The Brooks Review

Month: November 2014

  • The UnderFit Shirt Update

    When I crowned my ‘best undershirt’ I chose UnderFit because it was modern, exceedingly comfortable, and held up well. That is all still true.

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  • The Truth About the Wars

    Daniel P. Bolger:

    What went wrong in Iraq and in Afghanistan isn’t the stuff of legend. It won’t bring people into the recruiting office, or make for good speeches on Veterans Day. Reserve those honors for the brave men and women who bear the burdens of combat.

  • Review of the Tom Bihn Daylight Pack

    Nice review of one of the neatest backpacks out there. I didn’t expect to like this bag, but I truly do.

  • Ulysses Over Writer

    Chris Bowler:

    Although I switch tools far less often than I used to, it still happens. In this case, it feels like a change for the right reasons.

    Ulysses is immensely good, starting to see the trend of a lot of writers switching to it.

  • “DarkHotel” Uses Bogus Crypto Certificates to Snare Wi-Fi-Connected Execs

    Dan Goodin:

    Researchers have uncovered a seven-year-old malware operation that combines advanced cryptographic attacks, zero-day exploits, and well-developed keyloggers to target elite executives staying in luxury hotels during business trips.

    This is why I run a VPN if I am on any network that I didn’t build.

  • Net Neutrality

    President Obama:

    So the time has come for the FCC to recognize that broadband service is of the same importance and must carry the same obligations as so many of the other vital services do. To do that, I believe the FCC should reclassify consumer broadband service under Title II of the Telecommunications Act — while at the same time forbearing from rate regulation and other provisions less relevant to broadband services.

    I’m glad he finally took the stand he campaigned on. This is the right and only move.

  • I Need More Screens, Or a Bigger One

    In my new role at MartianCraft I need a lot of windows open all at once — most of them communication related. It works fine on my 15” retina MacBook Pro, but it could be much better with more space.

    Sure I could buy a $5k 5k iMac, but nope. And honestly my retina MacBook Pro still has a lot of life left in it (though the SSD may need to be replaced soon to get back some speed).

    So I really think I need another monitor, but the entire reason I got rid of my external display was because I couldn’t stand that it wasn’t retina.

    Decisions…

  • Dueing it Wrong

    Speaking of Shawn Blanc, this is a great set of tips for getting the most out of OmniFocus. I just setup his Keyboard Maestro workflow and it is great, though I made one for my ‘Waiting’ perspective too. I also added in a bit of window moving magic to place them where I want.

    Just be sure to not close out the main window, or you’ll have to add all that guff back.

  • Yosemite Accessibility Permission Problems with Keyboard Maestro

    That would drive me nuts, glad Shawn detailed this a bit.

  • Secure Messaging Scorecard

    Surprisingly good scores for FaceTime and iMessage, given how seamless and easy they are to use.

  • Seasonality Go 3.0

    I’ve always been a fan of Seasonality for it’s massive amount of data that it can show you. If you really like to nerd out on all the weather data, this is the best app for that. I don’t use it everyday, but today we are having quite the wind and rain event. So I’ve been staring at the map view far too much today:

    It’s a good app, and with version 3 (as you can see) it now works on the iPhone. The design leaves a bit to be desired for me, but you can’t argue with the data it shows — there’s a ton of it.

    Note: You have to go to Map Settings and enable particle mode to get that wind chart, then zoom over to Tacoma, WA.

  • Facebook Wants You to Vote on Tuesday. Here’s How It Messed With Your Feed in 2012.

    Micah L. Sifry:

    On Tuesday, the company will again deploy its voting tool. But Facebook’s Buckley insists that the firm will not this time be conducting any research experiments with the voter megaphone. That day, he says, almost every Facebook user in the United States over the age of 18 will see the “I Voted” button. And if the friends they typically interact with on Facebook click on it, users will see that too. The message: Facebook wants its users to vote, and the social-networking firm will not be manipulating its voter promotion effort for research purposes. How do we know this? Only because Facebook says so.

  • The Mechanical iPad Keyboard

    As most readers of this site probably know by now, I was never a very big fan of mechanical keyboards. When Shawn Blanc started to get on board with them I would poke fun at him on our podcast on a regular basis.

    I just never understood mechanical keyboards, because who wants a loud keyboard?

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  • Insanity

    I was emailed a couple of Word documents to read through yesterday. I started to read through them on my Mac, and then I realized that it would be way better to read through them on my iPad with my feet kicked up. But the files were zipped in the email.

    So I went ahead and AirDropped the files from my Mac to iPad. That froze Pages for 10 minutes. Then I put the files in iCloud Drive, they still haven’t shown up on my iPad.

    And then I put the files in a BitTorrent Sync’d folder, but the BTSync app on my iPad started to crash on launch.

    In the end, I just emailed the files to myself and read them, finally, on my iPad.

    Insanity.

    I would have been done far sooner if I never bothered with the iPad. And that’s the problem with the iPad — or more aptly — with Apple’s software.

  • Retina Ready

    Now that I have a new job I am having to adjust to a new set of communications tools (of which there are many). Something that I continue to notice is that many of the less ‘general’ consumer focused apps are very outdated. They work, but they aren’t updated for the latest and greatest gear.

    The most prominent of those is the lack of retina ready tools for Mac users with many of these apps — let alone Yosemite-esques designs.

    This will slowly drive me nuts.

  • The Christmas Catalog at Tools and Toys

    Good collection, beautifully presented.

    There is of course my year ’round list of things to spend money on here.

  • The Anti-VSCO Photographer

    Conor McClure:

    It just doesn’t make sense anymore. I see photographers buy these new packs like they buy new iPhones—immediately, at whatever price, just because.

  • The Synopsis

    I linked to my new site when I launched it, but I didn’t write about it much. I didn’t want to say too much, as I just wanted to see what happened. That and I was pretty busy at the time.

    I do think it is worth taking a moment to address the site and some of the motivations, goals, and ideas behind the site.

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