It feels like fall out there! Finally! I pulled some flannel out of the closet upstairs and swapped out my short-sleeve polos and shorts. It’s a good day to be inside, with all this rain and wind.

We met Teri for some snackies and wine at Bellview for one of the last soirees of the season Friday after work. Next weekend Rhonda and I will be in New Brunswick visiting Aaron at Rutgers for Parents Weekend. I’ll have plenty to share for sure. Tripsy is all loaded up with ideas and a reservation for Le Malt Lounge on Saturday. We’re planning on stopping at Stokelan Estate Winery on ride up.

Buena Connection’s The Backroads

Rhonda and I rolled up to Hammonton yesterday to restock our salami stash; they have these big unmarked salami that are identifiable as spicy or mild only by a rubber band. They are always excellent and will last you a while unless your salami lust is boundless.

We stopped off for a pint at the Buena Connection Brewery, which I’ve featured a few times here. I tried their Backroads IPA, which they describe thusly:

Pours like a pale yellow, almost straw-like color with a light-moderate haze. notes of fresh squeezed orange juice with a medley of citrus and tropical aromatics

It’s their take on the juicy, hazy style of IPA that has found favor among hopheads in the last few years. It was excellent. I was tempted by their Photon (kölsch) and Western Sky (West Coast IPA), and of course the Oktoberfest. I was really happy with my selection. A former classmate of Rhonda’s pours pints there and we love to chew the fat with him while we have a few sips. I actually cycled with him once, back when I first started riding with the group that would become Paramount Cycling Club.

Gerard Bertrand Gris Blanc

After the salami run, we stopped at Rocco’s Town House for an early dinner (are we that old now?) and it was once again excellent. We asked for a bottle of White Horse Winery’s rosé, but they were out. The waitress suggested this gris blanc, it was perfect: crisp, but with a touch of tart fruit on the palate.

I had scallops for dinner, and we shared their steamed mussels first. All really really good.

Tron 4K

I was a wee pup of seven years when Disney’s Tron debuted in theaters. It was the kind of special effects-heavy kid-friendly sci fi flick that us kids dug right into, including the five-points-of-aritculation Tomy toy line. Tron:Ares just came out in theaters, and while I don’t think I’ll see it there, I will as soon as it comes out on Disney+. I thought it would be fun to watch the original, which I’ve done many times over the years. I cued it up the other night and started watching, and the first thought I had was, “wow, the special effects really hold up.”

Rhonda remarked that it must have been touched up, and she was right:

The original Tron has been digitally scanned and meticulously restored by The Walt Disney Film Restoration team, which corrected the new digital master for dirt, warping and other source imperfections. Resulting, Disney claims, in “pristine image quality.” The Restoration Team’s work was all undertaken under the supervision of director Steven Lisberger, too, to ensure that the remaster remains true to the original artistic intent.

I’ve encouraged the boys over the years to enjoy Tron, as I did with DC and Marvel comics, Star Wars, and lots of other plastic pursuits. Diamond Select released a three-pack of Tron figures that borrowed the Tomy line’s colored translucent plastic, but with updated articulation and detail compared to the original line. I ordered it for the boys back then and Aaron was kind enough to let me display the Kevin Flynn figure on my desk.

There’s a lot to ponder on rewatching Tron: the nominal hero, Tron, overshadowed in plot and on screen by an impossibly young Jeff Bridges; the anthropomorphized “programs” that live in the Grid; and questions of identity and free will.

One of the central challenges (perhaps the challenge) of cooking at home is remembering dishes. You can easily get in a rut, or at the very least forget about some popular and easy dishes.

To this end, I refer to AnyList to see what was on the meal plan recently, but the problem with ruts is they can stretch out interminably. That means a lot of scrolling in AnyList.

Rhonda and I realized I hadn’t made this pressure cooker risotto, which everyone likes. I grilled some chicken last night to save for tonight to have with the risotto, in part to purge our memories of the terrible risotto we had at last Wednesday’s Wine Down Wednesday. Theirs was firm, loafy, with some uninspired chicken sliced up in there. Not so mine.

We went hard on the mushrooms.

I took the E-PL5 with the TT Artisans 18mm f/6.3 lens with me to the winery yesterday and took some pics. It’s strange that I’m so drawn to taking that one with me instead of the E-M10 Mark IV with the Panasonic Lumix f/1.7, but I like wondering what I’m going to get. I toss a lot of the shots I take with this lens.

We learned that the rosé supply is running short, which is terrifying. I’m hoping they’ll offer it on tap again in December when the new supply hits, but I’m doubting it.

I figured the winery on a sunny Saturday would be a great time to take some pics with this lens, as its thirst for light is strong. I like how the trees around us darkened the foreground.

I was enchanted by the guy in the background: he rolled in, got a bottle of red, light a cigar, and dipped into a book. He was flying solo.

When you find yourself lost in thought: begin again.

We’re well into October but I’m in shorts and it’s pretty much summer outside (during the day at least). I did manage to wear a flannel shirt Friday, though. I’ll be grilling ribeyes shortly; they’re in the sous vide tank right now.

Not Your Desk

I see your desk: bespoke. the ultra-clean, organized set up. The RGB lights tastefully illuminating the cubbies. The small plastic potted plant with manicured pebbles. It makes a nice insta post for sure.

I don’t want your desk. I want my desk. My desk has a bunch of shit strewn atop it. I clean it up from time to time but I don’t obsess over it.

What’s this USB cable for? I don’t know. Do I need these headphones out all the time? Probably not. but they don’t get in anyone’s way. Black peripheral, white USB cable? Um, yeah. It’s what I had when the thunderbolt dock was delivered.

Unused laptop in a stand, not even charged? It is, in fact, pretty much unused. But hey! I know where to find it if I need it. I could put the sunglasses away in the drawer, but they’re right there, conveniently reminding me to wear them.

And that USB-powered tire pump? Why have that on your desk? Because I can charge it up using an mis-color-matched USB cord, that’s why. It’s not like I have a garage.

Your desk? Looks great. But I still like mine.

Touch: the AppleScript

I have a thousand reasons why I like to drop a test file into a location. Unix is a beautiful construction, where there’s a solitary app for most things. macOS does the same thing, it follows the same path, and the best macOS apps the Mac assed Mac apps all shine when developed in this way.

Sometimes I just want create a text file. Touch is a handy Unix app that I often turn to in such circumstances.

But let’s be honest: I’m not hanging out in Terminal all day. Or ever, really. Are there people out there who are? Seriously? If you say so.

Years ago I wrote a simple AppleScript to create a markdown file for me. It’s easy to fire it off with Launchbar, too. I gussied it up a bit using Copilot yesterday.

try     
    tell application "Finder" to set currentFolder to (folder of the front window as alias) 
    on error    
        set currentFolder to path to desktop folder as alias 
end 
try  
    set baseName to "new" set extension to ".md" 
    set counter to 0 set fileExists to true  repeat while fileExists    
    if counter is 0 then        
        set fileName to baseName & extension    
        else        
        set fileName to baseName & " " & counter & extension  
    end if  
    set currentFile to POSIX path of currentFolder & fileName   
    set fileExists to (do shell script "test -e " & quoted form of currentFile & "; echo $?") is "0"  
    set counter to counter + 1 end repeat  
    do shell script "touch " & quoted form of currentFile  
tell application "Finder"     
    select file fileName of folder currentFolder 
end tell

Logitech MX Master 4

Have you met a keyboard person? They will drop 200 bucks on a keyboard sight unseen if the kickstarter description hits all the right notes. How do I know? I’ve been one. We have rights.

The MX Master is something of a legend in the peripheral world. It merits its own reviews, and iterations are hotly anticipated It’s a big, heavy mouse that appeals to the same types of users. I’m one of them.

The MX Master 4 has more software affordances than ever before. It’s got more thunk and chunk than the 3S that preceded it. It is absolutely worth a spin if you enjoy using a Mac with a mouse, especially with a desktop Mac or a laptop in clamshell mode. And for me, that’s the best way to use a Mac.

The newest physical feature of the MX 4 is the Sense Panel with haptic feedback. From MacWorld’s review:

But, of course, it’s the haptic feedback features that are the star of the show, and the thumb rest now has a haptic ‘Sense Panel’ that sits right under the tip of your thumb. This is a button that you can program to perform a variety of functions, but it also provides tactile haptic feedback in the form of a brief ‘click’ sensation – similar to the haptic feedback on Apple’s Magic Trackpad – in response to a variety of actions or commands.

The update to the LogiOptions software includes their take on a radial launcher:

For home users or ordinary office workers, the Logi Options+ app provides another new feature, called the Action Ring, which is activated by pressing the Sense Panel button. The Actions Ring appears on screen when you press the Sense Panel, and displays a circular menu with additional commands that you can select. By default, the Action Ring displays a set of standard commands, such as launching the Notes app on a Mac or instantly locking your Mac.

LogTech is trying to Sherlock Pieomter.

Brown Loafers

They are almost always the best choice.

The Blog of Random on the split-brain experiment:

The split-brain experiments show the incredible ability of the human mind to adapt in any situation that it is placed in. They also show that all of those quizzes about being “left-brained” or “right-brained” due to being more “artsy” or “sciency” are completely false. In reality, both hemispheres are equally important to function as a normal human being, and tests have shown that both hemispheres are used equally in most situations, whether you’re painting or solving a math problem.

Sam Harris, in Waking Up:

What is most startling about the split-brain phenomenon is that we have every reason to believe that the isolated right hemisphere is independently conscious.

It is amazing to consider the outsize impact our left hemisphere has on our conscious perception relative to its importance. We live with a silent self that knows quite a lot about its chattier half–and that interest seems exclusive.

I might argue, too, that our left hemisphere is responsible for a considerable amount–if not most–of our suffering.

Aaron will alight for Rutgers in the next 15-30 minutes. We really enjoyed having him home, and celebrated with just the three of us (Joe is working) at Sweet Amalia. It’s a wonderful spot for any occasion, I have to say, although the anxiety of rolling up to the joint in anticipation of the shoobie attendance is nerve-wracking to say the least.

We got a couple orders of their fries (frites perhaps), a dozen Sweet Amalia oysters, the steamed clams, and the scallops (which come with corn, sausage, grilled romaine, potatoes, and some other goodies). Rhonda and I sipped some Adella from Bellview, too. It was hot in the midday sun for sure, but a transformative dining experience, as always.

I took these pics with the TT Artisans 18mm f/6.3 lens, this time on the E-M10 Mark IV.

I took a half day Friday and rolled up to New Brunswick in Aaron’s Mini to pick him up for a weekend visit. He brought two friends back with him who live locally. We hit the Double Eagle for wings last night and had a fine time. He and I also grabbed hot pot again at the same place we went to when we visited last spring. It was once again excellent and I was both stuffed and over-salted by the meal. We both remarked we’d go back again when we stopped to refuel the squad at a Wawa in Vincentown on the way home.

Mudhen Wildwood Haze

The aforementioned Double Eagle has Mudhen’s Wildwood Haze on tap, and I tried it Friday when the four of us went out. I’m really loving the NEIPA style wherever I try it.

Cleanshot X

I take a lot of screenshots. I used them for this site, of course, but I send images throughout the day via email and Messages. The built-in feature in macOS generally works fine for me, and I’ve never had much to complain about the feature, especially considering the options it’s gained over the years, including screen recording and other options.

I grabbbed Cleanshot X when it was part of a software bundle deal a while back, and it’s definitely a worthy utility if you take a lot of screenshots. I love how the thumbnail of the image remains pinned to the corner of the screen until you do something with it or dismiss it, and the fact that you can hop right into your screen grab and edit it using Cleanshot instead of switching to another application. This even works for screen recordings.

You can do other cool stuff with screenshots, including hiding the documents on your Mac’s desktop when you take a screenshot.

Bic Gelocity Gel Pens

I always shop for pens whenever we end up at our local Dollar Tree. They often have Sarasa pens for a buck apiece, and once I got this Bic Gelocity, which I love for its smooth writing, giant barrel, and curvy appointments.

Home (Reprise)

As a psychologist, I’ve always been interested in our individual internal experiences. I wrote back in August, while we were on vacation, that I imagined both the hesitation and excitement of living in the space between graduating high school and moving away to college must be a dense space. I should know–I lived it, too.

But we’re all different, and can only know each other’s thoughts and feelings through the imperfect media of language and supposition. I wondered, too, about how Aaron might feel on his first visit home, after some time away: how it might feel familiar and comfortable, but also how this first momentous step towards independence colors the shelter and safety of home. It’s been great having Aaron home this weekend, and Rhonda and I are both looking forward to the upcoming parents weekend for a two-night visit.

LDStephens:

I didn’t do any of this to prove something to anyone but myself. I just wanted to see if I could. Looking back, it wasn’t about patches, jerseys, or times. It was about showing up. Riding through pain. Managing the mental battles after mile 150 or mile 100 when you’re climbing into thin air. And finishing, even when everything in you says to quit.

It’s not about the bike.

Cycling – Three Doubles and a Summit

Rhonda and I nipped out for some shellfish and fries to celebrate her birthday last night. It was a chance to eat some of Sweet Amalia’s amazing namesake oysters and fries. We got some steamed clams too, which replaced on our table (but not in our hearts) their excellent mussels.

Just before sunset is a great time to sit outside and swallow some shellfish. The hard afternoon sun gives way to soft, golden light. It’s hard to kiss another weekend goodbye, but this made it–ahem–sweet indeed.

There was a cool Ford Fiesta ST in the parking lot, too. I sent a picture to Aaron and my dad, both car nuts.

After upgrading my micro 4/3 camera to the E-M10 Mark IV, I kept thinking that it would be fun to get a tiny lens for my EPL-5, which I bought back in like 2013. In comparison to the E-M10, it’s a tiny camera, and has always been easy to pack for taking pictures. Unlike cell phones, cameras have a long shelf life, and there’s a thriving market for used cameras due to their usability well after newer models have replaced venerable models. Despite having a newer camera, I can still find a useful life for older kit.

Poking around on B&H led me to find this super-cheap lens. I’ve usually browsed fast prime lenses, but farting around with my iPhone 16 Pro’s Camera Control button, and taking a lot of heavily bokeh’d pictures, I realized the sweet spot is probably in the 2+ aperture range. I asked Copilot about a few lenses that I was ogling, wondering which would be a stark departure from my Panasonic f/1.7 prime.

This lens takes up almost no extra space; it’s about the same size as a lens cap. It needs a lot of light to take good pics, and I’m finding it a challenge, in a welcome way, to capture pictures worth keeping. It’s fun to take pictures and then have to wait until I get home to see the results, contrasted with the immediate gratification of using a phone camera.

There’s something about the color on this lens that makes pictures look older. There’s a faded, tan character to them that I find pleasingly nostalgic. Some of the pics I took of Aaron’s Mini Cooper are emblematic of this:

I took some golden hour pics at a couple of our favorite local wineries and a nearby restaurant that we all love.

Coda Rosa

Rhonda and I tried a bottle of their Pinot Grigio prior to dinner at the Franklinville Inn for her birthday last night. It was an interesting spot for sure, with an engaging manager and furry friends.

Sweet Amalia

Rhonda and I celebrated her birthday at the Franklinville Inn last night, but the party continued this afternoon, with some wine and shellfish at the excellent Sweet Amalia.

Fiesta Friday at Bellview

We had a sip and some cheese Friday night in lieu of dinner proper.

Aaron’s Mini Cooper S

I snapped a few pics of Aaron’s Mini at the office. I drive it a couple of days a week while he’s at school. Hey: I gotta help out where I can.

All in all, it’s been a lot of fun to take this whacky lens with me and take some pictures.

Today is a special Sunday since it’s Rhonda’s birthday. She’s the big 5-3, which means the big 5-1 is just around the corner for yours truly. We went out to the Franklinville Inn last night for dinner, just the two of us, since Aaron’s away at school and Joe was working. Joe did try to switch hours but there were not takers. I’m writing this while draining a spritz after hitting the squat rack. I did 80 kettlebell swings too, and a 10-minute super-easy row to warm up before the weights.

Coda Rosa Winery

Rhonda and I were thinking about having a spritz before leaving for the restaurant, but I remembered that there was a winery near the Franklinville Inn, in Monroeville. Alas, the joint has closed down, but I found Coda Rosa on the map, and that was actually more on the way to the restaurant than Monroeville would have been.

One of the things I enjoy most about visiting the different wineries here in South Jersey are the small differences. All of them are situated on bucolic grounds, with long, straight rows of grapes surrounding the property. Sharrott, though, is more of a restaurant: there’s a kitchen, reservations are recommended, and there’s table service. Bellview is a more casual affair, with a staffed counter, some app-style things to eat, and a grand expanse of lush green grass adjoining the winery proper for casual seating. You can bring camping gear and set up a tent and chairs if you want. And of all the places we’ve visited, Bellview is the only place with wine on tap. Maybe it’s a holdover from my early forays into the then-nascent brewery scene, but I usually prefer something on tap to something bottled.

Coda Rosa is perhaps the simplest of the wineries we’ve visited: the winery and tasting room are housed in a small rectangular building, and there’s a small patio for seating outside. The host/manager, Tanya, is a vibrant soul. We ate grapes straight out of the vineyard (Chambourcin) and petted the two “security” dogs who traipsed about. We split a Pinot Grigio and it was excellent.

TT Artisans 18mm f/6.3 UFO Lens

After upgrading my micro 4/3 camera to the E-M10 Mark IV, I kept thinking that it would be fun to get a tiny lens for my EPL-5. It’s such a tiny little camera and would still be fun to tote along for taking pics. Unlike cell phones, cameras have a long shelf life, and there’s a thriving market for used cameras due to their usability well after newer models have replaced venerable models.

Poking around on B&H led me to find this super-cheap lens. I’ve usually browsed fast prime lenses, but farting around with my iPhone 16 Pro’s Camera Control button, and taking a lot of heavily bokeh’d pictures, I realized the sweet spot is probably in the 2+ aperture range. I asked Copilot about a few lenses that I was ogling, wondering which would be a stark departure from my Panasonic f/1.7 prime.

This lens takes up almost no extra space; it’s about the same size as a lens cap. It needs a lot of light to take good pics, and I’m finding it a challenge, in a welcome way, to capture pictures worth keeping. So it’s been fun. I’ll probably write up something more in depth with more picture samples. The spritz pic up top was taken using the UFO, as was the picture of Coda Rosa’s building and the chalk wall.

Gina Trapani ’s Note to Self

Internet celebrity Gina Trapani (who I read daily at Lifehacker back in the day) has returned to blogging on her own site.

Note to Self

Diablo III

I rarely game, and I hope I’m able to retire early enough in my life before the curtains come down so that I can while away a few hours playing some games. I purchase Warcraft 3 at an Apple Store back in 2002 on CD-ROM but have never played it through. I have installed Battle.net on my Mac many times over and have Warcraft 3, StarCraft, and Diablo III waiting for me to dive in. I finally tried Diablo III on my desktop Mac last weekend and had an absolute blast playing it. Dead-simple controls, that familiar Blizzard sheen, and good (if obviously dated) graphics all conspired to keep me thinking about playing again all week.

Logging Your Food Can Get Cumbersome: The upshot of measuring your food is that you’re better at guesstimating when you’re in situations when you can’t (or won’t) measure: out for dinner, at a party, etc. I know about how much steak is 120 grams, and likewise with chicken. I’m pretty sure I know how much salad I ate when I can’t measure. A half of a medium baked potato is around 80 grams. But measuring half a dozen pieces of salami and some bits of brie can get downright fiddly.

Me, inThoughts on Losing 90 Pounds, or Bouncing Along the Bottom

One of the reasons I started counting calories is the first place was not to lose weight, but to understand what I was eating having lost the majority of it. It took me a year to get to 165, and looking back at pictures from that time, that was a good weight for me (I’ve been floating around 155 these days).

I got to 165 by cutting back on intake and increasing my physical activity. But I never measured my food to get there. I suspected, though, that it might be an important maintenance practice.

With that thought in mind, I downloaded FoodNoms shortly into 2024, and started weighing my food. I imagined that I’d be able to use the practice at home to get a sense of what I was eating when I couldn’t measure my food–think restaurants and dinner out with friends. (I won’t pull a scale out of my pocket in a restaurant.) Writing this, I realize how contrary my approach was: I was doing a good job “feeling” my way through it, but longed to understand it numerically.

Indeed, weighing and logging my food and drink helped me absorb some standards that assist with tracking when I can’t measure my food. For example , I’m disciplined about measuring a 100-gram serving of wine to enjoy with dinner. That’s just a bit less than 4 oz. So that’s a good ballpark number for winery visits, 100 grams.

• Cheese is something I love, but it’s calorie-dense. By weighing my apps at home, I noticed that I tend to lop off about five grams of most cheeses. That’s true of cheeses like cheddar, Asiago, and Manchego. Brie, however, finds itself cut off in gooey 12-16 gram bites. And viscous blobs of burrata tend to weight 20 grams or so. A corollary: I will easily eat 10 grams of bread every time I hit the loaf, but the crostini Rhonda makes at home, which I invariably break in half, are five grams.
• Salami is usually 5 grams for a thin slice; thicker preparations are likely closer to 12 grams. Pepperoni is 3-5.
• Peanuts are around a gram a pice, so they’re easy. Almonds are a bit heavier, but they’re easy to count, too.
• I tend to eat 150-200 grams of protein: steak, chicken, or pork
• A banana is probably around 100 grams
• Tiny apples are 100 grams. Like comically small ones. That one you just housed was probably closer to 200.

Sure, you can log repeated five-gram bites of cheese into FoodNoms over a long, leisurely visit to your local winery. Or you can live. Tally to the rescue: this killer utility can eliminate the fiddliness of measuring food on the go.

Tally doesn’t have any opinions about what you count–It’s agnostic in purpose. You can tally good habits, bad habits, weird predilections, annoyances, interruptions, how many times you let the dog out, trips to the loo… Tally has no presets, no specific purpose. It just counts.

So how does food logging shake out on Tally? You create one or more tallies, organized, if you like, into sets, and set the step, reset to, and even a target, for the tally. You can count up or down.

I don’t need to tap a tally 100 times for a glass of wine; each tick of the tally is set to increment by 100. I leave cheese and salami set to increase by a gram at a time. And for spritzes? They’re invariably 6 oz of prosecco and 2 of aperol. So I can just count how many I had, because I don’t vary the recipe.

Tally is an amazingly flexible but focused utility for your iPhone. It only does one thing: count. But you can make it count what you want, any way you want.

Matthew Weber:

The thing, though, about being comfortable in your habits, is that nothing really new happens. If you don’t do things differently or try new things, your life is going to pass you by, because the new experiences are what make life worth living. They are what create new and cherished memories.

It is Good to Be Uncomfortable

Alain de Botton:

While we may not be able to overcome our burdens themselves, it does lie in our power to alter what these burdens have to mean to us. We may not have to take them as proof of our stupidity or ill-adjustment, they can be signs that we are destined to have interesting lives rather than calm ones, lives marked by a high degree of exploration, psychological understanding, and striving rather than settled certainty and equilibrium.

An Interesting Life Rather Than a Happy One