Finally downloaded Rocket for Mac. It’s a free utility that allows you to invoke an emoji picker just buy typing a colon (:) and the name of the emoji you’re looking for.
It’s very cool and works nicely. I don’t know that I need it; Launchbar effectively does this, and there is a keyboard shortcut for pulling up the emoji picker in macOS. I do both of those a lot. I’m going to leave Rocket running and see if it sticks.
A coworker surprised me when I got to work today with some sea bass her husband caught. Moments later, Rhonda texted me about what we were planning for dinner (I keep all that in AnyList). I mentioned the piscine windfall and we got to talking tacos.
Rhonda make a crema with mayo, lime juice, Greek yogurt, and avocado, as well as a mango salsa and a roasted corn and red pepper salsa. We had rice and beans too. Came out great.
I only recently discovered Bartender’s Menu Bar Item Groups, a feature that’s a mouthful but improves my experience using the utility. I used to have just enough menu bar items that just running Bartender vanilla was useful. But there are so many apps vying for menu bar real estate that Bartender started to lose its utility.
But Menu Bar Item Groups really clean things up.
Bartender Menu Bar Item Groups
Michael Tsai, echoing Steve Jobs’ infamous jab, “If you see a stylus, they blew it”:
To me, if you’re trying to use a keyboard with an iPad, you’ve failed. It’s better to lean into what it’s good at. For years, Apple tried to resist the idea of an iPad as an iPhone with a larger screen. But the apps have trended in that direction, and I think that’s actually not a bad way to think of it. It’s actually what a lot of people want.
For all the handwringing about the underpowered os running state-of-the-art Apple kit, it’s refreshing to consider using the device for what it is rather than wishing it would be something else. For all my own handwringing, I do delight from tapping a post into Ulysses on the naked glass from the sofa, as I am now, or completing my weekly review and populating my Unschedule for the week. I type with a weird mix of touch typing with my left hand, and hunt and peck using my right index finger. It’s slow and inaccurate but it feels different. I don’t want to use a keyboard all the time with an iPad.
But sometimes I do. I’m still excited about iPadOS 19.
Weather-wise, a wild week: Torrential rain on Friday, and quite possibly the most exquisite spring Saturday weather I can remember. Some unseasonably hot days prior.
Rhonda and I sat outside and had Sweet Amalia oysters with Aaron last night around six pm; I can’t remember feeling quite so blissed out, with the warm waning sun lighting up the small lot on historic US 40, the wine, the food, and the company. I reflected on how lucky we were to spend a glorious afternoon at Bellview Winery soaking in the day’s after-the-flood warm, dry weather. And things only improved from there. It was one of those moments where I waxed ecstatic about living in the weird interstitial region that we do: rural, poor, blessed with amazing produce and wine and some niche spots worth exploring. Wide-open skies and a short hike to the beach or one of the nation’s best restaurant towns.
I can’t complain.
We had some fried eggs this morning for breakfast, a plan we’d hatched the night before because there were enough asparagus stalks coming up in the garden to make it worth our while. We didn’t have bacon, which is usually the breakfast situation: we’ll get three pounds of bacon at the butcher, and keep it around for about as many weeks. We don’t always eat it all, but it usually works out.
Rhonda mentioned the asparagus and suggested that it would be good with fried eggs in lieu of bacon, which was a sound idea. The asparagus from our back yard is tender, mild, and lacks the flavor profile so many find objectionable in the venerable stalk. I have grown into an adult who loves asparagus from a child who hated it. My remembrances of it were mushy with an off-flavor, a kind of cabbage-y heat that made me similarly dislike Brussels sprouts. Perhaps the culinary revolution that occurred in the mid- to late-90s helped improve the preparation of heretofore loathsome side dishes. ‘Cause I love Brussels sprouts now, too.
So I stabbed the gooey yolks of my eggs with asparagus instead of bacon. The kale in the pic is from the garden as well; it does not grow in abundance, but I’m always able to add a handful to my salad each day.
I was check the New York Times app Wednesday morning and saw a link to a story, “Why Boys and Men Are Floundering, According to Relationship Therapist Terry Real.” It offered a “listen” feature, which I clicked and listened to. It was a feature of the Times app I had seen before, as with Apple News, but never tried. It was a great listening experience, as it uses AVAudioSession (I think) to play the audio even after the phone locks and the display dims.
The Times on Safari links to their own NYT Audio podcast app; writing about the app proper’s audio support above led me to it. I had already installed it some time ago on my iPhone 🤦♂️ but never used it. I logged in and I’m ready to go. Very nice. I spit the audio out to my HomePod mini in my office while I prepped lunches for the week and wrestled the frozen turkey breast into the sous vide machine. One criticism: the app was playing its version of Facebook’s Reels or YouTube’s Shorts upon launching the app and the audio of the podcast I was listening to.
These are leaks/rumors, but the word is that iPadOS will take some much-desired steps towards more Mac-like functionality. I’m excited about a persistent menu bar when the iPad is connected to a keyboard. I’d really like to see a clipboard manager, too.
This prosciutto-like meat was a welcome pairing with our other Appyhour cheeses and Sunday spritzes. Very lean, not terribly salty, with a nice chew. I paired a slice with black pepper asiago from Bagliani’s and it was great.
I’ve featured Sweet Amalia’s excellent oysters here on Uncorrected before. They sell them in restaurants in the region, but they have a market in nearby Newfield, too, which is unassuming but adorable and also serves great chew.
On our most recent visit, they had their signature oysters on the menu and available (it sounds strange, but the Market & Kitchen doesn’t always serve their own oysters–the homebrew mollusk is so popular that the supply is exhausted provisioning restaurants). So when they are in fact on the menu, I’m compelled to order them.
Of course, Sweet Amalia oysters are the stars of the show. This best-selling menu item is personally plucked from the ocean and harvested by hand by Calvo and her team. These medium-sized, round, lusciously plump oysters, reminiscent of glistening pearls, are bursting with flavor—a delicate balance of cream and brine. Their uniformity in shape and size speaks to Calvo’s dedication to their quality and freshness.
How a Tiny, Unassuming NJ Oyster Stand Became a National Seafood Sensation
Rhonda and I had the mussels too and some fries (they come with an aioli or mayo), too, and brought a bottle of Hawk Haven’s excellent dry rosé. Big watermelon flavor, to my mixed delight and horror.
I ducked into the kitchen last night to grab some fruit, and realized that the watermelon stash was getting low. There was still a half watermelon upstairs, so I grabbed it from the fridge and started cutting it up.
My particular approach to cutting watermelon is: quarter the melon, run the knife between the flesh and the rind to separate a big wedge of red deliciousness, and then slide downward from the apex to the base. I then throw these big chunks into a container for later munching.
This sometimes leads to ribbons of what I endearingly refer to as “water melon sashimi”: there is red flesh attached to the rind, which I slice off and often eat while I’m standing there hacking up the rest of the melon.
Well.
Last night, I took a big roll of the sashimi and chucked it in my mouth. I didn’t really chew it. It just kinda slid down. And it got stuck.
The watermelon didn’t cover my trachea, so I was able to breathe normally and talk and everything else. But my body was in fight or flight mode, and it wasn’t a minor annoyance: it was uncomfortable and unsettling. I tried drinking some water and even a hot beverage, at Rhonda’s suggestion. But we decided to go to the ER.
You don’t ever want to go to the ER, but you really don’t want to decide it’s necessary at 9 pm on a weeknight, either. It was pretty crowded. The PA who saw me had me take three meds: Lidocaine, something with magnesium in it, and a third medication that I can’t remember. They were going to do an x-ray as well.
I took the meds and sipped on a ginger ale I got out of the vending machine (while loathe to consume ultra-processed soft drinks normally, in the calculus of choking vs ginger ale, ginger ale will win every time), and in short order I felt the melon slide down. The discomfort receded, and I was back in action. Much to Rhonda’s chagrin, my impish sense of humor returned almost immediately, and I resumed my normal practice of skylarking.
So yeah, the moral of the story is to chew your food. Even watermelon. It too can get stuck on the way down, despite its manifest slipperiness. Live and learn.
Meanwhile, that sound you hear isn’t the hype engine that Disney’s marketing department has ginned up on social media, but the bottom of the barrel being dredged as Marvel Studios exploits a handful of D-list characters before rebooting its proven and most popular heroes. The “dirty half dozen”/“magnificent six” featured here can’t agree on what to call themselves, but have no illusions about one thing: They’re the losers of the MCU.
Ouch. There are some compliments.
The Last of Them (Apple News)
David Mullen recently posted about some local wines he tried, and he mentioned Hawk Haven’s Cab Rosé. We grabbed a bottle of their Signature Series when we stopped by. Looking forward to uncorking it!
Rhonda mentioned that a student in her class described something as “cringey,” so we were talking about what that meant. She asked Aaron, 18 and in high school, how he used it.
“It’s like secondhand embarrassment,” he offered.
It’s warming up out there! Yesterday was sunny but cool, down in the low seventies. One thing about being a thinner version of myself: it was jeans and sweatshirt weather for me. Today’s a much warmer affair, and I’m about to step out for a Mother’s Day dinner with the fam, and I’m in linen head to toe. Happy Mother’s Day!
We were Marvel cinematic completionists for a while, seeing all of the films when they came out. As the kids have gotten older, we’ve been less insistent about seeing each film in the theater. From that list, we have Captain America: Brave New World and The Marvels that we didn’t see in the theater, neither of which I’ve even seen.
Rhonda and I have developed a habit of hitting a winery on Saturdays, which has also limited our movie-going to some degree. Part of the theater diet includes our particular way of seeing them, which is: hit a matinée at our favorite theater in Northfield, NJ (it’s an independently owned venue), then roll back to a nearby shopping area so the boys can check Target and GameStop while Rhonda and I stock up on bagels. We learned that by going in the late afternoon, just before closing, they will often throw in some extra bagels if they’re piling up.
For a while, we’d make a night out of it, taking in the movie and housing some popcorn and sugary stuff we smuggle in from Dollar General (aka Desserts General), hitting the stores, and then having dinner out. But popcorn belly is a thing, and we don’t like to force dinner just because we’re nearby. Plus, I make better cocktails than just about every place we go. So we head home after shopping and I make cocktails, and then it’s out for dinner somewhere.
We stopped at the usual Dollar General, which is on the way to the theater, and I looked at my phone while we were waiting in line and realized that, due to the availability of showtimes on Saturday, I had chosen a different theater in the complete opposite direction of where we were. I went into fight or flight mode to figure out how to fix this problem, using the Fandango app from the parking lot of Dollar General to cancel the tickets (you can get a credit if you know you’re going to see another film). We looked at a few other show times and Rhonda made the brilliant suggestion that we shop first and hit the 3 pm show, which is a perfectly serviceable way to do it, but I wasn’t thinking flexibly in the moment.
So we got vermouth, bagels, Aaron got an album, and we even managed to browse Old Navy before heading back to the theater. We loaded up on popcorn (by this point, all I’d eaten all day was a banana and some watermelon) and took our seats.
I had seen some good reviews of Thunderbolts, so I was looking forward to the film. I had high hopes, because in the same way that some offbeat titles in the comic-book-inspired moviesphere have yielded great films (Guardians of the Galaxy is an easy example, but I’d include the second Suicide Squad and Rogue One in that list, too.) I never read any Thunderbolts comics, but I was familiar with the title and broader ragtag team trope.
I thought it was a good flick, but not great. Sentry is a great character. Red Guardian is once again a big bowl of comic relief. I was surprised to see Taskmaster taken out of the story so early, but not terribly disappointed. I just didn’t like that take on Tasky in Black Widow. I can see why they didn’t want to make another Deadpool-style character with taskmaster, but whew that was a dry character.
It was a rushed near the end–but captivating. Sentry is a complex character, driven to cure his own mental illness in the same way that Deadpool underwent experimentation to cure his cancer, and emerged more powerful but still not of a piece. Julia Louis Dreyfus as de Fontaine is a good riff on her Veep character: unabashedly opportunistic, on the verge of exile from government service, duplicitous, riveting on screen.
Thunderbolts was not, as I expected, a standalone title in the universe. Mussing from the ending and the obligatory post credits roll, Marvel is undoubtedly planning to replace the iconic Avengers with something. I’m not going to say too much about the plot in case you haven’t seen it yet. But it was fun and the compromised heroes who make up the team are sympathetic in their way.
As with Vineland’s longstanding Maplewood restaurant, the Savoy has long stood at the intersections of Landis Avenue and Union Road. It’s a venue for events, with the Bistro at the front of the building serving as a mid-tier dining experience. (Outside they’ve added Luna’s, which is a more casual outdoor dining experience.)
All of the storied eateries in Vineland have largely remained the same over their long lives. Savoy has iterated on their menu a fair bit of the years, and we like it most of the time for a local bite out.
Aaron revealed that last night, after the movie, we would be treating him to a night out with his squad (they went to Applebees or some similar Darden property in our local shopping zone), so Rhonda and I hopped over to the Savoy.
I’ve had their Veal Milanese at least a half-dozen times, and it’s always good (one time I had a chewy piece). It’s a paillard of veal, breaded and fried, topped with tomatoes and arugula. They always serve their dinners with very banquet-looking sides, including mixed vegetables and a disturbingly composed scoop of mashed potatoes. (I did’t eat the potatoes.) It was going to be this or their Veal Saltimboca, which I also enjoy at the Bistro. We split the clams casino first; theirs feature Cooper Sharp, which I really like. Clams, bacon, and Cooper: like a salt-lick for boozy adults.
Human beings make strange fauna and flora; fathers, husbands, and sons are blessed to have these women in their lives, a force of love and nurturance. Whether you are a mother, have a mother, or simply appreciate the love and dedication this day represents, let this weekend bring you moments of joy and connection.
I stopped on the way home for a couple of crowlers (great portmanteau) to go with tonight’s smashburgers. I was going to get growlers (they have 32 oz. vessels) but I figured we’d be stuck with the glass if we didn’t like the beer. Plus I like saying “crowler.”
There was a lengthy queue when I came in, but it moved quickly. The fella who tapped the brew mixed up the styles on the crowlers, so our intention to move from lighter to heavier beers (I got the cream ale and the IPA) was thwarted. It didn’t matter much; the cream ale has a decent hop finish, but is otherwise unremarkable, while the IPA was a more sessionable variation, less malty than Glasstown’s 609 and less juicy than Bonesaw’s Swoosh. Rhonda likened it to Tonewood’s excellent Freshies.
I’m keen to try the nitro stout next.
Jason Snell:
It seems so quaint and obvious now, but in 1998 the iMac was, if not revolutionary, at least rebellious and radical. In an era of beige PCs, it was the color of the water off Australia’s Bondi Beach. In an era where the average computer was shaped like a pizza box or a minitower, tethered to a CRT monitor via a fat cable, the iMac was a clean self-contained unit.
Rhonda got an iMac DV SE at the CompUSA back in 1999 (I may have had something to do with it). It only came in one color–a smoky gray. It was a lot of fun to play games on; she played the Sims and I had a FireWire drive I’d bring over to her (now our) house and play Driver and some other games off of it. She has a green M1 now.
This isn’t a picture of the iMac we used, but it’s the same model.
Nearly three decades later, Apple owes everything to the iMac
One of our favorite phô places has broken rice on the menu. Rhonda tried it last time we went and raved about the pork chop. Aaron has plussed his phô with a side chop from time to time. They are delicious: thin, cooked to well done, with a sweet and tangy flavor.
Cooks Illustrated for May and June has a recipe for the dish, so we tried the pork chops (I just steamed rice). I marinated them overnight in fish sauce, brown sugar, olive oil, some garlic, and some chillies, and grilled them crispy.
Chris Lawley recently joined Matt Gemmell in stepping back from iPad uniformity. Federico has been using a Mac.
The most recent edition of the Appstories podcast(where Viticci mentions using a MacBook Pro) is a good listen if you, too, question iPad monolithicity. The hosts list what they’re hoping to see in the much-ballyhooed iPadOS 19, which is rumored to feature a menu bar, macOS style, when attached to a keyboard.
A more mouse-forward affordance would certainly be welcome. But I’ll agree with John and Federico in hoping for:
It’s not worth repeating that the iPad is, and has been, glorious hardware with an OS that doesn’t satisfy more demanding users. I think people get upset because they see the potential of the device–hence their secular incursions.