I am pedantic enough to insist on the use of “BBQ” or “barbecue” in one cooking situation, and grilling in another. Barbecue connotes low heat, judicious application of smoke, extended cooking times. Grilling, on the other hand, means higher heat and shorter cook times. Here, the smoke flavor comes from the charcoal only. But the lines do blur.
Sunday was baby back ribs, once again, on the Weber Bullet smoker. I used Kingsford briquettes, a bit of rub, and cherry and apple woods. They took about five hours and came out great. I always use the Minion Method for ribs; it’s yielded reliable and delicious results.
Ribs on the Virtual Weber Bullet
Monday found the smoker fired up again, this time sans the water pan. This method, which I’ve also used to great success in making beer can chicken, uses a lot of charcoal to fashion a kind of pit barrel grill. The drums I cooked today took about an hour, and that’s about the same for a whole bird. The smoker only gets up around 325 degrees on a good day, so it still takes some time. Again: very good.
Ulysses: I’ve been trying trying demos of the Mac/iOS/iPadOS since the app debuted on the Mac, but I never pulled the trigger and subscribed. It’s a great example of a Markdown-based text editor, although Ulysses has some notable differences from the likes of iA Writer, what might be considered its closest analog. I don’t need or want Ulysses for much of its feature set, though; I prefer individual text files to a database exclusive to the app for this kind of writing. It does, however, have great WordPress support, even allowing you to include images in a post. I’m writing this installment of Sunday Serial in Ulysses in fact, and will likely publish it from here as well. I prefer iA Writer or even BBEdit to it on the Mac, but even there, I have to move everything over to MarsEdit (a great application in its own right, but not one I like to write in). Ulysses nicely unifies posting to WordPress when I’m using my iPad.
AppyHour: Rhonda signed up for this app-delivery service a while ago. We both agree that we’ve enjoyed trying things we wouldn’t have otherwise chosen at a store. The Prosecco jam in this last box is gooooood.
Rhonda and I found ourselves temporarily in an empty nest last night, so after Brie and rosé at Bellview, we ducked into around-the-corner Greenview Inn. I hadn’t really ever looked at the “from the grill” section of the menu, but you can order a number of meat and fish selections, choose a sauce, and add an a la carte veg to go along with it. And I figured with sauces being hard to calorie track, why not try something chock full of protein? So I ordered the veal chop with some salt and pepper, and a wedge of lemon to add some zing. Twas good.
I just finished John Kaag’s Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are. I was curious about Nietzsche back in college after reading one of Henry Rollins’ books. Kind of on a lark, I took a political philosophy course in my junior year at Ursinus, and Nietzsche was featured as one of the three thinkers we read. (I ended up taking two more of this professor’s classes; he was a great lecturer and I enjoyed the reading, writing, and discussion immensely.
While Kaag is indeed a professor of philosophy, the book itself isn’t written for a academics; it is unabashedly confessional, and at turns triumphant, as Kaag punctuates compulsive, starving hikes with passages from the German thinker, equivocating the writings with his own life and experience.
It’s a curious approach; not pop philosophy, by any stretch, but not dense, either. I hesitate to call it a good introduction to Nietzsche or anything so pat, but that’s not exactly wrong.
I liked Hiking with Nietzsche enough to move on to Kaag’s debut, American Philosophy: A Love Letter. This is far less familiar territory for me, although it features Willam James, who I remember someone describing as a psychologist who wrote like a philosopher, while his brother was a novelist who wrote like a psychologist. Something to that effect, anyway. I’m only a few pages in so far but so far, so good.
Here are some memorable quotes from Hiking:
“Nietzsche was drawn to Emerson’s Promethean individualism, his suggestion that loneliness was not something to be remedied at all costs but rather a moment of independence to be contemplated and even enjoyed”
“According to Nietzsche, there are two forms of health: the futile type that tries to keep death at bay as long as possible, and the affirming type that embraces life, even its deficiencies and excesses.”
“Human existence is cruel, harsh, and painfully short, but the tragic heroes of ancient Greece found a way to make the suffering and sudden endings of life beautiful, or aesthetically significant. This is what Nietzsche meant in The Birth of Tragedy when he claimed that the existence can be justified only as an aesthetic experience.”
“To feel deeply the wisdom-tinged sadness of growing older, to understand that one’s youth isn’t long gone, but rather somewhere forever hidden from view, to face self-destruction while longing for creation—this is to grapple with Ecce Homo”
I dropped Tameno into last night’s Sunday Serial; admittedly, I’d only farted with the app a little as of that writing, but I was excited to see a new app by Matthias Gansrigler, the creator of one of my favorite Mac apps, Yoink. I used it a bunch today, and I like it more than I thought.
I use the timer on the phone and Apple Watch a lot, but only for a few cases: for making coffee, I often need 30 second and four-minute timers (for blooming a pour over and brewing French Press, if you are curious why), and 10-minute timers for charcoal.
One particular use I found today was working on a low-importance but urgent task at work; I had to unpack some boxes, and I figured I’d only do that for about 20 mins. Sure, I could have asked Siri to set a timer for me; instead, I just asked Tameno to tap me every five minutes. That way, I could keep track of how long I organized and go a little bit longer if I wanted. As predicted, I was only gonna do two Tamenos, but I ended up doing three. And that was helpful: I realized that was my third tap, oriented myself to how long I’d worked / how much time I lost to a mundane but important task (not much) vs what I’d accomplished (I got lots of supplies squared away and more than I thought I would in 15 minutes), and moved on to something more mission-critical. Tameno didn’t holler “Time’s up!” It just gently tapped me every five minutes. (You can, though, have Tameno count down to zero.)
Using Tameno helped me discover its baked-in OS goodies, too. Sure, the main screen offers tappable plus and minus button for your timer, but the power user move is to just swipe up or down (for longer or shorter durations). And it works exactly the same way on the Apple Watch. The one difference is that there’s no visual cue to see your timer history, a feature I consider a must-have on this app. But as you might expect, a long-press on the watch face reveals your (synced) timer histories. Simple but brilliant. Would that you could long press on the iPhone screen for the same feature.
Tameno on Apple Watch
I’m looking forward to using this as a kind of Pomodoro timer, and exploring using it with Siri, as I often tell Siri to “set a timer for 10 minutes” and the like.
Shareshot: Shareshot is a cool utility for iPhone and iPad that allows you to drop images from your Photos library into the app and add an iPhone background to the screenshot. There are a lot of fiddly options that make this fun and smart looking.
Tameno: From the maker of the must-have Yoink comes Tameno, a timer app for iPhone and Apple Watch. You set one-off timers using a delightful swipe-driven interface, which responds adaptively to your touch, to set interval-based timers. As a quick example, you can set a two-minute timer that will tap you each 120 seconds. Simple, useful, cool. You can’t save a bank of timers, but you can check your history, which is just as good.
Wine Growlers: Rhonda and I went from splitting a bottle of wine at our local haunt to splitting a growler. This move happened over one weekend and is now our default. This weekend, we graduated our practice to getting two growlers so that we’d have 1. Room to try something new and 2. Some wine to enjoy at home. Pro move. I feel like we’ve entered a new echelon of winery goer.
I featured Tabbs back in February as a Sunday Serial pick. My subscription just renewed, and I thought I’d dig back into this extension.
After a little configuration rejiggering (ctrl-j is the default trigger for the extention on Windows, which conflicts with Edge’s default shortcut for showing your downloads), I got to peeking around in the settings configuation. Without using keyboard shortcuts, Tabbs looks nicer than the default tab switcher in Chrome-based browsers, but mousing isn’t any faster or different from the browser default. This is where Tabbs really shines: after invoking the extension, typing alt-c will close a tab without switching to it. Similarly, you can pin tabs to the Tabbs menu to keep it at the top.
Tabbs Extension Panel
Another way that Tabbs speeds up your browsing is by allowing you to interact with a tab in a submenu from the Tabbs pane. After invoking the extension, you click or arrow to a tab (or search for it) and then type the slash character (/), which reveals a second panel with commands specifc to the selected tab:
– Pin
– Close
– Bookmark
– Select
– Nap Tab
Tabbs Submenu
In addition to searching your open tabs, Tabbs will search your browser history.
If you spend a lot of time in a browser, Tabbs is worth a serious look. Do note, though, that it requires a subscription to use all of the features.
Dr Henry Cloud took [Scott Pack’s observation that once you learn that life is difficult, it stops feeling so] a step further. In his book Integrity, he wrote about “eating problems for breakfast” as the key to personal growth and success. In other words, it is important to orient yourself to the fact that bad things will happen — and you have to be prepared to meet and resolve them.
[DayOne](Day One Journal App | Your Journal For Life (dayoneapp.com)): DayOne is a journaling app that is tightly integrated into the Apple ecosystem (there’s a web version, too). At its core, it’s good for keeping daily journals, but the os-level integration allows you to import pictures and other data, document your location, and more. It’s a [Mac-assed Mac app](Daring Fireball: Mac-Assed Mac Apps)for sure. One of the charming things it does (if you want it to) is remind you to read an old entry. Today, I got this one:
Post-vacation trips
I often think about how bad I’m going to feel after a vacation (being sad about going back to the routine)), but in purely behavioral terms, I must like all vacations and breaks because I am always excited for them when they are upon me. If the post-vacation sadness were so salient, I wouldn’t want to even go because the negative emotional fallout would outweigh the fun. And that’s never the case. Sunday damage never dampens Friday enthusiasm. So weird…
I’m terribly inconsistent in my use of DayOne, but I do find it a good place to write things I might not want to share here or just to think (because writing is thinking). And having the entries is a fun way to recall specifics about a time you have vague memories of.
2. [Espanso](Espanso – A Privacy-first, Cross-platform Text Expander): This is a cross-platform snippet expander for Mac, Linux, and Windows. Creating snippets ("Matches," in Espanso terminology) requires adding commands to a YAML file, which is not at all like the experience of using a tool like [TextExander](TextExpander: #1 Text Replacement & Keyboard Shortcut App), but like AutoHotKey, Espanso has a lot of power and customizability.<sup>1</sup>
3. Blueberry Pancakes: Rhonda gets a boxed mix and adds buttermilk; I don’t know how to prepare them, but I can cook them (and eat them). I make these on the Blackstone griddle after the bacon is cooked. A once-in-a-while food for sure.
Blueberry Pancakes
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<sup>1</sup> I do still have a TextExpander subscription, but I don’t use it like I used to. Because I don’t write technical reports or documents as an administrator, I don’t need access to a lot of repetitive text. I do like to have a few things handy, though: email addresses, my cell number and work number, addresses… things I might otherwise have to type out repetitively.
Where I have often found Windows lacking in software compared to the Mac (gasp!), Microsoft’s own PowerToys has always been a new-installation-must on any Windows device I’ve used since I discovered it back in the Windows 7 days. My most-used and loved utility in this suite is PowerToys run, which is a launcher utility in the vein of the excellent (and also new-installation-must on the Mac) Launchbar (without which a Mac doesn’t feel like a Mac to me when it’s not installed… or should I say, until it’s installed).
You can get plenty of mileage out of PowerToys Run just using it as a launcher; for example, typing “Excel” in the search box will give you, as the first result, the application Excel. It’s great for web searches, too, and even searching your local hard drive.
PowerToys Run Searching for Excel
I do prefer the fast-if-spartan-looking Everything for file searches on Windows, though; it’s a focused application in that it searches for files and allows you to open or reveal them easily. It’s pretty ugly, though. It’s also free, so I can’t squak.
Everything is available to you via PowerToys Run not just as a launchable executable, though; you can install a plugin, and after typing a modifier key (“ is the default), you can search your machine via Run but using Everthing’s power.
Run works this way; you can just type into the search bar, but you can specify modifier commands to restrict your search to specific features (calculator, file search, and your search history, for example).
Run looks like a simple app–and you can use it that way–but beneath the hood is a cache of productivity firepower. And it’s made all the better by the Everything plugin.
While vacationing in Ocean City, NJ, Rhonda and I nipped out for dinner at Peter Shields after splitting a bottle of rosé at the nearby Willow Creek Winery. While the winery is a little overbaked and expensive, Peter Shields was short, one of the best restaurants I’ve been to in a while.
We started off sharing a yellowtail crudo, one of my favorite fish from our local sushi haunt; this dish arrived garnished with cucumber and watermelon, a heretofore untasted mélange of flavors for this diner. We also split blue point oysters on the half shell, which were plump and briny, and always a favorite of both of ours when we have them. (And we’ve had them!)
Yellowtail Crudo
I ordered a bone-in pork chop, which our server, Chris, was quick to point out was a pounded and fried dish; this was not necessarily my preference nor the dish I’d imagined in my mind based on the menu, but I readily agreed to this preparation. It was, in turn, excellent. The pork was pounded flat and dredged in breadcrumbs, and pan fried until crispy, with no residual oil on the surface. Topped Milanese style with greens and tomatoes would have been satisfying, but the lily was gilded with some chunks of meat and mozzarella. It was excellent and I’d order it again in a heartbeat.
Pork Chop
Rhonda was craving a steak, and she got the filet. It was perfectly cooked to medium rare, as requested, and beautifully served, with mushroom ravioli to boot.
Filet Mignon
For dessert, they offered a steamed caramel cake à la mode, which we split and adored. The dessert was swimming in a pool of molten caramel and was delicious and the perfect size to split. It was a whimsical nod to the classic caramel sundae, with the cake dressing the dish up to something elegant.
Peter Shields is a BYOB, but you can order bottles from the nearby Cape May Winery, which they should advertise more; we stopped at a liquor store along the way (and admittedly saved a buck), but I probably would have sprung for a bottle of Cape May in order to try another local wine.
(This is a slightly rewritten version of my Yelp review.)
I consider myself inordinately lucky that I get to go on vacation for a week in one of Jersey’s many excellent shore towns each summer. We just got back from Ocean City, NJ, yesterday, and here are some things to check out, should you find yourself there.
Swimming: I wrote last year that I was anxious about not being able to row on vacation, but I found out that fairly casual swimming is a great way to burn up some calories. This was in the hotel pool, where you can avoid the crowds and the kids by jumping in right after breakfast. I swam myself silly one day.
Peter Shields Inn: This is not in Ocean City (it’s in Cape May), but Rhonda and I like to nip out one night for a dinner alone, and this year we tried Peter Shields on the recommendation of one of Rhonda’s co-workers. I plan to write up the experience separately, but in short, it’s an excellent BYOB (they do sell bottles of Cape May Winery wine) in that just-a-notch-above casual that shore towns excel in. Definitely in the top ten.1.
Beach walks: Once again, before anyone was up, Rhonda and I took a 2+ mile walk on the beach and boardwalk, heading south from the hotel to a beach entrance, and then marched north back to Gillians Wonderland Pier (which will be closing). We will miss our La Colombe coffee stop next year for sure.
Swimming OCNJ
Peter Shields Pork Chop
OCNJ Morning Walks
A quick word about Ocean City, which bills itself as the World’s Greatest Family Resort. It’s kinda Disney-ish, which certainly accounts for its allure for parents of young children (and perhaps teetotalers). Staying at the south end or “Goald Coast,” as it’s called, is a quieter, more beach-goer vibe, while the nortern end offers a walkable downtown, many more dining options, and of course, the boardwalk. We’ve been staying at and preferring the northern end for the past few years, and access to a number of less crowded takeout spots in Somers Point is a big plus. Whatever your thoughts are on Ocean City, it is a town with a true sense of vision, evident in its organization and (sometimes annoying) reminders of local laws and ordinances. We love to scurry around all of these attractions.
1 I don’t actually have a top-ten restaurant list, but I should write that up. Vetri in Philly for sure would be on there.
