One of my key weight loss strategies was cutting calories. I didn’t ban anything from my diet, but took a hard look at portions. Cocktails were the very first target. To this day, I only make a tiny cocktail for myself, and it has worked for me long before I started tracking calories.
I knew I cut down the size, and because I measure when I make cocktails, I knew how much rye and vermouth went into the drink, but simply measuring the poured drink isn’t the way to tell how many calories you’re sliding down your gullet. A properly made cocktail is going to be diluted from the stirring (or shaking, if you’re an animal) step, so my 2.5 oz Manhattan doesn’t have 2.5 oz of booze in it.
I wanted to figure this out for myself once I started using FoodNoms to track my calories, the adoption of which was mostly to help me better understand how much I eat in a day, and hopefully prevent me from gaining weight back after working so hard to lose it.
I started by calculating the calorie load of the entire cocktail batch I was making:
– 90 grams of whisky: 205 calories
– 30 grams of vermouth: 44 calories
– 5 grams of bitters: 5 calories
Normally you could stop there; if you split the cocktail batch evenly between two people, you’d just halve the calories in the batch (254/2) and log. But I wasn’t drinking half of that; I was having a cocktail that yielded a 2.5-oz drink, while Rhonda’s was more like 4.5 oz.
So I figured out of seven ounces, I was drinking about 35% of the cocktail, which would be around 81 calories. I’ve worked this out using Excel and even Soulver in the past.
I checked in with ChatGPT about this, and even though I had to correct it once (it oddly figured that I was drinking half of the undiluted booze), the LLM figured I’m having about 85 calories in my drink.
The best part about using ChatGPT, though, was starting the chat led to the model asking me some questions, including if I garnished the drink. I replied that I put a twist of orange in each, and it described this as “expressing” to orange skin into the glass. I had never heard the term applied to mixology before, but like my example of “productivity rain dances” the other day, it resonated immediately as an effective word to describe what I was doing.

I was adding feeds to Tapestry and poking around in the interface, and I was delighted by this menu:

At first I thought it was unique to the app, so I hopped over to OmniFocus to see if there was a similar feature in the UI. There was:

But it’s an iPadOS thing and isn’t actually new. I should have recognized it from the files app.

Really looking forward to this. I was a big fan of the comic as a child, and lucked into Frank Miller’s Born Again story line when I started reading the title.

I was listening to Cal Newport’s The Deep Life this morning on my way in to the office and he was talking about a guy who used a spreadsheet to log how he felt each day. A -2 was the worst feeling he would score a day, and 2 was a great day. He’d tab over and add notes in the adjoining column.

I thought about trying this out and, after considering using Numbers, it would make a great Soulver sheet. So I’m doing that.

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

Ivory

When Twitter changed things such that apps like Twitterific and Tweetbot could no longer effectively serve their customers, Tapbots, the maker of Tweetbot, introduced Ivory in short order. It’s a great Mastodon client, feels familiar to Tweetbot users, and I prefer it to the stock Mastodon app.

Tapestry

I featured the new Reeder in Sunday Serial back in September. The new Reeder is made by the same developer who makes the now-called Reeder (Classic); the latter is an old-school RSS reader that connects to a number of services (or uses local or iCloud sync), while the former is of a new breed of app, a kind of content aggregator that collects your favorite content from across many silos.

Tapestry is the Iconfactory’s take on the same kind of application. You connect RSS feeds, Mastodon feeds, YouTube creators, Subreddits, and other sources to Tapestry, and read across services. It’s a beautiful and well-thought-out app, which is no surprise coming from Iconfactory.

The Black Magic Trackpad

Apple has a strange history of charging more money for otherwise identical products whose distinguishing feature is their black color. I am an avid sucker of this ploy, having purchased a black polycarbonate MacBook back in 2006, when Apple switched over to Intel for their processors.

I wrote last month that I’ve been flirting with replacing my Logitech mouse here in my home “office” with a Magic Trackpad. My previous attempts to use it with a Mac have always fallen flat, but I really like using it with my iPad. I think the touch-driven interface of the iPad lends itself to using a similar surface as a pointing device. And I do generally prefer using an iPad when it’s up to the lift. So I ordered a black one to match my black (pro?) keyboard.

Matt Gemmell on using the Mac after years of iPad exclusivity:

It’s satisfying in the conventional way, in that it meets needs without drama or acrobatics. It works in the sense that it marshals its resources firmly in the direction of service, rather than theatre. It’s flexible not as a shape-shifting device of modularity and digital magic, but in the unassuming and reliable way that its answer is invariably yes. For me, that’s more than enough of a recommendation.

Back to Mac

Manton Reece:

We are so used to exciting new gadgets and software, released all the time, and yet none of it is profoundly new. AI is the only thing that’s comparable in scale to the tech advances that have changed everything, like the graphical user interface, mobile phones, and the web itself.
I couldn’t agree more. I’ve been excited about near-term affordances but using the heck out of the current crop.

GPT-4.5 preview thoughts… and Steve Jobs

Via Matt Birchler:

Blogging is valuable because it helps you learn, because it helps others solve problems, because you get a rare buzz when you realise that yes, people are reading this stuff, and because you’re building a portfolio of writing to show your skills. The only one of those that I believe AI might harm is the buzz of engagement, and that’s so rare for most blogs that I don’t think it’s worth worrying about.

I think we all wonder why we do it, knowing damn well we’re going to keep doing it.

Giles Thomas.com

Two years ago, In “Building a Better Me,” I wrote about using my Apple Watch to track some health metrics after having lost around 30 pounds. One of those metrics ended up being heart rate variability, or HRV:

This is a stubborn and somewhat mysterious metric, but it too has crept up from below 20, and in some individual cases much lower, to often spiking during the day into the 30s and 40s. I know it’s low if I’m tired or in a blue mood. I am usually pleasantly surprised to see a higher number, but often reflect that I was busy and not terribly reflective when the number is at its highest.

Tonight, on the sofa, I started poking around in the Health app on my phone (what’s up, water weight!) and noticed that my HRV averaged 60 today. That’s not characteristic of my daily average, but I did notice that it has drifted higher, largely due to the fact that it sometimes increases while I sleep–which I now track, since updating to an Apple Watch 10 (it will always be the Alex’s Apple Watch X to me).

Looking back a littler further, though, and contrary to what I expected to see, is that while my average is far from high, if that means anything, I did manage to double my average number. So like 16 back in 2022 to over 30 since last fall.

So now I’m chatting with Chat-you-know-who about increasing parasympathetic nervous activity.

I was listening to Episode 341 of Cal Newport’s Deep Questions podcast and he started talking about “productivity rain dances.” It was one of those terms I’d never heard before but knew exactly what it was the moment the syllables filled the cabin of my Mustang. Have you ever decided to abandon your to-do app of choice in favor of another one in order to dodge a project? Clean your desk off or straighten up the dorm room? I’m oversimplifying, but that’s the gist.

The answers to these questions aren’t necessarily easy. As I talk about in Slow Productivity, making more time for key efforts often requires that you first tame the less important activities that are getting in the way. You probably need a more formal workload management philosophy to avoid overload, such as using quotas or separating “active” tasks from “waiting” tasks. You’ll also need better collaboration processes that avoid the distraction of constant messaging, such as using regular office hours for complicated discussions, and some notion of time management, such as time blocking, to maintain control of your schedule.

As he makes the case in the episode: it’s not an app. It’s something boring or simple that will probably make the difference. I like the idea of scheduling office hours or something similar; the number of distractions I face each day are pretty disruptive, none of them unwelcome or purposefully intrusive. But shifting cognitive set has consequences, and boy do I love my quiet time.

Productivity Rain Dances

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

Butcher and Singer

OK, I’m cheating a bit by picking a place I featuredyesterday with a bunch of pix last night, but there’s a bit more I could say. Butcher and Singer is a steakhouse, an in Steven Starr’s thematic approach, has a kind of Mad-Men-era vibe. (Starr is famously a concert promoter-turned-restauranteur, which is often credited for his curated collection of foodie experiences.)

There is a fascinating collection of Manhattans, and I find it interesting that there are no martinis featured on the menu in the way that the Manhattans are. I was sorely tempted to try the Robber Baron, which would be a Rob Roy by most definitions.

I ordered a NY Strip, which is a cut I almost never cook at home, but often find on the menu in steakhouses. It’s a leaner, grainier, beefier cut than my favorite, the ribeye, but I make ribeye at home all the time. I like the texture of strip, too. One thing I’ll say about this strip, and it reminded me immediately of the specimen my son, who attends a local technical high school’s culinary arts program, brought home from class one memorable day: the cut was of the bone-in variety, and this made the experience of eating it completely different from the thinner boneless version I’ve usually enjoyed. I prefer the bone-in version hands down.

The kitschy, throwback-to-bygone-era vibe even includes Baked Alaska as a dessert option. It’s hard to pass up; like the Lobster Thermidor at the Knife and Fork in Atlantic City, it’s one of the few (if only) places I go that has it on the menu.

ActivityPub

One of the concerns people who right on the internet entertain from time to time is how to promote their work. I don’t have any intention of making money doing this, but I do want to participate as fully as I can in an online community. And the version of that participation that would include Facebook and its associated services isn’t what I have in mind. I started digging around with WordPress, which powers Uncorrected, and learned a bit about ActivityPub. I’ve followed a few tutorials and got things linked up with Micro.blog and Mastodon. I had long ago set up a Mastodon account, but never really used it. But I don’t really use Twitter/X and Facebook isn’t interesting to me save for the occasional family post. But the idea is to decentralize your social identity.

Oliver Burkeman’s The Imperfectionist

Burkeman chronicles the the post-GTD landscape: there’s too much to do, there’s not really anything you can do about it, but let’s not fall into despair. It’s comforting and empowering writing about being productive, but encountering meaning and value outside of your role as an information worker.

I snapped a couple of pics of our pre-game celebration at the serially excellent Tonewood Brewing in Barrington, NJ, this afternoon. Behold:

BIERGARTEN Märzen Lager 6.0%
German malts, Tettnang, Haltetau Mittelfrüh, Saaz. Notes of buckwheat, dried cherries,black tea, toffee, and seedy granola

VERMILLION Vienna Lager 4.8%
100% Vienna Malt & Hallertau Mittelfrüh hops, Biscuity Malt, Fresh Baked Rye Bread,and a light Peppery finish

Somewhere in the mid-1990s my parents started dining out more, notably in Philadelphia. They took Rhonda and me out to Suzanna Foo in probably 1997 or 1998, and it was a revelation. Things have gotten better locally, and a nice dinner out didn’t necessitate a drive to Philly. But Restaurant Row still beckons, and we thought Aaron, an aspiring chef, might enjoy Steven Starr’s take on a classic steakhouse. Fois gras was had.