The Brooks Review

Author: Ben Brooks

  • Filson Washed Feather Cloth Shirts

    Filson Washed Feather Cloth Shirts

    I have long ignored this line of Filson shirts, not understanding why it might be good or why it might be popular. After deciding I wanted to look a little more put together for hiking, or when wearing clothes for working in the yard, I started thinking more about this shirt. Then I read David Coggins raving about how he loves this shirt, and I decided I needed one.

    I picked up one second hand, then another, and then Filson put them on sale, so I got another. It turns out, there’s a reason people love these, and that reason is that this shirt is very comfortable and very durable.

    I own both the long and short sleeve variants of Filson’s Washed Feather Cloth shirt, the only difference is the sleeve length. (This review is for the washed variants, the previous variant was not labeled as ‘washed’, but the material was the same.)

    (more…)

  • Gear Report 11/6/24

    Gear Report 11/6/24

    This week: thoughts on some Rolling Square gear; and some new products I have in for testing.

    You must be a member to read the rest of this article. (Already a member? Log In.)

  • GORUCK’s Early Bird Sale

    GORUCK’s Early Bird Sale

    Some insane deals from GORUCK have already started. GR1s and GR2s to be had just below and just over $200, depending on the fabric choice. A true bargain.

  • Member Journal — 11/4/24

    Member Journal — 11/4/24

    *Fucking vote.*

    This week: talking about why you wear a watch; I also try to offend every watch owner in one single section.

    You must be a member to read the rest of this article. (Already a member? Log In.)

  • Mystery Ranch Radix 31

    Mystery Ranch Radix 31

    Note: this bag was provided for review.

    When I first saw the Radix line of bags, I was sold — but I was living somewhere where I didn’t go hiking. When I moved to Colorado, I thought I should get one, but wanted to wait and see what I might need. Well, I now have a Radix 31 in to review, and I’ll just say this now: it’s my favorite hiking bag.

    Here’s what the Radix line is to me: it takes the concept of ultralight backpack bags, attaches a real harness to the bag for carrying weight and doubles down on that by adding a stellar internal frame.

    Mystery Ranch absolutely nailed this bag.

    (more…)

  • Member Journal — 10/29/24

    Member Journal — 10/29/24

    This week: observations on working at companies of different sizes.

    You must be a member to read the rest of this article. (Already a member? Log In.)

  • Triple Aught Design Astral VR Shell

    Triple Aught Design Astral VR Shell

    Note: this item was provided for review.

    Roughly six years ago, after being drenched from an unforecasted storm while waiting for a commuter bus, I decided that I would always have a lightweight rain shell with me going forward. I’ve carried dozens, while trying to find the right mix of light weight, good quality, and performant. That’s exactly the type of scenario the Triple Aught Design Astral VR Shell was designed for.

    It’s silly light, and surprisingly good.

    (more…)

  • Gear Report — 10/23/24

    Gear Report — 10/23/24

    This week: gear I have loved for a long time, and want to remind you about.

    You must be a member to read the rest of this article. (Already a member? Log In.)

  • Triple Aught Design Ranger Jacket LT

    Triple Aught Design Ranger Jacket LT

    This item was provided by Triple Aught Design for review.

    Perhaps this is because I was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, but a good fleece jacket feels like a wardrobe staple — a must own. Growing up, it was always the classics — we wore them for everything, all day, from hiking to dates. At some point fleece jackets shifted into wild hybrid rain jacket things, which lost some of the classic look, but they’ve always held a spot in my heart. I love wearing them.

    Which is why I was pretty excited to check out the Triple Aught Design Ranger Jacket LT. I’ve heard nothing but great things about this jacket, but I had no idea what to expect. My first impression of this jacket was: wow this feels really nice.

    This jacket gets better each time I wear it.

    (more…)

  • Member Journal — 10/21/24

    Member Journal — 10/21/24

    This week: crafting a great workspace for, erm, work.

    ## A Comfortable and Performant Place to Work

    It’s been a while since I talked about office setups — since COVID when I mostly was talking about getting good quality lighting for the endless fucking video calls we spent our lives on. Anyways, since moving to Boulder I have encountered one of the hardest home office setups of all: a dark office. I have not had an office this dark since 2015, and to put that into perspective, that’s when I switched to iPad Pro full time, and when the iPad Pro was new. So it’s been a bit.

    I’ve been fortunate through the remainder of the houses I’ve lived in that there’s been fantastic light pouring into the office spaces I worked in — good natural light can make all the difference to the quality of your space.

    It’s been five months of me working through this, struggling, and finally piecing together a solid setup. So, rather than talk about the specific gear I used to do this, I thought I would talk about how I craft a home office which is cozy, and great to work in.

    ### Philosophy & Goal

    Let’s start with the philosophy and the goal side, as not everyone shares the same things here. Perhaps your goal is to keep as small a footprint as possible, or to craft the most Instragrammable space — there’s no wrong goal. Likewise perhaps your philosophy is strict minimalism, or perhaps you thrive in the chaos of things around you — what works for one doesn’t work for all.

    Which is to say, most of this is only helpful if you also agree with my philosophy and goals for the setup.

    You must be a member to read the rest of this article. (Already a member? Log In.)

  • ‘Why you should skip the M4 Macs and switch to an iPad Pro instead’

    ‘Why you should skip the M4 Macs and switch to an iPad Pro instead’

    Thiago Trevisan for iOS Central:

    The iPad Pro hardware can certainly have you racing down the highway of productivity, but then you hit a bottleneck: iPadOS. iPadOS just isn’t designed for daily production on a larger scale, but Apple has carefully curated a suite of apps that are designed specifically with iPad Pro users in mind to make it a valuable tool in smaller instances.

    I am biased towards favoring the iPad for everything. However, I think the iPad is at a critical disadvantage for current and future computing, namely because of it’s limited hardware performance specs when compared to Macs for what LLMs need to run efficiently (and quickly).

    The fastest M4 iPad Pro you can buy is:

    • 10-core CPU with 4 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores
    • 10-core GPU
    • Hardware-accelerated ray tracing
    • 16-core Neural Engine
    • 120GB/s memory bandwidth
    • 16GB RAM

    MacBook Pro M3:

    • 16-core CPU with 12 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores
    • 40-core GPU
    • Hardware-accelerated ray tracing
    • 16-core Neural Engine
    • 400GB/s memory bandwidth
    • Up to 128GB RAM

    Yes, the prices are not even remotely on the same planet, but the current top-tier open source LLMs are hungry for GPU processing and RAM. Two areas where the iPad Pro just is not a beast on the specs. (There are companies, likely also Apple, working to offload more of these models to the CPU, but as of right now this is a GPU game.)

    I get all the past complaints and why iPad or Mac — but right now, I would be buying based on what can run local LLMs on the fastest. Which is decidedly not the iPad Pro.

  • ‘Thinking Like an AI’

    ‘Thinking Like an AI’

    Ethan Mollick writing in his newsletter, One Useful Thing:

    But the LLM does not just produce one token, instead, after each token, it now looks at the entire original sentence plus the new token (“The best type of pet is a dog”) and predicts the next token after that, and then uses that whole sentence plus the next to make a prediction, and so on. It chains one token to another like cars on a train. Current LLMs can’t go back and change a token that came before, they have to soldier on, adding word after word. This results in a butterfly effect. If the first predicted token was the word “dog” than the rest of the sentence will follow on like that, if it is “subjective” then you will get an entirely different sentence. Any difference between the tokens in two different answers will result in radically diverging responses.

    Entire post is an excellent read.

  • New York Times Tells Perplexity to ‘Cease and Desist’ From Content Scraping

    New York Times Tells Perplexity to ‘Cease and Desist’ From Content Scraping

    Alexandra Bruell, for The Wall Street Journal:

    The publisher has sent generative-AI startup Perplexity a “cease and desist” notice demanding that the firm stop accessing and using its content, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

    (more…)

  • Benchmade Taggedout Carbon Fiber

    Benchmade Taggedout Carbon Fiber

    If you see the images of this, and you think it is a supped up Bugout, then you get partial credit. Benchmade claims they used the Bugout for inspiration to make the Taggedout, which is an ultralight, backcountry hunting knife. There are three versions of this knife:

    • Orange Grivory Handle, CPM-154, 2.1oz for $200 MSRP
    • OD GReen G10, CPM-S45VN, 2.889oz for $300 MSRP
    • Carbon Fiber, CPM-Magnacut, 2.44oz for $375 MSRP

    I am reviewing only the Carbon Fiber model, as I am now a Magnacut snob. Unlike many other manufacturers, Benchmade has taken to charging a premium for their Magnacut blades, however they do try to add to the premium-ness with things like Carbon Fiber Scales, paint, and other additions.

    There is no getting around the fact that you pay $175 more for a heavier knife with a better steel.

    (more…)

  • Montana Knife Company Magnacut Blackfoot 2.0

    Montana Knife Company Magnacut Blackfoot 2.0

    The knife community has fallen in love with Montana Knife Company, and their plethora of knife designs. All of that love makes the knives impressively hard to get — with new releases selling out faster than most can checkout. (This of course leads to a lot of flipping in eBay.) I’ve been looking a lot at fixed blade knives lately, and I was able to buy a Magnacut Blackfoot 2.0 second hand for a great price.

    It’s quite a knife.

    (more…)

  • Member Journal — 10/14/24

    Member Journal — 10/14/24

    This week: looking at some of the tech stacks I use at home; and some of the non-iPad compute I have in my home office.

    You must be a member to read the rest of this article. (Already a member? Log In.)

  • Screen Recording Changes in macOS

    Screen Recording Changes in macOS

    John Gruber asks:

    Why in the world didn’t Apple take regular use of a screen-recording app into account all along?

    I think this is the question you ask when you have not used a Corporate Mac in the last 4-5 years. For those who are, you know that companies install applications which take screenshots and screen recordings of certain or all activities being done on the Mac. You know, for security.

  • Mystery Ranch Rip Ruck 24

    Mystery Ranch Rip Ruck 24

    This item was provided by Mystery Ranch for review.

    The Mystery Ranch Rip Ruck series have been all over stores for ages, but the latest revision of the line brings the Rip Ruck 24 — which has a unique design and style for an EDC bag and a sweet spot for capacity. I was sent the ’ponderosa’ color, and it’s been a fantastic, if quirky to use.

    (more…)

  • Gear Report — 10/9/24

    Gear Report — 10/9/24

    This week: current flashlight carry; and some new items.

    You must be a member to read the rest of this article. (Already a member? Log In.)

  • Laek Adventure Towels

    Laek Adventure Towels

    Note: Laek provided these towels for review.

    A little talked about fact in my house: I don’t use your standard bath towel when I shower, instead (since 2017) I’ve been using various towels from hiking/camping offerings to Outlier’s Grid Linen towels. I keep a single thought about this stuff in my head: if certain items are so good for travel/adventure/camping, then why are we not using them at home?

    It never made sense to me, so I often try out these products at home, as a way of benchmarking how good they actually are. Laek’s Adventure Towels are no exception — I’ve been using them as my primary towels here at home for weeks now.

    They are like a chamois for your body, and they are as weird to use after a shower as that statement makes them sound, and yet highly effective towels. I’m not sure I can go back to my other towels…

    (more…)