One of our favorite phô places has broken rice on the menu. Rhonda tried it last time we went and raved about the pork chop. Aaron has plussed his phô with a side chop from time to time. They are delicious: thin, cooked to well done, with a sweet and tangy flavor.
Cooks Illustrated for May and June has a recipe for the dish, so we tried the pork chops (I just steamed rice). I marinated them overnight in fish sauce, brown sugar, olive oil, some garlic, and some chillies, and grilled them crispy.
Chris Lawley recently joined Matt Gemmell in stepping back from iPad uniformity. Federico has been using a Mac.
The most recent edition of the Appstories podcast(where Viticci mentions using a MacBook Pro) is a good listen if you, too, question iPad monolithicity. The hosts list what they’re hoping to see in the much-ballyhooed iPadOS 19, which is rumored to feature a menu bar, macOS style, when attached to a keyboard.
A more mouse-forward affordance would certainly be welcome. But I’ll agree with John and Federico in hoping for:
Rethought support for background processes
ChatBot Siri
A clipboard manager
Launcher utilities
It’s not worth repeating that the iPad is, and has been, glorious hardware with an OS that doesn’t satisfy more demanding users. I think people get upset because they see the potential of the device–hence their secular incursions.
I grew up in what is often referred to as the golden age of action figures, as contrasted with the golden age of toys. It was a time when, starting perhaps with the Kenner action figures that accompanied the release of the Star Wars films in the 1970s and 80s, plastic action figures became popular. In addition to Star Wars, there were Transformers, GI Joe, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and more. Movie and cartoon tie-ins helped popularize many of the lines.
Both of my sons, now adults, got into action figures, much to my delight (I figured they’d “grow out of it” by middle school, but that has not proven to be the case. Lots of adults collect action figures these days, whereas it was kind of weird when I was younger to see teenagers or adults buying them.) I got a call from Joe, our oldest, letting me know that he found three ROM figures at a Target near his school. I had asked him to grab one for me should he see it.
In 1979, Parker Brothers introduced ROM: Space Knight. There was a backstory and a comic book:
ROM Space Knight, Rom came from the peaceful planet Galador, which was populated by humanoids that look much like Terrans. After the Galadorian space fleet was decimated by the Dire Wraiths without provocation, the call went out to the young people of Galador to give up their humanity to become Spaceknights.
I never read the comic book, and this particular toy was not a modern marvel of articulation. I was also five years old, so while I remember seeing the commercial on TV, I never felt any particular attraction to ROM. I did love MEGO figures and Star Wars and other toy, but ROM seemed like a bleep-bloop robot toy with batteries to manage.
Hasbro, meanwhile, has continued the Marvel Legends line of action figures that ToyBiz started some time in the early- to mid-aughts. As with the excellent DC line popularized by Mattel, Legends has mixed in the must-have and obvious choices– Captain America, Wolverine, Spider-Man–with obscure characters that many of us only know from leafing through the voluminous pages of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe.
This year, Hasbro did those of us circling their 50s a solid and revealed a ROM 6” Legends figure. I asked Joe to keep an eye out for one: in a fit of nostalgia, and also of curiosity, I knew I would like to have a Space Knight of my own. Today, Joe delivered.
ROM Space Knight
It’s pretty amazing, and as Aaron observed, kind of strange that they lavished the attention to the sculpt and articulation that they did, considering the character’s relative obscurity.
Not the first time I’ve made this. You sous vide a chuck for about 24 hours and then sear it off. This time it was a little more well done than we’d have liked, but it was still really good. Kinda briskety.
Chuck Roast in the Sous Vide TankChuck Roast After 28 Hours in the Sous Vide TankSeared off chuck roast
My younger son, Aaron, is doing the vinyl thing, traveling to record stores and shopping online for records. It’s no secret that vinyl has been a thing again for a while, despite the ubiquity of music via digital subscription (which we have as a family in Apple Music).
Today, he went over to my parents’ house to help out with decorating for the season, and came back with some of my old CDs. Rhonda mentioned to him when he came home that we have some bins in the basement with our commingled collection, and he headed straight down there to have a look.
We both went down with him, and I was as excited about seeing some of my old CDs as he was. (It’s even more fun seeing someone else excited by your collection.) I said something like, “I don’t know why I’m so excited… I have all of these on my phone.”
“C’mon… physical media!” Aaron answered in a flash.
He drug a bunch of CDs upstairs and organized them in his room.
I attended a session on Friday hosted by the New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education at the Medford Board of Education building and the presenter was Kory Kutzler from Resilient Edge. He was talking about trauma and developing resiliency, and one of his products that he brought to sell was a journal. Practicing gratitude was a feature of one of his products, and he was going over how you could journal gratitude.
I had gotten into that a bit a while back, writing “Three Goods” in Day One from January through March of 2024. I had Todoist remind me each night to make a list, and I enjoyed it, although sometimes it was a stretch to dig up something. That stretch, though, was helpful in that it assisted me in finding even small things that I could appreciate. I knew it was time to stop when I found the reminders annoying.
Kory’s discussion of this practice reminded me of my own short practice of gratitude, and I thought for a moment that maybe I should do that again, even if it were just a quick list in Apple Notes or an index card. But then I thought about Sunday Serial. Each week, I sit down and pick out at least three things that you can consider or check out, and they are some things that brought me a moment (or more) of joy, however ephemeral or forward-looking. So in that way, I am still very much practicing gratitude, albeit not daily.
Orthogonally related to practicing three goods–another thing I tried out when I was not looking forward to the day ahead was to write down three things I was looking forward for the next day on the evening before. These things were usually pretty small, like rowing in the morning, having a banana, or making a cup of coffee. I still do this from time to time.
What’s to look forward to about rowing before dawn, you might ask? It’s hard to find something that’s good for you that you can stick to, that helped you solve a problem or improve yourself, and to be well enough to do, and be able to tread down into the basement without a drive to a gym or waking anyone up. Rowing has very much been that for me.
We can’t delude ourselves that every day is going to be a fun, light, and carefree. We also can’t dedicate our lives to small pleasures. But there’s a special place for them in our hearts.
Bellview Winery’s Sunset Red Wine
Rhonda and I hit our usual spot for a growler refill and the Serafina we enjoyed (mostly me) last time kicked while they were filling our half-liter growler, so I went with the Sunset. We’ve had it before, but it’s been a while. I asked for a quick summary and the associate described it as a “light dry red,” which sounded perfect for a warm spring evening with dropping temps, and a chuck roast in the sous vide tank for tonight’s dinner. The website describes Sunset as “29% 2020 Chambourcin, 18% 2021 Chambourcin, 15% 2019 Syrah/Merlot, 14% 2021 Cabernet Franc, 13% 2019 Chamby/Cab Franc, 5% Blaufrankisch 2021, 5% 2021.” I’m more of a red wine fine but I’ve really gotten into whites since we’ve been trying wineries. I usually drink up all the red when we get it.
Bellview Wine and Nachos, Sunset on the Right
Somewhere I got into drinking Cabernet Sauvignon, which I like plenty, but I have always enjoyed lighter reds, notably cutting my teeth on Beaujolais and especially enjoying the fleeting availability of the nouveau variety. Wine is fun because of the remarkable variety of styles, even if you only prefer reds or whites.
MailMaven
I don’t know that I’m going to move my Mac-based emailing to MailMaven, but upon first blush, it checks off many of the boxes that I look for in an email application. Smart Folders? Check. Gmail and iCloud support? Check. Mac-assed Mac app? Check. Support even emailed me back… on a Sunday. Which is wholly unexpected.
MailMaven
Watermelon Season
I love watermelon. I’ve always liked watermelon, but my weight-loss journey found me eating more fresh watery things that aren’t very processed, and a rediscovery for me was watermelon. I think a bit part of why is the water part: I was rowing a lot, and intensely, and was often thirsty peripheral to my efforts. The structure of watermelon is such that large chunks of it are still low in calories, so it’s a good thing to eat when you’re hungry but trying to be careful. This isn’t the first watermelon of the season, but it’s the first (of many) full-size melons I’ve gleefully toted out of our local Shop Rite.
Watermelon
Tarragon Omelette
Rhonda and I picked up three pounds of bacon at the butcher during spring break, and we’re loathe to waste it, so I usually make a bunch on one morning each weekend. Eggs are made to order, and Aaron asked for an omelette.
I’ve been around the horn with omelettes, making French-style in stainless steel pans and country-style in the cast iron. Most recently I’ve been making them on the Blackstone griddle we have.
I was hustling out to the garden for some chives to juke the dish and spied the tarragon. I asked Copilot if tarragon goes well in omelettes, and it was most enthusiastic about the pairing. Aaron said it was great.
Take Control Books’ Joe Kissel posted the other day about a new email app for the Mac, MailMaven. I’m trying the beta out now, and it really looks great. I’ll write up more soon.
Besides all that, Maven offers deep customization. If you’re the sort of person who loves tweaking things and squeals with delight every time you uncover another checkbox in Settings, you’ll be thrilled. Every aspect of the windows and message display, every keyboard shortcut, tweaky attachment options, and even the color, shape, and position of the unread message badge on the icon can be adjusted to your heart’s content.
I’ve written a lot here on Uncorrected about email apps. This is pretty exciting.
The mussels fixation continues apace. Spied this garage queen in the parking lot on the way out. It looks identical to my 2013 GT, but that style was available from 2005 to 2014.
Mussels Red and White, Spicy, at the MaplewoodConvertible Mustang GT
When I interviewed for my current job, I told a (true) story about my first interview in the same district 22 years prior, for a school psychologist position. When I was asked where I saw myself in a few years, I thought for a moment and recounted a memorable passage from Under the Tuscan Sun:
Tuscans are of this time; they simply have had the good instinct to bring the past along with them. If our culture says burn your bridges behind you – and it does – theirs says cross and recross.
I only thought it fitting to repeat it when I was board approved for the position.
_Under the Tuscan Sun_is a book about which you can unironically say is better than the movie. I learned about it from A Common Reader, an early online bookseller famous for its paper catalog: the book descriptions were worth reading, irrespective of the likelihood that you would buy the book. I read it in Italy, when Rhonda and I were on vacation (in the summer of 1999, I think). It was a great book.
The novel is by no means heavy, but the movie has a much lighter vibe, and it is not an improvement. The characters in the movie are mere caricatures of the novel’s.
_____
I was thinking about our last vacation, and how both of us are eager to go back to the same hotel in Cape May. But I was thinking about other places, too. Not necessarily that much further from home as Cape May, but I hatch plots from time to time. Maybe notions is a better word.
That makes me wonder if one is better than the other, or if it’s just a matter of preference. Exploring and trying new things is always fun for me. But I do enjoy the comforts of the routine. In all things, moderation, I suppose.
Taking the Ferry to Rehoboth Beach, Off Season
I mentioned Norman Mailer’s _Tough Guys Don’t Dance _in “Genius and Lust,” and maybe this is one of the reasons I fell into it as autobiographical: One of my enduring memories is Mailer’s representation of Provincetown as an off-season shore town, because I could so readily identify with the shift, living, as I always have, close enough to the Jersey Shore that off-season visits were common enough.
The place turned gray before one’s eyes. Back in summer, the population had been thirty thousand and doubled on weekends. It seemed as if every vehicle on Cape Cod chose to drive down the four-lane state highway that ended at our beach. Provincetown was as colorful then as St. Tropez, and as dirty by Sunday evening as Coney Island. In the fall, however, with everyone gone, the town revealed its other presence. Now the population did not boil up daily from thirty thousand to sixty, but settled down to its honest sediment, three thousand souls, and on empty weekday afternoons you might have said the true number of inhabitants must be thirty men and women, all hiding.
This is not a new dish for us, but it is a treat. We’ve had picanha, which is a rump cap or sirloin cap, at Brazilian steakhouses in Philly, most notably the now-shuttered Chima. It’s served coiled up on skewers in those places; I just sous vide and then roast off the whole thing on the grill. I kept it in the circulator for like six hours at 128 degrees before a 20-minute sit on the charcoal grill. It’s a leaner cut than a ribeye, but plenty juicy from the basting it gets from the fat cap. I had some Bellview Seraphina with mine. Rhonda did too.
Picanha in the sous vide bagPicanha hot off the grill
Menuwhere is a great example of an app that makes being a Mac user fun, and highlights now iPadOS can be a staid experience in comparison.
I’ve written before about my love for Proteron Software’s Max Menus, which allowed me to create custom menu palettes for macOS that I could invoke using the mouse or keyboard. Here’s a Youtube video of the app in action. If you remember making folders of custom aliases and keeping them in your Apple Menu Bar back in the Mac OS days, it was kinda like that.
Menuwhere, from the clever developers at Many Tricks software, allows you to invoke the menu bar menus from wherever your mouse pointer is. I currently have it set to respond to control-right-click on my mouse (which is currently a Magic Trackpad).
