Top Posts
The best shit of 2025.
Just in time for end of year sales, The Best List for 2025 has been published for members. The sections are expanded, while trying to keep it concise. A lot of turmoil this year, so go check it out.
2024’s list is now free for all, and you can see past years here.
A fantastic car, no one should own.
Gear Patrol has a great ode to the Range Rover P38, and as someone who owned a 1998 model year 4.6HSE for a long time I can concur — this is a fantastic vehicle.
But there’s a caveat.
The caveat is that these epitomize the Land Rover stigma of always being in the shop, and thus needing two. In fact, when I met my wife, I had this generation Range Rover — she had to drive me to and from the shop so much, that I am henceforth banned from owning another Land Rover.
That said, these are just a beast of a vehicle. They drive like a tank, they are fantastic off roaders, and smooth on the road. The interior is obnoxiously comfortable, and they have loads of space. I once drove this through 12-14” in snow and ice up a hill without the car flinching while others slid back down. Confidence inspiring.
The V8 is mated to a 4-speed, which is not the smoothest, as it struggles with gearing at modern highway speeds, with constant shifting issues to keep the power in-band.
So, I do think the P38 is stellar, but I also would advise you not own one. Like, at all. Unless it’s a second car you never need to rely on, whether day to day, or on a trip of any kind. It never left me stranded, but I still have error codes and multi-thousand dollar invoices burned into my head.
Top tips and learnings from my home server usage this last year.
It’s been about a year now since I went really deep on my home server setup, replacing a lot of what I used to pay for with open source, self-hosted, systems which sit right next to me in the office. So I thought I would take a moment to talk through some of the software, and the hardware — what worked well and what didn’t.
Looking back at the year of gear.
This was an interesting year for gear in a lot of ways — so I thought I would wrap up the year commenting on different gear categories and how they felt over 2025. In some ways there’s a lot of good out there, but in far too many other ways, it was disappointing.
I’ll go category by category.
What an amazing looking and feeling shirt, which fails the odor test.
I was looking to hit a free shipping minimum and tossed in a 50th Anniversary Edition of the Wickron Long Sleeve Tee from Montbell — this is their standard active material which can be found in many variants across the lines of clothing Montbell sells. I’ve been using it for many weeks now, and thought I’d share some quick thoughts.
Generally, there’s better options on the market than this.
Save money, buy cool watches.
Vero has a great sale for the holiday, including my favorite The Smokey Bear Campfire Edition (Review.)
Buy some for everyone.
Solid savings from Benks on the best cases I’ve found and the only cases I use.
A fun game, now on sale.
Note: this game was sent to me for review.
This is a fun backyard/outdoor game, and it’s 25% off today.
Feels like one of those games my kids will decide to play for a while, make up completely new rules for and keep playing — and onward with the cycle. Good stuff.
I still do not understand how this is priced so low, but it’s a hell of a good deal.
I’ve written a fair amount now about Yoshida & Co’s Porter line of bags, and once you start diving down that rabbit hole, you’ll quickly find that Uniqlo makes some bags which look awfully similar to Tanker bags, but at a price well under $50. Which is crazy. I picked up the Uniqlo 2Way Utility Bag in Japan to see if the bag is any good and how it compares.
I am very torn. This is decidedly not up to quality standards of Porter, and it’s lacking some of the better Porter features. The design is very similar to Porter, and I loathe copies when I buy stuff. That said, for the price, this is a very good bag to buy. I suspect most people will see this well before they see the Tanker Helmet and Tote bags it is copying.
So floppy.
Believe it or not, this is one Ruck I’ve never had from GORUCK. I’ve ordered one.
My favorite slippers, now even better.
Note: this item was provided for review.
I’ve been wearing my last pair of Kyrgies daily, so when they offered to send over the Bishkek Kicks, I was very excited to get them. I’ve been wearing them a couple of weeks now, and I am very happy with them. A little different than the slippers I had before, but in most ways a lot better too.
