Sunday Serial: macOS Golden Gate Developer Beta, Theming OmniOutliner , and My 2026 Mazda MX-5 Miata ND3

Another Father’s Day! Joe got me this cute little He-Man minifig at a nearby toy show.

We’re not really doing much since Aaron has to work and won’t be home until close to seven tonight. The pool and some spritzes beckon, though. I cooked a nice picanha roast last night for our dinner after he got home after a lengthy soak in the sous vide tank.

macOS 27 “Golden Gate” Developer Beta

iPad is usually where I’m OK installing a beta OS: I need my Mac to do work, and I need my phone because it’s my phone. iPads are ancillary (which doesn’t mean I don’t love using them for everything), but they are a third category and a third rung on the needs vs wants list.

But I have an older M1 MacBook Pro from work, and while it has taught me that a Mac can, in the era of Apple Silicon, last you a long time, it’s not my main machine, and is ripe for usage as a beta testing machine.

I have modest needs as a computer user, but the things that I was excited to see in Golden Gate are the visual tweaks to Liquid Glass. First up: the layered side panels. Here’s notes in Tahoe:

And then Notes in Golden Gate:

Golden Gate fixes the unnecessary side panel crowding in Notes (and other apps).

Things are still a bit crowded, even on the generous display on this MacBook Pro. Liquid Glass looks a lot less horsey on a 32” display, but this isn’t a setup for most MacBook owners; the OS should look tighter and smaller than it does now. Even in Golden Gate, I find application toolbars ugly. Going text only (where available) looks weird, contrary to macOS pre-Tahoe.

I’m still on the waiting list for the new Siri. Everything I’ve heard sounds great, and I’m looking forward to something more intelligent. If it can see OmniFocus, Notes, and Fantastical, as well as files on my Mac, I think Siri AI will be very interesting.

Theming OmniOutliner

I’ve been using OmniOutliner since it was bundled with my PowerBook G4 in the early 2000s. There’s a lot to love about OmniOutliner, if you love (or even just like) outliners. (I find it funny to this day that when teachers suggested that outlining was a good way to start a paper, and required the class to create outlines, I would absolutely bristle). These days, I almost think in outlines; I reach for Bike or OmniOutliner the moment something comes up and I need to take notes. And if I’m writing, as I often do, in Notes, I follow a loose outline style/format.

I’ve never found theming to be terribly accessible in OmniOutliner, though, and my earliest forays into crafting my own were fraught with difficulty, such that I never really made any. I was farting around with version six and was delighted that the small bit of experience I’ve gained with styles allows me to facilely create some nice-looking outline templates.

One of the Drafts styles I like is called “Six Colors,” referencing of course the original Apple logo, and Jason Snell’s post-MacWorld website and sundry digital goods. I thought that something like the Six Colors theme would make for a nice OmniOutliner template.

I started off with a blank white canvas and added text color stylings, but then I thought it might be fun to create a theme where the rows are colored, too.

After that, it was off to the races! I found a website, Figma , with 100 thoughtfully crafted four-color designs, and started cobbling together some more templates. Happily, OmniFocus stores themes in iCloud if you’re using it, so they sync across devices.

Mazda MX-5 Miata ND3

My mind is not to be trusted. I wrote about some test drives I’d done when thinking about trading in my 2013 Mustang GT last week. I had notionally settled on keeping the mustang and repairing the things that ailed it; meanwhile, I found myself continually researching cars, car prices, and engaging Copilot in a lengthy discussion about my “perfect” car. (The answer was the BMW 2 Series, more specifically the 230, which confusingly sits price wise and procedurally above the BMW 228. The 228, I learned, is actually a Mini Cooper, and sold as a 1 series in Europe. Copilot did not recommend the 228 for me, although it does have the JCW engine in it. It seems to be a car reviled by BMW purists, but for a person for whom the JCW seems like a great car, I was kinda into the idea. But: no manual.

You can now very easily draw a small circle around the new cars you’d buy if you just factor in two data points: cost and transmission. Do you want a car that costs around 40k and has a manual transmission? Your options get narrow fast. You can cast a wider net by ignoring price constraints, but if price is your cardinal factor, then it gets pretty easy. For me, it was WRX, BRZ/G86, Miata, or something used.

I had conceded to myself that I was going to have to consider non-manual options if I were in fact to purchase a BMW 230, but the prices are so high that I abandoned the idea.

I have loved the MX-5 Miata since it came out. My Dad, an inveterate namer of four-wheeled things whilst driving, always exclaimed “Miata!” back in the late 80s and early 90s when we’d see one on the road. I remember thinking that if he was enthusiastic about something, it was suggestion that he’d buy one. Once, we went to a Nissan dealership where his college roommate worked, and checked out a moon glow yellow Nissan 300 Z. I was sure we were there to buy one. We were not. But that car changed my opinion about yellow cars, and made me want a Z to this day.

Anyway, the decision to buy a new car vs repair the Mustang was complicated for me. There are a couple of truths about the Mustang: I never considered one in any previous car-buying situation; the platonic ideal that the mustang is chasing is not a part of my lexicon. When last I shopped for a car, in 2015, I had narrowed my search down to a Ford Focus RS, Subaru WRX, or a GTI. The AWD in the WRX was the final selling point.

That I got to drive a GT for the last 10 years was a gift, though, materially and spiritually. Just because you wouldn’t normally consider something doesn’t mean you wouldn’t end up enjoying it. And the experience of the GT was an eye-opener. Yes, it was big and heavy, but it was fast and stable at highway speeds. The aftermarket exhaust sounded like a dream, and the car was a heard turner on noise alone. I loved that car, and I can now say that I absolutely enjoy a big American muscle car, borne from a decade of experience.

But we all have preferences and notions. If I had to plant my flag, I’d want this car:

2-dour coupe or roadster
Naturally aspirated six-cylinder engine
Manual transmission
Low body weight

That car doesn’t actually exist anymore outside of the Porsche 718 Cayman and Boxter, which Porsche isn’t taking orders for anymore.

The Miata is pretty close, though, looking at that list. It’s only strike is the four-cylinder engine. Yet, after the first test drive, I thought, “I can’t daily this car.”

But as I continued to research, Copilot did make one comment that resonated with me: You’ll think it’s too small for a week. And that was my experience with the Toyota MR2 Spyder that I bought back in 2003 and drove for about four years before having to trade it in on a more practical family car, as we had two small children. I was driving the Spyder home on the day of the purchase, barreling down route 55 with the top up, all the crap that I’d been carting around in my more capacious Ford Contour that I’d just traded in for pennies piled up on the seat beside me, the front end bouncing up and down like an exuberant kangaroo, and I thought: what did I just get myself into? It was so small, so light, and utterly unfamiliar to me.

But the next day, the car unburdened by the weight of my hoardings, zipping up to the dealership to drop off my old car’s title, top down, I realized that I was having a blast–an experience in a car I’d never had before.

The Spyder only had 138 horsepower. It was not a fast car, but any metric. But it was a true mid-engine runabout, with variable valve timing that kicked in pretty high up in the rev range. I remember one time Dad and I went out for a drive in his new 5-liter Pontiac GTO, and he let me take the wheel. After a long cruise in rural south Jersey and a couple of beers at a friend’s house, I got back into the Spyder and drove it back home. The contrast was striking–the Spyder felt like the tiny toy car that it was. That did nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for the car, but it did put its proper place in the pantheon of cars I’ve driven.

In time, I came to see the Spyder as a kind of automotive albatross, uniquely ill-suited to my current needs as a family man. I replaced it with a Subaru Legacy with a manual five-speed. It was fine. It was what I needed at the time.

But I always missed the Spyder, and serially lined up replacements in my mind, should the time ever come when I might want something like that again.

That time has come, and the Miata fits the bill. Like a glove.

A driving glove.

Sunday Serial: Test Driving Cars, Andy Ihnatko’s New Website, and Hector Simpson’s Dynamic Wallpapers for the Mac

The last couple of weeks before the end of the school year are always hectic. Joey and Sorayah went on a business trip to Kentucky for her work, and are back now. We’re celebrating my Mom’s birthday this weekend, and Father’s Day a week early, with some BBQ chicken thighs and sides.

Test Driving Cars

I test drove a couple of cars this week before dropping the Mustang off for service; I wanted to feel out if I would rather have a new car or keep the GT, anticipating some costly repairs. I drove a yellow Subaru BRZ, and a Mazda MX-5 Sport (a Miata, of course).

I loved the BRZ; it wasn’t loud in the way the Mustang is, but it’s small and quick and tight. I don’t think the four-banger would ever knock my socks off, but it was a great ride. I think I could live with one of these.

The Miata was a lot of fun, too, but it immediately sounded like a toy when the salesman started it up, and it did nothing on the test drive to make me think it wasn’t. Fun to drive? Absolutely. A daily driver? Not for me.

I was surprised by my impression of the Miata: I once owned a Toyota MR2 Spyder, which was a mid-engine roadster and a Miata competitor. I know what these little cars feel like.

Andy Inhatko’s “Loitering at tech’s intersections”

Andy is a self-described “beloved tech pundit” who wrote for MacUser and MacWorld, and is a regular contributor to MacBreak Weekly. It’s great that he’s launched a new website, and I’m looking forward to reading more of his writing. Andy knows a lot about tech, photography, and cinema.

This is Ihnakto Dot Come

Hector Simpson’s Wavēy and XIV Cosmos and Horizon Wallpapers

Most days, I fire up the Dizzypaper app and select a wallpaper that suits my mood. I added Hector’s Wavēy and XIV Cosmos and Horizon wallpapers to my collection this weekend, because the collections are beautiful and fit my preferenceph for wallpapers: vector graphics, tasteful colors, and clever masking.

Wallpapers by Dizzup

Sunday Serial: Designed in California: An Apple History Podcast, More BetterTouchTool, and Bellview Winery’s Gemini Blend

It’s a hot Sunday here in South Jersey. We were going to steam some crabs, but they’re still pricey this early in the season, so it’s chicken thighs on the grill with rice and broccoli any minute now.

Joey and Sorayah are going on a trip to Kentucky for her work, so we’ll be a three-person household for the week. I am thinking about using Joe’s car to get around while I get some necessary repairs done on the Mustang. I was sorely tempted to test drive both a Subaru BRZ and a Mazda MX-5 Miata, as the old girl is not only getting up there in years, and requires some maintenance. But I don’t think I want to part with the Mustang, and a comparable replacement would be a tad rich. But then he slashed his own tire driving today, so I’ll have to get that replaced, too. Sheesh.

Designed in California: An Apple History Podcast

Jason Snell and Myke Hurley launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a podcast covering Apple’s history:

The two of us, Myke Hurley and Jason Snell, have been discussing Apple in depth every week for more than a decade on the Upgrade podcast. We want to go further, creating a podcast series that’s dedicated to telling stories from across all five decades of Apple history.

Jason has done some amazing work since leaving MacWorld; his “20 Macs for 2020” series was a blast, and I’ve been a longtime listener and subscriber of his Six Colors newsletter and podcast. He’s a great voice on MacBreak Weekly, too, which I’ve been listening to since its inception.

One of the things I appreciate about his coverage of Apple is that his Mac usage has traverses the same trajectory as mine: he’s been using a Mac since the early days, and has seen the evolution of the Mac from the classic OS through the transition to Mac OS X, and then the move from PowerPC to Intel, to the introduction of the iPhone, and more. He’s an enthusiast but to a fanboy..

There’s every reason to expect that Designed in California is going to be great.

More BetterTouchTool

I mentioned BetterTouchTool in my last Sunday Serial, and I’ve been using it since to learn more about it. I set up a couple of actions:
– Toggle Mission Control: command-option-mouse wheel scroll up/down
– Two-finger rotate right/left: adjust volume

I had always looked at BetterTouchTool as a way to hack the MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar, and also a way to add gestures to the Magic Trackpad. I don’t generally use a trackpad with my Mac at home or in the office, because I plug into a Thunderbolt dock at both locations and use an external display, keyboard, and mouse. (I do like using it instead of a mouse with my iPad, though.) If I’m at home, I don’t use my laptop that much after dinner, which is more iPad time. And I am a Logi MX Master mouse user.

The announcement of the new launcher feature, a la Apple’s Spotlight, was a nice surprise and made me peek at this tool again. I realized how many features are included, and how it’s a competitor to another deep and complex utility, Keyboard Maestro. BTT can do everything BetterSnapTool can do, and then adds a ton of customization options. You can effectively replace text expansion utilities like TextExpander with BTT–as you can (and I have) with Keyboard Maestro.

Bellview Winery’s Gemini Blend

Described on their site as “a light dry white blend of Caygua, Gruner and Traminette.” It’s bright and crisp, less velvety than the outgoing Viognier we’ve been drinking. Perfect on a hot summer day.

Granfalloon

Vonnegut never provided an etymology for granfalloon, but it’s not too hard to follow his logic. “Proud”? That’s the gran-. “Meaningless”? Possibly the -loon. This splendidly useful word is so puffed up, so grandiose, so silly — compare buffoon, lampoon, and the Bugs Bunnyism maroon — that it can only mean what it sounds like.

One of my favorite Vonnegutisms. Ting-a-ling, too.

Word of the week: Granfalloon

Sunday Serial: BetterTouchTool, Lamy Safari Rollerball Pen, and Shoreline Vintage & Toy Show 2026

What a beautiful weekend! Saturday and Sunday were chilly in morning, sunny, and then exemplars of a warm, dry May weather. You could do worse than have a glorious, full-throated, naturally aspirated American V8 engine in your car on a day like today.

Bellview Winery was an obvious choice for our Saturday, considering the weather, but they had a ticketed event, so we stayed home and had cheese and salami and raided our cellar (which is on the second floor in a cheap fridge). Joe was working, but Rhonda, Aaron, and I nipped out for dinner at the Turkish joint around the corner. It’s really good!

It occurred to me that the genesis of Sunday Serial was to recommend things to my readers. I haven’t invoked the mission in writing for a while, so here it goes:

Here are a few things to check out!

BetterTouchTool

I’ve been using BetterSnapTool for over a decade to manage the windows on my Mac. It originally was one of the few utilities to add Windows Snap-style functionality to the Mac. Apple did eventually add a similar feature to Sequoia, but there are still advantages to third-party utilities, such as programmable keyboard shortcuts..

BetterTouchTool has long offered the same features, in addition to giving users a path to creating custom mouse and touchpad gestures. In a recent blog post, the developer described a new beta feature: a Spotlight-like Launcher. His hopes were high that Apple would eventually add third-party support to Spotlight, and while the latest version of Spotlight that ships with Tahoe brings some feature enhancements, it was not what he was looking for. With that, BetterTouchTool joined the crowded field of excellent third-party launcher utilities.

You can use BTT’s launcher to fire off custom actions, launch apps, see running apps, create and use widgets, search for files, use Soulver to make back-of-the-napkin calculations, and lots more. I’m excited to finally create some custom gestures with my trackpad, and avail myself of BTT’s ability to manage windows.

[BetterTouchTool’s new Spotlight Like Launcher (BETA)]

Lamy Safari Rollerball Pen

I had to return some pants Rhonda got for Aaron at Staples today, and I browsed the pen aisle to see what they had; Staples has always been an OK spot for Fisher Space pens and more. I spied a Lamy Safari Ballpoint in bespoke packaging on one peg, and gave it a quick ogle. I didn’t take me long to decide to purchase one.

It’s preloaded with a black ink cartridge, but I’ll order a refill in the near future and make it blue. It’s got that great thick barrel that I love from my Safari fountain pen, as well as the rounded wire clip. I was hoping for a gel pen, but this does write nicely.

Lamy Safari Clipped to my Field Notes Notebook

Shoreline Vintage & Toy Show 2026

Joey and Aaron clued me in to Shoreline Vintage’s show this weekend; since adding Farpoint IIto their collection of vendors, they’ve been throwing great shows every summer, usually around Memorial Day. We got up early because Joe had to work and headed over for a bit of shopping.

Toy Shows are always an eclectic gathering of enthusiasts. There were people in costumes, some cross dressing, and plenty of eagle-eyed shoppers. Joe and Aaron split off and browsed the tables. It was, as usual, a great show with lots to see.

I’m excited that Aaron’s eye was bewitched by a used Nikon DSLR. We went back to the table a few times to try to get more info about the camera, and as we walked the grounds, I learned that the Nikon D3500 is not a new camera, but is one of the last in the line of consumer-focused DSLRs and not mirrorless. It was a kit with an 18-55mm f/3.5-5.5 lens, probably a standard Nikon kit lens, but also a 70-500mm f/4.5-6.3 zoom lens. That’s pretty close to all you’d need, save for a nice prime lens with an aperture around f/2 or a little lower.

I told him we could figure something out if he wanted to buy it without exhausting his budget; my notion was that we’d eventually get him a Panasonic or a Olympus so he could use my lenses, but he seems to be drawn to Canon and Nikon. I’m curious about APS-C and Nikon’s software interface on their cameras, as well as the physical controls, though. I suggested that we could negotiate the price, and Aaron went for it: he suggested a price, and the seller readily agreed. Proud of this guy!

So yeah: he’s got a Nikon, and there’s an f/1.8 35mm on the way from Ebay.

Cotypist: AI Autocomplete for the Mac

Cotypist developer Daniel at Accelerated Thoughts GmbH sent beta users an email (“a sale for the people who got here first”) sent an email on May 20th letting early adoptersl know that Cotypist would be on sale starting today, with a generous intro offer for early adopters. I’ve been using it since learning of it on Bundlehunt, and while I’m loathe to add another subscription to support my software habit, the ineluctable sign that I was developing an affinity for the app revealed itself: I was using a Mac without Cotypist, and I was annoyed not see the autocompletion. Launchbar and Alfred users know what I’m talking about.

I like Jason Snell’s angle on AI apps: possibly fruit from a poisoned tree, but more germane to his point is that I don’t generally struggle with writing. Jason’s cultivating the sympathetic view that AI tools can help people for whom writing comes less naturally. (Do they have AI for dynamic problem solving and math? Cause I’d be up for those.) But like anyone, I find myself tired, or uninspired, or just plain stuck with what to say from time to time,and a friendly suggestion from an app that’s paying attention to my writing can be a helpful prompt.

So here’s to the next year of (co)typing. A bicycle, perhaps, for pedaling the cursor from left to right.

Cotypist: Type as fast as you can think.

Sunday Serial: Steve Jobs in Exile, MarkEdit, and JXA Scripting Using Claude

It’s a long weekend here in the United States; we are celebrating Memorial Day, which is a holiday to remember those who have died in military service. Like many federal holidays, it has been associated with retail sales, and is the informal kickoff of the summer season. As such, barbecues (lots of outdoor grilling, more accurately) are a feature of the weekend. The boys have been working this weekend, and the weather is crummy, so we’re not doing anything special. I do have a grocery store prime rib in the oven right now, though, so that will be a fun meal later today.

I got home a little early Friday, so I stopped at Bellview to fill up our growlers. We took Aaron out for Indian food Friday night, his first visit since’s he’s been home from college. They had these laminated cards on the tables encouraging diners to try their chicken lollipops, which are frenched drumettes.

Last night, we tried a new Turkish place, Wandering Rose, that opened up in a spot previously occupied by a diner; we had it delivered via DoorDash. It was really good, and we’re excited to go back.

Steve Jobs in Exile

I preordered Steve Jobs in Exile a while back when I learned about its impending release. I’m perennially curious about how NeXT evolved into Mac OS X. On a recent Upgrade episode,author Geoffrey Cain spoke with Jason Snell about the book. Jason pointed out that Steve Jobs in Exile fills the hole from David Pogue’s recent history of Apple, where Steve Leaves before returning to Apple. As Pogue’s book is about Apple, he doesn’t wander into the NeXT era save for how Apple came to acquire it (also a great story).

Steve Jobs in Exile

MarkEdit

MarkEdit is a Markdown editor for the Mac; the developer bills it as TextEdit for Markdown. It has a great set of themes to choose from, including an excellent Cobalt theme, which is usually my favorite for such applications. I used TextMate for a long time with a Cobalt theme, and MarkEdit’s looks even better.

Claude Code for JXA Scripting

I downloaded Claude’s Mac app to try it out; I’ve been using assorted AI tools to help me cobble together AppleScripts for a while now. Since Apple has elevated JavaScript to have first-class support in macOS, and added the ability to write and run JXA in Script Editor, I’ve been asking Claude to build JXA scripts for me.

One simple script grabs both the URL and title of the current tab open in Safari and makes a link for me. Little scripts like this are a great time saver.

const safari = Application("Safari");
const tab = safari.windows\[0].currentTab();

const url = tab.url();
const title = tab.name();

const formatted = `[${title}](${url})`;

app = Application.currentApplication();
app.includeStandardAdditions = true;
app.setTheClipboardTo(formatted);

formatted; // return value shown in Script Editor

I like to fire these from Launchbar.

“Language is Chaos”

Musings from a Tangled Mind, taking on some of our language’s strangest words:

Some words are just silly. “Queue.” Now this is nonsense I can respect. A queue is, fundamentally, just a line. A very simple concept. Yet the word itself contains four silent letters standing around doing absolutely nothing. Kind of like the poor suckers at the back of a line.

Q is carrying the entire operation on its back while U, E, U and E trail behind like middle management. It’s absurd. It’s inefficient. It looks like it should take several minutes and a French lesson to pronounce. And yet… there’s something almost impressive about it. That level of confidence isn’t a spelling choice. It’s a decision. A theatrical little power move.

Words Behaving Badly

Mini at Sunset

Aaron sent me a pic of his Mini at the inlet between Ocean City and Longport. I gussied it up in Affinity Photo.

D5C711B8 0FDE 402F B195 386D99C1F52E.

Even More Leisure, Orthogonally

Via Kottke, fnnch on making a living as an artist:

When you turn an avocation (hobby) into a vocation (job) you have to do new things you do not enjoy. Emails, events, meetings, accounting, and more. These are not only a drag but can actually strip the joy from the rest of your art practice.

This intersects with Arthur Brooks’s writing on leisure, which I’ve written about here and here.

How to Make a Living as an Artist

A Little ExtraBar Goes a Long Way

I’ve been farting around with ExtraBar since I got it, and I really like the approach. It’s effectively a replacement for your Menu Bar (or more accurately, utilities like Bartender that clean up an overstuffed Menu Bar), but there are a few ways of configuring it to make it, indeed, an extra bar. This is how I’ve set it up; I like having all of my menu bar icons showing when I’m plugged into a larger display.

Show Desktop: activates the function-f12 keystroke
Fill Screen: sets the currently active window to fill the entire screen, but not the single-window mode a la iPad.
Center Window: Centers the currently active window
OmniFocus: open Perspective: “U2”
OmniFocus
Show Safari Sidebar
Safari: multiple controls, including showing the sidebar and search tabs
Home Focus Toggle
Work Focus Toggle
Trigger Macro by Name (search Keyboard Maestro macros)
Typinator Search
Bookmarks (Shiori): activates the Shiori bookmark manager in ExtraBar
MailMaven: multiple controls
Clear Notifications
Control Center (toggle)

Sunday Serial: Bellview Winery’s Argento Blend, Schwinn 430 Elliptical, and Kagi Snaps

It’s the top of the summer, and we have a full house once again: Aaron is home from college. He’s got a neat job lined up at the NJ Motorsports Park as a marshall. He’s going to see a lot of cool cars in the next couple of months.

On a related note, Rhonda and I nipped out to Maplewood for diner Friday, as the boys both had plans to go to the food truck festival at their alma mater. I spied a couple of marked up Porsche Caymans in the parking lot, likely having just come from the track.

I keep a list of cars I’d consider buying in the event that I had to replace my beloved Mustang (MX-5, BRZ, Nissan Z, and some others), but the Cayman and 911 sit up there in the “if a pile of money landed in my lap…” fantasy.

I was up near Trenton Wednesday for work, so I lit up to Rutgers after work to pick Aaron up. He finished his final just about when I was pulling into New Brunswick, so we loaded up the Mini and nipped out for some phô, which was what he was craving. I stopped and got us a couple of Tsingtao beers to go with the meal. Asian beers are generally thin, watery affairs, enjoyable with just about anything. If you like juicy beers, Tsingtao is not for you. But it’s a great refreshing beer after five or so trips from the dorm to the car.

Bellview Winery’s Argento

Last summer, Rhonda and I enjoyed Bellview’s private party to celebrate their 25th anniversary. We had a great time, and got to try their newly released Argento, which is their take on a Bordeaux. It features their Cab Franc, San Marco, Petit Verdot, Blaufrankisch, and Merlot. It’s a great blend: pronounced berry, with some tannin and pepper on the finish. One of the ladies who works there tempted me with a taste a couple of Saturdays ago when I was filling up the growlers, and yesterday I made good on my resolve to pick up a bottle sooner than later.

Schwinn 430 Elliptical

I bought an elliptical at our local Sears (remember Sears?) probably 20 years ago; it was on clearance, and I paid maybe $500 bucks for it. It was a nice low impact cardio machine, and I got a lot of miles out of it. Rhonda started using it, too, combining it with some hand weights, and really liked the results.

I’ve gotten into cycling, rowing, lifting weights, and then rowing again in the intervening years, and while I could see the use for an elliptical in our home gym, I didn’t see the need to buy another one. Rhonda, however, has lamented the fact that it doesn’t work anymore (the computer broke, and replacing it would require finding something on eBay; the last few times I looked for one, they were incredibly rare and expensive).

I was circumspect about buying another elliptical, as the second Concept2 rower I bought was originally intended to be hers, but she doesn’t really like rowing. (Not true for me, though: I use it pretty much every day).

Schwinn 430 Elliptical in the upstairs bedroom

I did end up ordering a Schwinn 430 Elliptical from Best Buy for her; it’s a reasonably priced model, and I think will do the trick. I was tempted by a NordicTrack model, which include a more fulsome computer with video workouts, a la Peloton, but I didn’t want to pay the price.

I put the Schwinn together last weekend, and make a few last adjustments this afternoon after hearing some squeaks while I was testing it out. It’s all set and ready for action. Here’s hoping it sees some usage! It’s nice having the upstairs apartment vacant and available for our use. It’s a separate hangout space for the kids, a seasonal closet for our wardrobes, a place for an extra refrigerator, and now a home gym annex.

Kagi Snaps

I tried Kagi search on John Gruber’s recommendation, and recently, he posted an article about their “Snaps” feature, which are similar to their Bangs, which are similar to Duck Duck Go’s bangs. The difference is that they restrict the search to a particular website.

I’ve never actually looked any of these up. I just guessed at the ones I most want to use and they all worked on the first try. @nyt returns results from The New York Times; @wsj is for The Wall Street Journal. Take a guess what @df does.

Kagi Snaps

I made one for Uncorrected, natch.

War of the Rosés

Hopefully I’ll never write a headline that trite here again, but I couldn’t resist. We opened the ‘25 Myra tonight for Mother’s Day, and while I was fetching it from the fridge upstairs, I paused to assemble our humble collection.

Rhonda wisely observed that the Stokelan puts her in mind of Bellview’s Fiori Rosé, less so their dry rosé. Both are paler, less berry versions.

Sunday Serial: Bundlehunt Edition

It’s a warm, sunny Sunday here in South Jersey. I’ll be grilling some shrimp in a bit. It’s entirely possible that I’ll be updating this post, or just adding an addendum, to celebrate Stokelan’s new Myra release, which has been settling in the pantry since we got a bottle.

Aaron comes home Wednesday; I’ll pick him up at school after his final and we’ll roll back home after a quick dinner. I’m also considering Bahn Mi in the dorm before the drive home.

Christmas comes a few times a year for Mac software nerds thanks to BundleHunt. There are a few other titles I’m curious about in the current bundle, but I did try a few this week.

Application Wizard

I figured I didn’t need yet another application switcher, but something about the utility caught my eye when I clicked into the description.

After fiddling around in the preferences, I realized that Application Wizard effectively recreates what I loved about an old application I used in the PowerPC days on my PowerBook G4: MaxMenus.

Application Wizard has four menus: Open, Quit, Switch, and Special. These are exposed in the menu bar, if you like, and in a similarly designed panel that you can float on the edges or corners of your screen. Each menu is represented by a colored dot.

MaxMenus similarly exposed its menus in the four corners of the screen, but my favorite use case was to create my own menu with everything I wanted in it, and then use a hot key trigger to invoke the menu. Application Wizard allows you to do exactly the same thing! I’m looking forward to setting this up and using it.

Integrity Pro

Integrity Pro will check a site for broken links. I was able to point Integrity Pro at Uncorrected and it found a bunch of broken links: 404s and more. It reports Cloudflare blocks, generates a sitemap, and gives SEO data as well.

It looks like Network Utility for your websites.

Supasidebar

Yet another tab manager!

The Arc browser made a splash in the tech world a while back, with its interesting take on tabs and bookmarking. I tried out Arc but never found it much to my liking. To be fair, it requires relearning a lot of the habits you’ve picked up over the years using browsers, and if you’re as old as I am, that’s entails all of the browser evolution since the early Netscape and Internet Explorer days.

You can use Supasidebar to manage bookmarks, create workspaces with specific links, a sidebar for your browser (a la Arc), and a minimal launcher. It’s like a browser-independent Arc-inspired sidebar that appears in all of your browsers.

But it was the launcher that grabbed my attention. Supasidebar has a built-in tab-searching that lets you search your open browser tabs. It looks great and has some additional search parameters you can trigger.

Sunday Serial: Stokelan Estates 2025 Myra, Sweet Amalia Oysters, and Subaru Lane Keep Assist

Turned out to be a beautiful day. We were saving up all of the yard work and other necessary maintenance tasks for today; Rhonda mowed the lawn, I did some weed whacking, changed to oil in Joey’s car (I’m too cheap to go somewhere for an oil change), and in filling up Aaron’s Mini’s tires with air, I broke the rear passenger-side valve stem. So the Mini is jacked up in the driveway, and the wheel is in the trunk of the Mustang so I can drop if off for repair. No good deed indeed.

Stokelan Estates 2025 Myra

Rhonda and I took off on Friday and journeyed north to replenish our salami supply at Bagliani’s, and then lunch and a sip at Stokelan Estates Winery, (which was just reviewed on New Jersey Uncorked). We were disappointed to learn that their stock of the 2024 Myra dry rosé was exhausted, but the cheerful server mentioned that the 2025 was cellaring after being bottled. She snuck down to the cellar and gave us a bottle with a gentle reminder not to open it for a couple of weeks due to bottle shock, a phrase I had not encountered yet (Jimmy at Bellview did say once that a new stock of a varietal was “settling” and not yet for sale though).

So we have one in waiting and are very excited to try it when the time is right! We enjoyed both of their Chardonnays (the Catspaw, which is unoaked, and our favorite, as well as the Crossroads, which is lightly oaked version). We had their excellent sausage and fennel flatbread again, too.

Sweet Amalia Oysters

One of the two local seafood shops (fishmongers, if you’re a market romantic) has been posting that they have Sweet Amalia oysters in stock. Rhonda and I were out in the vicinity of Dad’s Seafood, and she suggested we take a peek. They had crabs, but they were from Virginia and North Carolina and selling for 60 bucks a dozen. It’s early in the season, and that’s pretty typical.

Anyway, we decided to just get a dozen of the oysters (they were 20 bucks a dozen) and have them with spritzes and cheese + salami yesterday afternoon. They are always excellent, and this batch was no different: small to medium in size, soft and assertively briny.

Lane Keep Assist

I was talking to one of the school psychologists at work (and a friend from grad school to boot) and she mentioned a button on her Subaru Ascent’s steering wheel that steers the car for you on the highway or turnpike or freeway or expressway or… you get it. I declined the overview at the dealership, and I’m not good about reading the manual until I have a question, so I never knew what it was. I figured the new WRX had cruise control just like the last one, and it worked the same way: it’s on and you have to adjust as you encounter traffic.

This shouldn’t surprise me considering all of the safety goodies even Joe’s base Impreza has (lane assist and crash detection). I tried it out on the ride up to Stokelan on Friday, and while it didn’t do anything on an earlier stretch of Route 206, once we got a little farther north and the pace of traffic picked up, I noticed how the car was using the lane markers to keep me centered. As my colleague had mentioned, it took curves and bends in the road on my behalf. It was wonderful. I sent her a text with a picture of the button on the wheel and sung the feature’s praises.

Even the cruise control has come a long way. The cameras in the car watch the car before me, and the system moderates my speed to keep a safe distance between me and the car ahead. I’m looking forward to trying this out when we go up to help Aaron move out of his dorm in a couple of weeks.