I was peeking around in Glass for samples of pics taken with the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 7-14mm f/2.8 PRO and saw that they’ve partnered with Darkroom to advertise Darkroom+ for $19.99 for a year. So I grabbed that.
Darkroom
I also have been trying out Retrobatch; I take a lot of pics for Uncorrected, and would very much like to streamline my resizing workflow (WordPress doesn’t like photos above a certain size). The excellent MarsEdit will take care of this for you, but I often post from Ulysses, because I like to be able to use my iPad to post as well.
Digital photo expert Styler Stalmanjoins David Sparks and Steven Hackett on Mac Power Users to discuss iPhone photography. It’s a great listen if you know a bit about cameras and photography (or want to learn) but came to this world from your phone.
the ultrawide lens is 13mm, which is “beyond ultrawide” (typicallly 16mm)
it’s not as good in low light as the 1x lens
4x is about 100mm: a standard portrait length
5x is 120mm
Optical zoom = cropped zoom
Don’t pinch to zoom: “be on the numbers” due to how the phone processes images
He tries not to use Portrait mode when shooting due to the lack of natural blur compared to the camera’s natural bokeh (“be careful of how much Portrait Mode you use”)
The latest selfie camera has a greater pixel count than previous versions
Follow the path of least resistance: “Apple wants this to be easy for you”
I mentioned last weekend that I was trying to replace the flushing components in the toilet upstairs. The problem I ran into was that I couldn’t spin the nuts off of the bolts in water tank; the metal used in the bolts was softened by all those years of submersion in water, I guess, and not even some strategic spritzes with Liquid Wrench helped.
I mentioned it to our superintendent at work (who was in the process of installing his own bathtub, which made my problem seem tiny), and he suggested using a hacksaw. I ended up using just a hacksaw blade, over a couple of sessions, to cut the bolts between the base of the commode and the tank.
It wasn’t fun but it’s done! We have a freshly refurbished can upstairs. I did the same for the downstairs bathroom years ago. So I can log another home repair to my spreadsheet. Regarding said spreadsheet, I just started it today to keep track of when I service or repair something so I can remember how long it’s been since I tangled with a wary structure, appliance, or some other thing that awaits my attention.
I do a lot of these things in part to save a buck, and to avoid the hassle of trying to find someone to come out and do them for me. I feel like most of my home repairs have a very imperfect version of doneness, as I’m not the handiest of fellas, and always have something in mind I’d rather be doing. But you can’t argue with feeling a sense of accomplishment having fixed something yourself.
Next Friday is another visit to New Brunswick to visit Aaron. I found a host of places to try for dinner, including some intriguing Portuguese joints. I’m second guessing not trying one of those spots (not that it’s too late) because I met a couple at a party last night, and she was from Sayreville. I not a teleologist but I do find such moments of serendipity intriguing. I think we’ll enjoy the Metuchen Inn, though. Looking forward to the visit and the inevitable stop (stops?) at Stokelan Winery.
Do I have to tell you that we’re enjoying some spritzes in this fine fall weather? Rhonda is toasting up some nachos to accompany them using some leftovers from the week.
Nachos
I hope you’re doing something that resonates with you from toes to dome. We only have this moment: the past is gone, and the future lies, uncertainly, in the moments, days, and years ahead.
Kagi Search
I’ve been curious about Kagi search since reading about it on Daring Fireball and listening to an interview with one of the developers. I’ve been using Duck Duck Go for a while, and Google, too, and the AI results I get with the latter really have started to bother me. I decided to try Kagi’s trial tier, and while not exciting by any stretch, I found myself very happy with the results I was getting, and when the generous demo bank of searches wore out, I couldn’t see myself going back. It seems a little wild to pay for a search engine, but as with RSS readers, the value proposition is hard to resist.
Path Finder
I’ve been trialing the Finder replacement Path Finder by Cocoatech for years now, but I never found a reason to purchase a license. It popped up on Bundlehunt so I bought a few for my Macs. It’s an interesting twist on the Finder. One of the features I really like is how it displays labels in a window; it’s much less subtle than the Finder, which I like, especially in looking at a folder organized using the Johnny.Decimal system, which I’m currently half-assing. I also really like the Path Navigator feature. Tahoe’s Finder enhancements have been welcome, though. I has a great Yoink-like feature, called the Drop Stack, that lets you move files without opening multiple windows.
Path Finder’s Labels
How Andre Agassi Beat Boris Becker
Andre Agassi was a rock star American tennis player who was divisive in terms of his fan base, but was always fun to watch. He evolved, from tennis rebel to statesman, during his career. This video is great, from the tennis angle and from the how-do-I-get-better angle.
Now this is some fall weather we’re having! Rhonda and I were happy to get to Bellview after a couple of weeks away. It was packed but we found an iron table near the arbor and packed own provisions. The live music featured a drummer I know personally, and the singer/guitarist is Aaron’s former history teacher.
Siesta Saturday at BellviewK and J at Bellview
It’s spritzes while the ribeyes soak in the sous vide tank for a spell.
I have some research to do for our next journey up to see Aaron in a couple of weeks. I also decided to try to fix the leaky toilet in the apartment upstairs, but I can’t get the nuts spun onto the bolts that hold the tank on to shake loose. I hit them with some liquid wrench, so here’s hoping. If that doesn’t work, it’s time for delicate grinder wheel surgery.
Dipping into these kinds of projects always cause me some anxiety: I’ve fixed my share of household problems, but you’re only as good as the last thing you fixed. It’s like a domestic booby trap: one of these days, you’re gonna bite of more than you can chew. I guess it’s all in how you look at things.
Underbrush Gum
I’m generally immune to the bespoke infomercial reels on social media selling products, with one, and now two, exceptions: William Painter sunglasses, and Underbrush Gum. With William Painter, they had a comedian name James Schrader star in breezy, smart commercials for their brand, and they were engaging in the way that the Dollar Shave Club’s ad campaign was. I ended up ordering a pair of the Williams Painters, and I still rock them to this day. I have two pair, in fact.
Underbrush Gum
Underbrush’s commercial is more serious, but I was sucked in by the hand-cut gum and the claim that it can reverse decay. I’m not sure if that’s true, but I wanted to try the gum.
One person who tried a piece said, “I don’t think I’d chew that again,” and Rhonda said it smelled like bug spray on my breath. I’ve enjoyed it, though, and I’m happy with how long both the flavor and texture last chew after chew.
Michael Caputo’s Six-Color Apple Stickers
I saw these on Reddit I think, and it scratched an itch I’ve been carrying for a while now. I’ve always loved the six-color apple logo, as a Mac user since 1993, and an Apple II users since I was a little kid. Only the Studio and phone were spared the sticker treatment.
iPad MiniMacBook Air
The Shacket
Whilst trawling Marshalls for things to wear, I found “The Shacket,” which is basically a flannel shirt designed to be worn with an undershirt, and cut straight at the waist, to be worn untucked. It’s a portmanteau of shirt and jacket, which I appreciate in the vein of the spork, and which has generally been reserved to ladies fashion (a la the skort).
Me and My Shacket
I really like the cheap-o shackets I got, and have been looking for the right weather to wear them: we’re not so formal as we used to be at work, and to be frank, I’ve ignored the dress code in favor of my own sense of what looks good. The line between what looks good vs what’s appropriate is fine, to be sure, but I reserve the right to make my own decisions, because I can. I don’t dress like a slob, and serially strive to look composed even when casual.
Anyway, I was thinking about wearing one of the Marshall’s shackets last week, but I never did. I made up for it today, though.
Kagi News operates on a simple principle: understanding the world requires hearing from the world. Every day, our system reads thousands of community curated RSS feeds from publications across different viewpoints and perspectives. We then use AI to distill this massive information into one comprehensive daily briefing, while clearly citing sources.
I’m back from vacation in Ocean City, New Jersey. We’ve been going since 2009 for a week or more each summer. It’s a great Disney-esque shore town. I checked email lightly and did some more yesterday and today so that I don’t walk into Monday without a plan. Here are some things to check out.
Fiery Feeds
Andy Baio linked to this post by Molly White a while back, where she extolled the benefits of RSS:
Perhaps you’ve heard of RSS. It stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and it allows websites like blogs, newsletters, and news sites to make their content available in “feeds” for outside services called “RSS readers” or “feed readers”. Far from being the new hotness attracting glitzy feature stories in tech media or billions in venture funding, RSS has been around for 25 years.
I was swimming this week in Ocean City and thought for a sec about how I’ve been using RSS to curate my news for nearly 20 years, and I’m glad the spec has stuck around all that time. I know a lot of people who would never bother with RSS, and that’s disappointing to think about. It’s one of those things I could bother a normal person about with great enthusiasm.
I was doing some reading on vacation last week and I remembered farting around with Fiery Feeds not long ago; I loved the high level of customization available in the app, but didn’t see why I might need to add another to my stable of RSS readers. As it stands, I use, frequently, and appreciate each of these for different reasons:
Unread
Reeder (Classic)
NetNewsWire
ReadKit
I’ve been working on an RSS reader article for Uncorrected, kind of rounding up the ones I use and cataloging their features and why I like/prefer different apps. Trying Fiery again after hearing Matt or Chris talk about it on The Comfort Zone, I realized how much I like it. And the yearly sub is cheap. It runs great on the Mac, too. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to just stick with one of these apps, and I’m glad to have the variety (even if it’s a bit of cognitive overhead to think about which one I’ll use at any given time). I like the Hot Like and Low Frequency filters in addition to the wild array of UI customizations.
Fiery Feeds
Somers Point Brewing Company
Rhonda and I found this brewery on vacation last year and stopped in for one pint each this summer, we managed to get there twice: once after our date in Atlantic City, and once again while picking up dinner for everyone.
One intriguing sensation that I’ve started to notice is the flavor profile that tends to tied the varied offerings of each winery or brewery we try. I don’t know how to describe or quantify it, but for example, having tried many pints over the years at the excellent Tonewood brewery, I detect a flavor that unifies the brews. I notice this with Bellview Winery’s offerings, too; there’s something that unites their Astraea and rosé on my palette.
Somers Point’s brews certainly share this property, too. I would not say that their beers have roundly been my favorites compared to Tonewood or Bonesaw. I think I’ve settled on their NEIPA as my favorite of their styles, but I can’t wait for a chance to stop in again.
Somers Point Brewing Company
Somers Point
Speaking of Somers Point, I would recommend it to shoregoers looking for a break from the food in Ocean City. If you don’t mind heading off of the island for takeout, I can recommend that you try these spots:
Shen’s was Jing’s, and it was better when it was Jing’s, but this is still good if you need a sushi fix. The sashimi portions are huge. Cazadores seems new but the staff were super-sweet and the food was really good.
I purchased my first “real” digital camera back in 2013. It was an Olympus E-PL5, which I’d read a review of on Shawn Blanc’s website. I eventually got the pancake lens, too, which I cherish.
I’ve been shopping for a replacement for a while, something employing traditional meatspace dials for adjusting aperture and shutter speed. I still enjoy the shots I get from the E-PL5, but can’t for the lfe of me figure out how to readily get into either aperture or shutter speed settings using the camera’s control wheel. It’s baffling. And, I’d say, something an enthusiast would absolutely want ready access to.
Fast forward 11 years and I decided to stick with a 4/3 mirrorless because of the lens. I shopped OM/Olympus and Panasonic, but this was a fire sale.
I was planning on getting something on the next step up,notably the OM5, but I read a few reviews that made things sound like the E-M5 is, for my usage, the same camera minus weather sealing. And that’s not something I need.
So the Panasonic lens is on the new camera, and I’ve enjoyed the small collection of shots I’ve taken today. I’m looking forward to taking lots of pics in Ocean City next week.
On May 1st, Joe Kissel delighted Mac nerds who have specific email requirements by announcing the launch of MailMaven, a power-user-focused email application for the Mac that extends SmallCubed’s dedication to managing email on the Mac.
I’ve been test driving MailMaven since the public beta release; today, I plunked down the digital equivalent of 45 USD for a license after a generous trial period. I have a 67% increase next year to look forward to should I choose to continue to use MailMaven. I’ve enjoyed the beta so much that I wanted to go for it.
Smart Folders
The first feature I look for in an email client is Smart Folders: they are how I set up my email clients in my own particular preference, which I’ve written about before. A quick summary of how I manage email:
A folder showing today’s inbox contents;
A folder showing yesterday’s inbox;
A folder showing this week’s inbox ;
A folder showing last week’s inbox.
Once a message is archived or moved to another folder, it’s not something I see unless I search for it. I try to keep these folders pruned so older messages don’t pile up. It’s aspirational.
MailMaven supports Smart Folders. For my use case, I can create account-specific smart folders that fit the bill, so this checks off the Smart Folders Box for me. It too supports compound rules, so I am able to combine my iCloud and personal Gmail accounts into “home” smart folders, and then a separate set for work. I like it.
Smart Folders
Review
MailMaven’s Review feature set is unique. It’s a list of enhanced saved searches, including all of your unread messages, and then a menu of recent emails, organized into received today, yesterday, this week, etc. As with project tagging, these are monolithic smart folders that don’t make any distinction between accounts. You can certainly create your own smart folders to fit your use case.
A clever twist in the Review section of MailMaven’s feature set is the eponymous “review” folder. You can tag messages for review at a later date you specify, and even organize messages by those for which you are awaiting a reply.
You can set a review date to a message in MailMaven; you pick a date, which supports natural language, so you can assign a review date and it will appear in the Review pane. Here, a Smart Folder like setup presents your email grouped by Today, tomorrow, past due, future, and more. It’s ambitious–and evidently in progress.
Tagging
MailMaven offers tagging as well. I can set keywords and flags to messages, which isn’t terribly new in the world of email. An interesting feature, though is its integration with OmniFocus and Things. MailMaven will read your projects from either (or both) apps and allows you to tag messages with a project. This doesn’t write any data to OmniFocus, in my case, but you can view your email correspondence by project, which can come in handy. My gripe about this right now is that, in MailMaven, all of the projects are in a list, and if you have a lot of projects, it’s not easy to scan, and I can’t tell what order they appear in. I’m looking forward to this feature’s evolution.
MailMaven/OmniFocus Integration
Whereas apps like Spark and MailMate will send a message to OmniFocus, MailMaven takes a more Outlook-like approach to project management. Once enabled in the Tags section of MailMaven’s settings, MailMaven will import the names of your OmniFocus projects. Associating a message or messages will then be tagged with the project name. You can then review your email in MailMaven organized by project, which is a tremendous affordance.
Tagging Pane
I like this feature (and find myself using it daily) but wonder about its direction. I review projects in OmniFocus, so I like everything associated with the project to be in OmniFocus or at least linked using notes and HookMark. So this is a different style of interaction. However, when I need to find an email associated with a project, I have found myself browsing in the project view instead of searching reactively.
Notifications and Focus Modes
MailMaven doesn’t currently support macOS’s Focus Modes; I was hoping it would, as Mimestream and Spark both allow me to use a monolithic email client but filter notifications for for work and home, as appropriate to where I am and what time it is. This isn’t on their roadmap for the app, either, although it’s a popular feature request.
Performance
I can’t be picky with a beta version, but MailMaven feels pretty slow compared to MailMate, Mimestream, and Mail. MailMate and Mimestream are focused in a way MailMaven isn’t, to be fair: the former is IMAP only, while Mimestream is (currently) a Gmail client, while MailMaven supports multiple protocols. MailMaven is, however, more expensive (after the first year) for new subscribers than either of those applications, so as the app develops, I’m hoping to see that it can be multi-protocol and fast.
Search
MailMaven opens a separate window for search, which isn’t expected behavior, but it has its merits. I don’t like it as much as I like search in MailMate, but it is a more directive version of search and so is friendlier to newer users. It’s much slower than MailMate in my usage, but it’s also capable of trawling multiple accounts, and also not restricted to a local mailbox in the way that MailMate works. MailMaven has cues in the UI to help you focus your search.
Search
Conversation Panel
In the same way that MailMaven’s search happens in a second window, there is a Conversation Panel that shows your conversation threads. This is perfect for users like me, who prefer to see a straight list of messages organized by when they hit my inbox, rather than comb through a threaded list.
On larger displays, you can simply leave this window open, which is how I discovered the feature: I plugged my laptop into a 27” display at my desk at work, and I toggled it open by accident. In a situation such as this, there’s enough screen real estate to leave it open all the time, and I just love being able to glance up and see the thread. And at home, on my 32” Samsung, there’s plenty of room for both the main application window and the Conversation Panel.
Conversation Panel
This does not work as well on a MacBook. On a 13” inch display, you want every bit of screen real estate available for the app proper. I attribute my long laptop-only existence to why it took me so long to go back to using apps in windowed mode on the Mac, and why the iPad never seriously bothered me for its lack of Macness.
In the spirit of writing is thinking, I like a desktop set up hands down.
Clicking on a message will show you the conversation history, but you needn’t cruft up your main application window with this if you don’t need it. I’ve always resisted threaded views because they complicate the messages list. So while I might switch to the conversation view in MailMate, for example, to find a message, I never keep that layout. MailMaven’s Conversation Panel obviates this decision entirely.
MailMaven supports two viewing modes: “Snippets” and Table View. The Snippets view looks like Mail or many other mail applications: A list of messages, with a preview (you can set the number of lines from zero to 4) in a central column, with the message itself appearing in the right pane. It’s fine, and conventional, but it’s not my preferred view.
Table view arranges your mail messages as a tight list in the main viewing pane, and shows a preview below this list. This look, too, should be familiar to anyone who grew up using an email application before the days when computer displays were widescreen.
Snippits ViewTable View
My particular preference in MailMate is to turn off the preview pane completely (two-pane view) so that I can only see the table list of messages. Because I use smart folders so heavily, this makes the day’s email obligation look shorter. MailMaven, as of version one, will not support turning off the preview pane (I emailed SmallCubed, and they said that they are planning a feature in a future version, but not version one). This is due to the fact that the messages controls are attached to the message window, which makes sense.
Favorites
Favorites in MailMaven is a genius idea, but the one I understood last. You can add any inbox, folder, tag collection, Smart Folder, to Favorites and create your own email dashboard. Once I realized how useful this feature would be, I populated it with:
My. Three email accounts’ inboxes
Home and Work Today folders
Anything I’ve flagged for followup
Preferred Projects
Today and Tomorrow’s Review folders
I live in this pane, even though its utility was lost on me at first. I generally work out of my Today Smart Mailbox in MailMate, but like Mail, the default behavior there is to show your account with discoverable subdirectories. In truth, I don’t usually need to see that arborescent list as I work; I’m usually looking at today’s input, and I search if I need anything else. This favorites setup allows me to switch between today’s mail for both work and home accounts, see my most-used flag, and a few other views that I can use throughout the day. It’s pretty exciting.
MailMate Favorites View
The Final Word
MailMaven is an ambitious and opinionated email application. Version one of MailMaven doesn’t sport every feature that SmallCubed is planning. What hurts right now for me is the lack of more robust OmniFocus support and support for Hookmark. But the fundamental rethinking of an email application, in a landscape rife with free alternatives, is heartening and inspirational. For power users, it’s a must-try app. And a Mac-assed one at that.
