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Tascam DR-03 Review: Best Cheap Portable Recorder vs. Smartphone

Posted on January 8, 2026January 8, 2026 by Drew G. Rosen

When I bought my Tascam DR-03 used at Goodwill for $22, I knew it was a great value: a portable solid state recorder that still holds its own almost 17 years after its release.

Unexpected bonus: The previous owner had left a 2GB SD card inside. When I hit play, I wasn’t just hearing audio; I was transported.

First, it was a lady practicing piano. Then, a clip of a preacher talking about God in what sounded like a cavernous hall. And even a psychology class in some lecture hall at the University of Unknown.

My voyeuristic side kicked in, and I listened. But what struck me most wasn’t what was recorded, but how it sounded.

It was spatial.

Unlike a flat phone recording that tries to isolate voice and kill the background, the Tascam’s stereo condenser mics capture the room. I could hear the silence between the piano notes. I could hear the echo of the preacher’s voice bouncing off the walls. It gave the audio dimension…like being there.

The $15 Cure for Nighttime Distraction: Westclox Baby Ben Review

Posted on January 5, 2026January 7, 2026 by Drew G. Rosen

My nightstand used to look like the return bin at Best Buy.

It was a tangle of cables: a watch charger, a phone charger, a Kindle, and an open bottle of water balancing precariously in the middle. But the centerpiece of this clutter was always the phone. It sat there, glowing and vibrating, demanding to be checked one last time.

The breaking point wasn’t a work emergency. It was a pickleball paddle.

I reached through the wire nest at 11:15 PM to check my calendar. I saw a game scheduled for after work, which reminded that I had seen an ad for a paddle earlier in the day. That led to a Google search for a Tesla-created paddle, which spiraled into a 20-minute deep dive on a forum about aerodynamics and Elon Musk.

I lost sleep and sanity to a rabbit hole that only existed because I allowed my phone to sleep next to my head.

The solution wasn’t to organize the cables and tuck them into the alarm clock charger. It was to remove them entirely.

Ping Minimalism: Stop Notification Overload and Reclaim Your Focus

Posted on December 31, 2025January 8, 2026 by Drew G. Rosen

Another notification. Another context switch. Another three minutes of your life, gone.

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably googled something like “how to stop notifications from ruining my life” or “why can’t I focus anymore.” You’ve read the digital detox guides. You’ve been told to “just unplug.” And you’ve probably thought the same thing I did:

That’s not realistic for someone with a job.

I can’t go dark. Neither can you. Our bosses expect responses. Our clients expect availability. Our kids’ schools need to reach us when someone throws up in the cafeteria.

So here’s the thing: Ping Minimalism isn’t about silence. It’s about triage.

Think of it like an ER doctor. When patients roll in, they don’t all get seen immediately. The guy with the paper cut waits. The woman having a heart attack does not. Your notifications deserve the same treatment.

This guide will show you exactly how to implement notification triage—so you can actually finish a thought, ship real work, and stop feeling like a trained seal responding to digital bells.

Kodak Charmera Review: The Blind Box Digicam That Fits on Your Keys

Posted on December 28, 2025December 30, 2025 by Drew G. Rosen

We live in an era of 48-megapixel phone sensors and AI-computational photography that fixes our skin before we even press the shutter. Everything is sharp. HDR-balanced. Basically, everyone is a perfect photographer.

Frankly, it’s boring.

The Kodak Charmera is some temporary relief. It’s a tiny, $30 camera sold in a “blind box.” You don’t know which of the 7 retro designs you’re getting until you lift the packaging. It shoots grainy photos that look like they were taken in the mid-2000s. And that is exactly why you need one.

Casio AE-1300WH Review: The $40 Pomodoro Technique Machine

Posted on December 27, 2025December 27, 2025 by Drew G. Rosen

I have tried every “Focus Timer” on the App Store. Forest, Session, Pomofocus, generic countdowns: they all share the same fatal flaw: They live on my phone.

To check how much time is left in my creative writing sprint, I have to wake up a device that contains my email, the endless possibilities of AI, and countless notifications. It is similar to trying to be gluten-free while holding a soy sesame bagel. The tool for focus is housed inside the machine of distraction.

Enter the Casio AE-1300WH.

It looks like the famous Casio Royale (AE-1200), but the internals are completely different. While the Royale is designed for “travelers” (world maps), the 1300 is designed for referees and coaches. It is an interval training engine. And by accident, it is the perfect wrist-mounted Pomodoro machine.

Whoop 5.0 Long-Term Review: The Fitness Tracker for People Who Hate Being Tracked

Posted on December 26, 2025January 2, 2026 by Drew G. Rosen

This review is for people who want health data without turning their wrist into another screen.

As a marketing exec and passionate creative, I live a data-driven life. I have dashboards for spend, spreadsheets for ROI, and analytics for this very blog. I might even have a chart for tracking ridiculous expenses. Information is everywhere.

Most modern wearables deliver health data like the Vegas Strip: they buzz, they light up, they make demands. They turn your biological metrics into just another notification competing for your awareness.

I need the data, but I despise the distraction.

I have been wearing a Whoop for over five years, recently upgrading to the Whoop 5.0 with EKG. It is a strap. That’s it. No screen. No buttons. No lights.

It creates a boundary that modern tech has forgotten: The data exists, but only when I ask for it.

No More Laptop: My reMarkable 2 Evernote Workflow for Meetings

Posted on December 24, 2025December 25, 2025 by Drew G. Rosen

My day job has me in meetings, lots and lots of meetings. A few years ago, I looked around the conference room and realized something depressing: everyone was multitasking. And even if they weren’t, the illumination of the laptop screen made them look like they were.

When you open a laptop in a meeting, you are signaling partial attention. Even if you are taking notes aggressively, the speaker will likely assume the worst. You aren’t present. You are emailing a coworker or a friend.

I needed a way to lower the barrier without losing the data. I needed a “Safe Mode” protocol to make me feel a bit more human.

SanDisk Sansa e280: The Blue Ring Time Machine

Posted on December 23, 2025December 25, 2025 by Drew G. Rosen

I dug my old Sansa e280 out of an unmarked cardboard box under the steps in my basement ready to laugh at my 2006/2007 music preferences. I plugged it in, hoping for five minutes of battery life, and scrolled past the albums—Taking Back Sunday, Rise Against, Ke$ha. It was a perfect mid-00s fossil.

Then I found a folder labeled RECORDINGS.

Inside weren’t songs. They were “Audio Blogs” I recorded many years ago with travel writers I used to work with. And underneath those was a file simply dated from a Tuesday in 2010. I hit play.

It was my old Shiba Inu. Barking, crying, being a puppy. Kenji passed away early this year, yet there he was again, transmitted through a scratchy internal microphone on a $200 MP3 player. I sat there with wired headphones, listening to my “good boy.” I’m not sure a cloud backup from the 00s would have survived this long. But the Sansa did.

AlphaSmart NEO2 Review: The $95 Distraction-Free Writer’s Deck

Posted on December 22, 2025January 2, 2026 by Drew G. Rosen

I didn’t buy the AlphaSmart because I needed another keyboard. I bought it because I needed to stop editing sentences before I finished writing them.

Writing on a modern laptop is an exercise in self-defense. You are constantly fighting off notifications, email pings, and the urge to “just quickly check” a fact, which inevitably leads to a 20-minute deep plunge into the history of the spork.

I wanted a “Writer’s Deck”—a dedicated machine that does exactly one thing: captures words. Now that my short-story collection is out, I need all the focus I can get to complete my novel.

I stalked eBay for weeks, ignoring the beat-up units formerly used by school districts. I waited for an immaculate AlphaSmart NEO2 that looked untouched, complete with a fresh internal backup battery (important for memory storage) and a working USB cable. When one popped up for $95, I didn’t hesitate.

Fujifilm FinePix Z90 Review: The $70 CCD Time Capsule

Posted on December 21, 2025January 5, 2026 by Drew G. Rosen

I admit it. I fell down the rabbit hole.

I wasn’t just looking for a camera. I was hunting for the secret sauce that has made a recent comeback: the CCD sensor.

For the uninitiated, CCD sensors are the tech world’s equivalent of vinyl records. They render colors in a way that feels thick, warm, and distinctly not like a smartphone. But finding one in 2025 usually means buying a bulky brick that requires its own carrying case.

I didn’t want a project. I wanted something I could slide into my pocket or hang from my bag.

I stumbled onto the FinePix Z90 on eBay late one night. It was sitting in that awkward teenage phase of technology—released in 2011, right when cameras were desperately trying to be smartphones. It had a touchscreen. It had a sliding lens cover. It looked like a prop from a Y2K sci-fi movie that got the future slightly wrong.

I hit “Buy It Now” before I could talk myself out of it.