The Brooks Review

Category: Articles

  • iPad Productivity Report — 5/15/17

    This past week I spent a couple days at a conference, nothing out of the ordinary, except for whatever reason I started to inventory the devices people were using and trying to pick up on how they were using their devices. (This is also usually the part when I start to tweetstorm about force quitting apps.)

    I think the most absurd of the bunch I observed was a blogger using a 13″ MacBook Pro, an iPhone, and a small point and shoot camera. From what I could tell the main apps being used were: Chrome for Wordpress, Slack, and Photos. The workflow was simple: take some notes in a Wordpress draft, chat in Slack, and take photos of the presenter with the camera, transfer those images to the Mac and upload to Wordpress for an eventual blog post.

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  • Death Wish Coffee

    Yes, this is a post about coffee, which is among the most annoying of topics on generally tech focused blogs. But, let now assure you that I am not a pretentious coffee drinker, I use a Keurig and I fucking love it — so yeah.

    Anyways, a coworker posted a link to this Buzzfeed video of their staff drinking “Death Wish Coffee”, it’s great. I quipped that it looked great, and if it comes in K-Cups, I’d get it to try. And of course seconds later my coworkers delivered, because of course it comes in K-cups.

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  • First Look, Arcido Faroe (video)

    Get it [here](https://www.arcido.com/products/faroe).

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  • iPad Productivity Report — 5/8/17

    This week, I want to talk about images for the internet — when you have an iPad Pro and nothing else. Specifically, I want to dive into how I prep images for blog posts, and how I share a link to an image on services which don’t support native image embedding.

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  • Tim Cook’s CEO Status

    Common argument: Tim Cook should be replaced as CEO, because something something negative about innovation at Apple, or not understanding products. If you ask them who should be CEO, there’s never an answer.

    When I called for Steve Ballmer to be ousted from Microsoft, I did so by showing a series of charts reflecting the stock value of the company — the metric by which CEOs are judged (rightly or wrongly). With Ballmer it was basically maintaining a steady and boring course.

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  • A Pen Video

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  • Streamlining my Day to Day Wardrobe

    When I wrote my series of articles on the gear I use to travel light, I ended it with an even stronger affinity towards the gear I use when I travel. In almost every case this clothing was better than the clothing I wear on a normal day.

    Let’s just take the most basic of all wardrobe items: jeans. For many of you reading this post, jeans are probably right up there with with a t-shirt as a core thing you wear almost everyday (if not everyday), and something you also feel exceedingly comfortable in.

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  • iPad Productivity Report — 5/1/17

    Today I want to talk about typography — or more specifically how to get better typography on your iPad. One of the biggest stumbling blocks for people who care about typography, but want to use iOS, is that it is not very clear how, or if, you can get the typefaces you love on to the iPad. Clever apps like Ulysses, allow you to send it any font file and the app will make it a part of the fonts you can choose from — it’s handy if all you care about is seeing your favorite writing typeface in the world’s best writing app.

    But what about if you want to do some print design, or even use the corporate typefaces in Pages and such?

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  • Folsom & Skinth (video)

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  • The XTS Titanium Pocket Pen + Stylus

    A while back I snagged the XTS Titanium Pocket Pen from Big Idea Design as a potential replacement for the Fisher Bullet Space Pen I normally travel with. The appeal to me was that it looks about the same, is about the same size, but uses a much better Pilot G2 insert instead of the space pen insert (I really don’t love those). It also looks non-stupid, which is how I more or less describe the bullet look.

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  • iPad Productivity Report — 4/24/17

    As I mentioned a [couple weeks ago](https://brooksreview.net/2017/04/ipad-report-41017/), I have been experimenting with the idea of using only *one* of my iPad Pros ((hashtag firstworld problems)) instead of both interchangeably. ((Hashtag jfc)) Of course for me that is settling on the larger 12.9″ iPad Pro and the tradeoffs which come with that device.

    Over this test period I’ve found that I use only the 12.9″ iPad Pro about 90% of the time. There are simply still times when a smaller iPad is very useful — with book reading being the primary reason I prefer the smaller iPad Pro. Aside from that, the vast majority of my usage has been on the larger iPad Pro, and I peg it at 90% (knowing that is being overly generous to the smaller iPad Pro).

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  • Finding a Flashlight Part Three: Flashy Lights

    So far I have covered flashlights to depend on with your life, and flashlights to always have on your person. Now I want to go over all the other flashlights I purchased to test, which don’t really fit into either of those other two categories. And a few other lights which are on my radar, but have not found their way to my office (yet).

    All these lights run the gambit of uses, and looks, and while some could fit into the two categories I already wrote about, for one reason or another I didn’t feel they fit well enough for my criteria. So here we find ourselves, with the poorly named: Flashy Lights edition.

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  • iPad Productivity Report — 4/17/17

    It’s no secret to long time readers that I have given up on most Kickstarter products. It frustrates me when an already established company uses the service to launch another product — especially when that product is already a part of their core mix (bag company launching another bag, stand company launching another stand, etc) — to me that feels like wanting all the rewards of a successful product without taking any risk. I am equally leery of new companies because I’ve been burned far too many times by people who have the best of intentions and lack all other skills.

    However, there is one good thing about Kickstarter: it shows you what people want. Create a project, get a prototype, put it on Kickstarter (or Indiegogo, I am using those interchangeably here) and you’ll instantly know if there is a market for your product. With that in mind, I searched both services with the phrase “iPad Pro”.

    Oh my.

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  • Maxpedition EDC Mini Pouch

    One of the bigger trends on everyday carry blogs is the emergence of pouches to carry the increasingly insane amount of shit people seem to think they need. As members will note in my videos, I picked up the Maxpedition Mini Pocket Organizer to test out, and after having used it for quite some time, I have more than a few things to say.

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  • iPad Productivity Report — 4/10/17

    In my attempt to figure out if it is better to use one iPad, or two, I pared back my usage to just the 12.9″ iPad Pro. This included two long plane flights and some on-site client time with just the larger device — as well as over a week of working solely on the larger iPad.

    And my take away from all of that is: this isn’t so bad at all. My biggest fear is that multi-tasking would suffer, as I tended to use my 9.7″ iPad Pro as a secondary display. My ancillary fears were around how well I would like using the larger iPad Pro as my couch computer — a role which had been solely taken up by the smaller iPad.

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  • Back to Safari Reading List

    When Instapaper shit the bed a while back I left for greener pastures of Pinboard — but for whatever reason I began having a ton of issues with the API not working, and thus not being able to update the apps which I rely on for reading.

    This is all maddening. And before you ask: I do not like Pocket.

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  • Wrights Notes

    At the end of January a new notebook company launched, with the idea that they would allow you to specify exactly what you want the notebook to be. I was poking around and noticed that they have a custom option for what is printed on the page.

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  • iPad Productivity Report — 4/3/17

    I am in the middle of a site redesign and after posting a teaser image on Twitter, more than a few readers sent in the same question: how are you doing that on an iPad? It’s actually pretty easy to design a website on an iPad — since there is no build or compile times you have to worry about. However, people still don’t believe me, so I am going to go over how I do this on an iPad Pro. And in the last part of the update this week, I want to talk about how I am consolidating back down to one iPad Pro.

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  • Bose QC35s

    My last pair of noise cancelling headphones was the Bose QC 19s, and I wore them so often that not only was the pleather earpad disintegrating, but I had zip ties holding together various other broken parts. They were a pair of headphones which seemed amazing to me.

    Though the sound isolation, the noise canceling, was never great, it was good enough that I was fine with it. Now fast forward to Christmas 2016 and my father gifted me a pair of QC35s, which is only appropriate since I got the QC 19s from him way back when. I put them on right away and was astonished at how quiet the room was, I didn’t believe it. My dad and family were also impressed.

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  • Right, About VPNs

    If you haven’t heard, the Republican Party pushed through a change which removes the FCC from its ability to oversee how data is used from ISPs. Effectively, this would allow someone like say, Comcast, to legally sell your internet traffic records. Things like: the sites you visit and where you visit them — anything you are doing on the web which isn’t HTTPS will be known and able to be sold. Even with HTTPS where you go is still known by the ISP.

    This is clearly very bad. The only way to now truly maintain internet privacy (once 45 signs this into law) — even at home — is to use a VPN. This fact has not slipped through the eyes of VPN providers.

    Having spent some time using VPNs full time, I need to tell you right now: it sucks. Doesn’t matter what service you use, it’s a lessened experience. The connections are choppy at times, slow at others, and never as fast as your internet connection.

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