The Brooks Review

Year: 2014

  • The Tom Bihn Parental Unit

    Back in May of 2012 I posted about how I was using my Smart Alec bag from Tom Bihn as a diaper bag. There wasn’t much to the setup, and so I seem to always receive emails from people wanting to copy that bag setup. Truth be told I stopped using that setup when my wife bought herself a Kate Spade diaper bag.

    Now I personally hate that diaper bag, but she liked it and she carried it most of the time — so I didn’t really have a choice in the matter. Additionally, a backpack as a diaper bag can be rather annoying at times.

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  • It’s Been Cold Here

    The weather keeps jumping down below 30° here, and that’s not normal. Especially not for this time of year. I saw a nice frosty field on my way into work. I snapped a few shots before I froze.

  • Mean People Fail

    Paul Graham:

    It struck me recently how few of the most successful people I know are mean. There are exceptions, but remarkably few.

  • Nobuya

    Serena Ngai:

    Nobuya had mastered his craft, and his passion for his life’s work was admirable. Could this be translated to this bubble of technology we live in? Technology is ever changing and it’s easy to get caught up in new trends and tools. But is it realistic for us to keep up with them?

  • Canopy for iOS

    This is how Amazon really should look.

  • How to Transfer Digital Assets Upon One’s Unexpected Passing

    Really interesting post from Matt Henderson on how he is dealing with passing on his digital information if/when he passes. This is something that I have always wondered about. Two really interesting services he found.

  • GORUCK Sale

    My favorite GORUCK bag, the GR1, is on sale. Which is very rare. Many of their other bags are on sale as well and I’m really having to show restraint.

  • Some Notes on Twitter’s App Download Tracking

    Nik Fletcher has a good look at Twitter’s latest stunt. What’s most concerning to me is that they always wait for holidays to slip out this ‘news’. That’s shady no matter how you spin it.

    I’ve deleted all of their apps from my devices.

  • Beginning Minimalism

    Dave Paola on owning less:

    For that, I recommend starting small and taking baby steps: keep an open box somewhere in your house or apartment, and whenever you come across something that you haven’t touched in awhile, put it in the box. At the end of every month, casually look through the box and ask yourself if you really need any of the stuff.

    I constantly try to do this, but I’ve mostly failed at this point.

  • Winding down my Twitter apps

    Manton Reece is winding down his Twitter apps at the end of the year. This kind of stuff is bad for Twitter. Not opening up the search of all tweets to third-parties was not a shocking move, but it’s just another move to close down access to Twitter.

    I am actually amazed third party Twitter clients are still allowed.

  • Read Receipts

    Are really, really nice and you should have them enabled.

    Here’s why, in short, you should stop being paranoid and turn on read receipts:

    1. It’s kind. I bet you love it when your buddies have it turned on, why not do the same? You love it because then you know they got, and saw your message. You also know when you pester them for an answer, and when they just haven’t checked their phones. ((Thanks Alex for reminding me of this.))
    2. It can save you time when you are talking with someone. You know that I loathe the ‘thanks’ emails, this is a similar situation. “Ok, see you in ten.” That’s one of those statements where a needed response is vague. Typically I would say “Yep”. But with read receipts I can just read the message and know that the other person knows I saw the message, and now I don’t have to type anything and that person got instant feedback — if I didn’t agree I would respond.

    The only reason you don’t have them on is because you want to delay your response, or “hide”. Get over it. Or just unlock your phone and pull down notification center — that will allow you to read messages without sending the read receipt.

    So, go enable them.

  • Podcasters: You’re In The Entertainment Industry! [YouTube]

    This is a great rant:

    …hand puppets would be better podcast hosts than half the tech podcasts…

  • Flare App Updated Effects

    One thing I didn’t know about Flare 2 is that the effects are updated automatically whenever they add new ones. Two new ones “Analog Gallery” and “Vintage Galore” were added.

    Once again, they are nice. Vintage Galore is particularly nice if you remove the “paper” effect from it. I love this app more and more.

  • Quick Tip: Manage Apple Pay defaults

    I hadn’t thought to look in Settings to change this. Glad I read this.

  • Bittorrent Sync: Security Is Our Highest Priority

    A few people sent me links to a recent security analysis of BTSync, knowung that I use and love it. This is the official response, and I feel fine with continuing my use of the tool.

  • YosemiteSanFranciscoFont

    I’ve been using San Francisco as my default font since it came out, replacing a short run of Avenir. This is a dead simple way to install it — have fun.

  • The New Way to Edit Photos

    When I left my company at the beginning of this month, I had to cancel the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription that I had, and I did so with a little too much glee — because the next day I remembered that my copy of Lightroom was tied to it.

    Oops.

    It wasn’t for a few days that I found out Lightroom really never fully expires, but I was right fully worried — Lightroom was where I edited every photo I took.

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  • Traveling with the Smart Alec

    Wow.

  • YosemiteSystemFontPatcher

    I am now using this to change the font in Yosemite from Helvetica Neue to Avenir Next. It looks really sharp, but there are some things that just appear as jibberish the font family doesn’t have the correct characters.

    I don’t know how long I will keep this, but I am a big fan and the change is pretty easy to do once you build the fonts.

    See also:

    Try at your own risk.

  • Quote of the Day: Cameron Moll

    “In the end, while technology is regarded often unjustly as culprit rather than scapegoat, unquestionably it has enhanced the pace at which we busy ourselves with tasks, whether mundane or extraordinary.”