Posts about Miscellaneous

Doing the hard thing, even if it’s working out in the morning before your first cup of coffee, and you would rather die

I’ve been playing with a new routine for the month of August. Nearly a year and a half ago, I bought a good rowing machine. I use it a lot. I’ve tried rowing during the morning, which is hard; rowing over lunch, which is difficult to consistently schedule; and rowing after work, which requires a level of fastidiousness towards a shut-down routine that I do not possess. 

The habit I quit the fastest is rowing in the morning. It’s hard to get out of bed and work out. Your body is cold, so it’s slower. You never get your best times in the morning. You’re groggy and grumpy. You get the benefits of an improved mood after a workout, sure, but those benefits are less observable because your comparison point pre-workout is asleep.”

Despite that, my habit for the month of August is to attempt to work out every morning before I work. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I have various rowing routines. Tuesday is strength training. Thursday is core day, with optional strength or rowing sessions on top of it. If I really need a break, I can walk on Thursdays instead. 

I’m starting my second week of this. I hate it. To be blunt, I love working out, but I don’t love anything enough to want it before I have coffee. 

But it also works. Or at least, it’s working now. If I remember, I’ll write again about how it’s going in a month. 

There’s something about starting with the hard thing. I don’t mean eating the frog. I mean just doing something hard. It’s the same dopamine hit you get from a hard Dark Souls boss. Maybe it’s because I’m chronically depressed, but doing one hard thing before my brain can talk me out of it is the only way I know to do two hard things. A part of your brain says: I can do this. I am not a failure. I’ve done this hard thing. I can do anything.”

Doing the hard thing gives you the strength to ask the most important question: What’s next?”

Strasbourg

Outside the Strasbourg Cathedral, the gigantic gothic architecture cast a tall shadow even in the mid-afternoon sun. A woman with a white painted face like a clown in a Fellini film extended her hand to shake mine. She appeared seemingly out of nowhere, but in the menagerie of tourists (even on a rainy afternoon like that), it was easy for even a clown to disappear. 

Without thinking, I accepted her hand and shook it. She asked for a photo. We took a selfie. 

The clown spoke to me in French. I do understand the language at this level, but from the way she gestured to the small wallet bulge in my jeans pocket, I knew what she was asking. For what rendered service, I asked. I noticed my wife, much smarter than I am, was long gone, practically halfway to the Petit France district four blocks away. 

The woman gathered that I do not speak much French, and found other ways to demonstrate what she wanted. She rubbed her stomach, and said baby, feed baby,” over and over again, while pointing at my wallet. I doubted she was pregnant; she looked old enough to be my mother, and while my mother is not old, her becoming pregnant now would be cause for a new addition to the Old Testament. But who would dare speak poorly about miracles outside the great Strasbourg Cathedral?

I felt embarrassed for having fallen into this obvious tourist trap. My first reaction was anger for being played a fool, but nobody should be faulted for wanting a selfie with a Fellini-inspired clown. The trap was not worth my anger. I was the victim of only a minor fraud. It was better to pay the fine, remember the lesson, and keep some level of my dignity. 

The Mickey Mouse impersonator I saw only moments later was likely even less trustworthy.

Default apps in 2023

I love a nerdy blogging trend. I don’t remember where I saw this first, but I know I read Matt Birchler’s post, Manuel Moreale’s post, and Chris Coyier’s post in my RSS feed. Robb Knight has a list of others who have shared their app defaults. Here are mine:

  • ✉️ Mail service: Fastmail
  • 📬 Mail client: Apple Mail
  • ✅ Tasks: Omnifocus (beta testing OF4)
  • 📰 RSS service: Feedly, although I really ought to move to Feedbin
  • 🗞️ RSS client: Reeder
  • ⌨️ Launcher: Alfred
  • ☁️ Cloud storage: iCloud and Dropbox
  • 📸 Camera: Usually my iPhone 15 Pro, but when purposefully shooting, I bring my Canon R6
  • 🌅 Photo editing and library: Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, and Apple Photos
  • 📆 Calendar: Fantastical, but if it weren’t for the quick even creation, I’d use Apple Calendar.
  • 🌐 Web browser: Safari for personal, 1 Chrome window for each active work projects. (John Siracusa is my browser window and tab collecting spirit animal. Right now I have 89 tabs open across five browser windows — and I’m still collecting links for this post.)
  • 🔖 Bookmarks: Pinboard for text, Eagle for interesting visuals (I highly recommend Eagle)
  • 🗄️ Backups: Time Machine and Backblaze on every Mac, Synology for cold storage (also backed up to a remote Mac), iCloud for iOS devices. (This is very overkill, but I lost 1TB of photos during my stint as a wedding photographer because multiple backup drives simultaneously died while I was away over Christmas vacation, so I’m hardcore about this now.)
  • 🎙️ Podcasts: Overcast
  • 🎶 Music: Apple Music
  • 🎹 DAW: Logic Pro
  • 🍿 Movie tracking: Letterboxd. I also share everything I watch on my own website
  • 🧑‍💻 Code editor: Nova, with occasional Visual Studio Code usage
  • 📝 Notes: Obsidian
  • ✍️ Writing: iA Writer
  • 🎨 Design: Figma for UI, Illustrator for some icons and logos, InDesign for print work, Apple Freeform for sketching
  • 🔐 Passwords: 1Password
  • 💸 Budgeting: YNAB (I can’t recommend YNAB enough. I hate talking about money, and YNAB has made planning and budgeting finances with my wife tolerable.)

A lot of software on this list hasn’t changed in many years — sometimes close to a decade. I am far more likely to change the physical hardware in my life than I am to change my software tools.

Additional software I’d like: Ulysses with backlinks. Notion without the fiddling.