From the Marginalian, a humbling and inspiring metaphor for life found in the humble worm:

There are experiences in life that strike at the center of our being, sundering us in half with unforeseen pain for which we were entirely unbraced. Because we know that this is possible — from the lives of others, from our own past experience, from the history of the heart recorded in our literature — we are always living with the awareness, conscious or unconscious, that life can sunder us at any given point without warning. This is the price of consciousness, which makes living both difficult and urgent.

Trauma, Growth, and How to Be Twice as Alive: Tove Jansson on the Worm and the Art of Self-Renewal

We’re enjoying Ocean City, NJ, this week. Be back next week!

So check this out: Last year, about one year ago, while we were on vacation in Ocean City, Rhonda and I brought Aaron home during one day to pick up his girlfriend. I snuck in a 10k row while we were here. I was curious how my one-year-ago effort compared to my most recent 10ks, where I’ve taken to slowing things down a bit and focusing on form. Here’s the table:

Times are about equal, as is pace. Power(watts) are also equivalent.

But comparing my heart rate shows a lower rate at the same effort year over year, and my stroke rate is considerably lower this year.

I’ve pivoted from faster to something different… more efficient? More power per stroke? Interesting.

I [mentioned][1] OneNote’s Feed and how it had been obscured in OneNote’s GUI in favor of the Sticky Notes menu. A helpful Redditor mentioned that you could bring the Feed back by:

1. Searching for the Feed in the the Search bar (alt-Q)
2. Type “feed” in the Search box
3. Right-click on the “Open Feed” item in the resulting picklist
4. Choose “Add to Quick Access Toolbar”

Voila! The Feed will be in the upper-left hand of the application’s menu.

Here’s a quick video I made to illustrate.

I was thinking today that the recent vacation to Hershey Park and the bookending weekends has a bit more content with my weight than I’ve been for a while. I’m satisfied to see consistency over a steady drop.

Considering that I started this journey just trying to get down to a size 36 pant, I should be!

But I had gotten addicted to seeing a drop in weight when I hopped on the scale, and was concerned if I gained, or in some cases, didn’t lose after trying.

It’s not to say that I don’t celebrate for a quiet second when I get back down a half pound or so after a weekend of relative gluttony. But this is more of a control issue–that I can bend it back the other way, still bend it back–than a sheer loss issue. That’s because anyone who has lost weight with some effort fears that it will come back. Like all of it. Over night.

Anyway: I’m kind of bouncing along the bottom of my loss. The line has flattened.

It took 18 months. A year and a half.

A Few Observations

• You Realize You’ll Have to be This Vigilant for the Rest of Your Life: Maybe I’m overstating the case, but you realize that your current level of output (exercise and movement) and careful eating (and logging of said eating) is both necessary and sufficient to maintenance. Your engagement matters.
• Logging Your Food Can Get Cumbersome: The upshot of measuring your food is that you’re better at guesstimating when you’re in situations when you can’t (or won’t) measure: out for dinner, at a party, etc. I know about how much steak is 120 grams, and likewise with chicken. I’m pretty sure I know how much salad I ate when I can’t measure. A half of a medium baked potato is around 80 grams. But measuring half a dozen pieces of salami and some bits of brie can get downright fiddly.
• Logging Your Food Enables You to Eat and Drink Everything: You don’t have to avoid entire food groups because it’s an unknown evil; you can have a cocktail and account for it in your intake. (Maybe not tonight, but you can make up for it later.) You can still have cheese; just have less of it. You can have wine with dinner; measure it and count it against your daily balance. I think some partial bans or restrictions can be helpful: booze, candy, soda, that kind of thing. It’s necessarily that you can’t ever have them, but you can limit them to certain situations or events.
• Move More: On some days, like Sundays, I can bury the needle and burn 500+ calories in a rowing session. But most weekday mornings, I can only get in around 200 calories before it’s into the breach once again. But you can burn a lot more calories just walking around at work or doing work in the yard. Obviously combining exercise and active movement during the day is the smart move.
• Eat the Same Thing a Lot: Having a similar salad, with minor tweaks, for lunch eat day takes the guesswork out of your intake when you’re busy. This has helped me discern a workable pattern for myself: about 250 calories for breakfast, 250 for lunch (more accurately, 500 calories before dinner), and leave 1000 in the bank for dinner and a drink. I can usually have some fruit or pistacios for dessert, too.
• Don’t Eat After Dinner: This is really only when you’re starting out, but try not to eat after dinner. Once you get pro with counting calories, you can adjust against your calorie balance.
• Eat Fruit and Vegetables: You can eat a bowl of watermelon and not touch the calorie content of a cookie. (But you should have a cookie once in a while, too.)
• Eat Nuts…but Measure Them: Nuts are a great source of energy and will keep you feeling full, but you have to measure them, as they’re calorically dense. Housing fistfuls of peanuts while you’re having a cocktail with someone special will surprise you, energy-wise.
• Technology is a Fantastic Tool for Health: From tracking workouts to movement, and for logging your food, there has never been a better time. I get a lot of data from my Apple Watch and PM5 erg computer every day that informs how much I eat. And all of the other health data: resting heart rate, walking heart rate, and more, are all great metrics to track while you’re getting–and staying–healthy

All of this is on the eve of our annual vacation to Ocean City. I hope the pool is warm! ¹

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¹ Last year, I was worried about not being able to row on vacation. I learned, though, that just casually swimming around in the pool, treading water and swimming around, as I do, can burn 100 calories in about 10 minutes. So an hour of that a day? Lots of calories burned, leaving room for pizza, a beer on the deck, and even some Kohr Bros.

Microsoft does a lot of strange things. Or at least they do, from the viewpoint of a lifelong Mac user. Maybe Windows users feel the same way when they use a Mac. But where I feel Apple makes one version of an app and declares it the best of its kind until it summarily replaces it with what is now the best app (notable exception described below), Microsoft floats all kinds of ideas and examples of things and sees what sticks.

An example? Consider Loop. It’s clearly a Notion competitor, which itself is kind of a Google Docs competitor. Loop, though, competes with Microsoft’s own Word (in some ways) and even the venerable OneNote. If you like OneNote but want to try Loop, how do you not lapse into paroxysms of uncertainty about when to use each application?

Even within OneNote, there is a curious amount of feature creep and obfuscation. Consider the Feed, a helpful feature that allows you to see your notes chronologically, irrespective of the group they’re filled in. Notes apps of all stripes will show you this view of your data; in OneNote, it’s a kinda-hidden option that Microsoft has purposefully hidden from the user (it’s not hard to find, but it’s not exposed in the GUI). But on the iPhone, OneNote works exactly this way.

One example, though, in the same vein I find endearing and useful: the integration with Sticky Notes. As on the Mac, Windows has a quick and dirty sticky notes app; but on the Mac, stickies are their own data silo; there’s no integration with Apple’s Notes. But on OneNote, where the Feed once lived, you can view your sticky notes and add and edit them as well. This is useful and boasts some clever features, the main one of which is Sticky Notes attention to the source of the information for your Note. for example, let’s say you’re looking at Serious Eats for sous vide recipes. If you create a new note while viewing this page, Sticky Notes will embed a link to the URL and the browser you were using when you created the note. This is a very cool example of linking in the manifesto sense. Sadly, you can’t file sticky notes into groups or dividers. Maybe this will come in the future.

The Feed, however, shows all of your notes, Sticky Notes included, in the same chronological view. It will also show notes you may have taken in Samsung Notes, if you’re a Samsung phone or tablet user. Yet the Feed is hidden, replaced by the Sticky Notes view.

I don’t get it.

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

1. Maybe: Via the Marginalian comes this Chinese proverb¹. What if you lived such that nothing was experienced as an advantage or disadvantage?
2. Hiking with Niezsche: I’m reading this now and highlighting like a madman so that I can review them in Readwise, but I figured I’d throw it in this week’s list. It’s both what I thought it would be and different; the author, John Kaag, is a professor of philosophy, so it’s not written from an enthusiast’s perspective, but it is a reflection on Nietzsche’s writing from a rather personal viewpoint.
3. Zippo Lighters: As an inveterate charcoal griller, I have always had a variety of disposable lighters around. They are bound to disappoint at some inopportune moment. I got this Zippo a while back, a fond throwback to my smoking days (Camel Lights, natch), and as long as there are some spare flints and lighter fluid in the house, I can always count on it.

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¹

Once upon a time there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away. That evening, all of his neighbors came around to commiserate. They said, “We are so sorry to hear your horse has run away. This is most unfortunate.” The farmer said, “Maybe.” The next day the horse came back bringing seven wild horses with it, and in the evening everybody came back and said, “Oh, isn’t that lucky. What a great turn of events. You now have eight horses!” The farmer again said, “Maybe.” The following day his son tried to break one of the horses, and while riding it, he was thrown and broke his leg. The neighbors then said, “Oh dear, that’s too bad,” and the farmer responded, “Maybe.” The next day the conscription officers came around to conscript people into the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. Again all the neighbors came around and said, “Isn’t that great!” Again, he said, “Maybe.”

The farmer steadfastly refrained from thinking of things in terms of gain or loss, advantage or disadvantage, because one never knows… In fact we never really know whether an event is fortune or misfortune, we only know our ever-changing reactions to ever-changing events.

It’s here! Delivered today. I will try it out tomorrow; I’m thinking with the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8.

A couple of observations: despite the flip-over case, it’s really small. It feels nice to type on, but I miss the fabric-covered keys of the original. This feels like a mid-grade island-style keyboard.

I’ve been writing here from time to time about the Nietzschean duality of Apollinian and the Dionysian, most playfully when doing so about Muppet Theory.

When considering the conceptual difference between Apollinian and Dionysian, I often think of Nietzsche’s example of sculpture vs music. Music and dance are communal, more chaotic and impermanent, while sculpture represents the structure and discipline required to bring a form to shape. As I was writing about the Foo Fighters show we just attended, I wanted to write a bit about my thoughts on the tension between these two forces, and how they might apply to the concert experience

Prior to the show, we walked around Hershey Park and rode some rides. I was thinking how I’m not terribly inclined to seek out live music. It’s not that I don’t enjoy a show (although they do go on a bit long!); I always enjoy live music and know enough about rock guitar to appreciate the music on a few levels.

And I thought that it was a good thing that I was exposing them, however later in their young lives, to the concert experience. And that this was a good introduction to a Dionysian experience.

But then the juxtapositions started to smack me in the face. The parking. The itinerary. The fact that previous set lists mirrored the Hershey show. The legion of trucks that surely carried the bands’ gear to the venue. The hours of prep beforehand in setting up the sound and lights. The venue staffing. The Ticketmaster app always alert and ready to show my tickets within the hour of the show starting. Rational thinking. Form and structure. All Apollinian traits.

A modern rock concert delivers a core Dionysian experience while your icons are on stage, but it relies wholly on Apollinian features to happen. And unlike in Nietzsche’s conception, these forces are not opposing one another, but supporting each other. A planned event with no Dionysus would be a boring affair. But Dionysus without roadies? Nothing would happen.

The closest somewhat-famous example I can think of that is a truly Dionysian experience with concert-going would be the desert parties that made the likes of Kyuss famous.

More than 100 miles away from Los Angeles and the width of a continent from New York, Palm Desert had no outlets for young bands. Kyuss decided to take matters into their own hands. Setting up makeshift stages in the desert outside of town, they would play gigs to ever-growing crowds of friends. Part gig, part alfresco revelry, they became known as ‘generator parties’, due to the electrical generators used to power the band’s amps.

[Kyuss’ Blues For The Red Sun: the cult 90s masterpiece that sparked the stoner rock revolution](1992: How Kyuss sparked a stoner rock revolution | Louder (loudersound.com))

You can plug in Burning Man for rock concert if you like; I think the analysis still holds.

We took the boys to see the Foo Fighters in Hershey, PA, last night. It was their first concert… I think between COVID and our distance from Philly and AC have conspired to keep them from ever asking to see a show.

The show was awesome and Dave Grohl is an absolute bundle of energy. I’ve been a fan since the first record, which I lived and listened too ad nauseum when it came out. I learned a fair number of songs as a fledgling guitarist back in those days. The opening act, the Hives, were great, too.

1. Plan to wait in the parking lot: I am reacting somewhat to this most recent experience, where we were stuck in the parking lot for almost an hour after the end of the show. I saw a fair number of vehicles parked, tailgates open, with concert-goers drinking and eating. I wasn’t hungry after the show, but I was certainly in need of water. I had a small bit of water left in my water bottle in the car (the double-walled aluminum kept it cold), but I could have used more than that. I’m sure everyone did.
2. Listen to the opening band on the ride up: I enjoyed all of the Hives songs they played, but I regret not listening to more of their oeuvre on the way. I know most of the Foo stuff by heart.
3. Get a backup battery for your phone: I have a cool MagSafe battery from Anker that you can use like a piggyback portable battery on your iPhone. You don’t want to run out of juice snapping pics and taking video, but you might also need the thing for the forced march back to your car, depending on where you parked.

I’m sure there are more pro moves that veteran concert goers abide by, but that’s what I took from the experience. Concerts are a lot of fun, but they’re not necessarily the spontaneous adventure you might remember from your youth.

I am the vacation planer for the family. I book the rooms, order the tickets, map the routes, and make the rezzes. This week finds us in Hershey, PA; we’re doing Hershey Park, but we’re mostly here for the Foo Fighters show tonight. We drove in yesterday afternoon and are lodged at a pretty decent Best Western on Chocolate Ave.

I made a dinner rez for last night at the around-the-corner Snitz Creek Brewery. Rhonda and I love beer, and the boys bar food, so it seemed like a good choice. It’s a pretty corporate place despite the appearance; would that I had the forethought to take my camera into the restroom, I could have delighted the reader with the cut-out-keg urinals. But alas.

Big picture, Snitz does a fine job with food; beer selection was mixed, and the service was lousy.

Rhonda started off with the Opening Day IPA, which is one of the brews I figured she would like to try; I went on their website the night before and reordered the list, grouping them by the styles I thought we’d be interested in. There’s a lot of fruit and dessert flavors on the list that I knew we’d avoid. The Opening Day is about twice as hoppy as the already aggressively hopped local favorite by Bonesaw, Swoosh. It’s nearly 100 IBUs, and there’s not much malt in the mix. Not for me. I tried the Golden Lager, which is a Helles style; I found this to be thin and boring in body and flavor. I know what a Helles is and what to expect, and this wasn’t a good iteration of the style.

Happily, the other beer I had my eye on, the Hopper Dropper, was much better (if a bit much): a hazy, nicely hopped IPA. Rhonda got the Citra, which is a much less bitter IPA that is hopped exclusively with Citra hops. Round two beers were both thumbs up.

The food at Snitz was, from start to finish, excellent and nicely executed. We all shared some wings, half hot and half mild; perhaps by accident, the mild came out with no sauce at all, which isn’t mild: it’s plain. But they were fresh and crispy and we all agreed, delicious. We also got the eggrolls, which featured local mushrooms. They too were excellent.

Rhonda got a smash burger, which was true to the style: gooey with cheese, juicy but not pink. I had a chicken satay bowl, which was a couple of boneless thighs with a bbq sauce. I intended to skip the rice, but found myself eating some of it anyway because it was so good. Aaron picked up some flavor in the rice, and Rhonda guessed it was Garam Masala. Aaron’s crispy pork chop was a riff on the same bowl I ordered, and it too was really good. Joe’s korean chicken sandwich looked good, served on the same brioche bun as Rhonda’s smashburger, but it was not a fried sandwich; the chicken was, I think, exactly what comes on the Satay. I do find that sleight of hand disingenuous, though: calling something “Korean chicken,” and describing it as “crispy,” would suggest to at least a sophomoric diner that it would be fried. Still good. But not fried.

The service was really bad at Snitz, though; we arrived and took our seats, and the server asked about drink choices. We needed a few minutes to make a decision about a beer, but because happy hour was almost over, the server launched into a dissertation about how we could save a buck by ordering one before 6 pm. I made a six pm rez and didn’t give a rat’s ass about happy hour when I made it, but more to the point, if you think happy hour is going to cause a stir at my table, give me the beer at 6:03 pm for the happy hour price. Least damaging? Just say, “Happy hour pricing is available until 6 pm” and let us peruse.

He then disappeared for a long time, and while yes, we did ask for some time to review the draft list, we had made decisions quickly thereafter. For the second round, I had to serve myself at the bar, which I always find annoying and should be embarrassing to the staff. What’s worse, I handed the bar tender our empties and asked for the two new pours (different styles) and what ensued was a lengthy pause and steady eye contact while the bartender reminded me that the glasses I was handing him were for two other styles. It was as if the notion of having a second beer that what not the same as the first was not only unusual but transgressive. Buddy… people do it all the time.

This brings me to the larger point about Snitz: it feels very polished but also corporate. That a person had to make this speech communicates that there’s no flexibility for on-the-floor staff, which sounds corporate to me. And the utter polish of the food, and the online rez system, and the goofy beer names… just something strikes me that way. I’m not above dining at a chain, but I don’t prefer the experience, generally, save for obvious hits like Shake Shack.

I’d go there again, though.

I was listening to the Modern Wisdom podcast this weekend, and Joe Hudson was on. I’m not sure what to make of “coaches” and their expertise in some of these matters, but I found this particular conception of why people are afraid of their feelings to resonate:

I also really like Hudson’s “Golden Algorithm”:

The Golden Algorithm of emotional mastery:
1. Name an unwanted emotion in your life
2. List the ways that you try to avoid it
3. Notice that every way you try to avoid it, you actually create it

The Art Of Mastering Your Emotions | Joe Hudson on Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson Ep. 813

John Gruber:

The knee-jerk reaction to my suggestion of picking Buttigieg or Whitmer is obvious: isn’t a black woman at the top of the ticket already asking a lot? Why go with two women, or a black woman and a gay man? Because they’re smart and they’re sharp and they’re good on TV. If you don’t like their message or platform, don’t vote for them. But if you don’t want to vote for a ticket with two women, or a ticket with gay man as VP, just because, then fuck you. Go vote for Trump, because you’re a bigot, and he’s the candidate for you. There are too many racists and sexists in America, but they’re not a majority.

BIDEN DROPS OUT OF REELECTION BID, FULLY ENDORSES KAMALA HARRIS

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

1. Lamy Safari Fountain Pens: I wrote last week about the Fisher Space Pen, which, outside of really nice disposable pens, was among my first “serious” pens and ignited my interest in more bespoke offerings. The Safari was not my first fountain pen, and truth be told, as a lefty, it isn’t always the pen I can use; lefties push their pens across the page, which can lead to even messier results than I’m used to.¹ Described as a “fountain pen for dummies” by the Strategist, it’s an approachable tool for anyone interested in trying out a fountain pen.
2. Drawboard PDF: I tried out the free version of Drawboard on either an iPad or Microsoft Surface Pro when I needed something that PDF Pen Pro didn’t run on, and the first version was interesting, if a little unusual, with its tool dial interface. I tried it again recently and was impressed with its design and performance on both Mac and Windows, so I signed up for a trial. The markup tools are easy to use and attractive, and the ability to rearrange and insert pages is spot-on for what I need. The only downside is that you can’t edit text in a PDF, which is a feature I don’t often need, but need once in a while. Happily, you can do just that with Affinity Publisher when you need to; there’s still a great bargain to be had if you’re looking for it.
3. UpNote: There are people in the world who lead quiet and contented lives using paper and pen for to-do lists and reference material, and a similar contingent who will use Apple Notes or Reminders or whatever comes with their device and spend little to no time wondering about alternatives to these solutions. I consider it a blessing and a curse that I am not one of them. As a technophile, I’m always looking around and trying out different applications that catch my eye. On the to-do list side, I’ve gone from OmniFocus to Asana to Things, back to OmniFocus, and tried Todoist a couple of times, which is where I’m staying for now (I could, and probably will, write a fair bit about Todoist in the way that I used to about OmniFocus). In the PKM space, I’ve similarly farted around with a multitude of options: Yojimbo, EverNote, Alternote, iA Writer, Bear, DEVONThink, Apple Notes, Dendron, and most recently, OneNote (not my first rodeo there). UpNote is an interesting mix of EverNote/Yojimbo-style digital shoe boxing, but with modern features like Markdown support and Wikilinking. It runs on everything and looks great. And it’s cheap! I really like it and would consider using it if it supported handwriting a la Apple Notes and OneNote. (Yes, for some reason, despite my eschewing handwriting in second grade, as this post attests, I still do prefer handwriting for a number of things, and at least like to be able to have the option to handwrite instead of type whenever the spirit moves me).

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¹ I went to Catholic school, and teaching penmanship was still a thing in the 1980s; we used yellow ruled paper and Palmer Method workbooks to practice printing and eventually, by second grade, cursive. I remember, after painfully and carefully trying to complete a writing assignment, looking over at a classmate, and watched her effortlessly, and with a sense of satisfaction, complete her assignment, producing clear and legible cursive on her paper. I realized that was never going to be me, and effectively gave up on anything more than just getting the assignments done at the age of 8.

Logitech announced recently an update to their excellent but dormant Keys to Go. I wrote about finding the re-released version and ordered one to carry in my bag for my tablet. I like the original very much, but found the update lacking compared to the original in terms of keypress and texture.

The Keys to Go 2 is now available. The new one looks like a cased-up version of Apple’s Mgic Keyboard. I ordered one and will report back as soon as I give it a spin.