I was delighted to learn that Hookmark works with OneNote. Now if only it would do the same with Todoist.
Author: Alex Nonnemacher
Applescript to Switch to Dark Mode is macOS
I found this script online back in 2018 and it still works in Sonoma. Fire it using LaunchBar, natch.
tell application "System Events"
tell appearance preferences
set dark mode to not dark mode
end tell
end tell
It will switch to dark mode and back again, somehow.
Sunday Serial: Fuji Sushi in Haddonfield, Bellview Winery, and Tabby for Mac
Here’s this week’s list of things to try out. I took a couple of weeks off for the holidays:
- Fuji in Haddonfield: We dined here tonight (and many times before) for my son’s brithday, my dad’s birthday, and Joey’s girlfriend’s. It was excellent as always. I can’t avoid the crispy salmon skin roll every time.
- Bellview Winery: Bellview Winery has been open for something like 20 years. They did our wedding favor splits back in 2003. I went recently for a celebration of life and had two glasses of their rosé. I was smitten and talked up coming back to Rhonda many times. Our Cape May jaunt ignited a renewed interest in checking it out, which we have several times since.
- Tabby: One of my favorite keyboard shortcuts on Chromium-based browsers is shift-command-a (on Mac) and shift-control-a (Windows) to search open browser tabs. This makes finding open tabs much easier than scanning horizontally across the toolbar when you have a lot open. Tabby is a tab manager for the Mac that exposes and allows you to search your open browser tabs across browsers. Pretty killer and infrastructure for me.
Fuji in Haddonfield, NJ
Bellview Winery Rosé
Tabby for Mac
Weighty Matters
I described a bit how I’ve lost some weight rowing and changing my diet here on Uncorrected. I keep close track of this by weighing myself every morning and appending the data to a CSV file via an action in Drafts. The resulting data file made it easy to ballpark how much I’d lost overall, and analyze some patterns (Monday mornings after three-day weekends=a bit of weight gain, for example). But I wondered about the larger data set and what I might learn from some analysis in Excel. So I fed the sheet into Excel and ran a pivot table.
Takeaways:
- Quarter 2 in 2023 was my greatest loss on record (28.5 lbs), with the most lost occurring in May. This puzzled me at first, but the reason is that I got a new rower for Rhonda to use. It had the newer PM5 computer on it, which synced with my iPhone over bluetooth using Concept 3’s ErgData app. As you can see below, I didn’t log the most meters of all of the months after which I started tracking the data using the PM5, but I moved from using the PM3 on my older rower and tracking the data manually to getting more competitive with myself. I did track data before this, but I used a Drafts action to write to a text file. I was not as concerned with my standings when I was using Apple Fitness+, only getting in a 20 or 30-minute workout with Josh or Ana. I would like to look more closely at my output prior to moving to the PM5 in the future.
- Closing in on losing 80 pounds, I’m starting to plateau. And while that causes me a twinge of panic, obviously you have to stop somewhere. I have to stop somewhere. Considering I was hoping to just move down a pant size, (I’ve moved down to a size 30 from a 38, when the 38s were cut generously), I should be just fine with that.
So what’s next?
Maintenance, I guess. I have considered cutting a day of rowing out of the schedule (I generally do six days a week). I have a hunch that I will be able to break some new goals if I rested more in between rowing sessions. I have also been thinking about adding some strength training back into the routine, if my left shoulder will cooperate (probably just bench presses). I can do up to 10 pull-ups now, which is 10 more than I could do a year ago. I don’t want to get bored and I don’t want to get frustrated if I’m not setting PRs. I even find myself getting anxious before attempting a PR now. I have a good idea of what I need to do to lose weight were I to gain some back, but I still fret.
It’s a crazy ride, this life. This goofy mind of mine.
Def gonna row tomorrow though 😉.
How Much Weight Comes Back If You Stop Taking Weight Loss Drugs?
In a study of people taking tirzepatide, people who were switched to a placebo gained back 14% of the 25.5% of their lost body weight (the placebo group continued to receive coaching). It’s not necessarily unexpected, though:
“If a patient wants to go off the medicine, we’ll try. But we also say what the results are — so far, it seems like most people are going to gain weight back,” Dr. Jay said. “And that’s not your fault. That’s because obesity is a disease, and this medicine is helping to address it.”
How Much Weight Comes Back After You Stop Using a Weight-Loss Drug?
The Case for Commitment in 2024
In Thoughts on Turning 49, I wrote about about not doubting your capacity for change. Here’s a great quote from Mark Manson in The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*uck that makes the case for committing:
Multitask at your peril.
The Week Between 2023
I’ve been referring to the break between Christmas and New Year’s Day as “The Week Between” ever since I found John Roderick’s version of the songhttps://youtu.be/x5dlcUGZqGY?si=-mLBmvLWpsjqtbz5 by the same name on YouTube. I have been lucky that for much of my adult life, I have been able to take the week off and be home with the family, most appreciably since becoming a father.
The Week Between is a time to make some plans and do some things that you might not otherwise have time to do, although we are not inclined to do anything exotic or costly.
I have the lists of things I’ve spitballed doing in both DEVONThink and even Workflowy, and it’s fun to look at the notions I listed there. Usually we don’t end up doing many of them, but I like to have a list to check if we get bored.
This year’s Week Between was emblematic of our typical fun, with some new twists:
- True Detective: There’s not much new on that’s been interesting to watch, but in her style, Rhonda found herself watching the first season of True Detective while we prepped for Christmas dinner. I loved season one but never got back into the show after that, so we finished off Season One and then watch the second as well. I liked the second season much more than I thought I would have.
- Wonka: I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and also Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator when I was a kid, and both novels were magical escapes. I didn’t even know about the original Gene Wilder movie until I was well into adulthood! This musical, starring Timothy Chalamet (from the most recent take on one of my favorite novels, Dune) plays Willy Wonka in a non-canonical prequel to the original story. It’s excellent and dreary and colorful and magical and a lot of fun to watch.
- Bellview Winery: I’ve been sniffish about local wines for no good reason until recently, when I attended a celebration of life for a retired VPS employee at Bellview. I had a nice glass of their dry rosé and was well impressed. Rhonda and I have been meaning to go back and check it out, and our recent jaunt to Willow Creek Winery was so much fun that we resolved to get to Bellview. We went earlier this week and are getting ready to go again as I write this. It is considerably less expensive than Willow Creek but is quaint, charming, and offers equally good wine.
- Pitman, NJ: Pitman didn’t have much going for it when I was younger, save for a cool hobby shop and the Music Museum, but it has experienced a downtown-shopping-district renaissance along with other notable downtowns in South Jersey in the last decade or so (like Collingswood and Haddonfield). We went about a year ago while Aaron was at the Deptford Mall with his girlfriend and tried lunch at Merryman’s Pub (meh), a beer at a now-defunct brewery, browsed the guitars at Just Antiques, and bought some cookies from Just Cookies. This year, we hit Crave and the Crazy Cat for cookies and cupcakes, and grabbed a pour-over at Endgrain. The coffee took a while to brew, and because they were single origin, only served black. I asked for milk, and the barista repeated, firmly, that they only serve the single origin coffees black. OK, fine. (I can’t argue with the end product, which was delicious.)
- Leave the World Behind is an apocalyptic Netflix original film. It is complete with some very cool camera moves, a bleak and urgent vibe, and a wholly unexpected ending.
- Bonesaw Brewing: After Pitman, we hit Bonesaw for a German altbier, and an IPA. My alt was interesting and I was wholly unaware of the history of the style, which includes an age-old competition with another of my favorite styles, Kölsch.
- Toy Stores: The boys still collect, so we hit both House of Fun and Play with This, as so often happens with our Camden County trips (Joe even called ahead to find a coveted Mezco Dr Doom).
- I should be writing my essential software lists; I have macOS to cover, as well as iOS, but this year, I’m adding Windows software to my list. I really like Windows 11 and am keen to write about it and the software I’ve been using.
- Umi: We tried this sushi-forward buffet as part of our Camden County trip. It’s a good self-serve buffet experience if you’re into that kind of thing. It’s not gourmet or chill, but it’s kinda casino style. Fun.
1 “The Week Between” is originally on “One Christmas at a Time” album by Roderick and Jonathan Coulton
Pendleton 100% Rye Whisky
This will be in my next Sunday Serial for sure but I’m jumping the gun in case anyone is looking for booze suggestions for the holiday. Make a Manhattan:
- 3 oz rye
- 1/2 oz sweet vermouth (Carpano Antica if you can)
- Dash of bitters
- Maraschino cherry
Stir over ice for one minute and strain into a glass. Simple and classic.
Windows User Goes Mac on Mashable
As a person farting with Windows more nowadays out of interest than necessity, I greatly enjoyed this article on Mashable. There are some basics that Kimberly Gedeon gets wrong, only out of being a Mac newbie:
Snap Layouts
As someone who often works with several different apps simultaneously, having the ability to snap Windows into certain quadrants of the screen is incredibly helpful. I’d love to have Slack snapped to one side of the screen, Gmail attached to the top right, and Google Docs positioned on the bottom right. Sadly, macOS doesn’t have this feature.
This is both true and false at the same time: macOS doesn’t have an exact copy of Windows Snap, but there is an affordance in the windows controls on the Mac. Excellent third-party options exist, like Mosaic and BetterSnapTool (which is no emollient if you are allergic to paying for software). If you are more techie, there’s always Keyboard Maestro.
I don’t get the gripe about having to tap the spacebar to pull up a preview of a file or photo in Finder.
Concept 2 December Challenge
I saw the Holiday Challenge on the e2 app and thought maybe I could participate. The question was, do I row 100k a month?
Why yes, it turns out I do, from the first month I started using the app to track my progress.
My Season So Far
It’s no surprise, then, that I was able to complete this challenge. Excited to participate and help raise money for charity!
Sunday Serial: The Oatmeal, Headway, and Blackstone Griddles
Here’s this week’s list of recommendations:
- The Oatmeal: I haven’t read the Oatmeal in a long time, but we were doing some shopping yesterday for Rhonda’s class and I chanced upon a collection of Inman’s cartoons in the book section. This one in particular, about running, made me laugh and see myself at the same time (see the cartoon below). I too am an introspective person full of self-doubt and insecurities, and the net effect of rowing for me does help with that (plus I look better, generally speaking). While physically rowing, I go into dark corners of my mind. I anticipate this, but the me that emerges from the basement is a better version of me. It’s a kind of est or cathexis or primal scream. I flipped open to this cartoon in a moment of synchronicity, perhaps, a delightful, ephemeral, human moment that only great humor can invite.
- Headway: I’ve seen the ridiculous Blinkest “Be the Most Interesting Person in the Room” ads and was wondering what Blinkist was. Turns out, it’s a kind of Sparknotes or summary service for books you want to read but maybe don’t have the time to. Headway is basically the same thing, and this month, there’s a big sale. So I took the leap.
- Blackstone Griddle: We picked up one of these four-burner models at Walmart a couple of years ago, and it’s the size of the professional grill at which I toiled in my long-ago part-time high school job at Atkinson’s Takeout. I make all kinds of things on it: eggs, stir fry, burgers, salmon, stir fry. They are great and worth having, even if you usually grill on a charcoal or gas grill most of the time.
The Oatmeal
Headway
Blackstone Griddle
Opinions are Like…
I wrote recently in “Thoughts on Turning 49” about the Stoic principle of not having an opinion. As Jungian synchronicity would have it, I chanced upon a TikTok interview featuring Pete Holmes ranting about the navigation app Waze, and he mentioned what I later leaned was the Third Chinese Patriarch of Zen:
The Great Way* is not difficult for those who have no preferences.
Third Chinese Patriarch Of Zen
Here’s Marcus Aurelius on opinions:
“It is in our power to have no opinion about a thing, and not to be disturbed in our soul; for things themselves have no natural power to form our judgements.”
Professional explainer of all things Stoicism, Ryan Holiday, expounds further:
The point is: One of the most powerful things we can do in life is to limit the amount of opinions we have. To say: “I don’t have an opinion on that.” (Even if deep down we do!) To focus on the things in front of us that matter, or more importantly, that are in our control. There is plenty there for us. Plenty to keep us busy, and not miserable.
The Curse of Having an Opinion About Everything
Our culture places great value on deciveness and action, hot takes and big opinions. But maybe we’re betraying a healthier version of our potential in so doing. Ride the wave.
OneNote for iPadOS Supports Drag and Drop into Notes
I’m not sure when Microsoft added drag and drop support of images into OneNote for iPad, but it’s there now (at least in TestFlight build 16.80). The lack of this feature was a bother for me and had me peeking at Bear again tonight. So glad to see this!
Yesterday’s 5k Row is a Personal Record
Between the weekend getaway and a toy show I promised to take the boys to, a 10k wasn’t in the works for me this Sunday. I did manage to squeeze in a 5k and set a PR by a hair. Behold:
Nothing terribly exciting, although I will point out that I was able to pull with more power at a lower stroke rate;. If you look at the third split, most relevantly, today I pulled at 198 watts at a stroke rate of 25 strokes per minute, while I pulled 198 watts on my previous PR in November on the third split… at 31 strokes per minute. It’s a small bit of data but it’s exactly what I”m trying to do: row with greater power, but more slowly.
Sunday Serial for December 10, 2023
This week’s list of things to check out:
- Yoink: This is a digital note shelf application I’ve written about before in my Essential Software series. You drag files and screenshots into the sidebar on your Mac, and then drag it out into the document or other project you’re working on. I use it for screenshots a lot, and it’s one of the things I miss when I use Windows. I do, however, find the omission of Yoink-like shelf apps on Windows moot because of how Windows handles screenshots–Windows copies them to the clipboard. Hence my next tip.
- Screenshot: Introduced in Mojave (and passed completely over my head) is a built-in utility that allows you to more specifically control what happens to screenshots in macOS. You can change the default behavior to send screenshots directly to your clipboard, for example, emulating Windows’ behavior and obviating the need for something like Yoink (Yoink is still incredibly useful for shunting files around in emails and moving files from, say, Finder to Google Drive).
-
Bleu Cheese stuffed olives: I had my first martini with stuffed olives Friday night at the excellent bar at the Ebbitt Room. Color me impressed. Remember when I wrote about having opinions? Sometimes you’re wrong about things. Bleu cheese-stuffed olives are one of them.
Yoink
Screenshot
Bleu Cheese Stuffed Olives