While organizing my bookmarks in Brave using the PARA method, I realized that some of the links I might like ready access to are blogs and sites I read often. I have eschewed the use of bookmarks for a long time, preferring instead to rely on an RSS reader (currently Feedbin, once again, despite the lack of any good windows client… but of course, there are excellent choices on Mac and iOS/iPadOS). I combed through Feedbin for some exemplars for my Reference bookmarks folder, adding some bookmarks to Brave and unsubscribing from dinosaurs. (Dinosaurs, in RSS parlance, refer to RSS feeds for sites that haven’t updated in a long while. In searching for a citation to this, however, I found Dinosaur RSS. It’s a mad world.)

My intention is, once again, to consult bookmarks when I want to read. I should probably just winnow down my Feedbin subscriptions, but I guess I’m a hoarder of feeds. I’ve been trying to use Raindrop.io for bookmark independent of any one browser (so I can switch between browsers as I like), but so far, I haven’t found myself going there much save for some archived links. Much of the reason for my bookmark and feed reading behavior is partly because I put a lot of reference material in other apps: OneNote, most (ahem) notably, and DEVONThink in more Mac-Centric times, and because of search. It’s so easy to launch a websearch from my keyboard that I don’t regularly consult the info I’ve already curated. AI will only make that more of a habit, although I still create a lot of notes in OneNote using search results from Copilot. I like doing this.

I like DEVONThink a lot; it has a great suite of apps on the Mac and iOS/iPad OS, but while it’s great for curating and organizing knowledge, it’s not an easy place to just drop quick notes, and I don’t find the search efficient.

Anyway, while scouring my RSS heap, I found this post by Brett Terpstra, who’s been a font of tech fiddling tips for a long time. He describes a system he uses to organize his file system, which I could totally get behind. Well, maybe. The thought occurred to me: I’m a categorizer. Everything I do with my devices involves some level of organization and categorization.

Oh, and just before I got into the bookmark adventure? I was listing local cheesesteak places that made Peter Genovese’s most recent list. I added them to my “Food/Dining Bucket List” in OneNote, and then realized the list was getting long enough that I needed subsections: Cheesesteaks, Asian, Mexican, Restaurants… you get the picture.

So after working for about an hour, I chose–chose–to categorize some data. Remember what I wrote about problems you like to have? I guess that’s a problem I like to have.

Into Copilot went the query: “What personality type likes categorizing information?”

The personality type that often enjoys categorizing information is associated with the Judging (J) preference in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). This preference is part of a dichotomy that reflects how individuals approach structure and decision-making in their lives. Those with a Judging preference typically like to live in a planned, orderly way, seeking to regulate and manage their lives. They tend to make lists, create plans, and organize their world to understand and manage it12.

For example, types such as ISTJ or INTJ are known for their methodical approach and strategic thinking, often enjoying the process of categorizing and systematizing information2. However, it’s important to note that while MBTI provides a framework for understanding personality preferences, individual behaviors can vary widely within each type. 📊🗂️

I found a Jungian personality type test I took back in 2011, and I was an IFSP (Introverted Sensing Feeling Perceiving). I was moderate for Introverted and Feeling, slightly expressed for sensing, and distinctively perceiving. I should probably take one of these tests again one day soon.

But no J.

I hit the basement this past Sunday for another 10k. I skipped it last weekend (not rowing, just the 10k) because I hadn’t taken a break the previous Saturday (before Easter), and my knees were sqwaking at me.

I approach most 10ks with the same mix of apprehension I used to experience when squatting weights from 325 on my (never-met) march to 400 lbs. I’m not even competing with anyone, just myself. There’s nothing on the line save my self-regard, I suppose.

Anyway, despite the whisky from the day before, I put forth my best effort yet:

I shaved 16.6 seconds off my previous PR of 40:41.6 to finish in 40 minutes, 25 seconds. I was feeling pretty confident from the outset of the row, settling in to 2:00 to 2:01 splits early on in the piece, before surrendering some gains due to exertion and concentration.¹ I even started writing this post in my head, albeit crowing that I’d achieved a 40-minute 10k. That didn’t happen, but this did.

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¹ I wrote before how people have asked me if I watch movies or something while I row. I don’t do that; I watch the erg computer (PM5) or my phone’s display of (mostly) the same data (the PM5 connects to your iPhone via bluetooth to the ErgData app, the interface of which is customizable in ways the PM5 is not). But my point is that it sounds ridiculous to say that concentration is involved, but avid fitness nuts know what I’m talking about. After a while, just doing the thing isn’t enough: if you’ve lost the weight or whatever and find yourself still (manically) engaged in the pursuit, it’s often for mental wellness, maintenance of course, and a borderline obsession with your stats. And for 40 minutes at a steady state, focus is both necessary and elusive.

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.