I’ve shared before that one of my rowing goals is to row a 10k in 40 minutes flat. I’ve gotten close but I still have some seconds to shave off my best time:

Today’s 7500 was a surprising jump, especially for a weekday row (fueled by nothing more than a cup of coffee and some pineapple). I managed to keep my pace at just about 2:00 and finished just over 30 minutes. That’s only 75% of the 10k total I’m shooting for, but I was pleased.

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

1. Notion Calendar: One of the development artifacts of macOS’s UNIX routes is a preference for single-purpose apps. Unlike Outlook, Apple includes separate mail, contact, and calendar apps. You can swap out your favorite software for any of those build-in apps; I use MailMate, MimeStream, and Fantastical on my Mac, and Fantastical and Spark on iOS and iPadOS. Microsoft touts Outlook as an integrated solution, and is deprecating its standalone apps in favor of it. I’ve been generally happy using Outlook on Windows, but I still search for good standalone options. Notion Calendar is no Fantastical, but it looks quite a lot like it, and works nicely on Windows (it is severely limited on iOS, though).

2. Blue Cork Winery: I recently visit the town of my soon-to-be employer, and stopped on the ride home to grab a bottle of wine to share with Rhonda. We’ve been drinking Rosé at most of the wineries we’ve visited, and while this was a solo mission, I was glad to find their Cab Franc Rosé in the fridge. We had it with sushi Friday night, and while it’s a bit more berry-forward than Sharrot or Bellview’s take on this wine, it was very Outer-Coastal-tasting and emblematic of the local style.

3. Dr. Martens Men’s 1460 in Cherry Red: A fit of nostalgia found me searching online for Doc Martens in blood red. I didn’t find that color, but the Cherry Red is, I suppose, the modern equivalent. I haven’t work Docs in over 20 years, but I started thinking they might not look bad with some of my officewear and especially my more casual selections (which I am prone to, at work, these days). They are pricey but I have really enjoyed wearing them since they came in, although they’re tough to break in. I imagine some black and brown Docs are in my future!

Blue Cork Rosé

George Hahn:

The Chemex was invented in 1941 in New York City by a German-born chemist named Peter J. Schlumbohm. This beautiful and simple coffee maker is made of heat-proof, laboratory grade, borosilicate glass with a wood handle tied to the neck with a leather strip. No plug. No electricity. It’s a work of modern art… literally. (It’s part of the permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian and the Corning Museum.)

My Coffee Method of Choice: Chemex

Totally getting a chemex for my new office.

Haven’t had a pair of these in over 20 years. Tough to break in but I’m enjoying them more than I thought.

Some things to check out:

1. Old Grandad Bonded Bourbon: Not the most exciting whisky I’ve ever had. Fairly sweet, lots of corn. Just fine in a Manhattan, though.
2. eMClient: one of the pain points of using Windows is having a good email client option. My particular needs for work center around a useful smart folder scheme. On the Mac, it’s MailMate, hands down. This Windows client uses IMAP to access your Gmail account, but the clutch feature for me is Smart Folders. It’s not as flexible as MailMate, but is anything?
3. Villa Fazzolari in Buena makes the best pizza around. Rhonda and I split the personal Gino Jr.’s Favorite, as we often do.

Gino Jr.’s Favorite Pizza

eMClient

On the heels of much writing celebrating writing blogs, I added a blogroll page to Uncorrected. Enjoy.

This is a silly little thing, but I get a kick out of it. This is a small pocket I knife I inherited after my father-in-law died. It was eminently amendable to sharpening, but the tip of the blade had broken off.

I busted out a two-sided whetstone I got at Ace Hardware some years ago and filed the blade down into a point. No bladesmith am I, but it’s really usable now.

Last August, I wrote in “Another Good Trend” that my cardio fitness levels, as reported by my Apple Watch through the Health app, had gone from “below average” to “above average.” Cardio fitness is Apple’s term for VO2 max. From the Health app:

This is a measurement of your VO, max, which is the maximum amount of oxygen your body can consume during exercise. Also called cardiorespiratory fitness, this is a useful measurement for everyone from the very fit to those managing illness.

A higher VOz max indicates a higher level of cardio fitness and endurance.

Oddly, all of the rowing I do doesn’t lead to Cardio Fitness reports. But walking does. Rhonda and I took the dogs for a 30-minute walk again today and I found a pleasant update when I checked my stats: I moved into the “high” category.

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

1. Tabbs: Tabbs is a Chrome extension that adds some flair and functionality to the default tab search in your Chromium-based browser of choice (I’m using Brave). You can search your open tabs, close duplicates, creat tab groups, and more.
2. Tri-Tip Roast: Tri-Tip might get its own post here on Uncorrected. This roast is from the sirloin of the steer, and this one came complete with a nice fat cap. I sous vided it at 129 for about three hours and seared over lump charcoal for about ten minutes. Delicious.
3. Dune: I haven’t seen the second install ment of Villaneuva’s interpretation of the Frank Herbert sci-fi classic, but I can’t wait. It’s getting good reviews. I read all six of the original books in college. My roommate was one book behind me and gobbled them up right after I did.

This is Tonewood Brewing‘s Bend Hoppy Brown. 5.2% Dark Specialty Malts w. Chinook & Cascade. Milk Chocolate & Orange Zest. One of the best brews i ever had.

1. We’re lucky now to have an Indian restaurant nearby (two, in fact). Pictured below is their excellent Chole Bhatura appetizer, which Rhonda and I split.

2. We had a nice Mendoza from Moore Bros with our Indian. Very good.

3. Funny coworkers: I’ve often remarked that I get much of my social exposure at work. Outside of work stress, I’ve never found my colleagues to be anything but funny and admirable people to work with. One of my coworkers hung this sign up at the new worksite we’ve been opening this week after I quipped this hated boss phrase about having the student workers keep at it.

I took the time Sundays often afford to row a 10k this afternoon. As I lamented in my last 10k update, I didn’t match or best my current PR. There was one noteworthy stat, though: my stroke rate.

Here are the splits table from my PR from November 2023:

My Current 10k PR

I averaged 30 strokes per minute on this piece.

And here are the splits from today’s 10k:

Today’s 10k

My last split got up to 28 strokes per minute, but check out my average: 25.

I’ve been looking to reduce my stroke rate to allow me to more comfortably row longer pieces. It reminds me a bit of weightlifting, when I would deload to fix an error with my form.

A quick word on comparisons: It’s fine to compete with yourself. But the progress and knowledge of others is worth consideration, too. Case in point: I used to cycle, and rode solo all them time (I’m an only child and most of the things I prefer are solitary pursuits). I did chance upon a local club ride, though, and I learned a lot from riding with better, more experienced riders, and it changed my skill level after just one ride.

OK, enough about cycling.

In that spirit, however, I took to Concept2’s excellent Logbook (which doesn’t require a separate subscription, thank you very much!) to compare myself to other rowers. Filtering 10k pieces by males in my age group 40-49, I found the following record holder’s stats:

Impressive. This guy was pulling with way more power than I can muster, but with a stroke rate just a digit above my 25.

Long slow distance.

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PS: I am comparing myself to heavyweights. I weighed in as a lightweight this morning, though. Here’s the same age group’s lightweight record holder:

30 strokes a minute. Heaps of power.

I finally wrote up my Bellview Winery review for Yelp. Love this place.

I was using the newish Mac browser Arc to proofread something Rhonda wrote for school, and was confounded about where the URL bar was. Arc, like many newfangled apps, uses a hotkey-activated command palette to open a new URL (among other things). This is potentially confusing UI design for many users, but I happen to like this mode of interaction (starting, I supposed, with my love for LaunchBar).

ARC Browser’s Command Bar

Launchbar

In my quest for ever-more-Camino-like Mac browsers (think light and simple), I was looking for a browser to try out that had minimal UI chrome exposed by default. I forgot about Arc but then remembered that I had installed it and tried it for a bit.

I liked the command bar!

So I thought, maybe someone made a Safari extension. My first search led me to FinBar, a very cool riff on the idea.

FinBar reminds me of Paletro, which I wrote about here, in that it uses a hotkey-enacted palette to expose the menu bar options available to you in the active application. You can accomplish different things in different applications, but the key is, you are always using your keyboard.

;

FinBar in Ulysses

This week’s things to consider:

1. UGG: I’ve never cared for UGG much but recently found myself desiring a pair. I pulled the trigger on Amazon ($180 gulp) for a pair of chestnut UGG Men’s Classic Short Boot. They remind of Birkenstock sandals and Doc Martens: lovably ugly and lusciously comfortable.
2. CARROT Weather: This iOS/iPadOS/macOS weather app got another mention on Upgrade #493: Upgradies Hall of Fame and I thought maybe I should give it a look. I was a long-time subscriber of Dark Sky before Apple bought it, and I’ve really liked Apple’s integration of Dark Sky into their own weather app. But CARROT boasts a few neat tricks: snarky reporting, multiple data sources, and a highly configurable interface. I let the sub continue after the trial. Rhonda likes to pay attention to the phases of the moon, and CARROT Weather has a great feature for tracking this, too.¹
3. Frozen blueberries: Buy a pack of blueberries at the market, chuck the whole thing in the freezer, and you can have a guilt-free handful of tiny popsicles whenever you’re craving a sweet.
   

UGG boots on my feet

CARROT Weather

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¹ Teachers are terribly fond of attributing aberrant behavior to a full moon.