Sunday Serial: The Bagliani Salami, Wineries, and Togethering

Spring break is just about over! I’ve treated myself to a lot of extra calories over the last ten days, so I have some restricting to do! Ahem.

I mentioned Dredge+ last week, and I have been playing the game all week. I just love it. I haven’t felt compelled to play a game this much since Limbo (and Balatro maybe). I described it as a fishing game, which is the grind mechanic you need to do to stay solvent, but it’s not really a fishing game. Lots of descriptions are “Lovecraftian,” and in that vein the game reminds me very much of On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness. I used to play that game on our Mac in the living room with Joe sitting on my lap. What a blast we had. I ran the keyboard but consulted with Joe before each move.

The Bagliani Salami

It occurred to me that while I mention our ongoing love affair with Bagliani’s spicy salami, I never say much more than that. This is because I know nothing about the salami: the provenance, the ingredients, nothing. The red rubber band means it’s spicy. They sell them out of a deli case and by the pound. One of the checkout girls remarked, “you got an extra slimy one” when ringing one up once. My father, an aficionado of these things, has gleefully marveled about the possibility that they’re not legal in the normal sense of the word, as it applies to groceries.

Stokelan Estates Winery

Nothing new here and I’m conflicted about including it here in this week’s post, but we had such a nice visit over break, cementing the primacy of their 2024 Myra as one of our very favorite rosés.

Take Home Goodies from Stokelan Estates Winery

White Horse Winery

Hammonton, NJ, has a tremendous variety of wineries within and just beyond its borders. Rhonda and I tried their oaked Chardonnay after our visit to Stokelan. It was pretty good, although a little tart on my palette. Something in the flavor profile reminded me of Cedar Rose’s Chardonnay.

Togethering

Rhonda and I spent the whole break together, taking Aaron back to school after making Easter dinner on Saturday, and then running errands and finding pleasant diversions.

There are a number of benefits to marriage that people overlook all the time. I have a built-in best friend I can try all kind of experiences with, often negotiated at the very last moment.

That’s me being glib; our relationship surely resembles some others, but is entirely unique. I remarked the other day that while some of the locations have changed, we don’t do anything that different compared to our twenties, when we first met and we’d find places to eat and brew pubs to try, which were new to us back in the late nineties. We’ve known each other for 30 years. You can’t fake that.

I’m very thankful.

Jersey Rosé: Spring Has Sprung

Rhonda and I took flight yesterday to recharge our salami supply at Baglianis, and then rolled up to Medford’s Stokelan Estates winery to split a bottle of one of our favorite rosés from the Outer Coastal Plains. We are happy to report that the flatbread crust at Stokelan is much improved. I directed our entourage to White Horse Winery thereafter, in the spirit of exploration; we thought to visit Tomasello, but the operation was scheduled to close at 5 pm, leaving us little time to browse the stock. White Horse, happily, was open until six, so we were able to review the menu at our leisure and grab a bottle of their barrel-aged Chardonnay.

Outdoor charcuterie board wine glass 2026 04 10.

Outdoor pizza green sauce meat 2026 04 10.

Couple posing outdoors sunny day 2026 04 10.

Stokenlan wines estate winery new jersey 2026 04 10.

📸 Artemis II

Via Stephen Hacket, the Artemis II Flickr album.

Sunday Serial: PCalc, Dredge+ on Apple Arcade, and Living Colour

One of the downsides of having the kids in college is that they don’t really have any time off for Easter. Aaron came home for the weekend with a friend, and we’re scheduled to make the return trip in a couple of hours. Rhonda and I will drive Aaron and a friend back to Rutgers, and then our spring break commences. We made a rib roast for dinner last night, since Joe had to work and we wanted to have dinner without worrying about driving back in the same day. I followed Kenji’s recipe this time, forgoing my usual sous vide method. It came out great.

PCalc

My favorite calculator app for the iPhone has long been Calcbot; it’s the perfect size and design for my elementary needs, and the conversion feature is both useful and thoughtfully designed. Alas, it doesn’t work on the Mac anymore, which saddens me. I just don’t like the official Apple calculator very much.

PCalc is a famously fun calculator for macOS (and iOS), with a gazillion customization features, and a deep set of features for more demanding use cases. The About screen even had a game stuffed into, which was wild; developer James Thompson pushed it out into its own app, though.

Thompson’s blog is a great read, too; he’s shared many great stories about working for Apple as a developer during the switch from OS 9 to Mac OS X, and he wrote the original Dock. That was an exciting time for Mac nerds.

Dredge+ on Apple Arcade

I tried the demo of Dredge a while back on my iPad, but didn’t take the plunge of a purchase; it had a great art style, and simple mechanics, but I didn’t spring for a purchase. I tried it again when it came out on Apple Arcade, and it’s incredibly enjoyable.

In Dredge, you play as a fisherman whose job it is to catch fish, sell them, and use the money to upgrade your boat. There are a gazillion mini-missions that you are tasked with, as well: delivering dredged supplies, catching specific fish, and delivering packages. All of this happens in the backdrop of a story about a mysterious red glow in the sky, and malicious creatures in the water. It feels a bit like the side missions that you encounter in a Zelda game.

Living Colour

I was coming up with material for last weekend’s Sunday Serial, and “Nothingness” by Living Colour came on the HomePod while I was researching. It’s one of my favorite songs by them, and one of my favorite songs of all time. I got to thinking that Living Colour wrote a number of my favorite songs. I remember in high school, our religion teacher tasked us with bringing in an example of a song that represented a certain version of love. I chose “Solace of You” and she agreed that it was a good choice, and exemplar of the kind of love she was talking about.

I listened to Living Colors debut album, “Vivid,” over and over when I was finishing middle school and starting high school. I’d ride around on my Haro BMX bike and listen to the cassette using my walkman. It’s a great album start to finish, and I love their cover of the Talking Heads “Memories Can’t Wait”; I learned it on my guitar in college.

Their second album, “Time’s Up,” includes another of my favorite songs of theirs, “Under Cover of Darkness,” which featured Queen Latifah on the track. Their third album, “Stain,” might be my favorite of theirs. I love “Nothingness” most of all, but eight of the first nine songs are incredible.

Mirth and Memento Mori: The Talk Show “Apple at 50”

It was a blast to listen to this recounting of the early and mid-life struggles of Apple, with, to my mind, a recognizable era: when the Mac of the 90s was an exciting line. As Siracusa pointed out, there were many lines, but there were great machines. My college roommate lusted over the Quadra; I nearly bought an early PowerPC model, but went with a Performa 630 CD and a SCSI drive for additional storage (to my regret).

It’s wild to think that there are people who are using Apple devices who didn’t experience this period, and then again people who weren’t even born at the time, who are doing same.

If you, like me, can’t get enough of this kind of chatter, the Verge’s How Steve Jobs Saved the Macintosh episode of Version History is a great watch (or listen).

Stream Deck + Lever

This is a fine April Fool’s Prank indeed. “Inspired by casinos. Approved by no one.”
CleanShot 2026-04-01 at 10.35.18.

📸 Brie and Wooly Wooly Cheeses

Sunday Serial: Just Noticeable Difference, Bass, and Penny Skateboards

I had to nip out yesterday morning to Home Depot to return a case of drop ceiling tiles that we ordered for Aaron’s bedroom (it’s the only room in the house with a drop ceiling). The tiles were delivered after the first order never materialized, and when we finally did get the tiles, they were broken, which I learned yesterday when I opened the case with the intention of replacing some of them. I returned them and got a new case and shot back home so I could try to get a few replaced before Aaron got home for Easter next weekend.

I also replaced the drive belt in our washing machine yesterday; Rhonda noticed that the spin cycle wasn’t ringing out the clothes as well as it should, so I ordered a new belt from Amazon. The particular model makes it easy to replace the belt; the only problem I had was actually getting it onto the pulleys. I cribbed a trick that I’ve seen the boys do a thousand times with action figures whose joints are too tight: boil some water and sit the item in the water for a few minutes. That worked nicely, and I got the belt on after my initial frustrations.

Things that you think are going to be easy often turn out to be a bit more difficult, while things you imagined are going to take a lot of time are often done in a few minutes. Ultimately, there was plenty of time to hit Bellview for wine and cheese, after squats and bench presses, which I do on Saturdays.

Check Your JND

Jason Anthony Guy linked to this gamewhich tests the smallest color change you can see, which is called just noticeable difference.. I tried it yesterday in bed on my iPad mini, and I got a pretty good score on the first test, but a more average score on the “hard” version. I recall the concept of JND from college, I think from the experimental psychology class I took in my sophomore year, but I can’t remember for sure.

Bass: How Low Can You Go?

Joey’s girlfriend let us borrow her bass guitar (I think she’s open to selling it), so I ordered some Ernie Ball strings for it, as the ones on there are a bit rusty and the G string broke when I was tuning it up. I’m pretty excited to have a bass guitar to play around with. I really would like to record some tracks for songs I’ve already recorded in Logic. There are also a few songs I’d really like to try to learn and record, where I’ve appreciated the base lines. I was working on Promises Promises by Incubus a while back, and since it’s not much of a guitar song, I’ve always really paid attention to the bass line. I really love the line in Mr. Brightside by The Killers too.

Penny Skateboards

Inspired by Sal’s post about (not) being to old to start skateboarding, I checked to see if Penny skateboards were still a thing. And happily, they are. I bough a couple of them to skate with the boys, and we had a good time; I wrote about it 13 years ago. There was a hardware store around the corner that sold them, and disc golf supplies as well, which I also bought and Aaron and I tried at nearby Landis Park. But back to the skateboards, I purchased a small 22” yellow penny first, and then a larger 27” at a Zumiez in the mall.
I put grip take on the 22”; it was, much to my surprise, my favorite of the pair. It’s much smaller than the decks I was used to as a kid, but it’s tight and responsive. I see them every time I go into the shed, and think I should grab the 22” and roll down the street just for fun.

Aaron Holding Our First Penny Skateboard

Applescript to Clear Notifications in Tahoe

Joe Kissell, in an email today announcing Glen Fleishman’s new book, Take Control of Focus:

Glenn Fleishman is back with a brand-new book that helps Apple users manage notifications and the many varieties of audible, visual, and tactile alerts across their devices. Take Control of Focus shows you how to use Apple’s Focus feature to impose order on the many beeps, buzzes, and “Pay Attention to Me Now!” doohickeys we encounter all day long.

On a related note, an Applescript I found to clear notifications on the Mac:

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "NotificationCenter"
        try
            perform (actions of UI elements of UI element 1 of scroll area 1 of group 1 of group 1 of window "Notification Center" whose name starts with "Name:Close" or name starts with "Name:Clear All")
        end try
    end tell
end tell

You can run this as an Applescript, of course, or make a Shortcut, Keyboard Maestro macro, or ExtraBar action.

Drums!

I make grilled chicken drumsticks all the time. It’s just a couple of hours over indirect heat (charcoal of course), and some sauce in the last 30 minutes or so. Nearly effortless. I threw a couple of turkey drums in the mix last night, and they were a treat. I had one with my salad today for lunch.

In Defense of Farting Around

Laze.net:

Is that judgement we make of ourselves really real? Can we stop being performative to ourselves like we often are for others? Should we stop giving a fuck about what we think of us, too?

On the Guilt of Quiet Days

Witch: App and Tab Switcher for macOS

I’ve tried a thousand utilities for tab switching; I generally use Safari as my primary browser, but I have always liked the tab search feature in Chromium-based browsers.

Witch by Many Tricks handles tab search and switching, but it required a little setup before I could use it the way I wanted. Here are my settings:

Invoking Witch (I used command-shift-k) opens the Witch window, and I can immediately start typing to search for tabs. Safari doesn’t even have to be active for me to search for tabs. Which treats open windows in other apps as tabs, too, so you can search for documents you’ve been working on.

Sunday Serial: Inkwell, Tab Finder 2, and Kagi Bangs + Launchbar

Aaron’s been home for spring break this past week, but he’s headed back to Rutgers later today. Since Rhonda and I have been working, we didn’t do much save for a few meals out. Aaron met me Thursday for phô near work, and last night we tried Carmella’s Cucina in Mays Landing. It’s a new Italian BYOB. I’ll probably write it up for Yelp; our dinners were excellent.

Inkwell

Manton Reece recently released Inkwell, a new RSS reader that works in your browser. There’s a Mac app, too. It’s more of a river-of-news style reader, with “Today,” “Recent,” and “Fading” panes.

There’s an iOS app that works with Inkwell too, called Silverleaf Reader.

Tab Finder 2

Tab Finder is a great little app that lets you search and open browser tabs. Developer … has a new version coming out, in beta now. Tab Finder is the simplest, macos-iest tab switcher I’ve tried in my search to add Chrome’s tab search feature to Safari. I think I’m all in on Witch, but I still like trying other options. Tab Tab has been great, too.

Kagi Bangs + Launchbar = 🤓🩵

I kinda forgot about Kagi’s Bangs, which are like those employed in Duck Duck Go. I don’t generally use Bangs, but thought that I might be missing something. I was reviewing some of the bangs available this morning before leaving for work, and I saw that there was a bang to invoke Kagi Assistant, which I use all the time.

All day long, I am invoking Launchbar, typing “k,” and then entering my search text into the resulting text box, which fires off a Kagi search in my browser of choice. I really wanted to be able to do this with Kagi Assistant, too (instead of opening a new tab and clicking on the Kagi Assistant bookmark).

If you want to use this, create a new search template in Launchbar, and use this as the template URL:

https://kagi.com/search?q=!ai+*

Sunday Serial: Bellview Winery’s Fioré Rosé, Phase Wallpaper, and Typinator 10

Rhonda and I took off on Friday and drove up to New Brunswick to pick up Aaron; he is on spring break this week. We made a day of it, hitting Stokelan Estates Winery for lunch and a bottle of rosé. We tried the caramelized onion flatbread and the charcuterie board, and took a bottle of rosé to go. He surprised us with a really short haircut that his friends gave him. He’s going to get it touched up at the barber during break.

Stokelan Estates Winery Flatbread and Charcuterie

Bellview Winery’s Fioré Rosé

Imagine my delight and surprise when I stopped at Bellview yesterday to fill our growlers, and learned of their new Fioré Rosé on tap!

It’s A pre-release of our new Dry Rosé hitting the shelves soon. This light and crisp rosé is a blend of Merlot and Petit Verdot wines. Perfect for sipping a glass of wine on the porch with the spring breeze.

It’s a less intense version compared their current rosé, less berry. It was delicious. We did our own cheese and salami etc at home, including a can of the excellent Fishwife mackerel.

Hector Simpson’s Phase Wallpaper

In addition to Aqueux and Hej collections, I added Hector’s Phase collection to my wallpaper gallery. I love the Dizzypaper app he created to manage his collections on your Mac, and the wallpapers are beautiful. I have a nice green for St. Patrick’s Day on my desktop Mac right now.

Typinator 10

I’ve been trying out Typinator for a while since it was included on Bundlehunt. It’s a great alternative to TextExpander. Version 10 has iCloud syncing, an updated interface, and iOS apps that extend your snippets beyond the Mac. As an aside, I’ve never made a practice of switching keyboards in iOS, so I haven’t tried the iOS apps.

Run Your Bulls

The most recent version of Arthur Brooks’ Office Hours_discusses running the bulls… _your bulls, specifically, ie, living a better life by taking measured risks.

As an example of a study that investigated risk-taking behavior, Brooks’ mentioned skydiving and white water rafting as examples.

It reminded me of the time I went white water rafting in college with my former roommate. He had been a guide on the Lehigh River in PA, and the guides were going on a trip to Canada to raft the Ottowa and Rouge Rivers. He suggested that I come along, with the stipulation that I come up and get my feet wet, literally and figuaratively, on the Lehigh for experience.

I readily agreed, and visited him twice in Jim Thorpe for a couple of days of rafting, once after a dam release, and another time later in the summer for a sleepier version of the river. It was fun and easy; we paddled down the river in a two-man raft, helping kids who got stuck and offering encouragement to those who needed it.

The Ottowa, however, was a different experience. Someone described the river as a series of large lakes connected to each other. Big lakes. The holes, such as they’re known, were really big. Our first day featured the fearless crew floating down the river in six- or eight-man rafts (I don’t remember which). They were entirely too small for this adventure.

Going into the first hole, I vaguely recall seeing someone’s helmet coming at my face before I was thrown in the water. I came up to the surface still holding my paddle in my hand, as the owner had warned all of us not to lose them. I also saw one floating before me, and I grabbed it and made my way for the raft. The agitation of the water created a layer of sudsy foam, upon which a lifejacket will not float. I swam over and was hoisted out of the water. One of the owners complimented me for keeping both my paddle and for grabbing another one. Score some points for the n00b!

While that was an inauspicious start to the journey, the remaining holes proved more navigable until we reached the Colisseum, known for its entertainment value to those shorebound gawkers who watched more reckless souls cast their fates into a giant washing machine.

Our group paddled into the hole, and at some point, the raft folded in half bow to stern, jettisoning everyone on board save for me (lucky!) and the owner. After a Tom-Hanks-storming-the-beach-at-Normandy moment of echoey, swirling consciousness, I heard the owner, the only other man left in our boat, yelling my name over and over again until I oriented myself to his cries, follwed by an invective to paddle. And so paddle I did. He and I made it out of the hole and onto shore while the rest of the crew was rescued. There were rescue jetskis, to give you some sense of the seriousness of this hole.

One of the guides, “Hairman,” who went over the side, described being dragged along the river bed by the current. He was happily retrieved alive and well, but utterly rattled by the experience.

On our second day, we comandeered much larger rafts from the operators of the river adventure, and with sound planning and even some motivational speaking (“visualize success!” one guide shouted as we dipped once again into the Colliseum), made it out without any men (or women) overboard.

Hairman watched from the shore.

We slept for a week under the stars. My roomate and I were out laying on the ground one night, our last before heading back to an apartment outside of Quebec, and traced satellites in the dark sky. There was no light pollution to block our celestial view.

Upon returning home, that first night, I went to bed in my childhood bedroom, and for the first time in my life, I felt hemmed in, contained in a too-small, too quiet, climate-controlled box.

I had taken a significant risk, and lived to tell the tale. I even enjoyed a brief moment as a bad-ass who not only kept his paddle, but collected that of another. I stuck it out after the first day and dropped into the Coliseum once again; I faced my fears. I in turn treated the Rouge like the mini-river it was in comparison to the Ottowa: a place to splash and play, and try silly stunts.

That first night at home, I got out of bed, grabbed some blankets, and slept in the back porch of my parents’ house, under the skylights, the stars and the moon illuminating the back of the house. I was still me, but different.

I guess I ran the bulls.

Uncorrected

By Alex Nonnemacher