One of the features I was missing in a Mac OS utility was the ability to trigger commands without mousing, but still interacting via the GUI. The utility I used to rely on for this was MaxMenus by Proteron software, which is no longer (I see that I purchased it in October of 2002 for about thirty bucks).

I would create menus/palettes with commands to common actions, and I’d trigger the menu to pop up with a keystroke or mouse click (I can’t remember… It might have been hot corners).

When I first tried Pieoneer, it was in the spirit of replacing Max Menus. I used it solely as an app switcher, which is not this app’s marquee feature. If you only have a few apps running at any given time, you might be able to live with Pieoneer as your app switcher. But it’s not better than the default macOS app switcher. Or Launchbar, for that matter. It is cool if you prefer moused-based navigation, though.

There is an app-specific mode, however, called Controller, wherein you can assign commands to a radial menu that is specific to the active app (the one you’re using). The defaults include Safari and Finder, and they’re both examples of how you can use Pieoneer to great effect. In Safari, you can open up the sidebar, tab overview, and more. It’s great for exposing features in the application for which you often forget the keyboard shortcut.

I do think that my long-standing setup, which generally features Launchbar to do almost everything, is muscle memory and I’m not going to stop using it. Launchbar launches apps, starts web searches, organizes files, and navigates just about everywhere. It’s a piece of infrastructure that I absolutely rely on. It’s simple to start using but has true depth.

Maybe Pieoneer is a mouse-driven version of Launchbar?

Logitech MX Master

One of the features of Logitech’s excellent MX Master mice is the LogiOptions software, which I was loathe to install but find useful in setting up custom commands for the mouse. One of my favorite buttons on the mouse is the thumb button, which was programmed by default to show Mission Control on the Mac. I like Mission Control to some degree, but I often find the tiles to be too small to be useful when I’m running a bunch of apps (which I usually am).

I set up Pieoneer to show the Launcher feature when I shift-click the thumb button, and to show the application-specific controller menu when I click the thumb button without a modifier key.

Here’s this week’s list of things to check out. It’s been a long extended winter, and I hope everyone is seeing the promise of greener days ahead. This weekend has certainly not been an indicator of green things to come.

Cambozola Brie with Bleu

Aaron and I stopped at Bagliani’s on the way home from his Rutgers visit last Saturday, and in addition to a big salami (the cashier described it unfavorably as “extra slimy”), we got his favorite cheese, an asiago with black pepper, and this camembert-ish bleu cheese. I like a little stank on my cheese. We’re having spritzes and cheese as I type this.

Bellview Winery’s Hyacinth

Rhonda and I alighted for Bellview Winery today, having reservations about getting a good seat and decent service because of a spring fling event. (I can’t begrudge the business for participating in revenue-driving activities, but they’re a drag for us regulars.) Because of the weather, ti wasn’t crowded, but we were not able to avail ourselves of anting more tasty than some janky buffalo chicken tater tots. We prefer wine and salami with our wine to teenager food. Ahem.

Anyway, we got a bottle of rosé and a growler fill of their Hyacinth. It’s a dry white, less sweet than the Perseus, but lots of pear and melon.

MacBook Air M4

The MacBook Air has been a good choice for anyone needing a Mac for regular productivity for over a decade now. It’s the default for most needs. This one I’m rocking has 512 GB internal storage and, of course, 16 GB RAM. It does it all. This pic is a good example of the Midnight color in bare light.

There’s probably not much to say about the M4 that’s interesting here, but I’ll endeavor to in the future. Having experimented with a KVM switch so that I could run Aaron’s old Alienware PC for a while and switch between it and my Mac Studio, I realized that the M4 Air would be a fine machine for me for all of my needs. To that end, I ordered a dock to keep here at home so that I can dock whatever machine, iPad included, and use it with my Magic Trackpad and keyboard.

More on that later for sure.

I was listening to a recent episode of the Mindpump podcast, and the hosts were interviewing a caller. She was talking about being in great shape but feeling like she needed a new goal. The answer surprised me: you don’t always have to have goals.

They weren’t saying goals are bad, or counter-productive, or anything like that. To the contrary, they lauded her progress and hard work. But, the suggestion was… at some point, you just have to stop and enjoy it.

Host Adam Schafer started off by asking why she felt like she needed to see a nutritionist. What led to the nutritionist and setting goals? She responded that she liked the little challenges, and cited some examples. She likes something to “shoot for.”

Schafer advised, “I’m going to say something you’re probably not going to like…I’d go in the opposite direction… I can tell you’re already good… you’re fit and healthy… if everything has to be attached to something you’re chasing…. Can you just enjoy the process? You’re the client I’d push back on.”

“Can you start to intuitively eat and intuitively train?”

The Best Fitness Routine (It’s Nearly Impossible) | Mind Pump 2569

Here’s this week’s list of things to check out. It was kinda crazy weather in southern New Jersey last week: warm and humid for a couple of days, windy and cold others. Spring comes in fits and starts.

Rutgers University

Aaron has professed an interest in working in a professional kitchen since he was a child. He wanted to be a pizza chef for the longest time, and this directed him to applying to our local county technical high school for their culinary program. After four years of cooking in school for a significant portion of the day, and a couple of college tours, he’s thinking food science might be a better direction.
I remember Joey’s teachers in preschool (preschool!) professing concern that Joey, when asked, didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life. It had been many years between my graduation from college in 1997 and not knowing the answer to that question myself, but I remembered the feeling well.
One of the inherent inflexibilities in the county vocational school experience at Aaron’s school is that you can’t switch programs if you change your mind. This is not generally a restriction that one will encounter in “real life.” But it ultimately doesn’t matter. If you went to high school and took welding, auto shop, computer programming, or culinary arts classes, and learned from that that your chosen path might consequently veer to the right or left, you learned something valuable that many other people don’t get a chance to. If you learned how to fix cars in high school but became a lawyer professionally, then you possess a skill that is likely beneficial–and rare in your circle.
Anyway, we went on a campus-specific tour for accepted students Saturday, and it was a blast to stomp around the Douglass/Cook Campus and see the animals, classrooms, and more.

Rutgers-Adjacent Hot Pot

Aaron and I hit the Happy Lamb for hot pot following his Rutgers tour yesterday. We intended to try a soup dumpling joint in the same plaza, but it was packed. This was a familiar experience to our Delaware adventure, but we both agreed this place was a notch above.

Infinite Mac

Remember your first Mac? Mine was a Color Classic 2 running System 6. I had a succession of Mac after that and experienced every release from that Mac to Sequoia.
Infinite Mac lets you boot and play around in the Mac operating system of your choice, and even includes a couple of NeXT releases.
I am thoroughly happy with the state of macOS these days, but I have an unbridled affection for the old days, too (including Mac OS X 10.3 Panther and 10.6 Snow Leopard). The Mac has always been a fun platform to just play around on. And in the days before persistent internet connections, it was very much so. I could go on, but I miss the tear off Application Palette in Mac OS 9, Themes, and Window Tab. Lots of fun at this cool project.

Seth Godin:

Starting from the place that we’re all imperfect makes it easy to find empathy, for others and ourselves.
We are all goofballs

The Finder sidebar on my Mac Studio has long shown a laggy to throttled iCloud sync icon, suggesting that something was not syncing correctly. I do use iCloud to sync documents (and photos) between my devices, but I don’t notice any such behavior on any other devices, and in terms of being able to find what I’m looking for, I always can. So new files sync fine, and changes to documents sync fine, too. I even leave some OmniOutliner documents open on multiple computers and I’ve never run into an issue.

I checked with ChatGPT about this after seeing if possibly it was network related (it’s not, as far as I can tell). I eventually asked it for some terminal commands to help me diagnose the problem, and it suggested tryin the bctrl command. Which I did.

After trying ChatGPT’s first suggestion, I read the usage output and went with just brctl status. This revealed a list of files:

I went into the Finder and found each offending file and deleted them (they would then materialize in the same directory). It must have been one particular file that was causing the issue, because after deleting it, the output from brctl was clean. Well, almost.

There were “unclean items” being reported as well, and the progress wheel in the Finder was still stuck. The brctl output was less verbose about the location of these files, but it did share truncated file name information. I used Finder Search to figure out which files were the culprit. So I ditched those files and whoosh no more stuck progress wheel.

Carrot Weather

One of the nice things about the Concept2 rowing setup is the PM5 computer and its ability to record your workout data. You can use this as seriously or casually as you like.

My first round with a Concept2 rower found me using my dad’s Model D with the older PM3 computer. This computer kept your rowing data: stroke rate, power, distance, split times, and all that–but it didn’t sync with your iPhone over Bluetooth. I didn’t mind one bit at the time; I’d keep my basic stats in a markdown file, appended via a Drafts action. I rowed for maybe a year, not very intensely, just kinda steady state for a half hour, around a 2:30 split. I still have the log file that I wrote to, and I have data from March 2015 through January of 2016. That’s around when I got into lifting weights.

Fast forward to 2023, when I decided to start rowing again. I had the same Concept2 Model D from my dad, and I started pulling again. I used the same Drafts action to log my stats.

And then we got another rower.

Rhonda had seen me make some impressive gains (as in losing weight) over a short stretch of time, from January 2023 through April of 2023. (Looking back at Apple Health, it was 30 pounds.) She suggested that we get another one so she could join me. I was happy to oblige, and the newer models available at the time came with the upgraded PM5 computer. I started using it when she wasn’t rowing with me, and it eventually became my machine.

So my seasons, such as they are, are calculated from May 1st of each year through April 30th, coinciding with my first usage of the PM5. 2023-2024 was my first season, and I rowed just over two million meters.

I looked at the app on my phone recently and realized that this year, season two, is almost up, and I’m pretty close to hitting two million meters again. After some quick math, I think I’ll make it with room to spare.

I had been wondering about this, because my seasons correspond with my switch to my new job, which I started last April 29th. I continued to row each morning before work, but I did have to cut back my time a little, and row earlier in the morning. At my Vineland gig, I was able to row later in the am and often rowed longer than I do now (although not entirely). I’ve also ratcheted the intensity down a bit; I no longer row like a demon driven, but like someone trying to maintain fitness.

I guess that’s a way of saying, weight-wise, I hit the bottom. I’ve written about it before, and I’d say that the only way from here is to maintain. Or (gulp) go up. Which actually I have a little, I guess owing to more generous consumption on the weekends, and hopefully all of the pushups I’ve been doing. I’m inclined to eat more of my meal when we’re out, depending upon what it is and how good it is, and I enjoy more cheese and crackers at the winery, I suppose.

It’s hard to see but the cinnamon pear jelly is irresistible

So two million meters… that’s like 1200 miles. I could have rowed to and from Miami.

Jonathan Malesic, the author of The End of Burnout, told me that work defines many people. “We just can’t imagine that a person is worth something if we aren’t working,” Malesic said. “You’re anxious about your worth. And the only way you know how to prove it is you’re working all the time. As soon as you’re not, your value is in question.”

Why You Should Work Like Its the 90s

Go down to your local basketball courts and yell at all the non-NBA players who are playing basketball.

Jason Snell, Waxing Ecstatic About NaNoWriMo 

This is nothing new, but I found it delightful after hearing about it on Upgrade. You answer 25ish questions about how you pronounce words or specify a regionalism (“soda” vs “pop,” for example), and the quiz guesses where you’re from. Fun.

One of my favorite questions asked about “dinner” vs “supper.” I wanted to choose multiple responses; ultimately I went with them meaning the same thing, but another choice was that I didn’t use the word “supper,” which is absolutely true. My paternal grandparents were the only people I knew who used that word instead of “dinner,” but I had heard it plenty of times and it was equivalent in usage.

How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk

We may live our lives in parallel, but at the most fundamental level we experience aliveness alone, in the solitary chamber of the self, our experience a Möbius strip of consciousness folded unto itself, our becoming the most private, most significant work we have.

Rhonda and I were talking about this Saturday, that irrespective of the circle surrounding you, you live in your own head, hearing your own thoughts. Far from an existential burden though, Whitman, in his style, celebrated this.

Walt Whitman on Owning Your Life

Via One Foot Tsunami, a great tale of workplace malapropisms:

While we don’t have a full picture of everything on the list, several linguistic pause moments published in the Wall Street Journal stick out to me, like the hilariously redundant “I’m not trying to beat a dead horse to death,” the definitely not food safety-approved “Too many cooks in the soup,” and the unintentionally macabre “He’s going to be so happy he’ll be like a canary in a coal mine!” That last one reportedly came courtesy of marketing manager Mike Murphy, leader of the board.

I’m a keen observer of this kind of verbal misuse, but not in a judgmental way. I like the playful aspect of Ford’s manager here.

One Ford Executive Created A List Of Mixed Metaphors And Malaprops Heard Around The Office And It’s Hilarious

I’m enjoying some seriously warm weather here in southern New Jersey! Here’s this week’s list of things to check out:

Easter Lights

I’ve gushed about Rhonda’s holiday-centric lighting appointments in my office here in past posts, and I’m excited by the newly installed Easter display. Spring!

Bellview Chardonnay

Rhonda and I have been contentedly unable to extract ourselves from a love affair with Bellview Winery’s dry rosé. Last Saturday found me picking up some wine to bring home, as Rhonda was under the grip of a cold, and I grabbed a bottle of their chardonnay. It was great, and we resolved henceforth to add that into our rotation when we visit. Alas, Saturday’s visit did not in fact feature us drinking the varietal, but we did purchase a bottle for a near-future sushi outing.

The Perseus, I am happy to report, was excellent on a warm, if overcast, Saturday.

Sure, there was the ABC movement and all that, but I can’t get sniffish about these things. It’s often the sturdiest white on the menu that will pair nicely with whatever we’ve elected to eat.

Old Shorts

After I rowed this afternoon (shorts, finally), I was keen to slip into a pair of shorts while I fetched the groceries and began the process of wrangling in mother nature’s reassertion of her primacy in our yard this spring. Living in an older home, we don’t have a ton of storage space, and having the upstair apartment vacated, it has turned into, among other things, a seasonal wardrobe rotation space.

Prior to dropping some weight, I had a pair of tan hiking shorts that bought back in maybe 1999 that, somehow, managed to survive year after year of oil changes, lawnmower blade changes, and half-baked plumbing repairs. Each year, I’d drag them out of the drawer, and wear them around the house for all manner of duty.

Those shorts are gone now, and last summer found me in possession of (needed) new sizes. Lacking the orientation of the good-ole-standbies, I didn’t really know which shorts I was even looking for. And the ones I extracted from the closet upstairs? They were nice. I needed grubbies.

Happily, Rhonda recalled that I had, in fact, fallen into the exact same pattern as before, wearing a pair of cut-off black denim shorts (which were once hers). I have to hitch them up with a belt, as they’re my size but I guess made to be loose. So I hitched them up and hit the road. Glad to have them back in my stable!

Manton Reece:

The act of writing itself helps us think, helps us learn, helps us discover how we feel about a topic. It’s creative and has value even if no one is reading. It’s a snapshot in time to look back on later.

No one cares… for now

I’ve wondered and pondered existentially here on more than one occasion. What is the role in our lives of pursuits outside of work? What is their priority? What does “work-life balance” even mean?

And then, in the Atlantic, Arthur Brooks writes:

Doing leisure well will generate the sort of growth in our well-being that work cannot provide. We need to take the time to dwell on life’s big questions without distraction, to learn to appreciate what is beautiful, to transcend our workaday lives and consider what is divine.

Leisure, in other words, is far from the modern notion of just chillin’. It is a serious business, and if you don’t do leisure well, you will never find life’s full meaning. Properly understood, leisure is the work you do for yourself as a person without an economic compulsion driving you. For Pieper, this work of leisure—no contradiction, in his view—would not involve such “acediac” activities as scrolling social media and chuckling at memes, getting drunk, or binge-streaming some show. Rather, true leisure would involve philosophical reflection, deep artistic experiences, learning new ideas or skills, spending time in nature, or deepening personal relationships.

In this conception, leisure done correctly is equally important, and a source of generation, rather than a solipsistic, selfish pursuit.

You Can Do Leisure Better, Seriously