The Brooks Review

Month: June 2018

  • WESN Microblade Review

    Lurk around the knife subreddits enough and you will start to see a ton of custom knives — typically these are one offs which someone made for themselves. One day I saw this knife, which originally was a concept, then it was brought up as potentially a production blade. This knife then made its way to Kickstarter before being available for everyone.

    The thing about this knife is that it’s not like anything else out there. They label it “microblade” for a reason: the cutting edge is 1.5”. That’s about half of the length of a standard sized everyday carry knife. Further, the entire package, weighs just one ounce. It is very small.

    The WESN Microblade is truly a unique knife.

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  • Thermostats, Locks and Lights: Digital Tools of Domestic Abuse

    Nellie Bowles:

    In more than 30 interviews with The New York Times, domestic abuse victims, their lawyers, shelter workers and emergency responders described how the technology was becoming an alarming new tool. Abusers — using apps on their smartphones, which are connected to the internet-enabled devices — would remotely control everyday objects in the home, sometimes to watch and listen, other times to scare or show power. Even after a partner had left the home, the devices often stayed and continued to be used to intimidate and confuse.

  • Mindfulness Meditation and Napping

    It would be rather hard for anyone who regularly reads tech sites, or looks at the App Store, to not know about “mindfulness” and the general trend of meditation. A year ago, with stress mounting in my life, I took to mindfulness meditation settling on the app Calm to help me with it. Though I was never able to build a daily habit, I regularly meditated 3-4 times a week.

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  • My Current Everyday Carry

    A lot of what I write about here revolves around my search for finding better things to carry on a daily basis. When I started working from home, I thought it would alleviate a lot of the needs for carrying, but it actually made my struggle worse.

    When you don’t work from home, you tend to leave your house with the notion that you will be gone for the entire work day. This allows you to grab a bag, and slightly overpack, while having little guilt about doing so. That’s certainly how I approached it, and how most approach it given the “EDC” setups I see online.

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  • New GORUCK Bullet Ruck Out

    Looks like GORUCK has a new variant of that awesome 10L Bullet Ruck out. The major change seems to be the handle at the top of the bag. It is now the proper GR1 style handle instead of the nylon webbing loop. Very tempted to ditch my bullet to get one of these (if you want mine to help facilitate this swap for me reach out. I have a Steel color 10L SOLD). After the GR1 the 10L Bullet is my favorite GORUCK bag.

    Rumor has it GORUCK has a 15L Bullet Ruck coming out this summer too.

  • For Sale: Filson Tablet Briefcase (SOLD)

    I have my gently used Filson Tablet Briefcase for sale. This is no longer produced by Filson and while you can still find some retailers selling them, they are getting harder to find. Only reason I am selling it is because I tend to use backpacks over shoulder bags, and I don’t want to part with my Filson Original Briefcase. Color is Otter Green, the best Filson color. My Review.

    Yours for $130 shipped, only to US shipping addresses. First to pay gets it. SOLD

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  • Summer Things That We Buy

    Members might recall, last year that I took a car camping trip with a group consisting of 3 dads, and 5 kids. I made a video for that, which showed the absurd amount of gear I alone packed. We are coming up on the second year for this trip, and as such I have been going through a bunch of my gear to get it ready to go.

    With that in mind, and the summer upon us, it is highly likely that many of you are going to end up getting out of the house and this might necessitate some new gear. That’s what this post is about: the gear we buy for summer fun. I’ll be running through some of my favorite gear, and some thoughts I have on gear I am considering.

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  • No one is opening those emails about privacy updates, and marketers are getting nervous

    Michelle Castillo reporting on this catastrophic trend of people not opting into SPAM:

    “People are not opting back in,” says Michael Horn, the director of data science for digital marketing agency Huge. “It’s one thing for your customers who don’t have a relationship with the brand to decline and not respond, but you’re also losing a sales channel.”

    Not to worry. I’m sure they’ll work out some new type of shit.

  • Triple Aught Design Transport Wallet

    A bit ago Triple Aught Design released the Transport Wallet, which is the companies take on a wallet for travel and adventure. I had seen the wallet walked through on Instagram, and at only $35 I decided to buy it right away when they came out. There’s a few stand out features which sold me on the wallet:

    1. Hidden pocket and slots for lockpicks.
    2. A way to store small amounts of cash.
    3. Quick access pocket for the credit card you normally use.
    4. Harder to get to storage for everything else.

    The idea of this wallet, or rather the concept of it, is quite interesting. Everything is in a secure spot, but the stuff you need often is readily accessible in an almost one handed manner. However my biggest concern going into this wallet was that I would instantly find it too large.

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  • Your Phone Is Listening and it’s Not Paranoia

    Sam Nichols:

    With this in mind, I decided to try an experiment. Twice a day for five days, I tried saying a bunch of phrases that could theoretically be used as triggers. Phrases like I’m thinking about going back to uni and I need some cheap shirts for work. Then I carefully monitored the sponsored posts on Facebook for any changes.

    You’ll not be shocked by the results.

    (H/t to Steve)

    Looks like this post has been disputed enough to warrant not reading it. Apologies.

  • iPads, Watches, And Travel

    Going down the rabbit hole a bit this week. Talking about what makes good iPad software, what it would take to get me to switch back to Apple Watch, and a note that I checked a bag when traveling. Dunkin’ Donuts talk too.

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  • Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends

    By GABRIEL J.X. DANCE, NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and MICHAEL LaFORGIAL:

    “It’s like having door locks installed, only to find out that the locksmith also gave keys to all of his friends so they can come in and rifle through your stuff without having to ask you for permission,” said Ashkan Soltani, a research and privacy consultant who formerly served as the F.T.C.’s chief technologist.

    Only difference: the Facebook users don’t give a shit.

  • Backpacks for Kids

    A year ago I was confronted with something I thought would be really fun, but which turned out to be exceedingly frustrating. I needed a backpack for my daughter who was entering kindergarten. I suspect most parents go to Target and let their kid pick something they like, but there’s simply no way I was going to buy my daughter something that wasn’t high quality.

    Since GORUCK no longer makes the Kid Ruck (and they go on EBay for absurd money) I set out researching to find a full-size (all the backpacks she had prior were not full-size, and I define that by “can fit a binder in it”), well made, backpack for my daughter. I hated almost every recommendation that I saw.

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  • Day After Thoughts

    A few big thoughts on WWDC announcements, Overall I’m pretty happy.

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  • Mobile Safari is holding the iPad back

    Bradley Chambers:

    Here’s what the iPads needs: a desktop version of Safari with external trackpad support. Yes, Mobile Safari has a “Request Desktop” mode. There are plenty of websites that completely ignore that request, though. Even for the ones that don’t, many of the designs and navigations are built for a mouse pointer. The iPad already has external keyboard support and an external trackpad support would go a long way to making the iPad a Mac replacement.

    The iPad comes pretty close with iCab Mobile which is a great web browser when Mobile Safari isn’t working. However that’s not quite what Chambers is talking about here because this is more of a chicken and an egg issue. For instance many ‘modern’ websites rely heavily on the notion that there is such things as drag and drop, hover states, and generally speaking a cursor. Without a cursor a lot of the web doesn’t work, not because technically it cannot work, but because of lazy product design.

    Because some product manager decided that their support response would be “use a desktop, sorry”. I don’t want iPad to have a cursor, because that’s not what iPad is. I want websites to pull their heads out of their asses and realize that there are far more people using mobile Safari than there are those sitting down at a desktop to work. Just as web designers had to learn to design responsive websites mobile first, web application developers need to make their apps work on iPhones and Android phones first and foremost, desktops second. Because if it works on an iPhone, it will certainly work on a MacBook Pro.