The Brooks Review

Month: January 2017

  • My Morning News Routine

    A large part of my morning routine, as it likely is for most of you, is to catch up on the news I might have missed the night before. A few years ago this felt like a much simpler task: some RSS, some Twitter, done. I felt well informed using just a few tools and getting news which was highly tailored to me, or what I thought mattered to me.

    Fast forward to 2017, and my routine has changed greatly. I can’t use Twitter for news — hell I can hardly stand to read it. Twitter is a cesspool of bullshit, attention grabbing links, and it’s not where you get quality news — rather Twitter is where you get the same bullshit you would see on cable news.

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  • iPad Productivity Report — 01/16/17 🔒

    ## Building an iOS Workflow App

    One thing I used to do a lot on my Mac was to build small apps inside Keyboard Maestro which would help me accomplish really tedious shit. That’s something which is considerably harder to do on iOS — requiring you either use [Pythonista](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pythonista-3/id1085978097?mt=8&uo=4&at=1l3v36d), and thus learn Python, or use [Workflow](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/workflow-powerful-automation/id915249334?mt=8&uo=4&at=1l3v36d) and deal with a clunky UI and a limited tool set.

    *I’m not bitter, I’m just disappointed.*

    Still, I wanted to build one of these little apps this past week — both to see if I could actually build it, and secondly to help me out with a fun little idea I had. The idea was very simple: I have three different lists of things and I want to be given a random items off of the specified list. Nothing earth shattering, and something I could easily do on my Mac.

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  • MiniVan Programming Guide -for Mac

    Kevin Kortum follows up on his tweets to me showing how to reprogram the MiniVan:

    I apparently wasn’t the only person as Ben Brooks spoke about his troubles and I offered some assistance knowing how frustrating it can be if you just misunderstand a single step in what is provided by The Van Keyboards programming guide. I decided to put something together that goes into a little more detail than those tweets so hopefully anyone can do it without too much trouble.

    Fantastic. As a buddy said to me on Twitter, setting up your computer to reprogram takes more time than anything else. One thing I would add, is that on the MiniVan keyboard hex making tool, you’ll need to right click the keys to change them around. There’s some special options there which I wasn’t aware of, and caused me a lot of frustration.

  • Why would Apple release a 10.5″ iPad?

    Dan Provost:

    This has the advantage of essentially having two full height iPad apps, side by side.

    Now, imagine Apple doing the exact same thing, but with the iPad mini.”

    It’s perfectly normal to have three iPads, right?

  • Reprogramming the MiniVan on Mac

    Kevin Kortum reached out on Twitter and solved the mystery of MiniVan keyboard programming in just three tweets. I just got done reprogramming the keyboard and it worked like a charm. Big thanks to him. (Now I just have to deal with the fact that I not only need a Mac for this, but that I am going to be messing around with this quite a lot.)

  • The MiniVan Keyboard

    When writing about the Pok3r, I left out a rather embarrassing thought I had running around my head which goes something like this: I should really find another keyboard, even smaller, that I can take with me on trips. Insane, I know, but they do make them. They are called 40% keyboards (or 45% or a variety of other names, which makes them hard to find) and they are kind of insane themselves.

    They do not have a number row for starters, and they cram all sorts of other things away in modifier keys, but since they are all custom, you never know what is where until you memorize it all. Or you can reprogram the entire board, which means you learn your layout and not someone else’s.

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  • iPad Productivity Report – 1/9/17 🔒

    ## Drawing Apps

    For a couple of months there has been one post I have been putting off writing, this post, about drawing/writing/note apps for the iPad Pro. One of my key uses of the smaller 9.7″ iPad Pro is as a writing tablet during meetings/calls/research — using it as stand in for my trusty Baron Fig.

    I’ve tried many, but certainly not all, of the apps which could fit the bill as a sheet of paper for my Apple Pencil. To answer the immediate question as to which is best, all I can say is that it very much depends on what you want and need to do with these apps. Instead let me share thoughts on the apps I currently have on my iPad Pro:

    – [Inkflow](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/inkflow-visual-notebook/id519524685?mt=8&uo=4&at=1l3v36d): this app has some of the more compelling screenshots in the App Store, but it falls short of them in practice. The UI is clean and simple, and the icon is solid. The choices of writing tools is minimal, but still useful. I love how quickly the app launches and is ready to go, how I can easily add pages to any of the “books” the app uses to organize things. There is also not a lot of pressure sensitivity in the app, which is good if you don’t want to pay much attention, but bad if you want things to look nice. I look at Inkflow the same as I do a Field Notes: it’s not the greatest, but it’s really handy and holds a lot of random shit. Inkflow stays on my home screen as a tool to capture the random things you might find in my Field Notes.

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  • The difference between Google Assistant and Siri

    It’s never as cut and dry as you assume it is.

  • Microblogging on Kickstarter

    Manton Reece on his new project:

    I’m writing a book about independent microblogging, and launching a publishing platform called Micro.blog.

    I’ve had a lot of chats with Manton, not only about this project, but our general philosophical agreements about many things privacy and “owning your own stuff” related. I backed this project, and in fact (as of this writing) it has nearly doubled its funding goal. Even so, I think you should back it if you can.

    This is not another App.net fiasco. His service and the ideas behind it are 1000% better (well that’s not really possible, but it is better, a lot better). It’s the service I use to cross post from here to here.

  • iPad Productivity Report – 1/2/17

    ## I Can’t Use an iPad, But Thanks

    Last week, I published [this article](https://brooksreview.net/2016/12/evovling-ipad-desktop-usage/) on the overall state of desktop iPad usage. The best part about publishing articles like this is fielding the myriad of questions which inevitably hit my inbox — while I can’t get to them all, I do try to read them all. Here’s the most common email/DM/tweet response I got:

    > I do XYZ thing every day, and because of that it’s rather obvious I can’t use an iPad. I think iPads are amazing and I love to screw around on my iPad, but my Mac is essential. I wish I could use an iPad, but it’s just not an option for me/most people who aren’t writers.

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