Last week, I mentioned that I had been wrestling with our lawn tractor. It’s a Husqvarna from the mid-2000s—it’s been in service for a long time. I’ve changed the belts, the blades, the oil, and filters to keep it running. The deck (the metal shell that houses the blades) has taken a beating over the years, and a bracket that holds the belt pulleys had broken free from the shell. Rhonda and I combined forces on Tuesday afternoon after our getaway to Philly, and completed what I learned is called a “field repair.” It seems to be working now!

After thinking I’d fixed it several times before Tuesday (Wednesday actually), this repair reminds me that success and failure are often within a few inches of each other. Every win starts off as a potential loss. It’s an argument for adversity maybe: too many serial wins can lead to feeling a failure as catastrophic.

Television Time

I’ve been using an app called Sofa for a while now to track television shows and movies that I might like to watch. It’s a great iPhone and iPad app, and it runs on the Mac as well. It has evolved to include books, podcasts, restaurants, and video games. I like it a lot, but it has lacked a central function that I wanted in such an application: moving a show to an “actively watching” list or state. (I’ve never used it for books, which is a topic for another post.) Version 5.2 of Sofa now lets you track shows, generating a list of episodes and providing the user a way of checking off episodes.

Jason Snell recently highlighted Television Time on an episode of MacBreak Weekly, and after a few years of trying the free version of Sofa (I find the subscription a little pricey for my needs), and also trying Casey Liss’s Callsheet for the same purpose, I decided to give Television Time a spin.

Television Time is TV-specific; you can’t add movies or any other kind of media. This is a good thing. You can research shows, and add them to your “To Watch” list when you’re ready. There’s no intermediate resting place for a show, though, which I would like. Television time includes notifications for upcoming episodes, and a wealth of data about an episode, including original air date. It will also monitor the time you spent watching TV if you check off what you’ve been watching. And like Sofa, Television Time shows you where you can watch a show.

Television Time is only 9.99 for a yearly subscription.

Retropia Repurposed Disposable Film Camera Lens

I’ve written a fair bit about my TT Artisans 18mm f/6.3 UFO Lens here on Uncorrected. It’s primary appeal to me when I found it was both its tiny size and its low price, and while both of those remain attractions, it’s not a lens that I’d recommend for someone outside of understanding what a strange thing it is.

Shortly after I purchased the lens, I started seeing adds for repurposed disposable film camera lenses, one of which is the Retropia. I thought it might be duplicative at least, or less functional, than the TT Artisans, so I bought one for Aaron to use with his Nikon D3100. It turns out that he also purchased one, so I’m going to return the one I bought for him.

It’s a tiny lens that weighs almost nothing. It’s more of a lens cap than a lens. It makes the TT Artisans feel heavy.

You have to fire the camera in manual mode to use the Retrotopia; it doesn’t support any kind of autofocus or aperture priority. With a fixed aperture of f/11, it needs plenty of light to work. I would normally avoid taking pictures in the midday sun, but the Retrotopia is perfect for such shooting.

I took this picture of my Miata with the Retrotopia. It has that greasy, smeary look that you might get from a cheap disposable camera. I don’t love it, but it’s kinda fun. The TT Artisans takes much sharper pictures, and that’s not saying much for the UFO.

PowerMate Agent

I still have an ancient Griffin PowerMate around that I haven’t used in forever. I stumbled upon the PowerMate Agent application recently, which revives the peripheral. It scrolls and mutes! Pretty cool.

What a beautiful weekend! Saturday and Sunday were chilly in morning, sunny, and then exemplars of a warm, dry May weather. You could do worse than have a glorious, full-throated, naturally aspirated American V8 engine in your car on a day like today.

Bellview Winery was an obvious choice for our Saturday, considering the weather, but they had a ticketed event, so we stayed home and had cheese and salami and raided our cellar (which is on the second floor in a cheap fridge). Joe was working, but Rhonda, Aaron, and I nipped out for dinner at the Turkish joint around the corner. It’s really good!

It occurred to me that the genesis of Sunday Serial was to recommend things to my readers. I haven’t invoked the mission in writing for a while, so here it goes:

Here are a few things to check out!

BetterTouchTool

I’ve been using BetterSnapTool for over a decade to manage the windows on my Mac. It originally was one of the few utilities to add Windows Snap-style functionality to the Mac. Apple did eventually add a similar feature to Sequoia, but there are still advantages to third-party utilities, such as programmable keyboard shortcuts..

BetterTouchTool has long offered the same features, in addition to giving users a path to creating custom mouse and touchpad gestures. In a recent blog post, the developer described a new beta feature: a Spotlight-like Launcher. His hopes were high that Apple would eventually add third-party support to Spotlight, and while the latest version of Spotlight that ships with Tahoe brings some feature enhancements, it was not what he was looking for. With that, BetterTouchTool joined the crowded field of excellent third-party launcher utilities.

You can use BTT’s launcher to fire off custom actions, launch apps, see running apps, create and use widgets, search for files, use Soulver to make back-of-the-napkin calculations, and lots more. I’m excited to finally create some custom gestures with my trackpad, and avail myself of BTT’s ability to manage windows.

[BetterTouchTool’s new Spotlight Like Launcher (BETA)]

Lamy Safari Rollerball Pen

I had to return some pants Rhonda got for Aaron at Staples today, and I browsed the pen aisle to see what they had; Staples has always been an OK spot for Fisher Space pens and more. I spied a Lamy Safari Ballpoint in bespoke packaging on one peg, and gave it a quick ogle. I didn’t take me long to decide to purchase one.

It’s preloaded with a black ink cartridge, but I’ll order a refill in the near future and make it blue. It’s got that great thick barrel that I love from my Safari fountain pen, as well as the rounded wire clip. I was hoping for a gel pen, but this does write nicely.

Shoreline Vintage & Toy Show 2026

Joey and Aaron clued me in to Shoreline Vintage’s show this weekend; since adding Farpoint IIto their collection of vendors, they’ve been throwing great shows every summer, usually around Memorial Day. We got up early because Joe had to work and headed over for a bit of shopping.

Toy Shows are always an eclectic gathering of enthusiasts. There were people in costumes, some cross dressing, and plenty of eagle-eyed shoppers. Joe and Aaron split off and browsed the tables. It was, as usual, a great show with lots to see.

I’m excited that Aaron’s eye was bewitched by a used Nikon DSLR. We went back to the table a few times to try to get more info about the camera, and as we walked the grounds, I learned that the Nikon D3500 is not a new camera, but is one of the last in the line of consumer-focused DSLRs and not mirrorless. It was a kit with an 18-55mm f/3.5-5.5 lens, probably a standard Nikon kit lens, but also a 70-500mm f/4.5-6.3 zoom lens. That’s pretty close to all you’d need, save for a nice prime lens with an aperture around f/2 or a little lower.

I told him we could figure something out if he wanted to buy it without exhausting his budget; my notion was that we’d eventually get him a Panasonic or a Olympus so he could use my lenses, but he seems to be drawn to Canon and Nikon. I’m curious about APS-C and Nikon’s software interface on their cameras, as well as the physical controls, though. I suggested that we could negotiate the price, and Aaron went for it: he suggested a price, and the seller readily agreed. Proud of this guy!

So yeah: he’s got a Nikon, and there’s an f/1.8 35mm on the way from Ebay.