Recent Articles

Over the years I’ve referenced what bags I carry when I am out and about with the kids, when they were in diapers I called this my diaper bag, and now that they are out of diapers, but still not self-sufficient, it’s my dad bag. (Some of the older posts: here, here, and here.) The biggest struggle is not which bag, but what size bag you want to use for this purpose, and as the kids get older, I’ve found the decision is not any easier.

(Yes you can get buy without a dad bag, but then you rob yourself of two things: fewer tears, and getting to carry a great bag. So that’s pure madness.)

For those on Reddit, you might find me lurking around many subs and commenting here and there on posts, and I recently have been seeing many posts on this very topic, and frequently still get emails about this. I thought it was about time to write this all down and codify it for more people. So here’s my thoughts on how to choose a good dad bag for yourself, as well as what I use.

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Originally, I was going to post these as separate reviews, but I think they work best together. So be warned that this is three reviews of three knives, all of the same heritage from Bradford Knives.

Bradford’s Guardian line of fixed blades knives are available in four sizes, here I look at the 3, 4, and 5 series of knives. These range from a small everyday blade to larger survival blades. Each of the three blades are among the best fixed blade knives I’ve ever used.

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Ok, hang on now. I know you’ve stuck with me through reading about a lot of random shit, and this seems like yet another. But, this is actually not about anything healthy for you as a person, as much as it is about my beloved Merino Wool shirts. You see, most non-natural deodorants tend to clog up the fabric on merino near the arm pits, and thus reduce performance.

So after a lot of reading and research, it seems that using a natural, non-bar, deodorant causes your merino to not only last longer, but perform better. And that’s a way better selling point if you ask me. But I also don’t want to stink, so in the name of science I’ve tried a few natural deodorants which perform well with Merino to see if they can actually — you know — keep the stink at bay.

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For the majority of the life of this site, I’ve been a staunch OmniFocus user. Detailed and meticulously maintained systems for doing. I didn’t have, nor did I want, a list — I wanted platform from which I launched my projects.

That’s a fancy way of saying I scheduled time — I made tasks — for managing all my other time and my other tasks.

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Let me start by saying: these bikes are for young kids and they are really expensive. But, there’s a reason I am writing about them: they are absurdly good.

I think my daughter was 3 or 4 when we got her a bike. It was a Hello Kitty bike we snagged from Target, a while later we got my youngest a bike at 3, a Minnie Mouse bike from Target. These run somewhere around $100. They are heavy and basically like the bikes I had growing up. In other words, they are what I think of, when I think of “kids bike”.

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I snagged an ENO Billow Air Lounger from REI during a sale, and took it with me camping with 5 young kids and three dads. I wanted to snag a hammock, but then I realized how potentially dangerous that would be as I had visions of kids flipping out of a hammock on the trip, so I stuck with this — it’s basically a ground hammock.

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I’ve been running this site as a “member” supported site since July of 2012. That’s what I call my subscription based, paywall model, a member-site. I’ve tried a lot of different methods to what I charge for, over the years, so I know a thing or two about subscriptions. I’m not selling software, but the consumer mindset on most any recurring payment is similar across the aisles. I’m sure Amazon could tell you some amazing stories about people being unwilling to use ‘Subscribe and Save’, but we are going to have to wait awhile for that TED talk.

When I first started thinking about subscriptions, I had to try and guess at how many people would actually pay for something they previously got for free. I had no clue how to start this guess — there’s basically no good method. Page views and unique visitors seemed like a bad place to look, as did followers on social media. So instead I went to RSS subscribers. I figured they were among the more interested and loyal people. I had about 12,000 RSS subscribers at the time.

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