by a company I loathe, but I mostly certainly bought and am using.¹ I can’t and won’t speak to the long term impacts of this tool, as it simply has not been enough time — but there is one thing we can talk about: design.

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1. It’s a complicated relationship. ↩

I’ve been mulling over Federico’s excellently well made iOS 11 concept video, and I wanted to reflect on some thoughts from a few of his larger ideas.

Continue reading: iOS 11: iPad Wishes and Oh God Please No, Not That

Yesterday afternoon, I pushed live a new theme for the site which I had been working on for the past few months. Most of the design elements were realized over the course of just a week or so, but I always sit with a new design for a few months as a way of trying it on. What I want to know is simple: after a few months, which one do I like looking at better?

Continue reading: A Fresh New Look

I have two things I want to share with you about home networking — and for this I mean WiFi, because I don’t know who wastes their time running Ethernet anymore.

Continue reading: Home Network Tips

Two things have come out recently, and both are very much related. The first is the Amazon Echo Show — which is a mini desktop computer thing with a camera meant to be kept somewhere convenient, but clearly not well seen since it is ugly. However, the idea is that this is a shared internet appliance as with the other Echo devices — you use it to aid you throughout the day without having to touch a device. So think like cooking recipes, or older people wanting a central video phone — which never works out well for companies.

Continue reading: From Shared to Personal to…

As I mentioned in my iPad Productivity Report, I attended a conference for a couple days recently, and I think I finally figured out the Apple Watch as part of that conference. But first, some much needed context:

• Right out of the gate I loved the Apple Watch. It felt like I was freed from my iPhone.
• Even as others left the device to collect dust, I still loved mine and advocated for it.
• Then I stopped cold turkey.

I have not worn my Apple Watch since some time in early November. However, a few of my coworkers were talking about how much they love their watches, and it spurred me to pull it back out and give it a go for a week. It took most of the first day updating it, but then we were off to the races.

Continue reading: Back to the Apple Watch for a Week

This past week I spent a couple days at a conference, nothing out of the ordinary, except for whatever reason I started to inventory the devices people were using and trying to pick up on how they were using their devices. (This is also usually the part when I start to tweetstorm about force quitting apps.)

I think the most absurd of the bunch I observed was a blogger using a 13″ MacBook Pro, an iPhone, and a small point and shoot camera. From what I could tell the main apps being used were: Chrome for WordPress, Slack, and Photos. The workflow was simple: take some notes in a WordPress draft, chat in Slack, and take photos of the presenter with the camera, transfer those images to the Mac and upload to WordPress for an eventual blog post.

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Yes, this is a post about coffee, which is among the most annoying of topics on generally tech focused blogs. But, let now assure you that I am not a pretentious coffee drinker, I use a Keurig and I fucking love it — so yeah.

Anyways, a coworker posted a link to this Buzzfeed video of their staff drinking “Death Wish Coffee”, it’s great. I quipped that it looked great, and if it comes in K-Cups, I’d get it to try. And of course seconds later my coworkers delivered, because of course it comes in K-cups.

Continue reading: Death Wish Coffee

This week, I want to talk about images for the internet — when you have an iPad Pro and nothing else. Specifically, I want to dive into how I prep images for blog posts, and how I share a link to an image on services which don’t support native image embedding.

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