Living in southern NJ, we don’t get much snow, especially in December. I’m a sucker for a white Christmas.

When I turned 21, a friend of mine at Ursinus, Mike Walter, took me out to a quirky bar in Kutztown, PA. They had Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale on tap and we had a few pints. It was a memorable night for me; it was a warm, dim bar, with a low-slung ceiling and a fire going. It was a cold night on an otherwise quotidian turn of the calendar make special by companionship and ale.

Our local pizza haunt, Villa Fazzolari, has Celebration on tap right now. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it on tine beer list; the waitress even had to check with the bartenders. But have it they did, and I had two. It was great; piney, resinous. I suspect I it will hang around.

One downside of digitally whoring around from notes app to notes app is a trail of digital knowledge, much of which may be errata, but some of which may remain useful.

Case in point: I help with the newsletter for a professional association. I must have been using Workflowy when I started, because that’s where the style sheet is. This by itself isn’t a big deal, but when you scatter bits of info across a half-dozen or more apps without being able to (or willing) to export and import everything from the old app to the new app… well, you know.

This is compounded by Workflowy’s being web-based/ an electron app. If you don’t use the app on your machine for a while, you’re prompted to log in. This requires you to receive and paste in an access code, which I don’t prefer to running a native application on my machine locally.

I’m working on the newsletter now and I knew to head to Workflowy for the style sheet. Once I had the style sheet up, I wondered to myself what kind of file formats at export Workflow supports. Happily, OPML is one of them.

It makes perfect sense that Workflowy would support OPML as an export format, but good on them for doing so.

OPML means that OmniOutliner can open the file and save it in their native format. So that’s what I did. I now have a file called “Workflowy” on my Mac that won’t ask me to log in all the time.

I even made it look like the original.

Last year, my mom was kind enough to surprise us for an overnight stay in historic Cape May, New Jersey. This is a nearby destination that I had just really never been too. We stayed and dined at the Washington in, and had a great time. We returned this summer for dinner at Peter Sheilds Inn, and we enjoyed our dinner. We got to talking one night that it was our anniversary and my 50th birthday, so maybe we should stay somewhere.

And so we did. I was able to book Room 7 at Peter Shields and make a dinner rez for the same night with no problem. We took the opportunity to do a little Christmas shopping Saturday night, so we found ourselves at the Lobster House for a drink and some apps. We had a Manhattan and a Martini each, the escargots, and some Cape May Salts oysters. Everything was excellent. It’s a weird old place that’s probably been run the same way forever. We hated the giant line of people waiting for a table at four pm (they don’t take reservations).

The area around the Washington Street Mall was so crowded that we decided to get a bottle of wine and check into the room. We glugged some chardonnay while we waited for dinner. Dinner was amazing, just like in August.

We started off with their excellent bread and the whipped butter, which is so good, I ate a whole timbale of it myself at breakfast. We shared the homemade cavatelli and the shaved Brussels sprouts salad. I had a NY Strip, while Rhonda ordered the short ribs with mashed potatoes. We finished with salted caramel cheesecake and the apple crumble. More wine, too; Cape May chardonnay, which was so good we stopped on the ride home to pick up a bottle for home (got some rosé, too).

This morning was breakfast at the Inn and then some shopping. I nipped out early because I was up for a few things at Wawa, and found (thankfully) my Apple Pencil just behind my car in the street parking. No damage either. I turned on FindMy right away. I thought about where it might be all night long.

We stopped, as we do, in the Peanut Butter shop, and I had some awesome samples. We got a jar of this stuff. I won’t eat it but it was delicious to try.

We just blew in from Cape May, and I have some things to write about that trip. In the meantime, here’s this week’s list of things to check out:

Image Playground

iOS 18.2 dropped for me Saturday morning, and with it came Image Playground. I’ve been pretty excited about Image Playgrounds for two reasons. First, my inner prankster was dying to create a Christmas elf from a picture of Rhonda and show it to her. Secondly, and more seriously, is that I like to use these image generators for written communications in lieu of stock art. I have never done any kind of work for anyone with a stock photos account, and I find this more satisfying than looking for images without watermarks or worse. I do have a device with an 18.2 beta on it, and so while I was able to try out Image Playgrounds late Friday night, the official release is much more polished.

And interesting direction Apple took with Image Playgrounds is that you have to start with an image from your photo library: it won’t create an image of a person based on your written (or spoken) input. On the other hand, Image Playgrounds takes your input–no matter how innocuous or impersonal–and translates it so profoundly that it doesn’t much resemble the starting image. This jibes with Apple’s public statement on photos, which is that they are digital representations of something that happened.

Smart Folders in Notes

I’ve taken to using Notes for all of my note taking again; essentially, my setup always involves some kind of task list manager, a notes app, and an email application (not webmail). There’s a lot of ancillary software and utilities that I run, too, but that’s the core of my setup.

I recently noticed the Smart Folders feature available in Notes, and I was excited to use them to good end (showing the notes I’ve edited over the last couple of days, irrespective of filing). But they bring me a touch of nostalgia, too, for they remind me of the smart playlists in iTunes. I still have a bunch of them that don’t auto-update anymore.

The Johnny Decimal System

I read about this digital file system organization scheme on Reddit. I’ve been using the Para method to organize my digital files, and I like it plenty, but I have found organizing by Home/Work/Professional to be a challenge in that the structure tends to want to impose itself everywhere within Para if you use it in one place. This system reminds me a bit of the very cool Dendron projects I adopted for a while.

It’s just a Shortcut to the Files app saved to the Home Screen, then dragged to the Dock. Feels right tho.

Dinner last night to celebrate my birthday was good enough to warrant its own post:

1. Appetizer: Baked Clams

Rhonda and I wanted to split a dozen raw oysters. They were out. These were really good though. I would definitely order them again. They make good martinis, too.

1. Entré: Elk

Like a lean beef. Very good.

1. Dessert: Crème Brûlée

Better than the Franklinville Inn.

1. Safari Technology Preview: I started using Safari Technology Preview back in the late 2010s just for kicks, and started using it again recently. I don’t think I’ll ever notice any of the WebKit updates, but hey… it’s like beta testing, which I am wont to do as well.

Safari Technology Preview side note : I typed this into ChatGPT, but didn’t get any confirmation of my hypotheses, which is that the icon (purple) and initials of the project (STP) are some kind of homage to Stone Temple Pilots. I may never know.

Key Features:

1.  Access to Experimental Features: Includes the latest updates to WebKit, the open-source browser engine that powers Safari. It often includes cutting-edge web technologies like enhanced JavaScript, CSS, and WebAssembly capabilities.
2.  Performance Improvements: Frequent updates focus on enhancing speed and responsiveness.
3.  Regular Updates: Typically updated bi-weekly, ensuring users have access to the most recent innovations.
4.  Isolated from Stable Safari: Runs independently of the main Safari browser, allowing users to test without affecting their regular browsing experience.
5.  Developer Tools: Offers enhanced developer tools to facilitate debugging and web development.
6.  Cross-Platform: Available for macOS and macOS beta versions, ensuring compatibility across Apple’s ecosystem.

Safari Technology Preview is ideal for web developers, designers, and tech enthusiasts who want to stay ahead with the latest browser capabilities.

2. Elk: We went out to dinner for my birthday with my parents to the nearby Greenview Inn last night, and they had elk as a game special on the menu. I love going to a restaurant will a fully-formed plan of what I’m going to order, and then having the entire enterprise washed out with the mention of a special. We go to the Greenview enough that I know what I want most times, but find their specials to often be delightful and seasonal preparations of something that elicits my unbridled curiousity.

I really liked it; it came plated with a carrot reduction and some sweet potatoes (which I mostly skipped). I had a nice bite of Rhonda’s prime rib, too.

Elk eats like red meat, but has fewer calories and fat. I liked it!

3. Feedbin’s Email Newsletter Subscription: I’ve been using Feedbin as the backbone of my RSS reeding for a long time. I tried Feedly for a bit but jumped over to Feedbin long ago. One of the features that I like about it and keeps it in the top slot among its competitors is the Email Newsletter Subscription feature. Feedbin creates a fake email address for you, and your newsletters are delivered to Feedbin instead of your email inbox, which surely runneth over. I’m still working out how this works with NetNewsWire and Unread on iPadOS, though.

Yesterday I turned 50. My favorite comment about turning 50 comes from my dad, who asked my grandfather (his father), while we were having pizza and drinks, when he turned 50, “How does it feel to have a son who’s a half-a-century old?”

Half a century. Wow.

Health: I wrote last year about turning 49 that I had lost 70 pounds. It’s closer to 90 now. I’m probably in better shape than I’ve ever been in my life. I’ve never been an athlete, but I’ve spent a considerable portion of my time exercising since high school because I’m prone to being chubby. I’ve jogged, cycled, walked, jumped rope, lifted weights, rowed on an ergometer, and more. I reflected the other day that I can wear pants in sizes that I only remember from 8th grade. I don’t take blood pressure meds any more or cholesterol meds.

I didn’t do much: I exercise about half an hour a day, and I watch my caloric input. I don’t abstain from any foods, but I generally try to stay away from dense carbohydrate-heavy foods, moderate my alcohol intake, and log what I put in my body. I try to be fairly precise when I can be so that I have a decent understanding of what I’ve eaten (mostly how much) when I can’t weigh my food.

But you realize one day that it’s not a thing that stops, it’s not a goal you achieve and that’s the end of it and you check it off and walk away from it. It’s always going to be a thing to attend to, a consideration, maybe a chore, maybe a source of frustration.

It’s like life that way.

Work: Freud said “love and work.” As a matter of sheer time and energy, it’s what I probably spend the most on. I’m lucky to have been able to find a career versus a job. There are things about work I don’t enjoy fully (as a fit for my personality), and things I love. I made the fourth major career move of my life. Fingers crossed! Change is never easy.

It’s like life that way, too.

Not Work¹: I’ve long felt a nagging sense of guilt about doing non-work things, because there’s always work hanging out there. The benefit of many years of work experience includes seeing other people who you respect professionally struggle with the same things you do: too much to do, too little bandwidth, material restrictions, etc.

One of my thoughts has been, to the degree that I really enjoy technology, my pursuits and interests are often in the personal productivity sphere. I like to try out to-do applications. I switch between them from time to time and like to enumerate their differences. I spend a lot of time thinking about the best way to handle email. I think a lot about my digital filing system and my reference system, and have similarly hopped between apps like Yojimbo, EverNote, DEVONThink, and other apps.

To a great extent, these areas of interest support my professional work (although I do by all means use OmniFocus for home project management, and my notes apps–currently Apple’s Notes–are full of home info, too). Were I to no longer have a position such as I do now due to infirmity, retirement, or something else, would I have this areas of interest? Would I think so much about them?

But one thing I’ve been trying to remind myself is that people exist outside of their identity as an employee. In the same way that I don’t expect anyone who works for me to be solely concerned with their work, but to have interests and lives outside of work, I too should not only feel free to cultivate this “other side” of my life, but should find it important. This doesn’t mean not caring about work, it means caring about the gestalt of my human existence. This includes work, but isn’t limited to it.

Back to Freud:

“Love and work….work and love, that’s all there is.”

What did Freud mean here? That one had family and work, and that was it? Regarding love, he meant a dedication to something greater than ourselves. That sounds simple, but it can be difficult to do. It’s easy to swing too far in the other direction, and forget the self.

Regarding work, though: He didn’t necessarily mean “a job” or “salary,” but again, he meant something beyond ourselves. Work, in this sense, is something productive or generative. And when compared with more passive modes of spending one’s time, blogging about things we care about can certainly fit this bill. It is a dedication to something purely option, a willing of ideas into the world.

Americans are greatly, tragically obsessed with productivity and identifying with their job/occupation. But interesting people are interesting not entirely related to–or possibly wholly exclusive of)–their jobs. It’s not that it doesn’t count, but it might have nothing to do with it. Or it might have to do with the interplay between their interests and predilections, and how we bring those to bear on our work.

When I imagine myself not working, I have to imagine a person with interests and ideas and goals that are not associated with work. And all of them have to be meaningful–viable–outside of professional considerations.

¹ This bit was originally written under the title “Not Everything is About Money”

Wow, this is some sad news:

Amazon has shut off the feed that allowed Delicious Library to look up items, unfortunately limiting the app to what users already have (or enter manually).

I wasn’t contacted about this.

I’ve pulled it from the Mac App Store and shut down the website so nobody accidentally buys a non-functional app.

I remember using Delicious Monster with an iSight camera to catalog my paper book library. Pre-ebook days for me.

Link

Here’s this week’s list of things to check out:

1. elago Vintage Mac Apple Watch stands: I don’t remember where I found out about these, but they’re always available on Amazon. Everyone in the house has a little plastic foam Mac they drop their watch into for charging: Aaron has a classic Mac, as do I; Rhonda and Joe have colorful pink and blue iMacs, respectively. I just got this one for my new 10-series watch, which has a faster charger. I can track my sleep now.
2. Wallaroo: Iconfactory has been making great icons and wallpapers for the Mac for decades. They continue to make neat apps for the Mac and iOS, including Wallaroo, a wallpaper app. You can use Shortcuts to set your chosen wallpaper, or download the included wallpaper to your device. I have a great thanksgiving wallpaper on my phone from Wallaroo right now.
3. Balatro: I kept seeing Balatro pop up on the App Store as a hot game. I don’t generally play card games, so I passed on it. But Jason Snell brought it up on MacBreak Weekly on Episode 947 and I decided to give it a spin. Part of what piqued my interest was his claim that it’s great on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Part of culling my Feedbin/RSS subscription list has come with it the realization that I like reading independent blogs and websites. I tend to avoid the firehoses, with exceptions, including even good sources like the NYT. It’s just too much for me to read in a feed reader; for those, I can use their proper apps or Apple News.

So I’ve trimmed the list down, recatorized and decatorized a bit, and synced NetNewsWire and Unread with Feedbin, which I’ve updated by unsubscribing to all of my old feeds, and uploading the winnowed down list, which I exported from NetNewsWire.

We’ll see how that goes.

But another thing I discovered, in trying to find search engines more inclined to return results from blogs and smaller sites, was Marginalia, which its creator, Viktor, describes thus:

Remember when you used to explore the Internet, when you used to discover cool little websites made by people and it wasn’t just a bunch of low effort content mill listicles and blog spam?

I want to show you that the Internet you used to go exploring is still very much there. There are still tons of small personal websites, and a wealth of long form text from both the past and the present.

So it’s a search engine. It’s perhaps not the greatest at finding what you already knew was there. Instead it is designed to help you find some things you didn’t even know you were looking for.

I created a quick custom search template in Launchbar so that I could check out the results over time; I’m curious to see if I find some good Feedbin additions.