Recent Articles

Note: this item was provided for review.

For those not aware, most of the major sunglasses brands are owned by two companies. Recently (in the last 5-10 years) there’s been more and more brands popping up which are smaller, independent companies — these brands typically make really exceptional products. Shinzo Tamura is one such brand, based out of Osaka in Japan. They sent over their Namba Slate Sunglasses for me to review.

I wasn’t sure what to expect with these. But what I got is easily the best pair of sunglasses I own, and have ever owned. From the optics, the materials, and the comfort — all outstanding.

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Whenever I talk to people in person, that’s the question I get the most: why are you carrying all this gear and what the heck do you need it for? This is a fair question, and depending on how much I want to engage with the person, I have two answers:

1. It’s just my thing.
2. I like to be prepared.

It’s genuinely very easy to be incredulous when you start looking at everyday carry (EDC) posts and blogs. People are carrying a full pharmacy, or they have an auto-deploying mini-gun strapped their inner thigh and spend a lot of time talking about reducing chaffing from the belt fed rounds. Some people very seriously carry two to three knives. The community loves to quip and quote military sayings that they often don’t understand and only heard in a movie.

It’s a big joke, or so it feels like even to me most of the time.

Every year or so I tend to revisit this topic, to defend why you should carry things, and talk about why I carry these things. I go into specifics about why I carry a bag; a knife; a flashlight; a first aid kit; or whatever else the taste of the moment is.

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Note: this item was provided for review.

A good standard, works for everything, pair of slacks has been hard to come by for me. Often I find the cuts to be too narrow, too low rise, or if they are a higher rise, they have a comically wide leg. I wanted something traditional, well made, and easy to wear.

I found exactly that with the Patrick James Garbadine Flat-Front Slacks — so much so that I really enjoy wearing these out and about.

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I should start this by mentioning that I am not the biggest fan of a tote bag. I get their value, have loads of them, and I do use them often. However, it’s almost always for carrying food stuffs — either home from a grocery store, or to the next Airbnb adventure. Outside of that, I’ve always felt a little awkward with a long handled tote bag.

But, when DSPTCH dropped the Corpsware line, and I saw the Market Tote — I was intrigued enough to pick one up. One of the biggest selling points was the shoulder strap, making this a tote-messenger — it looks sharp too with a cotton fabric.

Unfortunately, in practice, this isn’t a very good bag for many reasons.

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At the start of 2021, Marathon released an ‘Arctic’ variant of their iconic GSAR. A welcomed release from a brand with a lot of history both with the Canadian military and the US Military among many others. The watch community loves to talk about tool watches, which just so happen to be luxury watches — to me they are talking about a Mercedes G-Wagen (the Orange County variants that is). Sure, that can go off road and do cool shit, but that’s certainly not why you buy it.

The GSAR, and Marathon watches generally, are the Jeep Wranglers of the lot — all utility, all tools. I picked this Arctic GSAR up second hand, and have been wearing it a ton.

Bottom line: this is a better watch than I expected, and better than I wanted it to be, but the current pricing makes it a tough sell near MSRP pricing.

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Note: this item was provided for review.

Dressing for summer weather always presents the same problem: there’s not a lot of cool-wearing, but casual pants for men. There’s effectively linen pants and a plethora of “lightweight” variants of standard pants, most of which are hardly lightweight enough. (Which I assume is also why so many men turn to synthetic pants better suited for hiking.) The problem with linen is that it is hard for most men to wear it in an easy going fashion as it can read formal, or quickly be engulfed in creasing — which bothers most people.

Enter these Linen Drawstring Pants from Patrick James, a linen blend ‘easy’ style pant with the perfect toss on to stay cool style, all while keeping the ease of wear like denim is.

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This was a rather unexpected purchase for me — I just so happened to be chatting with the owner of STS, and he was wearing his HD Work Shirt. It looked great on him, and is a rather niche shirt — I needed it, so I ordered one. Once the shirt arrived, I had to hold back ordering another, until I wore the one I bought at least one time — I am slightly practical at times.

After that first wear, I hit order on a second. I’d own more, but they are out of stock in my size in the other colors. And since picking these up, they’ve become a staple shirt for me on the weekends. They are more akin to a really light (but durable) sweatshirt, than they are to a very heavy t-shirt.

That is to say: durable and supremely comfortable. Lounge and work ready.

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I don’t have any clever anecdote, opening, narrative, metaphor, or analogy for you. Apple is a big company, and big companies are hyper-fixated on their stock price, their profits, their growth, and above all else: protecting those three items by any means necessary. This is a universal truth of any company of any substantial size.

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The M4 iPad Pros have been out for a minute now, but I upgraded at the start of the year, and want run through some basics on where the iPad is at right now, and my move from a 13” iPad Pro to an 11” iPad Pro.

The gist of all of this is that this is a damned expensive machine, which is likely to offer very limited utility to anyone with an M2 or newer iPad Pro — and which is still vastly limited by the available software. There is, for diehard iPad lovers like myself, some good things to note here and there.

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