Philosopher Ruth Chen, on making big decisions:

When we choose between options that are on a par, we make ourselves the authors of our own lives. Instead of being led by the nose by what we imagine to be facts of the world, we should instead recognize that sometimes the world is silent about what we should do. In those cases, we can create value for ourselves by committing to an option. By doing so, we not only create value for ourselves but we also (re)create ourselves.

“On a par,” for Chen, means that options are not helpfully considered by consulting facts or input from the outside world, but rather, “you can look inward to what you can stand behind, commit to, resolve to throw yourself behind.”

Resolving to Create a New You

My boys got me this He-Man action figure for my birthday. I remember discovering He-Man figures at the local KB toy store, walking to the back of the aisle where the cool stuff was stocked and seeing what I recall as a wall of Masters of the Universe figures before me. The figures at the time came with mini comic books that told a decidedly different story than what would come from Filmation some time later.

Masters of the Universe were wildly popular back then, and as with many toys, are enjoying a resurgance as those of us who had them as children reach middle age. This particular He-Man is a bit of a masterpiece: it nods in every appropriate way at the original Mattel figure, while introducing all of the things about modern action figures that make them enviable to people my age.

Masters figures were cool in that they were larger than GI Joe or Kenner’s venerable Star Wars line, but they stood in odd squatting positions like wrestlers about to pounce. Their rubbery legs were fixed in a 45-degree bend, and their brick-shit-house physiques were common across most every buck. They were such an unusual mix of Conan-style swords and sorcery and sci-fi, though–with horror-movie-monster characters thrown in–that it was impossible not to appreciate them.

The Filmation cartoon, to my mind then and now, cast a corny light on the line, but it didn’t seem to hurt it one bit.

But all that is just some typing; it charms me to no end that my nearly adult children took a moment to hit Target and present me with a piece of plastic in the very same way that I have, and still do, for them.

Matt Birchler talks Raycast:

The uninstall action is one I’ve really grown to appreciate. It will show you all the files it will delete from your system, and it does a pretty good job of finding the right files and purging your system of whatever app is causing you grief (not Fantastical, of course 🙂).

I haven’t tried the uninstall option yet, and that’s what’s kind of neat about Raycast: features and functions hide out and await your discovery.

Raycast for Mac. The Next-generation Alfred?

Via Macstories, I found the Soviet-sounding Music Remote. I can’t stand how great this little app is.

Music Remote for Macintosh

Craft excels at providing a seamless linking feature… just type the “@“ symbol and you will be greeted by a pop-up menu from which you can choose documents to link to (a la Obisidan or Dendron)… or, more impressively, discrete text blocks in other Craft documents. This is where Craft gets specific and, dare I say it, downright crafty.

Here’s a short video showing an example of linking to a section of notes I took in our legal update at work over the summer.

Speaking of Spark Desktop’s Command Center, Quick Open in Craft is an affordance that I’ve come to love and rely on. I was looking at doing a big write up on Craft, but I think I might just take a whack here and there to highlight some of the things I like about it.

In Craft, smacking command-o on the keyboard, a la Obsidian or Dendron, opens the Quick Open menu. Unlike those two solutions, however, Craft’s Quick Open menu initially searches document titles. It does, however, expose one of Craft’s superpowers: block searching and linking.

Searching in quick open will allow to select a matching document or block of text; finding no match, it will offer to create a new document with the string you typed into the quick open menu.

Quick Open in Craft

Craft, Finding No Document of Block of Text Titled “Detroit Style Pizza,” Helpfully Offers to Create Said File for Me

Searching for the term “cannabis,” which was the subject of a recent legal training we sat it on here at work (as it applies to public school students), revealed no documents with that title, but did show me the location (navigable, to boot) of blocks where the word appeared. Tremendous. Contrast this to Dendron, where content search and file name search are two different key commands.

I have plenty more to say about Craft.

Moving to the new Spark on iOS and iPadOS isn’t much of a reach; the app largely works (and looks) like it did before. I would say the more assertive grouping of inbox messages into Notifications and Newsletters (Smart 2.0) changes things a bit (and, to my mind, for the better; messages that I would normally see in my inbox on MailMate are held in a category with limited visibility, but not moved completely out of sight). I also like Spark’s aggressively approach to asking me if it should block messages from potential spam senders. This dialog isn’t modal and I can respond when I have the time and inclination.

On the Mac, though, Spark Desktop is a considerably different animal from its predecessor. There are some serious limitations that early adopters will run into, but I’m forging ahead. I did email Readdle and ask them to let users turn off avatars. I have never been a fan of them in email, because they almost never impart any useful information. Companies that have bothered to create an avatar, and (internally) Gmail users who have set up an avatar have a visual identified that helps. But mostly I just see a garish blob of color with two initials. And this is why I always turn them off. Readdle’s response to my request was quick and it sounds like it’s already a feature request, so I remain hopeful.

Spark Desktop 3’s Avatars, There Whether You Want Them or Not

What does delight is the amount of time you can keep your fingers on the keyboard and just munge mail. I have been very happy with MailMate but Spark’s Command Center feature exposes keyboard shortcuts, with visual prompts to help you remember them. I am looking forward to some design changes to the Command Center, but this is a great start.

Spark Desktop 3’s Searchable Command Center

Updated for iOS, iPadOS, and the Mac is Spark, a longstanding email client. Their move to a subscription model is having all the expected effects. Spark has, for a long time, been my choice for iPhone and iPad email, but I’ve never been a heavy desktop Spark user. I wrote about Spark a bit here, here.

Currently in development, though, is Spark Desktop, and that may change things.

Following the current hotness that we enjoy in Craft, Obsidian, and Dendron is the Actions menu: Command+K opens a searchable menu of actions, from which you can type to select the action acted upon. It’s just great.

Here’s a quick video of me shoving an email from my son’s Physics teacher into a Gmail label/folder:

Spark

Last Sunday, Toyshows.org returned to the Nur Shrine Center in New Castle, DE for the Octoberfest Toy show. We really missed going to these during COVID. Note the delicious Shake Shack lunch and Octoberfest beer enjoyed afterwards. I took the boys and a friend.

My younger son, Aaron, and I were talking about movies he’s never seen, and one of them was Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s one of those movies I’ve seen so many times that I didn’t even think to make a fuss about showing the boys, but here we are. So today, with him convalescing from a stomach bug, I figured, let’s watch one of those flicks.

Toward the end, there’s a scene where Belloq (Harry Freeman) is yelling at Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford, for those of you who don’t know anything) and a fly shows up on the screen. It looks like it disappears into Belloq’s mouth.

We both sat up and were like “Did you see that?” Upon a scrub back, we could confirm that it was not an organic fly in the room with us, but something playing out onscreen.

So here’s the deal:

Did Bellow eat a fly in Indiana Jones? Answer: No, it just flew away but movie magic made it look like it did. The fun continues though, if you watch the video below and listen very carefully you will notice that the sound effects department added the sound of the fly landing on Belloq’s face and a second later you can hear the sound of it flying away. The crew were definitely having fun with this one.

Did Paul Freeman Accidentally Eat A Fly In Raiders of the Lost Ark?

I’ve been meaning to try this for a while: Detroit-Style Pan Pizza. I can’t say that I’ve ever actually had it outside of home, but the description sounded interesting and it reminded me of the deep-dish pizza I used to get as a kid at Pizza Hut, in a way.

I followed Kenji’s recipe, but I see there are many more on YouTube, including Sam Zein’s version. I even got the requisite pan.

Detroit-Style Pan Pizza Recipe