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

1. Blue Rascall Distillery: It’s a bit of a cheat for me to feature last night’s post about Blue Rascal in Serial Sunday, but it’s a charming and tasteful place. I got to thinking today that, like the breweries and wineries popping up all across the Garden State, and more appreciably in our remote spot here in South Jersey, that so many great options exist. We sat and sipped on locally made rye. Not just whisky, but rye. For all of the limitations of living in and around Cumberland County, we do have a number of treasures to appreciate. Rhonda and I were grousing a bit, though, that none of the categories we enjoy are currently here in Vineland. We did, for a time, enjoy an Amish market here in Vineland. But we have no distillery (nearby Millville does, though). We have no brewery (Millville does, though). And no winery in the land of the vines, birthplace of Welch’s. Caveat emptor: two cocktails isn’t the same as splitting a bottle of wine.

1. Hotel Starlino Maraschino Cherries; These cherries were featured at Blue Rascal, and the bartender declared them better than Luxardo. Rhonda and I both agree heartily. I ordered a big can today while walking the dogs.

1. Brave Browser: I’m not new to Brave, having used it in lieu of Chrome on the Mac due to Chrome’s resource hogging. It’s Chromium-based, so it was a good choice on the Mac as my “other” browser; I could keep myself logged into Vineland’s Google account, and turn to Brave for Google Suite work (Safari on the Mac is my preferred browser, though). So Brave was an easy choice for use on my Windows devices, once I realized how resource-hogging Microsoft’s Edge browser is. I even swapped Brave for Safari on my phone. It’s easy to set up syncing and there are granular sync controls. Brave’s search is pretty good (I think they use Bing), but you can switch to a number of other services, including Duck Duck Go. It also offers an AI assistant, Leo.¹

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¹ I had a moment of nostalgia, remembering my first beers at the Ship Inn in Milford, NJ. I turned 21 while being up in Milford with my family after my grandmother died. I believe it was the night before the funeral, and my Dad and I nipped out to celebrate my ill-timed birthday with a few pints. I don’t remember exactly what I had that night, but it was a transformative experience. Here were incredibly fresh, authentic British classic styles at a pub… in New Jersey. In sleep Milford. It was a revelation and emollient to such a sad time. It’s called Descendants Brewing now.

² I’m pretty excited to learn more about Arc and give it a go on both Mac and PC. I’m in the Windows beta, too.

Bellview Winery was having their Spring Fling this weekend, and so while that is often our weekend haunt for some rosé and cheese, Rhonda and I opted to keep our distance from our otherwise quiet spot. My boss mentioned Blue Rascal as part of a Jitney booze tour around Hammonton recently, and while searching for alternatives to Bellview, her positive remarks about Blue Rascal popped into my head.

I’ve been a martini drinker for a long time, although I enjoy other canonical examples of classic cocktails: the Old Fashioned, Manhattan, Margarita, Daquiri, and more. Most drinks are iterations of classic cocktail themes.

In entering the world of Manhattans about 20 years ago, I seized upon rye as my whisky of choice. Rye, as a whisky varietal, hails from this region (the Northeast), at least pre-prohibition, after which it largely vanished. 20 years ago, rye whiskies were few and far between, but happily there are many ryes to choose from these days, at all price points.

Blue Rascal Distillery is in nearby Hammonton, and offers, among its spirits, rye (they also have a wheat whisky). I’ve written a pile of words just to say that we had a couple of drinks each: I had a smoked old fashioned, while Rhonda had a riff on the classic called the Old Fancy. We both had Hammhattans after our Old Fashioneds.

A word: the Hammhattans (do I need to spell out that these are a kind of Manhattan?) do not use vermouth, opting instead for a black cherry liqueur. This is good, but not better, than vermouth, specifically Carpano Antiqua. The liqueur skews sweet, where vermouth is more herbal, and in the case of Carpano’s unassailable take on the aperitif, vanilla (in a good way). But man: these were good drinks.

I do think the “smoked” cocktail thing is a bit showy and unnecessary, but I suspect that bartenders who make an otherwise excellent old fashioned gild the lily with a bit of theater, not to the detraction of the cocktail itself, outside of elongating the time it takes to get to a thirsty traveler’s lips.

Via Ben Crowder, CJ Chilvers starting buying CDs not because he’s a Luddite, but because of the impermanence of digital subscription music:

A few years ago, the final studio album from Van Halen disappeared from streaming services. No one knew why.

Even Wolfgang Van Halen didn’t know why at first. Then, in an interview much later he said, “I hope people who like it have a physical version of it.”

That’s never a good sign.

A few months ago, David Lee Roth released a video explaining that he’s the problem. He refuses to renew the streaming rights.

What happened here isn’t unique. Media that was once considered stable and pervasive is now gone.

I brought physical media back into my life not to replace streaming, but to keep streaming in its place.

I’m always a little curious about the revival of vinyl: I have wonderful memories of buying a new album, spinning it up, and admiring the cover art and the lyric sheets. Dead Kennedys albums came with newsletters. Sometimes you got a sticker (Anthrax’s State of Euphoria comes to mind). But I wouldn’t trade having access to everything I ever owned and more to go back to that.

Except: like Crowder, I can’t seem to find some versions of songs that were previously in my collection (for example, when I want to listen to Incubus’s "Certain Shade of Green," I only get the chill acoustic version. That’s a fine version, but I like the one that sounds like a freight train hitting a concrete wall sometimes.) When you peer into the digital void, it looks back at you.

Why I went back to buying CDs (and you should too)

This is pretty rad 

Kourosh Dini:

First, by writing, be that of your ideas or your tasks, you use time in a wonderful organic way. Not only is there a free beauty unique to ink meeting the page, perhaps heightened with a nice pen, but there is a gentle living path for an idea to develop. Tracing letters directly from mind through muscle and instrument engages a flowing feedback.

Even better, if you attempt to write nicely, to make your words appear as something you enjoy reading, you need to slow down. Like any path of mastery, one needs to both reduce scope and speed to the edge of ease, and then preferably gently, guide your growth from there.

Writing by hand invites you into that process.

https://www.kouroshdini.com/a-benefit-in-handwriting/

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

1. Markdown Monster: I tried this Markdown blogging app a while back, but never got it to work. I installed it yesterday on my Alienware R6 (it’s Aaron’s old gaming rig, that sat unused in his closet for a while until I resurrected it and overstuffed it with 32 GB of RAM), and it works pretty well. I’m having a hard time understanding how to get image posting working, but hopefully I’ll figure it out. It does some clever things, like grabbing your clipboard when you hit control-k to add a link to text in your post. I’m guessing you could just use Markdown Monster for all of your Markdown needs, but that’s what Typora is for.
2. BatteryBar Pro: This little Windows utility is a nice stand-in for Coconut Battery on the Mac. It’s better than the default battery status report Windows will generate for you. Not that pretty but that’s Windows utilities for you.
3. The BankBar in Gloucester City: I wrote this up a bit this morning, but it’s a good spot worth a stop. Gloucester City is a blue-collar town, and has always felt comfortable to me coming from Millville and Vineland, as I do. And hey: the name is CamelCased.

Tomorrow is the big event… a solar eclipse during the day. I remember watching this with the fam back in 2017, I believe. It was the summer, and we had just ordered a new laptop for Joe. I came home early from work and we watched it with the solar glasses we found on sale at Lowe’s, entirely by accident. I will be able to nip out of the office to watch for sure.

Read More: The ultimate place in NJ to watch the solar eclipse

Rhonda, the boys, and I took to the Expressway to hit up House of Fun (for the boys) while we absconded to Tonewood Brewing‘s Barrington location for a couple of beers. I had the Trail Beer and Rhonda a Halcyon; we followed those two pints with smaller double-dry-hopped Fuegos, which were excellent. The Fuego is, to me, like Bonesaw’s Swoosh and Glasstown’s 609: consistently good, emblematic of the style, and an easy choice. (I particularly like having a couple of 609s at the Double Eagle with their wings.)

Rhonda had been seeing a couple of guys review local bars for their wings and other pub food, and happened upon their review of the Bankbar in Gloucester City. That is only a hop, skip, and a jump away from Barrington, so we hit it up. We shared the loaded chips and their firecracker shrimp, and then Rhonda and I split two orders of wings (six wings per order) with dry rub and SoleDad sauce. Both were great, and they were giant wings. I think they might brine the wings; something in the texture leads me to think so. Aaron got 12 Soledad wings, while Joe got boneless wings. The fries are an afterthough here; they could do better with some fancier fries for sure. Aaaaand Fuego on tap.

On our way back from Sharrot Winery, we stoppe₫ at Hammonton’s two local landmark grocery stores: Inferrera’s and Bagliani’s . Neither Rhonda nor I have ever been to the former; I learned of it from a coworker, who preferred it to the more famous Bagliani’s. Inferrera’s has fewer cheeses and salami (to name a few things), but we bought some very lovingly sliced chip steak, with which I made cheesesteaks. Aaron and I had AC-style rolls (from Bagliani’s), while Rhonda and Joe had softer, more pillowy rolls (Joe had a chicken cheesesteak). All good.

Rhonda, Aaron, and I hit Sharrot Winery for lunch today (ah, spring break). It’s a restaurant, too; unlike our usual haunt, Bellview, which offers cheese plates and the like, Sharrot has a small but tasty menu of dressed-up bar food and other goodies. We shared a bottle of rosé and two flatbreads (pepperoni and the bleu cheese/prosciutto), as well as the crab salsa and burrata. It was all very good.

I did a quick search for Conky for Windows this evening and found a few options. I’m trying out O&O for now. I’d like to be able to edit an .ini file to customize the options, but I’m going to see how this goes for now. I always liked Conky when I was farting with Linux.

Rhonda and I took Aaron for a tour of Drexel University today. It was a carbon copy of the trip I took with Joe two years ago. It was rainy and cold, so I didn’t get any good pics on campus, but lunch was a nice adventure after.

Chuan Kee Skewer

I found this joint on Eater Philly, and it sounded good. I had three places in mind, but this was the consensus due to hot pot… or so we thought. They didn’t have it on the menu, and the server seemed befuddle₫ when I showed him pics of the dish (on Chuan Kee’s Yelp page). So we got some grilled stuff, dumplings, and ramen.

Reading Terminal Market

I didn’t realize how close this was, so we walked from Chuan Kee. Cannoli from Termini Bros!

Rays Coffee and Tea House

They still make siphon coffee, but I ordered the house blend before I realized it. Next time.

I read somewhere that to find work you don’t mind doing, you have to figure out what problems you like to have. That’s an interesting angle to take on the problem of work, if it is a problem. It speaks to the fact that no job worth your time is going to be effortless; it’s worth expanding that notion to say that life isn’t particularly rewarding if you’re not in the active process of solving problems. I think it’s fair to say that even crossword puzzles and notionally fun things are often problems to solve; this keeps your brain healthy and active. AND: using cognitive energy burns calories.

Here are some things I don’t mind tangling with:

• Computer problems: I like troubleshooting tech issues. I don’t solve all of them, for sure, but I am able to figure out most things. People always ask me how I got “good” with computers, and it’s a simple answer: motivation and Google. (And by Google, I mean AI and YouTube and Stack Overflow and Reddit and you get it.) I like when people ask me how to do things at work and at home, I even liked troubleshooting my kids’ Windows issues when I was a die-hard Mac user.
• Certain mundane household tasks: I like folding towels (but nothing else). I like folding up foil for chickenbags. I like making pourover coffee, measuring everything, creasing the number 4 Melita filter paper, dampening it with hot water before adding the freshly ground beans. I like slicing chicken breasts into three thin cutlets with my razor-sharp Henckels 10″ knife. I like sharpening my chef’s knives and cleaver. I like crafting our nightly preprandial, currently Manhattans: I measure everything to the gram, thinly slice orange garnishes, and crack big ice cubes with due care.
• Writing this blog: I get a great kick out of writing here at Uncorrected. I need to do a couple of things before I settled in: I had to decide what it was about (it’s about nothing… it’s about whatever catches my eye… it’s about tech, cooking, exercise, ephemera). It is, in the classical sense of a blog, about a person with a penchant for writing doing just that. I like to think, and writing is thinking. It gives me great pleasure sometimes to just go back and read what I wrote. I like it so much more than social media. It’s the original social media, and maybe I’m just a crufty middle-aged guy, but that’s me. I write here; I think here. I like having a draft open before me, uploading media to WordPress. I like mulling over a post while I’m mucking about outside. I like dropping ideas into Todoist for later inspiration.

Sorry about missing Serial Sunday last night; it was Easter Sunday and while dinner was plenty early, I was vegging on the sofa and not feeling enumerative.

1. Momofuku Black Truffle Chili Crunch: This is one of David Chang’s excellent chili crunch varieties. It’s good on just about everything, but I always put it on my grilled chicken. It’s calorie dense, so keep an eye on your usage. It’s just delicious; we’ve had the regular, extra spicy, and hot honey, too.
2. Typora: Typora is a no-frills markdown editor in the style of iA Writer. I’ve been using it on Windows, as iA can be slow and looks out of place on Windows. It’s got a long free trial, and is only $15 for a license. Runs on Mac, too. Best of all, there are plenty of themes. I’ve been a sucker for “cobalt” themes since using TextMate many moons ago, and there are lots of nice cobalt flavors to choose from.¹
3. OLFA Blades: My dad always has the coolest, most bespoke tools, and he’s who I learned about OLFA blades from. I always have one or two around and spare blades at the ready. They are good for any precision cutting, or just zipping open a plastic bag.

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^{1It does not, like iA Writer for Mac and Android, publish to WordPress. This feature is omitted in iA Writer for Windows, too. Like RSS readers, the Mac is an embarrassment of riches for bloggers. No so on Windows.}

Hot on the heels of eggbag, I bring you: chickenbag. Arguably another portmanteau, chickenbag is a bag fashioned from aluminum foil that I use to store chicken, hot off the grill, for service (ie dinner). We have grilled chicken breasts about once a week, but sometimes it’s just something I make for Joe when the rest of us are having beef. I tear off a big sheet, crimp the fold and sides into a seam, and leave the top open for chicken to go into after it’s done. I can cook in batches and move it off to the side until dinner is served.