Weeknotes No. 23-42

The cooler autumn weather means it’s time to fire up the Solo Stove.

• 📖 Thanks to this page, I was able to get something working that’s been bugging me for a while: how to do a dictionary lookup using the native Mac Dictionary app, when highlighting and right-clicking a word in Firefox. Do do this under MacOS Sonoma 14.0, I went to System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Services, then under “Searching” enable “Look Up in Dictionary”

• ⚙️ I made more changes to my weblog automation scripts this week, including

  • Update to my microbot, which periodically checks my Mastodon feed for new toots. If a toot contains the #reading, #listening, or #tinkering hashtags, then it uses the toot content to update my /now page. Otherwise, it adds the toot to my microblog archive.
  • Updated pastebot to pull all recent content into the paste. This gives me the ability to edit items after the fact without going into DynamoDB.
  • Updated the schedules so that most of the Lambdas are running just once an hour.
  • Updated the drawing too.

• 🧞 Some people (apparently) love predictive text when typing. I am not one of those people. I think this was introduced with the latest MacOS Sonoma update. At least, that’s when I started noticing it. I turned that shit off.

• ☕️ I have an old Keurig coffee machine that doesn’t get a lot of play any more. The last time I tried using it, it complained that it needed descaled and refused to brew. I think it was angry that I had all but replaced it with a shiny new Nespresso Vertuo. So it’s been sitting on a shelf for several months. I decided this week I was either going to get it working again or get rid of it for goo. I had to take the damn thing apart and I broke a bunch of plastic clips along the way but I did eventually get it descaled and working again. Now it’s got a prominent place in my office and seems happy again—at least for now.

• 🍪 Fall means baking at our house. I made some pumpkin bread and chocolate chip cookies. Yum!

• ⌨️ Thanks to Andy for pointing me to Monkeytype, a “minimalistic and customizable typing test.” I don’t know if my scores are good or not but I do know they’ll fall precipitously as soon as numbers are added to the mix.

• 📓 My quest for a OneNote replacement continues. This week I started playing around with Bear. (I’ve also been testing Obsidian and haven’t been loving it TBH.) After just a short time, I already prefer Bear. The interface is more intuitive, the editor is more user-friendly (but still handles markdown nicely), and the Pro option is much less expensive that Obsidian Sync. We might have a winner, but more testing is needed.

Media Highlights

• 📺 Watched the first three episodes of Frasier and it reminded me why I enjoyed the original so much. It’s pretty much the same setup as the original, but back in Boston and with David, Freddie, and Jess standing in for Niles, Martin, and Daphne. But who cares? It made me laugh a lot.

• 📺 Lessons in Chemistry and The Morning Show are just barely good enough to keep me watching. I tried watching Wellmania but I couldn’t hang. Still working my way through The Terror, season 1.

• 📰 My first issue of County Highway arrived this week. My family had some fun at my expense but I reminded them that sometimes it’s good to slow down. As far as the paper itself goes, it’s like McSweeney’s meets the Utne Reader. (Although I’m reminded that Utne stopped publishing their print magazine a few years ago.)

• 🎥 The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is a delightfully weird short film, one of four by Wes Anderson adapted from short stories by Roald Dahl. I’m looking forward to watching the other three!