I featured Tabbs back in February as a Sunday Serial pick. My subscription just renewed, and I thought I’d dig back into this extension.

After a little configuration rejiggering (ctrl-j is the default trigger for the extention on Windows, which conflicts with Edge’s default shortcut for showing your downloads), I got to peeking around in the settings configuation. Without using keyboard shortcuts, Tabbs looks nicer than the default tab switcher in Chrome-based browsers, but mousing isn’t any faster or different from the browser default. This is where Tabbs really shines: after invoking the extension, typing alt-c will close a tab without switching to it. Similarly, you can pin tabs to the Tabbs menu to keep it at the top.

Another way that Tabbs speeds up your browsing is by allowing you to interact with a tab in a submenu from the Tabbs pane. After invoking the extension, you click or arrow to a tab (or search for it) and then type the slash character (/), which reveals a second panel with commands specifc to the selected tab:
– Pin
– Close
– Bookmark
– Select
– Nap Tab

In addition to searching your open tabs, Tabbs will search your browser history.

If you spend a lot of time in a browser, Tabbs is worth a serious look. Do note, though, that it requires a subscription to use all of the features.

Dr Henry Cloud took [Scott Pack’s observation that once you learn that life is difficult, it stops feeling so] a step further. In his book Integrity, he wrote about “eating problems for breakfast” as the key to personal growth and success. In other words, it is important to orient yourself to the fact that bad things will happen — and you have to be prepared to meet and resolve them.

All Successful People Rely on a Three-Word Philosophy

1. [DayOne](Day One Journal App | Your Journal For Life (dayoneapp.com)): DayOne is a journaling app that is tightly integrated into the Apple ecosystem (there’s a web version, too). At its core, it’s good for keeping daily journals, but the os-level integration allows you to import pictures and other data, document your location, and more. It’s a [Mac-assed Mac app](Daring Fireball: Mac-Assed Mac Apps)for sure. One of the charming things it does (if you want it to) is remind you to read an old entry. Today, I got this one:

Post-vacation trips
I often think about how bad I’m going to feel after a vacation (being sad about going back to the routine)), but in purely behavioral terms, I must like all vacations and breaks because I am always excited for them when they are upon me. If the post-vacation sadness were so salient, I wouldn’t want to even go because the negative emotional fallout would outweigh the fun. And that’s never the case. Sunday damage never dampens Friday enthusiasm. So weird…

I’m terribly inconsistent in my use of DayOne, but I do find it a good place to write things I might not want to share here or just to think (because writing is thinking). And having the entries is a fun way to recall specifics about a time you have vague memories of.
2. [Espanso](Espanso – A Privacy-first, Cross-platform Text Expander): This is a cross-platform snippet expander for Mac, Linux, and Windows. Creating snippets ("Matches," in Espanso terminology) requires adding commands to a YAML file, which is not at all like the experience of using a tool like [TextExander](TextExpander: #1 Text Replacement & Keyboard Shortcut App), but like AutoHotKey, Espanso has a lot of power and customizability.¹
3. Blueberry Pancakes: Rhonda gets a boxed mix and adds buttermilk; I don’t know how to prepare them, but I can cook them (and eat them). I make these on the Blackstone griddle after the bacon is cooked. A once-in-a-while food for sure.

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¹ I do still have a TextExpander subscription, but I don’t use it like I used to. Because I don’t write technical reports or documents as an administrator, I don’t need access to a lot of repetitive text. I do like to have a few things handy, though: email addresses, my cell number and work number, addresses… things I might otherwise have to type out repetitively.

Where I have often found Windows lacking in software compared to the Mac (gasp!), Microsoft’s own PowerToys has always been a new-installation-must on any Windows device I’ve used since I discovered it back in the Windows 7 days. My most-used and loved utility in this suite is PowerToys run, which is a launcher utility in the vein of the excellent (and also new-installation-must on the Mac) Launchbar (without which a Mac doesn’t feel like a Mac to me when it’s not installed… or should I say, until it’s installed).

You can get plenty of mileage out of PowerToys Run just using it as a launcher; for example, typing “Excel” in the search box will give you, as the first result, the application Excel. It’s great for web searches, too, and even searching your local hard drive.

I do prefer the fast-if-spartan-looking Everything for file searches on Windows, though; it’s a focused application in that it searches for files and allows you to open or reveal them easily. It’s pretty ugly, though. It’s also free, so I can’t squak.

Everything is available to you via PowerToys Run not just as a launchable executable, though; you can install a plugin, and after typing a modifier key (“ is the default), you can search your machine via Run but using Everthing’s power.

Run works this way; you can just type into the search bar, but you can specify modifier commands to restrict your search to specific features (calculator, file search, and your search history, for example).

Run looks like a simple app–and you can use it that way–but beneath the hood is a cache of productivity firepower. And it’s made all the better by the Everything plugin.

While vacationing in Ocean City, NJ, Rhonda and I nipped out for dinner at Peter Shields after splitting a bottle of rosé at the nearby Willow Creek Winery. While the winery is a little overbaked and expensive, Peter Shields was short, one of the best restaurants I’ve been to in a while.

We started off sharing a yellowtail crudo, one of my favorite fish from our local sushi haunt; this dish arrived garnished with cucumber and watermelon, a heretofore untasted mélange of flavors for this diner. We also split blue point oysters on the half shell, which were plump and briny, and always a favorite of both of ours when we have them. (And we’ve had them!)

I ordered a bone-in pork chop, which our server, Chris, was quick to point out was a pounded and fried dish; this was not necessarily my preference nor the dish I’d imagined in my mind based on the menu, but I readily agreed to this preparation. It was, in turn, excellent. The pork was pounded flat and dredged in breadcrumbs, and pan fried until crispy, with no residual oil on the surface. Topped Milanese style with greens and tomatoes would have been satisfying, but the lily was gilded with some chunks of meat and mozzarella. It was excellent and I’d order it again in a heartbeat.

Rhonda was craving a steak, and she got the filet. It was perfectly cooked to medium rare, as requested, and beautifully served, with mushroom ravioli to boot.

For dessert, they offered a steamed caramel cake à la mode, which we split and adored. The dessert was swimming in a pool of molten caramel and was delicious and the perfect size to split. It was a whimsical nod to the classic caramel sundae, with the cake dressing the dish up to something elegant.

Peter Shields is a BYOB, but you can order bottles from the nearby Cape May Winery, which they should advertise more; we stopped at a liquor store along the way (and admittedly saved a buck), but I probably would have sprung for a bottle of Cape May in order to try another local wine.

(This is a slightly rewritten version of my Yelp review.)

I consider myself inordinately lucky that I get to go on vacation for a week in one of Jersey’s many excellent shore towns each summer. We just got back from Ocean City, NJ, yesterday, and here are some things to check out, should you find yourself there.

1. Swimming: I wrote last year that I was anxious about not being able to row on vacation, but I found out that fairly casual swimming is a great way to burn up some calories. This was in the hotel pool, where you can avoid the crowds and the kids by jumping in right after breakfast. I swam myself silly one day.
2. Peter Shields Inn: This is not in Ocean City (it’s in Cape May), but Rhonda and I like to nip out one night for a dinner alone, and this year we tried Peter Shields on the recommendation of one of Rhonda’s co-workers. I plan to write up the experience separately, but in short, it’s an excellent BYOB (they do sell bottles of Cape May Winery wine) in that just-a-notch-above casual that shore towns excel in. Definitely in the top ten.¹.
3. Beach walks: Once again, before anyone was up, Rhonda and I took a 2+ mile walk on the beach and boardwalk, heading south from the hotel to a beach entrance, and then marched north back to Gillians Wonderland Pier (which will be closing). We will miss our La Colombe coffee stop next year for sure.

A quick word about Ocean City, which bills itself as the World’s Greatest Family Resort. It’s kinda Disney-ish, which certainly accounts for its allure for parents of young children (and perhaps teetotalers). Staying at the south end or “Goald Coast,” as it’s called, is a quieter, more beach-goer vibe, while the nortern end offers a walkable downtown, many more dining options, and of course, the boardwalk. We’ve been staying at and preferring the northern end for the past few years, and access to a number of less crowded takeout spots in Somers Point is a big plus. Whatever your thoughts are on Ocean City, it is a town with a true sense of vision, evident in its organization and (sometimes annoying) reminders of local laws and ordinances. We love to scurry around all of these attractions.

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¹ I don’t actually have a top-ten restaurant list, but I should write that up. Vetri in Philly for sure would be on there.

From the Marginalian, a humbling and inspiring metaphor for life found in the humble worm:

There are experiences in life that strike at the center of our being, sundering us in half with unforeseen pain for which we were entirely unbraced. Because we know that this is possible — from the lives of others, from our own past experience, from the history of the heart recorded in our literature — we are always living with the awareness, conscious or unconscious, that life can sunder us at any given point without warning. This is the price of consciousness, which makes living both difficult and urgent.

Trauma, Growth, and How to Be Twice as Alive: Tove Jansson on the Worm and the Art of Self-Renewal

So check this out: Last year, about one year ago, while we were on vacation in Ocean City, Rhonda and I brought Aaron home during one day to pick up his girlfriend. I snuck in a 10k row while we were here. I was curious how my one-year-ago effort compared to my most recent 10ks, where I’ve taken to slowing things down a bit and focusing on form. Here’s the table:

Times are about equal, as is pace. Power(watts) are also equivalent.

But comparing my heart rate shows a lower rate at the same effort year over year, and my stroke rate is considerably lower this year.

I’ve pivoted from faster to something different… more efficient? More power per stroke? Interesting.

I [mentioned][1] OneNote’s Feed and how it had been obscured in OneNote’s GUI in favor of the Sticky Notes menu. A helpful Redditor mentioned that you could bring the Feed back by:

1. Searching for the Feed in the the Search bar (alt-Q)
2. Type “feed” in the Search box
3. Right-click on the “Open Feed” item in the resulting picklist
4. Choose “Add to Quick Access Toolbar”

Voila! The Feed will be in the upper-left hand of the application’s menu.

Here’s a quick video I made to illustrate.

I was thinking today that the recent vacation to Hershey Park and the bookending weekends has a bit more content with my weight than I’ve been for a while. I’m satisfied to see consistency over a steady drop.

Considering that I started this journey just trying to get down to a size 36 pant, I should be!

But I had gotten addicted to seeing a drop in weight when I hopped on the scale, and was concerned if I gained, or in some cases, didn’t lose after trying.

It’s not to say that I don’t celebrate for a quiet second when I get back down a half pound or so after a weekend of relative gluttony. But this is more of a control issue–that I can bend it back the other way, still bend it back–than a sheer loss issue. That’s because anyone who has lost weight with some effort fears that it will come back. Like all of it. Over night.

Anyway: I’m kind of bouncing along the bottom of my loss. The line has flattened.

It took 18 months. A year and a half.

A Few Observations

• You Realize You’ll Have to be This Vigilant for the Rest of Your Life: Maybe I’m overstating the case, but you realize that your current level of output (exercise and movement) and careful eating (and logging of said eating) is both necessary and sufficient to maintenance. Your engagement matters.
• 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.
• Logging Your Food Enables You to Eat and Drink Everything: You don’t have to avoid entire food groups because it’s an unknown evil; you can have a cocktail and account for it in your intake. (Maybe not tonight, but you can make up for it later.) You can still have cheese; just have less of it. You can have wine with dinner; measure it and count it against your daily balance. I think some partial bans or restrictions can be helpful: booze, candy, soda, that kind of thing. It’s necessarily that you can’t ever have them, but you can limit them to certain situations or events.
• Move More: On some days, like Sundays, I can bury the needle and burn 500+ calories in a rowing session. But most weekday mornings, I can only get in around 200 calories before it’s into the breach once again. But you can burn a lot more calories just walking around at work or doing work in the yard. Obviously combining exercise and active movement during the day is the smart move.
• Eat the Same Thing a Lot: Having a similar salad, with minor tweaks, for lunch eat day takes the guesswork out of your intake when you’re busy. This has helped me discern a workable pattern for myself: about 250 calories for breakfast, 250 for lunch (more accurately, 500 calories before dinner), and leave 1000 in the bank for dinner and a drink. I can usually have some fruit or pistacios for dessert, too.
• Don’t Eat After Dinner: This is really only when you’re starting out, but try not to eat after dinner. Once you get pro with counting calories, you can adjust against your calorie balance.
• Eat Fruit and Vegetables: You can eat a bowl of watermelon and not touch the calorie content of a cookie. (But you should have a cookie once in a while, too.)
• Eat Nuts…but Measure Them: Nuts are a great source of energy and will keep you feeling full, but you have to measure them, as they’re calorically dense. Housing fistfuls of peanuts while you’re having a cocktail with someone special will surprise you, energy-wise.
• Technology is a Fantastic Tool for Health: From tracking workouts to movement, and for logging your food, there has never been a better time. I get a lot of data from my Apple Watch and PM5 erg computer every day that informs how much I eat. And all of the other health data: resting heart rate, walking heart rate, and more, are all great metrics to track while you’re getting–and staying–healthy

All of this is on the eve of our annual vacation to Ocean City. I hope the pool is warm! ¹

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¹ Last year, I was worried about not being able to row on vacation. I learned, though, that just casually swimming around in the pool, treading water and swimming around, as I do, can burn 100 calories in about 10 minutes. So an hour of that a day? Lots of calories burned, leaving room for pizza, a beer on the deck, and even some Kohr Bros.

Microsoft does a lot of strange things. Or at least they do, from the viewpoint of a lifelong Mac user. Maybe Windows users feel the same way when they use a Mac. But where I feel Apple makes one version of an app and declares it the best of its kind until it summarily replaces it with what is now the best app (notable exception described below), Microsoft floats all kinds of ideas and examples of things and sees what sticks.

An example? Consider Loop. It’s clearly a Notion competitor, which itself is kind of a Google Docs competitor. Loop, though, competes with Microsoft’s own Word (in some ways) and even the venerable OneNote. If you like OneNote but want to try Loop, how do you not lapse into paroxysms of uncertainty about when to use each application?

Even within OneNote, there is a curious amount of feature creep and obfuscation. Consider the Feed, a helpful feature that allows you to see your notes chronologically, irrespective of the group they’re filled in. Notes apps of all stripes will show you this view of your data; in OneNote, it’s a kinda-hidden option that Microsoft has purposefully hidden from the user (it’s not hard to find, but it’s not exposed in the GUI). But on the iPhone, OneNote works exactly this way.

One example, though, in the same vein I find endearing and useful: the integration with Sticky Notes. As on the Mac, Windows has a quick and dirty sticky notes app; but on the Mac, stickies are their own data silo; there’s no integration with Apple’s Notes. But on OneNote, where the Feed once lived, you can view your sticky notes and add and edit them as well. This is useful and boasts some clever features, the main one of which is Sticky Notes attention to the source of the information for your Note. for example, let’s say you’re looking at Serious Eats for sous vide recipes. If you create a new note while viewing this page, Sticky Notes will embed a link to the URL and the browser you were using when you created the note. This is a very cool example of linking in the manifesto sense. Sadly, you can’t file sticky notes into groups or dividers. Maybe this will come in the future.

The Feed, however, shows all of your notes, Sticky Notes included, in the same chronological view. It will also show notes you may have taken in Samsung Notes, if you’re a Samsung phone or tablet user. Yet the Feed is hidden, replaced by the Sticky Notes view.

I don’t get it.

Here’s this week’s list of things to check out:

1. Maybe: Via the Marginalian comes this Chinese proverb¹. What if you lived such that nothing was experienced as an advantage or disadvantage?
2. Hiking with Niezsche: I’m reading this now and highlighting like a madman so that I can review them in Readwise, but I figured I’d throw it in this week’s list. It’s both what I thought it would be and different; the author, John Kaag, is a professor of philosophy, so it’s not written from an enthusiast’s perspective, but it is a reflection on Nietzsche’s writing from a rather personal viewpoint.
3. Zippo Lighters: As an inveterate charcoal griller, I have always had a variety of disposable lighters around. They are bound to disappoint at some inopportune moment. I got this Zippo a while back, a fond throwback to my smoking days (Camel Lights, natch), and as long as there are some spare flints and lighter fluid in the house, I can always count on it.

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¹

Once upon a time there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away. That evening, all of his neighbors came around to commiserate. They said, “We are so sorry to hear your horse has run away. This is most unfortunate.” The farmer said, “Maybe.” The next day the horse came back bringing seven wild horses with it, and in the evening everybody came back and said, “Oh, isn’t that lucky. What a great turn of events. You now have eight horses!” The farmer again said, “Maybe.” The following day his son tried to break one of the horses, and while riding it, he was thrown and broke his leg. The neighbors then said, “Oh dear, that’s too bad,” and the farmer responded, “Maybe.” The next day the conscription officers came around to conscript people into the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. Again all the neighbors came around and said, “Isn’t that great!” Again, he said, “Maybe.”

The farmer steadfastly refrained from thinking of things in terms of gain or loss, advantage or disadvantage, because one never knows… In fact we never really know whether an event is fortune or misfortune, we only know our ever-changing reactions to ever-changing events.

It’s here! Delivered today. I will try it out tomorrow; I’m thinking with the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8.

A couple of observations: despite the flip-over case, it’s really small. It feels nice to type on, but I miss the fabric-covered keys of the original. This feels like a mid-grade island-style keyboard.

I’ve been writing here from time to time about the Nietzschean duality of Apollinian and the Dionysian, most playfully when doing so about Muppet Theory.

When considering the conceptual difference between Apollinian and Dionysian, I often think of Nietzsche’s example of sculpture vs music. Music and dance are communal, more chaotic and impermanent, while sculpture represents the structure and discipline required to bring a form to shape. As I was writing about the Foo Fighters show we just attended, I wanted to write a bit about my thoughts on the tension between these two forces, and how they might apply to the concert experience

Prior to the show, we walked around Hershey Park and rode some rides. I was thinking how I’m not terribly inclined to seek out live music. It’s not that I don’t enjoy a show (although they do go on a bit long!); I always enjoy live music and know enough about rock guitar to appreciate the music on a few levels.

And I thought that it was a good thing that I was exposing them, however later in their young lives, to the concert experience. And that this was a good introduction to a Dionysian experience.

But then the juxtapositions started to smack me in the face. The parking. The itinerary. The fact that previous set lists mirrored the Hershey show. The legion of trucks that surely carried the bands’ gear to the venue. The hours of prep beforehand in setting up the sound and lights. The venue staffing. The Ticketmaster app always alert and ready to show my tickets within the hour of the show starting. Rational thinking. Form and structure. All Apollinian traits.

A modern rock concert delivers a core Dionysian experience while your icons are on stage, but it relies wholly on Apollinian features to happen. And unlike in Nietzsche’s conception, these forces are not opposing one another, but supporting each other. A planned event with no Dionysus would be a boring affair. But Dionysus without roadies? Nothing would happen.

The closest somewhat-famous example I can think of that is a truly Dionysian experience with concert-going would be the desert parties that made the likes of Kyuss famous.

More than 100 miles away from Los Angeles and the width of a continent from New York, Palm Desert had no outlets for young bands. Kyuss decided to take matters into their own hands. Setting up makeshift stages in the desert outside of town, they would play gigs to ever-growing crowds of friends. Part gig, part alfresco revelry, they became known as ‘generator parties’, due to the electrical generators used to power the band’s amps.

[Kyuss’ Blues For The Red Sun: the cult 90s masterpiece that sparked the stoner rock revolution](1992: How Kyuss sparked a stoner rock revolution | Louder (loudersound.com))

You can plug in Burning Man for rock concert if you like; I think the analysis still holds.

We took the boys to see the Foo Fighters in Hershey, PA, last night. It was their first concert… I think between COVID and our distance from Philly and AC have conspired to keep them from ever asking to see a show.

The show was awesome and Dave Grohl is an absolute bundle of energy. I’ve been a fan since the first record, which I lived and listened too ad nauseum when it came out. I learned a fair number of songs as a fledgling guitarist back in those days. The opening act, the Hives, were great, too.

1. Plan to wait in the parking lot: I am reacting somewhat to this most recent experience, where we were stuck in the parking lot for almost an hour after the end of the show. I saw a fair number of vehicles parked, tailgates open, with concert-goers drinking and eating. I wasn’t hungry after the show, but I was certainly in need of water. I had a small bit of water left in my water bottle in the car (the double-walled aluminum kept it cold), but I could have used more than that. I’m sure everyone did.
2. Listen to the opening band on the ride up: I enjoyed all of the Hives songs they played, but I regret not listening to more of their oeuvre on the way. I know most of the Foo stuff by heart.
3. Get a backup battery for your phone: I have a cool MagSafe battery from Anker that you can use like a piggyback portable battery on your iPhone. You don’t want to run out of juice snapping pics and taking video, but you might also need the thing for the forced march back to your car, depending on where you parked.

I’m sure there are more pro moves that veteran concert goers abide by, but that’s what I took from the experience. Concerts are a lot of fun, but they’re not necessarily the spontaneous adventure you might remember from your youth.