Category: Articles

Note (3/10/21): The maker of this lived just south of Kyiv, Ukraine. He evacuated from the area after the war started, and thus currently is not able to sell/ship things. I wish him the best.

A little while ago ‘Walkman Backpacks’, a seller on eBay, released a laptop sleeve which is made to be installed into the Mystery Ranch ASAP — my favorite backpack. I had held off getting one while I waited to hear from a few I know who had them. I finally gave in, as the Aer Tech Folio I had been using, started to feel a little cumbersome.

I reached out to Igor, the seller, directly and had him make me standard laptop sleeve, but also a custom Admin Pouch with a hook back for it. They all came in a while back and I have fallen in love with this setup, and it’s proven versatile too. Let’s dive in…

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I snagged this during a recent sale from Grey Ghost Gear as I had been wanting to check this particular pouch out. My primary reason is it being a vertical orientation, but also I’ll admit that the chem light holders on it are another large draw — I love some chem lights.

It’s a mixed bag for me with this pouch.

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This week: overloading my EDC to cope with stress; protecting your iPad and other devices; and small bits on the Axiom 24, GSHOCK GA2100, and Ricoh GR IIIx.

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I recently received this stand as a gift, and it is supremely good. So we are going to dive right in. This a simple stand for the iPad Pro models (two different stands for the two different models) which allows you to magnetically connect your iPad to the stand — it raises your iPad up a little more, and allows a lot of different angles and articulation for the device.

It is one of my favorites.

Or, you can buy it here and see for yourself.

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I had managed to sleep through the first version of this knife coming out, but not this version as it was posted in the member Discord — a dangerous place to be most days. As soon as I saw this, I struggled to pick the color and blade I would want. But ended up getting the fully blacked out Hogue Deka (gen 2) with the wharncliffe blade.

This is one of my favorite pocket knives.

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Roam around the flashlight world long enough and you see people express a lot of love for Zebralight flashlights. I never gravitated towards them, as I don’t find them to look particularly good — but when you own enough flashlights you get to a point where you know you need to try one. You know you need to find out why this matters.

I hit that point.

I grabbed the SC64w HI, and have been using it for a bit now. I get it. I see why people like these lights. They are far from perfect, but they do a lot really well.

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I put this post idea down last August, little did I know then that the weather this winter would be insane, a major volcano would erupt in the Pacific causing many tsunami warnings, and oh tornados — doesn’t bode well for the summer fire/hurricane seasons if you ask me to extrapolate from unrelated events. Anyways, this isn’t a listing of gear in my bags, but rather updates to my thinking about each bag, the needs for the bags, as well as other odds and ends of that nature.

The big thing heading into 2022 is my shifting focus and thinking around which bag I prioritize, and focusing more directly on the most likely, instead of the most terrifying needs. Which is surprisingly hard for me personally to do.

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I’ve managed to standardize on two bags I rotate between for heading to the office day to day. Back in October of 2021 I told members about this setup, and it’s still my setup, so it’s time to go a little deeper on this, why these two bags, why two bags, and how I shift between them.

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I wrote about the Emisar D4SV2 recently, and the channel switching setup I have on that light. Shortly after that light came out, the smaller D4V2 had tint ramping / channel switching added to it — I quickly purchased a setup to provide a massive tint range: 2000k to 5000k.

This light is amazing, and one of my favorites.

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This isn’t my typical knife. When I go looking at knives I tend to focus on what I think I would use, and what I am likely to like the best — which means I buy a lot of knives that are increasingly similar to each other. Not a bad thing if you know what you like.

This knife, the WE Knife Co. Arsenal Frame Lock Knife in Gray Titanium/Green G-10 was a holiday gift from my parents and I have to say — not what I would have bought myself, but I am very glad to have it. This knife surprised me a lot.

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A few people might notice in some pictures of my flashlights that there’s spots of a green-white-yellow colored thing in different spots. This is the Glow Tape — which is a roll of glow in the dark tape. It’s really great stuff, and has an unreal amount of glow from just a little bit of light and a little bit of the tape itself.

You need this, but in case you need more convincing for $8, here’s how I use it.

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I am a big fan of the Emisar D4V2, but it has a larger sibling, the D4SV2 which is a chonky beast of a light that takes a beastly battery. I grabbed one as it was among the first ‘hank light’ to get the new channel switching / tint ramping version of Anduril in it. Let’s talk about both this light (it’s great) and the new tint/channel switching setups (it’s even greater).

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At the end of January last year, I started tracking the gear I used the most. Flashlights, knives, bags, and watches. And shortly thereafter I added in tracking my wears of different clothing. And throughout the year I’ve done a good job of logging all this stuff everyday.

I did this all in Numbers, as it presented an easy way to record the data, as well as to chart/analyze the data. There’s other tools for this, but this is what I went with. The downside of this is that I am recording raw counts, and nothing with dates associated with things. There’s also the issue that I don’t record the things I wear to work out in, or my clothes I wear when I head to bed at the end of the day.

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