They’re back!
Year: 2018
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Pre-Road Trip Planning and a Select Look at Stupid Things I Insisted on Packing
What follows is a random selection of notes around my thinking of packing and prepping to leave for a road trip with my family. I’ll follow this post up after the trip to see how accurate my guesses were about stuff. Do note that most of this I know is unnecessary, but it became a rather interesting thought exercise for me, and so I chased it down. I also have intentions of doing many longer road trips, so planning this out for this first smaller one seemed like it would help in the long run, and eliminate ‘what if’s’ as well as helping better inform future endeavors.
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The Pull
My grandfather on my father’s side would go on drives for seemingly no reason. Often he loaded up my grandmother and would drive around the Olympic peninsula. That’s roughly 5-6 hours of driving. He’d do it in a day, and at least a few times a year. He’d also drive anywhere he could for vacation, flying was a last resort for him.
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GORUCK Field Pockets
Looking through the archives here, I realize that I have never fully written about the GORUCK Field Pockets before. I’ve been on a bag organization kick, which I’ll have a longer post about later, so now seems like a really good time to codify what these Field Pockets excel at, and where they stumble.
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The Vortex Core
I have, generally, done a very poor job resisting the pull of smaller and smaller keyboards. I really like mechanical keyboards, and I truly think that the Vortex Pok3er platform is amazing. The rabbit hole gets deep, I’ve added custom GMK Carbon SA keycaps (about $180), a matching short braided USB cable ($20), a walnut wood case with wrist rest integrated ($50). Yeah, it gets expensive.
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My M5 For Sale
I don’t think cars get any better than this, unless you need to fit two car seats in it and be OK driving kids around in the car. Which is why I am selling what is perhaps the best car you can drive.
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Noteshelf 2 Adds Handwriting Recognition
Noteshelf is getting really good these days, so be sure to check it out if you haven’t yet. When I opened it this morning I had a notice that there’s now support for handwriting recognition. I had a hell of a time figuring out how to work it, but it’ for searching only. And it seems to work well. This is likely a way better way to implement the tool, than converting handwriting to a typeface.
Update A couple of readers have pointed out that this also works to convert hand writing to text. I couldn’t figure it out, but I am told you select the hand written text with the cut tool then tap the tool again to get a dialog. Neat.
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iPad Productivity Report — 7/16/18
It’s been a while since I wrote an iPad Productivity Report, but here we are with a fresh set of characters. Some big things have been going on in iPad world from rumored new device sizes, to software releases and announcements. Let’s dive into it all.
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Meditation under the microscope
Speaking of mindfulness, it turns out most of the studies about it were far from scientific. So Ute Kreplin did his own very scientific study of it:
There must be a more balanced view of meditation, one that understands the limitations of meditation and its adverse effects. One day there will be a more complete picture of this potent and poorly understood practice. For now, our understanding is mostly warped.
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Mastering the Art of Caring Less
Jamie Friedlander:
Although there is no direct English translation, wu wei (pronounced oo-way) could perhaps be described as “effortless action,” explains Edward Slingerland, a professor of Asian studies at the University of British Columbia and author of Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity. The concept, which has its roots in ancient Chinese philosophical writings, has seen a revival in contemporary science, Slingerland says, as scientists have begun to study the psychological mechanisms behind it.
This is a really interesting take on the mindfulness approaches currently dominating everyone’s inboxes. And perhaps way better.
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These Academics Spent The Last Year Testing Whether Your Phone Is Secretly Listening To You
Kashmir Hill reporting:
“We didn’t see any evidence that people’s conversations are being recorded secretly,” said David Choffnes, one of the authors of the paper. “What people don’t seem to understand is that there’s a lot of other tracking in daily life that doesn’t involve your phone’s camera or microphone that give a third party just as comprehensive a view of you.”
It’s even more creepy than I assumed. And way more clever.
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Massdrop x Ferrum Forge Gent
It has been a while since I’ve reviewed a knife which is made to be an everyday carry blade. The reason has been simple: I found the Chris Reeve’s Small Sebenza 21, and it is perfect. I do mean that, I’ve been using that knife a lot, and it really is perfect. But based on some very strong reviews I picked up this Massdrop collaboration the ‘Gent’ to see how it stacks up.
The Gent is (as far as I can tell) “produced” by Massdrop, designed by Ferrum Forge, and made by WE Knives in China. It’s basically super weird, so from here on out ‘Gent’ is what we are calling this knife, but do know there’s some stuff around how it got made.
The long and short of this knife: had I found this before the Small Sebenza, I would have crowned this the perfect knife. And given the price, it would not be absurd to make the argument that it is a better everyday knife than the Small Sebenza — as much as it pains me to write that.
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Complex Controls and Complex Decisions
Down the rabbit hole we go.
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Camping With Kids – Gear Thoughts, Season 2
Last year, a friend mentioned that he thought it would be fun if myself, a mutual friend, and all our kids went camping. That’s 3 dads, and 5 kids, this year from 4 to 8 years of age. All of us have varying levels of camping experience, and we all brought along a ton of gear. I made a short video about this last year, this year I’ve decided to write up some thoughts on the highlights of the gear I took, and some items we needed.
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iPad Office Apps, and MacBooks
It’s no secret that I love the iPad and think most of the world can easily get by with it as their only computer. However, most of the world doesn’t agree, and none of this is to say it isn’t without its challenges. Having said that, today I am going to look at the sorry state of iPad office apps, and why in the hell anyone would by a Chromebook over an iPad.
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Huge GORUCK Sale
Amazing deals on the GR1 and GR2, only in select colors and sizes. Typically these are the prices you pay for these bags used.
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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.
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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.