The Brooks Review

Author: Ben Brooks

  • Some Follow Up on Newsletters

    I was a bit surprised at the feedback from my last post on Newsletters, not at the amount of feedback, as much as how black and white the issue seems to be. People were either in agreement with me, or were baffled by my conclusions. I asked those who responded in disbelief that newsletters could be bad, to provide me with longer thoughts, and there’s one article I think encapsulates the position in favor of newsletters well.

    First, a point of clarification though: I used the term newsletter without specifying what the hell I meant. An error on my part. I simply mean an email newsletter that is filled with original content. What I don’t mean is emails, like this site’s daily email, alerting readers to new posts — in other words automated newsletters aren’t what I am talking about.

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  • Looking Back to NaNoWrimo

    A month has passed now since I undertook my own version of the NaNoWriMo challenge — writing and publishing over 50,000 words to this very site for the month of November. At the end of it I wrote a bit about the experience, but I don’t think it is until just now that I fully am able to realize the impact it had on me in a more long term sense. It hasn’t made me a better, or worse, writer — that’s all status quo. It has, however, helped my writing come far easier.

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  • LPT Request: Is There a Comfortable Position for Reading a Book in Bed?

    How do people have that many pillows? This topic can double for using the iPad in bed. Now, excuse me as I head to buy 25 more pillows.

  • Outrage of the Week

    They’re spying on me‽ The horror!

    Warrantless eavesdropping on people who have done nothing wrong – the largest system of suspicionless mass surveillance ever created – is inherently abusive and unjustified, and one shouldn’t need a report that this was done to the Benjamin Netanyahus and Pete Hoekstras of the world to realize that.

  • The All-in Party

    Fraser Speirs is making his iPad Pro his only computer:

    The iPad Pro was just the icing on the cake. It took everything that was good about iOS 9 on the iPad Air 2 and made it much, much better. The iPad Pro is fast, capable and packs a screen basically the same size as the laptop I just sold. This is how I want to work.

    Makes me feel ashamed I had to keep my MacBook. Though to be fare I charge my MacBook once a week because I rarely ever use it.

  • Ginter’s iPad Pro

    I think the way Josh Ginter is using his iPad Pro at work is great:

    I use a laptop PC at the office with an external monitor, but my desk has a keyboard tray. I don’t want my personal email flooding my work computer, and I have no way of sending iMessages on the laptop. So instead, I put the iPad Pro flat on its back on that keyboard tray and have Messages, Outlook, Slack, and Omnifocus running in Split View throughout the day. If an email comes in, I pull out the keyboard tray, print out any documents to my wireless printer, and tap a quick reply to the email before sliding the keyboard tray back in and getting back to the task at hand. If something comes through Twitter or Slack, same thing: tap a response and get back to work.

    This is kind of genius.

  • More Gun Taxes in Seattle

    This new gun tax in Seattle is great:

    At least some of these new revenues, moreover, will be used to throw a handful of sand into a canyon dug by pro-gun lawmakers at the federal level. Though some portion of the funds will go to research on gun violence, such research is sparse because of a 20 year-old ban on federal research into such violence.

  • Touch ID Is Too Good

    Dr. Drang on the notion that Touch ID is too fast:

    So these “edgy” interface fans want to unlock their phones by pressing the home button, swiping on the “slide to unlock” area, and then putting their thumbs back down on the home button for Touch ID. I’m sure Apple will get on that right away.

    The idea that Touch ID could ever be too fast is moronic.

  • Opting Out

    The greatest control Americans have had over the abusive and pointless security theater of the TSA has been to opt out of body scanners. That has now changed:

    Indeed, the only thing the TSA is alluding to is the fact some passengers will be denied the right to opt-out “in order to safeguard transportation security,” something we know is a sham since the body scanners have a 96% failure rate.

    I highly doubt that I have anything to personally worry about. But if I were — and I’m guessing here — say a person of middle eastern descent, I’m guessing they won’t be allowed to opt out. Which is infuriating to write, but this wreaks of racial profiling. I hope they get their asses handed to them over this.

  • Newsletters in 2015

    Twenty-fifteen started with a trend that was hard to ignore: newsletters were a big thing. I couldn’t for the life of me understand it, and perhaps I still don’t understand it, so I asked many of the people I know who run seemingly successful newsletters and they espouse how amazing they are. Each time I asked someone I felt like they looked at me with disbelief that I don’t see the way.

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  • RNI Films- an App Review

    My takeaway from Erin’s review: this is as close as you can get to Fujifilm, film simulations with filters.

  • Powered by WordPress, Proudly or Not

    Don Melton on moving to WordPress:

    What I really needed was a publishing system easily accessible from anywhere — even mobile devices — to quickly create and deploy content. Which is the whole point of having a blog that people want to read.

    See, I just don’t understand people who bother using non-Wordpress blogging platforms.

  • The Future of Computing Is in These Three Computers

    The three computers I am talking about are: iPad Pro, Surface Pro 4 / Surface Book, and MacBook (12” retina model). You probably suspected the first two given what I have been focused on of late, but that last one you might be questioning. Allow me some context before you label me as having lost my mind for claiming the MacBook is a part of the future of computing.

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  • Fujifilm X100T- a Camera Review

    Erin Brooks on the camera she stole from me:

    It’s so easy to use. Even not knowing all of the technical rules about cameras and photography, a person would be able to get fabulous shots using this camera. There aren’t a lot of settings that I need to tinker with, so I can have a basic understanding of how a camera works, and get the shot quickly, without much thought toward the set-up.

    I miss my camera…

  • THE BROOKS REVIEW’S WEEK IN REVIEW FOR 12-11-2015

    I sent out a newsletter containing all the links and a general thought for this week. I am going to move to this approach instead of posting links on the site when I come across them. I’m not sure Friday is the right day, but it’s the day for this week.

    The link above will give you the web version of the newsletter, you can subscribe to the newsletter here.

  • The Microsoft Surface Pro 4

    At the end of November I concluded with a post about how I was going to be all in on the iPad Pro and use it as my primary work machine. And then, as I was looking through Apple’s News app, I started to see a lot of people talking about the Surface Pro 4 versus the iPad Pro. The Surface Pro line has always intrigued me, and by all accounts many thought the Surface Pro 4 was the culmination of all of Microsoft’s work, and done very well at that.

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  • Standard’s Carry-on Backpack

    Note: This backpack was sent to me by Standard Luggage for the purpose of writing this review. Also all photo credits go to my wife, Erin Brooks, she’s way better than I am.

    I remember when I was a freshman in college, my sister (she was still in high school at the time) made it to state finals for track — which meant she was competing in eastern Washington. I took a long weekend and travelled out with my family for the two nights. I packed a almost-full duffel bag.

    Sounds like a reasonable amount of gear, right? It would be, except the bag I packed in was 72 liters. Mean it was huge and I basically packed for a weekend in it. ((Funny enough, this worked out great as a rain storm moved in and I was the only one with clothing for such an event — and extra clothing for my dad to borrow. Still though…))

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  • Ulysses Beta

    Sign up to get on the beta for the iPhone and iPad Pro. It’s really great.

  • iPad Pro vs. Surface Pro 4 Comparison

    I’ve given The Verge a lot of shit over the years, but this video is basically the most helpful comparison I have seen on the two devices.

  • The Tom Bihn Daylight Briefcase

    Since I became a rather loud MacBook only user, I’ve been seeing people asking on Twitter, and asking me directly, which shoulder bag is the best for a MacBook. I really didn’t have any good answers because I rarely use shoulder bags, and because I didn’t have any small enough not to be silly for the MacBook.

    There’s a lot of good looking options out there, but I wanted to be able to test something affordable for a change. So I reached out to Tom Bihn and asked if I could stop by to test out a few different bags, and possibly swipe one for a while to test out.

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