Today I found myself about a mile-and-a-half from the Sly Fox brewery’s Malvern location, so I just had to stop in. The original Sly Fox was my college haunt back in the late 90’s; it was in nearby Phoenixville, and (usually) Mike Walter, Jeff Henning, and I would find ourselves extracting a sawbuck each from the nearby Mac machine, and having three pints (at three bucks a pop) and leaving a buck for the bartender. We didn’t do the noisy sports-bar, plastic-cup-of-Natty-light, ten-cents wing thing very much, if at all, and preferred the quiet peace of the Sly Fox.

Things have changed a fair bit for the Sly Fox since those days; they now distribute their beer in cans in the region, and have multiple locations. I mentioned that I used to hang out at the Phoenixville location to the bar tender who pulled my stout this afternoon, and he knew of the original location, and filled me in on the new building across the street from the original, as well as two locations in Pittsburgh.

I can’t say the food was terribly exciting, but it was neat to step into an evolved version of my history, when the Sly Fox was one of the newest options for discerning drinkers popping up on the East Coast.

Some things to check out:

1. Old Grandad Bonded Bourbon: Not the most exciting whisky I’ve ever had. Fairly sweet, lots of corn. Just fine in a Manhattan, though.
2. eMClient: one of the pain points of using Windows is having a good email client option. My particular needs for work center around a useful smart folder scheme. On the Mac, it’s MailMate, hands down. This Windows client uses IMAP to access your Gmail account, but the clutch feature for me is Smart Folders. It’s not as flexible as MailMate, but is anything?
3. Villa Fazzolari in Buena makes the best pizza around. Rhonda and I split the personal Gino Jr.’s Favorite, as we often do.

Gino Jr.’s Favorite Pizza

eMClient

This is a silly little thing, but I get a kick out of it. This is a small pocket I knife I inherited after my father-in-law died. It was eminently amendable to sharpening, but the tip of the blade had broken off.

I busted out a two-sided whetstone I got at Ace Hardware some years ago and filed the blade down into a point. No bladesmith am I, but it’s really usable now.

Last August, I wrote in “Another Good Trend” that my cardio fitness levels, as reported by my Apple Watch through the Health app, had gone from “below average” to “above average.” Cardio fitness is Apple’s term for VO2 max. From the Health app:

This is a measurement of your VO, max, which is the maximum amount of oxygen your body can consume during exercise. Also called cardiorespiratory fitness, this is a useful measurement for everyone from the very fit to those managing illness.

A higher VOz max indicates a higher level of cardio fitness and endurance.

Oddly, all of the rowing I do doesn’t lead to Cardio Fitness reports. But walking does. Rhonda and I took the dogs for a 30-minute walk again today and I found a pleasant update when I checked my stats: I moved into the “high” category.

1. We’re lucky now to have an Indian restaurant nearby (two, in fact). Pictured below is their excellent Chole Bhatura appetizer, which Rhonda and I split.

2. We had a nice Mendoza from Moore Bros with our Indian. Very good.

3. Funny coworkers: I’ve often remarked that I get much of my social exposure at work. Outside of work stress, I’ve never found my colleagues to be anything but funny and admirable people to work with. One of my coworkers hung this sign up at the new worksite we’ve been opening this week after I quipped this hated boss phrase about having the student workers keep at it.

I took the time Sundays often afford to row a 10k this afternoon. As I lamented in my last 10k update, I didn’t match or best my current PR. There was one noteworthy stat, though: my stroke rate.

Here are the splits table from my PR from November 2023:

My Current 10k PR

I averaged 30 strokes per minute on this piece.

And here are the splits from today’s 10k:

Today’s 10k

My last split got up to 28 strokes per minute, but check out my average: 25.

I’ve been looking to reduce my stroke rate to allow me to more comfortably row longer pieces. It reminds me a bit of weightlifting, when I would deload to fix an error with my form.

A quick word on comparisons: It’s fine to compete with yourself. But the progress and knowledge of others is worth consideration, too. Case in point: I used to cycle, and rode solo all them time (I’m an only child and most of the things I prefer are solitary pursuits). I did chance upon a local club ride, though, and I learned a lot from riding with better, more experienced riders, and it changed my skill level after just one ride.

OK, enough about cycling.

In that spirit, however, I took to Concept2’s excellent Logbook (which doesn’t require a separate subscription, thank you very much!) to compare myself to other rowers. Filtering 10k pieces by males in my age group 40-49, I found the following record holder’s stats:

Impressive. This guy was pulling with way more power than I can muster, but with a stroke rate just a digit above my 25.

Long slow distance.

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PS: I am comparing myself to heavyweights. I weighed in as a lightweight this morning, though. Here’s the same age group’s lightweight record holder:

30 strokes a minute. Heaps of power.

I finally wrote up my Bellview Winery review for Yelp. Love this place.

I was using the newish Mac browser Arc to proofread something Rhonda wrote for school, and was confounded about where the URL bar was. Arc, like many newfangled apps, uses a hotkey-activated command palette to open a new URL (among other things). This is potentially confusing UI design for many users, but I happen to like this mode of interaction (starting, I supposed, with my love for LaunchBar).

ARC Browser’s Command Bar

Launchbar

In my quest for ever-more-Camino-like Mac browsers (think light and simple), I was looking for a browser to try out that had minimal UI chrome exposed by default. I forgot about Arc but then remembered that I had installed it and tried it for a bit.

I liked the command bar!

So I thought, maybe someone made a Safari extension. My first search led me to FinBar, a very cool riff on the idea.

FinBar reminds me of Paletro, which I wrote about here, in that it uses a hotkey-enacted palette to expose the menu bar options available to you in the active application. You can accomplish different things in different applications, but the key is, you are always using your keyboard.

;

FinBar in Ulysses

This week’s things to consider:

1. UGG: I’ve never cared for UGG much but recently found myself desiring a pair. I pulled the trigger on Amazon ($180 gulp) for a pair of chestnut UGG Men’s Classic Short Boot. They remind of Birkenstock sandals and Doc Martens: lovably ugly and lusciously comfortable.
2. CARROT Weather: This iOS/iPadOS/macOS weather app got another mention on Upgrade #493: Upgradies Hall of Fame and I thought maybe I should give it a look. I was a long-time subscriber of Dark Sky before Apple bought it, and I’ve really liked Apple’s integration of Dark Sky into their own weather app. But CARROT boasts a few neat tricks: snarky reporting, multiple data sources, and a highly configurable interface. I let the sub continue after the trial. Rhonda likes to pay attention to the phases of the moon, and CARROT Weather has a great feature for tracking this, too.¹
3. Frozen blueberries: Buy a pack of blueberries at the market, chuck the whole thing in the freezer, and you can have a guilt-free handful of tiny popsicles whenever you’re craving a sweet.
   

UGG boots on my feet

CARROT Weather

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¹ Teachers are terribly fond of attributing aberrant behavior to a full moon.