The Brooks Review

Year: 2016

  • Traveling the World with One Backpack

    Life on the road with just a GR2? Yes please.

  • Razer Mechanical Keyboard Case

    Jason Snell:

    If you want to turn your iPad into a nearly four-pound black laptop with mechanical keyswitches, this is the product for you.

    LOL

  • Traveling Light: Merino Ankle Socks

    When I posted my initial Traveling Light post on socks, I mentioned how I don’t wear anything special for style considerations. There is, however, one caveat: athletic socks, or more specifically the ankle socks I wear with shorts and sneakers.

    I picked up two different kinds to try over my recent family vacation, and I am a little blown away at how great they are. (I would have bought them sooner, but I so rarely wear these, I never got around to it.) I picked up Icebreakers and Darn Tough socks, both are heavily Merino wool based.

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  • Traveling Light: Warm Weather Gear

    I mentioned in my initial posts that I would be following up to post about shorts and short-sleeved shirts. This is that post. I tried out the Outlier New Ways, and the Ministry of Supply Apollo Polo shirts. Both are outstanding.

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  • Summer Remote Work Schedules

    Manton Reece on the troubles of working from home during the summer:

    I’d add to his list: you might have kids at home who open your office door whenever they want. My home office is currently shared with anyone who wants to use the extra iMac or printer, and the kids often need rides to appointments, camps, and friends. For me, summer is the most important time to get a more formal schedule.

    So true.

  • It’s About the Commute

    Everything about this passage is a big yep in my book:

    A quick poll of my fellow Basecampers revealed that having no commute is their favourite thing about working from home, and the biggest block against considering coworking. I’m lucky in that the space I ran was down one flight of stairs from our apartment (which brought its own problems!), and any new shared office would be a short bike ride away. But, for me, an office door is enough separation between my work and life, and I’d rather spend my journey time walking the dog. Did I mention I have a dog?”

    The moment I have to get in a car to do work, is the moment that working remotely is of less value to me. I have done long commutes to an office, and short 5-10min commutes to a shared workspace, and I loathed every moment I had to be in a car, no matter how short the drive was.

  • Multitasking and Mental Acuity

    Long known things restated again:

    The solution is to give up on multitasking and set aside dedicated chunks of time for each separate activity. So only check your email first thing in the morning and again at midday, or set aside 10 minutes per afternoon for Twitter.

    While reading the article I kept saying to myself: “this is why I like iOS better”. I know many people like to argue that I could make OS X, pardon me macOS, more like iOS — but that’s a poor substitute for the real thing.

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  • Default Outcome

    Manton Reece with a great line:

    Companies aren’t exactly designed to fail. But that is their default outcome.

  • A Precious Hour

    I did something similar during November when wrote over 50,000 words. It was hugely beneficial and something I am trying to start again as my writing time has become more of a back burner task of late.

  • The Arcido Bag Review

    Editor’s note: this bag was provided to me for review purposes, and is a pre-production unit.

    Cavernous, that’s the word I would use to describe this travel backpack and shoulder bag. To give you a better sense of what I mean, I had to triple the amount of clothing I would normally pack for my trip, in order to make the bag feel somewhat full and to keep my stuff from sloshing around the bag.

    Even with all that extra clothing, there was plenty of room to spare. I typically don’t open with thoughts on the size of a bag, but that’s the most striking part of this bag. It’s big. It doesn’t feel big on my back, or even heavy, but it looks big and packs even bigger.

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  • Towards More Minimal Travel

    Interesting post about the process of going from a take everything to a take very little traveler. I will say, he still packs a lot of stuff. But the fact he fits it all in the Aeronaut 45 is really impressive to me.

  • Toward a Smarter Software Future

    Ben Bajarin:

    For years I had been writing about the need for better predictive intelligence in our software. It seems ridiculous that my smartphone does not know more about my context and take relevant actions on my behalf. If I’m in a meeting, send all calls to VM or send a text message. If I’m running late to a meeting, offer to send an email or text to those I’m meeting with to let them know I’m running late and an ETA of when I’ll be there (since it knows where I am on the road, the traffic situation, and my time to destination). Our smartphones are really not that smart when it comes to the intelligence equation. That is about to change.

  • Dividing the Work Between Two iPads

    There used to be endless posts online on how to best work with two Macs — how to keep things in sync between a desktop and a laptop — and all the other messes that technology had yet to solve. I was right there with everyone, trying to divvy the work between two computers. In a way, having two iPads reopens this same discussion.

    Though, I must say, things have changed considerably for the better.

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  • The iPad Pro 9.7″ Smart Keyboard Cover

    I purchased the 9.7″ iPad Pro to be a couch computer and note taking machine, but also to be something I could easily take with me on short trips, or to the coffee shop. Which means I needed a keyboard for it, and given how much I love the Smart Keyboard Cover on the larger iPad Pro, it was an easy decision for me to buy it on the smaller iPad Pro as well.

    I’ve now spent some time using it and I find myself missing the larger keyboard with every keystroke.

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  • We tested over 60 different nail clippers to find the best

    User MooReview:

    Given that there was no exhaustive guide on nail clippers and thesweethome’s top pick recommends the nickle-plated Muji’s (good but not great) and the awful tweezerman barrel spring nail nipper, we thought we would get snipping to see if we could find something better.

    This is how you spend a Friday night. And to save you time, here’s their best all arounder (my affiliate link, as they provided no links).

    Also, the BuyItForLife subreddit is one of my favorites.

  • Are We at the Start of a Tech World War?

    Nick Bilton:

    Technology is also likely to be at the center of the next major geopolitical battle. The anti-immigration, anti-one percent, anti-capitalism and anti-everything else we’re seeing right now isn’t just going to go away in a society where people feel their voices are not being heard. They’re going to continue to try to affect change, and increasingly, they will rely on technology. And it’s that same technology that is likely to ensure that all future wars bear little resemblance to previous ones.

    Fascinatingly terrifying article.

  • Morning Brain Dump

    I wake up when the kids get up every morning, which means my schedule is never set. I can’t set a reminder to brain dump at X time, because I want to sleep as late as I can. (Big fan of waking early, but with two small kids it doesn’t work well for me right now.) I’ve also long complained about how slow it can be to add tasks to OmniFocus, and how much better 2Do handles this, but even 2Do isn’t low-friction enough in the groggy mornings.

    I really like to dump everything out of my brain, and into to 2Do while I sip my morning coffee. But I also needed a better way to handle this.

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  • Comparing iPad Pros

    I remember being a kid when our family got a new kitten. We had two other cats at the time and this kitten made those full grown cats look like giants. That feeling came right back when I picked up the iPad Pro 12.9″ when it was launched. There were moments when I would pick up my new iPad Pro and just start laughing to myself at the sheer size of the thing.

    It was so big in comparison to my iPad Air. The entire thing felt absurd — it’s even bigger than my MacBook. But unlike with my cats, the smaller iPad never grew larger to normalize things. Instead I just got rid of the iPad Air and my 12.9″ iPad felt normal after a bit.

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  • Daydreaming of an iPad-only future

    Tom on The Minimal:

    Going all in on iPad-only? The question for me today is when rather than how.

    He’s not just talking about leaving the Mac either, he’s looking at what it would be like to just have one device. As in: iPhone or iPad only. He’s got some really good points on both sides of the coin.

  • Finding a Good Apple Pencil Handwriting Note App

    Over the weekend I downloaded as many “handwritten notes” apps as I could find on the App Store to test and find what might be the best for using my 9.7″ iPad Pro as a notepad while I work. I was planning on writing one of those posts where I go through them all, but after searching hard and testing dozens, there’s none which I have found good enough to talk about.

    There are some promising apps, like Notability, Noteshelf, Notes Plus, Notepad+ — but they all have a fundamental flaw. For some reason each of these apps try harder to replicate what you would get from a paper notebook, than to take advantage that they are digital.

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