Year: 2024

I have no way of knowing how widespread this is throughout the world, but I do see this often enough in person that I need to provide some help and guidance. It’s that moment when someone comes to explain something to you on a menu, and they bust out a flashlight to help read the menu in the dimly lit restaurant — to your horror the ice blue light reflects back at you causing you to squint in terror while still not being able to read the menu any better. There’s shadows everywhere, and the ambiance was destroyed almost as quickly as our idea of freedom was when you became an adult. Your pupils shrink, and so does your appetite.

In other words, that perfectly balanced ambiance that a professional spent hours designing was instantly destroyed by a $20 Amazon purchase which no one took the time to think about.

This is easily fixed, and not even that expensive. So dear restaurants, please allow me to help.

(more…)

Sometimes, when you find a new brand, you don’t end up buying the first item which drew you to the brand. That was the case with Observer Collection gear for me, as my first pickup was the Whisky wallet. The actual item which drew me to the brand was this Papa notebook/passport wallet.

It looks so good, and it is in fact so good. This is also one of those items that is most certainly not going to be for everyone. It’s quirky and imperfect, and yet it goes most places with me now. I love it.

(more…)

I snagged this knife on a whim from Huckberry. I’ve long been curious about this tiny little knife and figured the holidays would be a good time of the year to give it a go. It’s prime pocket knife season.

The ACE Nibbler is a really nice knife, but you have got to want something stocky to like it — for me it’s not quite the right balance in hand.

(more…)

I switched over to the iPad Pro as my full time, or primary, computer back in December of 2015. I kept a personal Mac around until August of 2016, though I rarely used it. While there are Macs in our home, none are mine or used by me (other than to help troubleshoot them, which I am losing my skills for). It wasn’t until 2019 I would have regular access to another Mac, when I was issued one for work.

Even now, eight years on, I use a Mac only a handful of times each month — mostly to get around shortcomings in Microsoft’s Office suite of applications. So, given how long it has been, and how infrequently I blog about this topic these days, many have been asking me to touch base on this.

What better way to do this than a very blogger-esque listing of eight thoughts on eight years of iPad only use.

(more…)