Sunday Serial, Vacation Edition: Control, SteelSeries Nimbus+, and Errata

I’m coming off of a week-long vacation, or staycation, if you will: we didn’t go anywhere in particular, save for the overnight in New Brunswick. I just made salads and boiled eggs for the week ahead. Of course there’s some Sunday scaries, but not too bad.

We did a lot of floating in the pool during the day. I’d usually have something for breakfast and then skip lunch, and then we’d have some cured meats and cheese and other pickings (peanuts, pipits) phon the deck or in the house while we cooked.

I follow Ina Garten’s hummus recipe, which I often make when we get together with friends. This is exactly what I did Wednesday after we got home from New Brunswick before meeting some friends at the Blue Rascal for drinks. I made a second batch on Thursday because it was so good, and we finished that one off by the pool yesterday while enjoying some spritzes. Rhonda’s at the store now getting some more ingredients so I can make another batch. It really comes out creamy and smooth. I’ve read that you have to remove the chick peas from their shell or skin, but this recipe doesn’t call for doing so, and everyone seems to like it.

Game On

Vacation is a good time to play a game or two; the work week doesn’t leave a lot of time for that, although I did enjoy Dredge earlier in the summer. I’ve been meaning to play Icewind Dale on the iPad for a while now, but I never end up getting around to it.

I’ve been gaming on an Apple computer for many years. We had the original Castle Wolfenstein on the Apple II, and a few other games to boot: Dig Dug, Sea Wolf, and many others.

My first Mac was Color Classic, and I enjoyed the hell out of playing Prince of Persia, Spectre, and Wolfenstein 3D. I eventually played through the original Doom and Doom 2, but my all-time favorite franchise is the Marathon series. I still have them installed on my Mac. Halo was a worthy successor, but Marathon always brings me back to my youth as a college student. We’d sneak into the bio lab on campus and install the demo on the networked PowerPCs on the lab tables and have a frag fest. What a blast.

There are lots of games over the years that I’ve sunk many hours into, not just on the Mac. I could never name them all, here’s a list of some notables:

Legend of Zelda (NES)
Metal Gear (NES)
Marathon (Mac)
Oni (Mac)
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 (Mac)
Metal Gear Solid (PSP)
Ocarina of Time (N64)
Halo (Mac)
Mario Galaxy (Wii)
Breath of the Wild (Switch)

I’m forgetting a ton of games for sure. I played a lot of Quake and Unreal Tournament on the Mac. Giants:Citizen Kabuto was a strange and wild standout. I’ve played through Max Payne a bunch of times, and the first-person shooter Star Wars games, especially Jedi Knight II, many times as well.

I have a nice little library of Steam games that I can play on the Mac. I watch for sales on wishlist items and buy them when they come up at an irresistible price. Outside of Metro Exodus and Firewatch (a game I’ve played through several times), most of them as started but unfinished, or not played at all. I likewise have been meaning to play Warcraft 3 for about 24 years now. It’s installed and ready to go. I purchased it on CD back in 2002 at the Marlton Apple Store, and I still have it installed via Battle.net. I really need to play it.

There are a couple of reasons for this, but primarily it’s because I don’t want to sit in front of my computer at night after we’ve cleaned up from dinner. That’s our chance to watch a little TV and maybe fart around with my iPad. Plugging into a game for real is more of a vacation thing.

Which happened to be this past week!

Control

I purchased Control on Steam a while back, but didn’t get far at all. I decided to pick it up for iOS yesterday, as it was only five bucks. I’ve played a couple of hours on the iPad and have been really enjoying it, except for that I think there was a bug that caused me to start the game over from the beginning. I wasn’t too far in to make that a big deal.

Just for kicks, I started it up on my Mac on Sunday through Steam. The graphics look a bit more detailed on the Mac, and as I expected, I love the keyboard and mouse compared to the touchscreen on the iPad.

It’s a third-person shooter, with a theme involving a government agency that’s investigating a mysterious power that possesses people. You play as Jesse Faden, whose brother’s disappearance is linked to the agency. It puts me in mind of Max Payne, where it’s a shooter, but the additional combat feature opens up heroine Jesse’s ability to pick up and throw objects. It makes for a cool 1-2 punch feature, a la Booker’s Vigors in Bioshock Infinite.

So I’m playing it simultaneously on the iPad and the Mac in such a way that progress on one device has no bearing on the other. I could download Control from the App Store onto an external hard drive (which is where I have my Steam library), but I would need to make some room on the drive. Or… get another drive. Hmmm.

One discovery I made is that Apple’s newish Games app shows not just your installed games from the App Store, but your Steam and Blizzard games, too. Pretty cool.

One thing about gaming on a computer is my mousing situation. I’m a left by birth, but I mouse right handed due to some RSI that I was developing years ago. Despite this, I can’t WASD+mouse with my right hand; I have switch back to left-handed mousing.

A lot of mice are designed to be ambidextrous, with sides that are symmetrical. My preferred mouse of choice, however, is the Logitech MX Master, which is made for right-handed users.

To this end, I not only have to swap my mouse to the left of the keyboard, I have to swap the mouse itself. I have a Logitech G300 for gaming. It’s cheap but it works.

SteelSeries Nimbus+

I am largely sports-avoidant: I just don’t watch them. I have, however, enjoyed a handful of sports games over the years, most of which I have never played the analog version of. NHL ’93 and ’94, a basketball game called Hoops on the Nintendo, and even a baseball game on the Sony PSP. I recently saw Madden 27 pop up for Apple Arcade, and I figured that, too, might be a fun game for a sport I don’t watch.

I suspected that Madden might be more of a controller based game than a touchscreen game. I’ve been thinking about getting a controller after trying one of the boys’ older Playstation controllers to play some games, like Gear Club:Stradale on the Mac (another sport, car racing, that I don’t watch but enjoy video games of). I had the original Nimbus controller for our Apple TV, and while it still pairs with my Mac, it’s definitely missing some features that make me think it’s outdated.

I found a refurbished Nimbus+ on Amazon for $35 bucks.

Wise Fools in New Brunswick

Arron will be a sophomore at Rutgers this coming fall, and he is moving out of the dorms and into a apartment. Rhonda and I drove up to New Brunswick this week to help him move some of his stuff, and he followed us in his car for practice, as he didn’t have it with him last year, and so has never driven on the formidable NJ Turnpike.

The house is pretty much what you would expect for a college frat house. We moved a big air conditioner into his room, which is the third floor and a converted attic. AC is a necessity! We put together some furniture, and came back the second day to finish the job after stopping to get pillows and, unplanned, a vacuum cleaner for his room.

It’s a neat space and reminds me of one of the dorms I lived in at Ursinus, specifically one of the rooms on the third floor. It was a converted house. It will be a very cool place to hang out with friends.

I booked a room for Tuesday night at a local Marriott, and made a reservation at Saltfor dinner. After we finished moving, we checked in and had cocktails that I made at home to enjoy in the room. We lit out for Salt after a quick rest in the room.

Salt was excellent from start to finish. They had a capacious selection of oysters, and so we ordered six Wellfleets (old favorites), six Kumamotos, and another six of another variety whose name escapes me. I skew briny with oysters, so all of them were described thus, but there was still a tremendous range of flavors. The Wellfleets were probably our favorites, with a sweet, meaty texture along with an assertive brininess. We gilded the appetizer lily by ordering some steamed PEI mussels and clams casino, too.

Dinner was a full fish-fest: I had the whole branzino, Rhonda the soft-shell crab, and Aaron the crispy skin Black Sea bass. Each of these were excellent: the branzino was perfectly cooked and beautifully presented with the head and tail intact, but on a nice small plate, making it look less like a giant meal and more of a humble fish for a hungry fella. The soft-shell crab was sweet and crunch without relying on a thick layer of breading or batter. Mission accomplished with that dish for sure. Aaron’s sea bass had a nice crispy skin, as promised, and served over a small mound of risotto.

Another standout: when I got fussy about our Manhattans, asking for a specific rye and vermouth, as well as the proportion of each, the server didn’t miss a beat. I’ve had servers frown and take a lot of notes, but our man nodded knowingly with each request. (For the record, we had WhistlePig rye 10 year, which I’ve only ever had once before, at Knife and Fork in Atlantic City. Salt also had the 15-year-old version.)

We had plans to meet some friends at the Blue Rascal in Hammonton on Wednesday night. We got up, checked out, and drove back to the apartment for the aforementioned tasks, and then set off for home. We couldn’t help stopping once again at the Szechuan House on the way home for lunch. It’s a great place to order a bunch of dishes and share.

Rhonda and I split a bottle of Bellview Rosé, and we ordered a few appetizers: cold sliced beef and tripe, which comes with a chili vinaigrette; Dan Dan noodles; an egg roll; and chicken dumplings with the chili vinaigrette. We also ordered salt and pepper prawns (heads on), Kung Pal chicken, and shredded pork. Everything was excellent once again, and the lunch obviated the need for dinner.

Sunday Serial: Television Time, Retropia Lens, and PowerAgent for the Griffin PowerMate

Last week, I mentioned that I had been wrestling with our lawn tractor. It’s a Husqvarna from the mid-2000s—it’s been in service for a long time. I’ve changed the belts, the blades, the oil, and filters to keep it running. The deck (the metal shell that houses the blades) has taken a beating over the years, and a bracket that holds the belt pulleys had broken free from the shell. Rhonda and I combined forces on Tuesday afternoon after our getaway to Philly, and completed what I learned is called a “field repair.” It seems to be working now!

After thinking I’d fixed it several times before Tuesday (Wednesday actually), this repair reminds me that success and failure are often within a few inches of each other. Every win starts off as a potential loss. It’s an argument for adversity maybe: too many serial wins can lead to feeling a failure as catastrophic.

Television Time

I’ve been using an app called Sofa for a while now to track television shows and movies that I might like to watch. It’s a great iPhone and iPad app, and it runs on the Mac as well. It has evolved to include books, podcasts, restaurants, and video games. I like it a lot, but it has lacked a central function that I wanted in such an application: moving a show to an “actively watching” list or state. (I’ve never used it for books, which is a topic for another post.) Version 5.2 of Sofa now lets you track shows, generating a list of episodes and providing the user a way of checking off episodes.

Jason Snell recently highlighted Television Time on an episode of MacBreak Weekly, and after a few years of trying the free version of Sofa (I find the subscription a little pricey for my needs), and also trying Casey Liss’s Callsheet for the same purpose, I decided to give Television Time a spin.

Television Time is TV-specific; you can’t add movies or any other kind of media. This is a good thing. You can research shows, and add them to your “To Watch” list when you’re ready. There’s no intermediate resting place for a show, though, which I would like. Television time includes notifications for upcoming episodes, and a wealth of data about an episode, including original air date. It will also monitor the time you spent watching TV if you check off what you’ve been watching. And like Sofa, Television Time shows you where you can watch a show.

Television Time is only 9.99 for a yearly subscription.

Retropia Repurposed Disposable Film Camera Lens

I’ve written a fair bit about my TT Artisans 18mm f/6.3 UFO Lens here on Uncorrected. It’s primary appeal to me when I found it was both its tiny size and its low price, and while both of those remain attractions, it’s not a lens that I’d recommend for someone outside of understanding what a strange thing it is.

Shortly after I purchased the lens, I started seeing adds for repurposed disposable film camera lenses, one of which is the Retropia. I thought it might be duplicative at least, or less functional, than the TT Artisans, so I bought one for Aaron to use with his Nikon D3100. It turns out that he also purchased one, so I’m going to return the one I bought for him.

It’s a tiny lens that weighs almost nothing. It’s more of a lens cap than a lens. It makes the TT Artisans feel heavy.

You have to fire the camera in manual mode to use the Retrotopia; it doesn’t support any kind of autofocus or aperture priority. With a fixed aperture of f/11, it needs plenty of light to work. I would normally avoid taking pictures in the midday sun, but the Retrotopia is perfect for such shooting.

I took this picture of my Miata with the Retrotopia. It has that greasy, smeary look that you might get from a cheap disposable camera. I don’t love it, but it’s kinda fun. The TT Artisans takes much sharper pictures, and that’s not saying much for the UFO.

MX-5 Miata taken with the TT Artisans Lens

PowerMate Agent

I still have an ancient Griffin PowerMate around that I haven’t used in forever. I stumbled upon the PowerMate Agent application recently, which revives the peripheral. It scrolls and mutes! Pretty cool.

Philly Fun: Osteria and Tomahawk

Rhonda and I took off for Philly yesterday to see Tomahawk at Union Transfer. We had a lot of fun taking to boys to see the Foo Fighters two summers ago in Hershey, PA, and while we were tempted to reprise that trip, the Foo Fighters tickets were just too expensive.

I booked a room at Sosuite at Independence Lofts. They have a bunch of rooms on the ninth floor of a building in the Spring Garden section of the city. Like some of the more recent trips we’ve taken, Sosuite manages your check-in and check-out remotely; you don’t deal with a hotel manager or concierge. It was a great little room, with a nice view of the city, a queen size bed, bathroom, and kitchenette. It was perfect for a quick overnight.

We stopped by the Institute Craft Bar & Kitchen in the same building as our suite for a couple of drinks. We had Manhattans. It was the bartender’s first day on the job, so she needed a little direction. She even asked for our feedback (they were good).

Before the show, we had dinner at Osteria. It’s a more accessible version of Marc Vetri’s namesake restaurant. We shared the Frito miso, and we each tried a couple of the pasta dishes from the Primi section of the menu. (I learned by visiting the country twice that dinner in Italy isn’t a big plate of pasta; pasta is a small dish you enjoy before the second course, which is typically fish or meat.) I had the rigatoni, which is made with chicken liver, cipollini onion, and sage. I was torn between that and the tagliatelle, but when I asked our server what she recommended, she said the rigatoni is famous by dint of wining a James Beard Award. So that sealed the deal. Rhonda tried the Tortelli, which was served with sheep’s milk ricotta, brasied baby artichoke, and lamb bolognese. Both dishes were emblematic of both Vetri’s style and the Primi piatti tradition: just a few bites of pasta. We had a rosé with the appetizer and pasta.

The restaurant generously brought out a free pizza for us to share, which was a lot more food than we needed, but we were both keen to try it. It has a great chewy crust, charred on the undercarriage, but soft and chewy to the bite.

We splurged a bit and shared the T-bone steak special, which was superb. My general rule of thumb with steak in restaurants is to avoid it: I make it often enough at home, and it comes out pretty great. But this sounded too good to pass up, and provided a nice counterpoint to the carb-heavy pasta, focaccia, and pizza we’d enjoyed first.

There was nothing to regret with the T-Bone: it was expertly cooked to medium rare, cut Peter Luger style, with the sliced steak returned to its original place on the bone for serving. The platter was adorned with cippolini.

Osteria is a quick walk to and from our room, which was also a short walk from the venue. We strolled back to the room to drop off our leftovers, and then headed over to the show.

Union Transfer is a charming venue to say the least. It’s plenty small, if your tastes skew toward the intimate. It already pretty crowded when we got there, and after finding a place to stand upstairs, I went back downstairs to fetch us a couple of beers. I was on my way back up with our drinks when I heard the first strains of the Melvins, who were the show’s opener. I’m not familiar with the stuff, but man it sounded so tight. I grooved to the rest of their set. My only complaint is that we couldn’t find a place to stand that afforded us a view—any view—of the stage.

I checked out Union Transfer after the show online, and learned that it’s know for having great sound. I can’t disagree. Both bands were loud, but the sound was clear and intelligible. You could really feel it in the room.

Sunday Serial: Car Care and Software

Bloody hell: I’ve been wrestling with the lawnmower for a couple of days now. I put a new deck belt on because something wasn’t working, and I noticed it looked pretty chopped up. That didn’t entirely solve the issue, and I came home from running a couple of errands to find Rhonda trying to mow with the clutch slipping off.

I got the clutch back on after some struggles in the blazing mid-day sun, but there’s still something up with the deck belt again. I’m gonna have to fart with it again in the very near future.

I reprised the excellent smoked baby back ribs and spareribs meal from Fathers Day; Rhonda was out running some errands earlier in the week, and found ribs on sale at one of the local butchers. She made Cooper sharp mac and cheese to go with. Tonight: the competition barbecue chicken thighs once again.

Tomorrow I’m taking a half day, and Rhonda and I are rolling over the bridge to Philly to see Tomahawk and the Melvins at Union Transfer in Spring Garden. I’ve never been to Union Transfer, and I’ve never seen Tomahawk, despite being a fan for the last twenty years. We have a five pm rez at Osteria, which is Marc Vetri’s pizzeria and casual dinner spot. It’s gonna be great I think.

Rhonda painted the deck stairs and railings this week. She used a Sherwin-Williams paint that really looks good. Is thick a way to describe paint? I’m not sure. But it looks great.

I regret missing last Sunday’s installment of Sunday Serial. I had a lot of fun on Saturday night with some old friends, and writing wasn’t even on the radar.

Foam Cannon

I used a foam cannon that I got from my dad some time ago for the first time today; Aaron and a buddy used it earlier in the week. I had to find the correct parts to connect it to my pressure washer, but it’s all connected and working now.

It was a lot of fun to foam up the cars and let the foam sit (the luxurious word in the car entertainment space is “dwell”) for a few minutes before rinsing them off. I was hoping that this would allow me to skip a formal hand washing, but the results were not that good. I’ll add this as a step before a good hand wash, and as an intermediate wash between hand washings.

303 Convertible Top Protectant

Back in the summer of 2003, I traded in my Ford Contour for a gently used 2000 Toyota MR2 Spyder. It was my first convertible car and I developed some neurotic anxiety about caring for the top. I used a specific Raggtopp cleaner and protectant back then in the hopes of extending the top’s life. I’m not nearly as anxious about Miata’s top, but I do think it wise to care for it to the degree that I can. In southern New Jersey, the summers are dry and hot, and there’s a lot of sun for a car to soak up. And I don’t have a garage, so winters will be rough on the top for sure.

To this end, I applied 303 Convertible Top Protectant after a good wash and treatment with 303’s cleaner. I’m looking forward to seeing beaded dew on the top in the morning.

PasteBot 3

PasteBot is one of my favorite clipboard history munger utilities for the Mac. I came to it via the iOS version, which has long since ceased to exist. I remember Merlin Mann raving about the iOS version, which compelled me to try it.

Version three moves to a modern take on subscription apps: you pay one price for the new version, and subsequent years will net you new updates that have dropped for a reduced price. Bike uses this model, but perhaps Agenda made it famous.

I’ve been looking hard at my subscriptions lately, being a little more fastidious about whether I really use the subs I have, and cancelling ones I don’t need. But PasteBot is a good app, and one I use a lot.

iCanBike

BBQ

Spare ribs and baby backs

Sagami: Classic Sushi, Hold the Mayo

We also hit up Sagami for an early dinner on Friday. Sagami, for those unfamiliar, is a fantastic sushi restaurant just outside of Philadelphia. For me personally, it’s the first place I ever had sushi. I had just graduated from college, and gotten a job in Camden City, which found me driving all around Camden County. I took mental notes of all of these interesting places I’d pass during the work day, and the Rhonda and I would light out for dinner and drinks on the weekends, often trying places I’d spied during the week. Interestingly enough, she had been there once before we went. But that was my first blush with raw fish, save for a fraternity prank, and it was illuminating and instructive.

I can’t possibly know enough about Japanese cuisine to speak authoritatively about it, but what I have always appreciated about Sagami is the utter simplicity of the presentation. Later sushi excursions have found me staring at complex maki, with fish inside, fish outside, and a goopy mayonnaise squirted about.

Sagami doesn’t play that game.

We shared some edamame, and then I ordered some fried oysters, and the following list:

Negi toro roll
Sashimi:
– Hokaido uni
– engawa
– hotate
– salmon
– hamachi

Sublime.

Sunday Serial: Outliner Edition

I’ve spilled plenty of pixels here on Uncorrected about outliner applications. I’m a big user of OmniOutliner and Bike, and OmniFocus certainly has its roots in the former application. But there are many more, and even a website dedicated to outliner software. Enjoy!

Kosshi Outliner

macosxguru featured Kosshi on Bicycle for Your Mindrecently, so I downloaded the trial. Kosshi reminds me of Workflowy, but Mac-native without the need to constantly log in. (Speaking of Workflowy, I just logged in again recently and was met with a lengthy captcha ordeal that reminded me at least partly why I stopped using Workflowy).

Unlike Bike and OmniOutliner, Kosshi’s back end is a database rather than individual files. There are positives and negative to this approach; database apps allow for some neat features, including linking to your own notes and content in the app. Drafts, Ulysses, and Apple Notes are all examples of this approach, well-implemented.

Kosshi supports Markdown; imbedding images, videos, and PDFs; @ and # tags; internal linking; and bookmarking. It’s fast and stable in my testing as well. Some Workflowy features that I would miss would be duplicating and mirroring items, and there’s now way to grab a link to an item or note in Kosshi so that you can reference it from another application. No support for Hookmark, at least not yet, either.

There are a number of pre-programmed keyboard shortcuts that allow you to move items within the app, which is a great way to keep you hands on the keyboard while you’re working.

Outliner Software (website)

From the Bicycle for Your Mind post on Kosshi Outliner I referenced above, I learned about the existence of the Outliner Software website. It’s a forum for outliner and note-taking application nerds. Discussions about Drafts, Ulysses, Bike, and other writing apps abound.

Outliner Software

MojoPad

MojoPad is not strictly an outliner, but it’s a modern recreating of Gus Meuller’s VoodooPad. I used the lite version of VoodooPad a while back, and have, from time to time, found myself searching to see if the app was still available (and it is!).

MojoPad, like Kosshi, keeps its data in a database, and uses the concept of a wiki for its pages. CamelCasing words creates links, so you can keep adding information to your pages and linking (and creating) as you go. It supports rich text, plain text, and Markdown.

MojoPad is a great-looking app, and retains the spirit of VoodooPad. No iOS support, though.

MojoPad

MindNode Next

Mind maps are a thing… just not really my thing. I’ve used MindNode for a while now, at first mostly to try to understand mind maps and mapping, and to create a few flowcharts when I needed them.

MindNode has a toggle to switch between mind map and outline views, and this feature cleanly illustrates the indelible relationship between mind maps and outliners. The first time I tried the toggle, it was like a facepalm moment: Mind maps are outlines, and outlines are mind maps.

MindNode Next represents an evolution from the original MindNode. One very notable change is Next’s internal database structure, whereas the original MindNode stored its data in individual files. Next’s database structure allows for linking between maps, which can be helpful.

Even if you don’t use mind maps, MindNode is a fantastic outliner. It’s quite possibly the prettiest outliner I’ve used.

Classic Styles, Tonewood’s Touch

Yesterday, Rhonda and I dropped Aaron and Joey off at the House of Fun and headed over for a couple of beers at Tonewood.Brewing in Barrington, NJ. Tonewood’s non‑IPA beers consistently stand out; they don’t read as perfunctory crowd‑pleasers aimed at the Budweiser set, though widening their appeal may well be a factor. They feel like deliberate, respectful riffs on time‑honored styles. That’s no knock on their IPAs, though, which are excellent.

Yesterday, I tried the Birdie Rice Lager, and the Picnic American Pale Ale.

Birdie Rice Lager 4% : Light refreshing and crushable! Our Rice lager is brewed with Extra Pale Pilsner Malts, Jasmine Rice and Acidulated then hopped with Saaz, Mandarin Bavaria and Lemondrop.

Tonewood Picnic Pale Ale

Picnic American Pale Ale 4.8%: Notes of orange water ice, mango and papaya fruit cups, sticky pine sap and a fresh Spring breeze in Yakima

I nearly got the Slipstream Pub Ale again, but I wanted to try the Picnic. I still want to try the Slipstream on the hand pump at their Oaklyn location.

Sunday Serial: Mister Plimsoll, DaisyDisk, and Kagi Assistant

Happy Fourth of July! We celebrated the holiday with a barbecue at our house; I smoked both spareribs and baby back ribs. My parents came over, as did Joe’s girlfriend, and even Teri, my former boss from Vineland, joined us. We all drank a bunch of white wine too. I didn’t get any good pictures of the ribs, because I was hustling to get them done, but Aaron and I nipped out to get some red, white, and blue pictures of our stable of cars. I was hoping to get out there for these shots closer to the golden hour, but it was a bit later than I wanted.

Mister Plimsoll

Longtime Apple tech writer Glen Fleishman recently launched a utility for the Mac called Mister Plimsoll. It’s a free utility that will alert you to when a drive on your Mac is about to run out of space, name for the Plimsoll line on a ship’s hull¹. I’ve struggled with my Mac Studio running dangerously low on space, and my attempts to understand why, exactly, have found me staring at DaisyDisk and noticing that my Time Machine snapshots are growing out of control. Mister Plimsol doesn’t help you deal with storage issues, but it its helpful in updating you that things are getting tight. I missed two Arq backups because of Time Machine snapshot hoarding last week. I set up Mister Plimsol to send me a text message when my Mac’s free space dips below 10% of the drive’s capacity.

Indirectly related, I found that my Spotlight index was larger than it should be, so I rebuilt that using a strategy that Kagi Assistant recommended (removing the boot drive from indexing in System Settings, and then adding it back after a pause). I used DaisyDisk to delete some of the Time Machine snapshots, which were taking up over 70 GB of space.

DaisyDisk

As I mentioned above, DaisyDisk is a great tool for visualizing your Mac’s storage. It helped me narrow down what was taking up the most space on my Mac, especially when I compared the internal storage to that of my MacBook Air. That was the first clue that something was up with my Mac Studio’s Spotlight Index: the Air had almost no data in its Spotlight Index, according to DaisyDisk, while the Studio was taking up gigabytes of space. I knew that I was using a fair amount of disk space for both MailMaven and MailMate, because I’m not content to use Gmail’s web interface, but DaisyDisk helped me see beyond what I already knew.

I’ve been using tmutil via the Terminal for years to manage my Time Machine snapshots when things got out of hand, but those instances were few and far between. Something with the Studio is amiss, though, and it accumulates a large collection snapshots.

If you purchased DaisyDisk on the Mac App Store, you can swap your license for a standalone license which enables you to delete snapshots. Probably worth it.

Kagi Assistant

Central to solving the Spotlight Index and the Time Machine snapshot problems I was trying to solve was Kagi Assistant. Sure, I’ve used ChatGPT and Claude, and I use (weirdly enough) Microsoft’s Copilot a lot, but Kagi comes bundled with Kagi Search, which is why I initially signed up for a subscription. I’ve come to rely upon Assistant as my go-to chatbot.

The Plimsoll line is the point to which the vessel can be legally and safely submerged in water under various conditions. ↩

Sunday Serial: Miata Update, Mel Brooks Turns 100, Om Malik, and The Bear Season Five

I had a great week driving the Miata back and forth to work. Whatever compunctions I had about the straight-line power are vanquished. No, it’s not as fast as the Mustang, and where I live, in southern NJ, we have a lot of long, straight roads. A big old American muscle car is perfect for these roads.

But hey: so is a Miata. I can get to 60 in about six seconds if I want to. The naturally aspirated four-banger revs up readily, and the RWD pushes the ass around with authority. It’s just a blast to drive, and I look for excuses to do so. I tore down some Hammonton back roads on Thursday on the ride home and I think I’m gonna do that again from time to time.

Also: we have a convertible queen! She liked sniffing the sniffs on the ride home from the groomer Saturday. I took the Miata up Route 55 for a highway cruise and I’m happy to report that you can drive 80 mph and not feel like the car’s getting shifty.

Mel Brooks Turns 100

Mel Brooks is 100! Wow. My first exposure to his work was Young Frankenstein, which I recognized as a parody of the Frankenstein movies when I saw it as a kid. It seemed loony and little ribald. Later viewings of his films brought an appreciation of how one can use humor to pillory racism and anti-Semitism. He portrayed the marginalized as cagy heroes, while the villains were buffoons who harbored the worst impulses in humanity. Some of his oeuvre is funny for its own sake, but there’s real depth to his work, too.

Leslie Neilsen got a lot of mileage out of Brooks’ style.

Happy 100th Birthday, Mel Brooks!

RIP Om Malik

Longtime tech journalist Om Malik passed away last Wednesday. I was a longtime reader of his blog, GigaOm, and was glad to see him start another blog, Om.co. He thought big thoughts about technology and society, not living in the speeds and feeds of the moment. He was a digital photography enthusiast, as well.

The Bear Season Five

Rhonda and I binged most of the fifth season of The Bear last night. The season is almost wholly focused on one night in the kitchen, with the staff trying to pull off a final night of legendary service in the throes of a storm, with attendant leaks and food shortages. It’s typically intense for the show, and the compressed setting amps up the tension.

Rocketing Towards July

I took a half day today and visited Rhonda’s third-grade class. Instead of guitar, we launched model rockets that the boys and I have flown before. I took these to one of the middle schools in Vineland back before COVID.

Der Max

I launched this rocket first, using a small “a” class engine, which isn’t very powerful for this fairly heavy rocket. That worked out well–the kids got to see it shoot up into the air, but at a very visible distance, and tumble back to the earth. This one will fly again.

Big Bertha

I launched Bertha using a larger “b” class engine, and it made a marked difference. Big Bertha always stayed within eyesight, but it rose nice and high, and the parachute deployed faithfully. We then watched her sail off into the trees. Alas.

Star Trooper

These tiny-sized rockets might be my favorite. On a tiny engine, they disappear in a flash. We’ve made a handful of them over the years. One eagle-eyed third grader even spied the grounded rocket on the field, so despite a fin repair, the Star Trooper shall fly again too.

Lettera

The makers of the excellent Bear note-taking app for macOS have released a new app called Lettera. Check out that domain name! It’s a fork of Panda, which was their text engine for Bear, and which they released some time ago as a beta.

Lettera for macOS is

Lettera is Bear minus the database for note storage; its a markdown editor that uses standalone markdown files. This is hot if you like individual, portable documents, and even more so if you’re fiddling with your system by having an AI assist you.

Bear has always looked great and has been awesome to use; Panda, for me, was a great alternative once I’d given up on Bear as the best note-taking app for my usage. It’s at once nerdy and elegant; straightforward and stylish.

I’m happy to see that Panda has borne fruit (bamboo?) in the form of Lettera. I’m hoping that we’ll see an iPadOS version too.

Worry is an Avoidance Strategy

Fascinating article about the limits of traditional talk therapy when dealing with generalized anxiety:

People with GAD aren’t just anxious. They’re using worry to avoid something that feels even worse. When researchers ask GAD patients what they’re doing when they worry, they often say they’re trying not to think about “even more emotional things.” They’re using worry (which lives mostly in their heads as verbal, linguistic thought) to distract themselves from deeper, more visceral feelings of distress.

Why psychotherapy may not be the best way to treat anxiety

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.