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Space Age Madness
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Some Things I am Enjoying

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Here are some things I’ve been enjoying recently, in no specific order. I am not compensated in any way, even referral payments, for these links. Hope I turn someone else onto something they enjoy.

Mela

After years of being a devoted user of Paprika, I have completed converted over to Mela as my digital recipe keeper. Mela is from the same developer as Reeder, which is the RSS reader I have used, in conjunction with Feedbin, as my newsreader or choice for a long while now. Why did I switch? First, Mela just has a much cleaner user interface, feels more current and modern than Paprika, and is more in keeping with my personal taste.

Mela Main Window

Second, because this app comes from the developer of a feed reader, it has the same concept built into it. This allows me to add my favorite recipe sites to the app, and quickly be able to see the recipes that they have posted recently, then easily add them to my recipe collection in Mela. I like this workflow better.

Migration from Paprika was very fast and I haven’t found any issues with my collection of recipes. Once I purchased both the Mac and iOS versions, my recipes appeared everywhere via iCloud sync without issue.

Mela is $4.99 for iOS and $9.99 for the Mac.

Sportsletter

I’m a big fan of sports. I’ve also worked in sports for the vast majority of my professional career now. I’m not sure where I found it, but The Sportsletter is just an absolutely great and completely free daily sports email newsletter. It hits my inbox every morning about the time I get out of bed, and they do a phenomenal job of giving a sports fan the news, notes, stories and schedules for the day. Here’s an example newsletter for your perusal. I think maybe the best thing about it is that it’s not junked up with ads.

The Week: 10 Things You Need to Know Today

While I am suggesting email newsletters that hit your inbox in the morning. I have to suggest this daily news email from The Week. They are a credible source of daily news headlines without a lot of bias. You can subscribe to this one here. It’s exactly what the title says, ten things in your inbox, linking to credible news organizations about the stories if you want further information. If you’re interested in getting a bit more information every morning, this is a good way to do it.

Notorious EDC Beer Bomb

I wouldn’t consider myself a big EDC guy, but pens have been sort of a gateway drug for me into this world. The moment I saw the Notorious EDC Beer Bomb, I knew that I had to have one. (I borrowed this image from their site, sorry Tom.) It’s a bottle opener, a pry tool, and just a delightful little guy to carry around. I’m finding all sorts of uses for mine, and I kind of can’t wait for it to get beat up with use. Here’s a great little history of the object.

Notorious EDC Beer Bomb

Now the bad news, getting your hands on one of these isn’t super easy, and it seems like it’s getting harder all the time because they have gotten so popular, come in different color ways, and have attracted a bunch of avid collectors who congregate over on a private Facebook Group. Your best bet, if you want to take on the challenge of purchasing one of these, is to follow them on social media, and get into the Facebook group.

LePen

Do you remember LePen? When reading my weekly Pen Addict member newsletter a couple of weeks ago, there was a link to a blog post from The Stationer about the tools Tessa currently uses. Lurking in that list was a pen that I had totally forgotten about, LePen. I remembered how fun these skinny little pens are, and decided to order some from her shop. These pens are just as fun to have around I as remembered, and I am now using them to add color to my Bullet Journal spreads. I especially like their Olive Green color.

Well, that’s enough for this post, more to come soon.

Some things I’m enjoying

By

Here are some things I’ve been enjoying recently, in no specific order. I am not compensated in any way, even referral payments, for these links. Hope I turn someone else onto something they enjoy.

Hydrow Rowing Machine

This is an equivalent for rowing to Peloton, and by all accounts the best interactive rower on the market. I grew up as an endurance athlete, but I just hate riding stationary bikes, and I find rowing a better workout as well. Hydrow offers great instructors, a great community of people to support you as you progress, and it has worked for me. I know, this thing is crazy expensive, and also requires a monthly subscription, but I was able to cancel my gym membership altogether. We’ve had ours for about 11 months now, and I have worked out on it 300 days. This device, and the service it comes with, which includes guided yoga, pilates and strength classes, has been a key to maintaining my sanity and improving my fitness over the last year. Since we purchased it, I have lost about 26 pounds. (I don’t care that much about weight, I care about fitness, but it’s still an encouraging metric.)

Nomad Base Station Stand

I love this little wireless charging stand that I keep on my desk. It holds/charges my iPhone 12 Pro Max in either portrait or landscape, making it great for my ten hour shifts monitoring the live streaming coverage of our events through our app. It also wirelessly charges my AirPods Pro. It’s a game changer to be able to see your phone screen while sitting at your computer.

Tip Top Cocktails

You may not be able to find these too far outside of Atlanta yet, but I’m fairly certain that you will be able to at some point. While most cocktails in a can that I have tried have been, frankly, gross, Tip Top came to the table with Old Fashioned, Negroni and Manhattan cocktails in a well designed can that are delicious, and have become a staple for me. In the last month, they added new Daiquiri and Bee’s Knees cocktails to the lineup, and these two are both a welcome taste of Summer. I am not recommending their Margarita though. Start this Summer with the Daiquiri, you won’t regret it. So great for a delicious cocktail on the go.

Poco Loco Burritos

This neighborhood burrito joint opened last month in Kirkwood, on the edge of the Atlanta/Decatur line. If you are local, I would recommend joining their mailing list, which gives you ordering access to their Wednesday pre-order an hour earlier than people not in the know. Most burritos are protein-rich breakfast bombs, really flavorful and very filling. Each week they change their menu, introducing a new meat burrito, a new veggie burrito and a new frozen burrito, typically all named in some theme. (This week is Steve Martin themed.) There have been weeks, since they opened, when I have consumed one of their burritos for lunch 5 out of 7 days.

New Desk

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After using the same desk since 1998, I picked up a Jarvis desk from Fully and finally got to set it up over the weekend. It took a few hours to get my home office ready for another desk, and to get my computers and wiring broken down. It took another few hours to assemble the new desk, re-run the cabling to be standing desk compatible, and then to set my gear back up.

I am still waiting for some lighting strips to come in, and I need to spend some more time on cable management, but today is my first day at the new setup, and I can already tell that it’s going to be much better for me overall.

It’s an adjustable height desk, but I think I will primarily use it as a “sit at” desk. I just figured that it would make sense to get it and set it up in case I did want to try out that standing desk life. I wanted something that was a little wider to better accommodate my Mac on one side/PC on the other setup, and having monitor arms installed in the grommets has freed up a lot of desk space.

Apps: What worked for me in 2018, an update

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I’ve heard a lot of people say on podcasts in the last few weeks, as they wrapped up their app usage for 2018, that the mobile app market is mature, and that, while they wish there was a lot of new stuff to share, or a lot of change from 2017 to 2018, there just isn’t a lot of new stuff.

I wish I could say that I don’t agree with this, but, looking at my post from 2017, I don’t see a lot in my app usage that has changed a year later. This isn’t to say that I’m not perfectly happy with my devices, and I do like some of the quality of life improvements that Apple made this year at the OS level, especially Shortcuts and Screen Time. Aside from those, and you can almost just read that post from last year if you’re interested in what apps I’m using the most across my Apple Watch, iPhone and iPad.  There are a couple of additional app high points that I will point out as additions below.

I am really happy that Darkroom, which was already my photo editor of choice on iPhone, has made it’s way to iPad with a really nice version. In combination with my original Gnarbox, I now have a full portable workflow solution that is just camera and iPad Pro. I’d love to upgrade to the SSD Gnarbox this year, but I just bought the existing one, and feel like I need to get a little more out of it before spending more money. I like this solution better than directly connecting a card reader to my iPad because it’s backing the photos up to the Gnarbox at the same time. I do plan on spending more time with Lightroom on iPad this year too. I’ve been a long time Lightroom user on my Mac, and it’s still my primary solution there.

I am using Encrypt.me to automatically VPN my devices when I connect to untrusted WiFi networks. For a variety of reasons, but mainly because my Instagram account was hacked using a SIM Swap on Halloween, I have gotten more security conscious over the last few months. I’m also using Google Authenticator and have acquired a Google Titan device and a couple of Yubikeys. I still need to write up my tale of sim swapping woe at some point. Those aren’t apps, but have an impact on the way I access things. Over time, I would like to have almost everything in my online life locked down with one of them.

The Weekly Bump: Episode 7

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I continue to call this series of post “weekly” despite the fact that, based on actual data, it’s really trimonthly. (Trimonthly is only defined as occurring every three months, unlike the confusing bimonthly.) I’m going to be stubborn about this in the hope that, over time, I will be able to make progress in making it more often.

I’m sure you’ve heard this from many others at this point, and, more than likely, you’ve already seen it, but, just in case, I can’t recommend Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse enough. It’s truly unlike any other superhero movie I’ve ever seen before, and I have seen just about everything.  The animation style, and techniques are so cool. Also, even if you have seen it, this Twitter Moment is worth checking out, Bagel!.  Every member of our family loved this movie, and I intend to watch it several more times.  I was also lucky enough to get a pair of the sneakers from the film before they sold out. 

I listen to many of the same podcasts each week, with only a rare few being “must listen” status where I never miss an episode. That’s probably a good topic for a future blog post. One podcast that I have added to my rotation on a daily basis, however, is Techmeme’s Ride Home.  This show is great in that, most days, they have pushed the daily episode before I get into my car to leave for the day. With the way Overcast works, this means that this is waiting and ready to be played when I start my drive. Each episode contains carefully crafted coverage of that day’s tech news, and it’s never longer than fifteen minutes. It’s allowed me to stay up to date on several stories that are outside of my interest area. They do a really great job, and on a week like this one, with bucketloads of CES news, it helps me wade through the cruft to get to the interesting stuff.  The host, Brian McCollough, weaves his own humorous delivery into the stories, and that makes taking the medicine of tech news a bit easier as well.

I’m completely entranced by Reuben Wu’s photography. He uses drones to create either objects made of light or to do the lighting for the photograph. This article by Ilana Herzig for Artsy does a good job of covering the basics of his vision and some of how he captures what he does. You may also be familiar with him from the music group Ladytron.  (Wishing that I could afford one of his works, but I’m on a budget at the moment.)