Sunday Serial: Winterfest 2025 Software Deals, Trickster for macOS, and Planning the Week Between

I rolled up to New Brunswick to pick up Aaron Thursday afternoon, and we made it back home in very good time. His little Mini Cooper is a blast to drive, and feels solid on the turnpike at speed. How come no-one understands how to drive on multi-lane highways? I spend the whole ride up bobbing and weaving.

Winterfest 2025

The holiday software deals continue apace, and Winterfest is here again. Many of the stalwart apps are back this year, including Tinderbox, Scrivener, and BBEdit are there, along with some others I’ve been curious about. I’m test-driving Cotypist now.

Trickster for macOS

Speaking of Winterfest, Trickster was on sale, so I purchased a license. I’ve tried Trickster out before, and really liked the app. It’s kind of a Finder smart folder on steroids.

One of the features I discovered is that, when you invoke Trickster, with a click of the mouse, you can restrict the filter results to only show the application you’re working in. Sometimes, you want to see all of the files you’ve worked on in the last 24 hours, but you can restrict the filter to just Word docs, for example. I created a filter to show me all of the Bike and OmniOutliner files I’ve been working on.

I’d love to see support for Safari tabs in Trickster, although I don’t think that’s its intended use.

One critical limitation is that Trickster can’t help you with apps that store files within their own database. For example, you can’t see documents you’ve been working on in Ulysses, or notes in Notes, or maps in MindNode Next. You can see those applications, though.

And: Integrations with Hookmark and Launchbar!

The Week Between, or TWB25

I’ve adopted the naming scheme that I use at work to designate projects and reference materials to the Week Between, one of my favorite times of the year. For matters pertaining to the school year, I’ve been doing “SY26” for this fiscal year, and projections for the next year using SY27.

I like to list things to do for the week between, unsurprisingly, in various software pockets; OmniFocus is an obvious place for list making, but I started last year farting around with MindNode a bit, and I cracked open my plans from last year and updated. MindNode is very much a mind mapping tool, but the overlap between it an a classic outliner is significant; you could easily use it as one of the prettiest outliners around and never venture into mind map mode.

I find OmniFocus is a great place to get a list of things together as they come to mind, but then I use MindNode to organize the activities and ideas I have into specific days of the week. It’s not a hard and fast schedule, but it keeps me from letting the days laze by without any purpose. Not that those kinds of days aren’t rewarding, too.

Grilled Ribeye, Hold the Sous Vide

Rhonda mentioned that she wanted to have grilled steak, a cut that hadn’t spent the afternoon in the sous vide tank, since it had been a while. (It was a veiled complaint for sure.) We happened to have a frozen ribeye on hand, as well as some chicken, and were trying to use up some frozen foods, so onto the meal plan it went.

I gave it a quick trip on the Weber over some hot lump charcoal, and we were both really impressed. Sous vide is nothing if not consistent, but it’s hard to beat the char you get from a nice dry cut of beef. They don’t always come out like this, but I’m glad when they do.

Wide Angle Snowscapes: Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 7-14mm f/2.8 PRO

I took some pics with the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 7-14mm f/2.8 PRO, and I have a lot to learn. It was pretty damn cold out yesterday afternoon!

Sunday Serial: TineeOwl Arctic Case foriPad Mini, FastScripts for macOS, and Bellview Winery’s San Marco ’23

There’s a slow, steady fall of snow outside today: it’s a dense, heavy snow. Rhonda and I enjoyed dinner at Greenview Inn Friday night; I had the duck. Yesterday, we check out Bellview’s December cheese plate, which was “Santa and Friends.” We supplemented with some salami from Bagliani’s and some sardines for me.

Greenview Inn’s Game Special–Duck Breast

TineeOwl iPad mini

My general rule of thumb is that an apple-branded case or folio is probably the best for my usage; I’ve largely stuck to Apple iPhone cases (most recently, a Beats case) and Apple’s Magic Keyboards and Folios for iPads. I have a nice green Apple folio for my iPad mini, which I like a lot.

The thing about the mini is, it begs to be carried around and not stuffed in a bag. I like to keep it in the car with me, on the passenger seat when it’s empty, and put it on the counter when I’m making drinks and things.

Apple’s folio has a great texture, but you don’t want to get it wet or stain it. One of the things that make their folios great–magnetic connection to the device–keep it from being reliable protectors in the event of a drop.

Enter the TineeOwl Arctic case. It’s more of a wrap-around phone cover, a clear rubbery plastic case that protects the back and sides of the iPad, with a decent lip to keep the screen from contacting a table or desk surface if you lay it face down.

The TineeOwl Arctic has grooves for the iPad’s TouchID wake/sleep button and the Apple Pencil, so it doesn’t interfere with the Mini’s helpful touch features.

It can feel a little rubbery when you’re reading and holding the device from the side; the edge of the case will pull away from the device, depending upon how you’re holding it. That can feel cheap and one imagines serial removals of the case will one day render it too stretched out to be useful. On the other hand, in a landscape of overpriced accessories, TineeOwl’s pricing is such that you don’t worry about it.

And hey: now I can see the six-color logo sticker on the back!

FastScripts

FastScripts is a utility from Red Sweater Software (purveyor of Mac-assed Mac apps, including the excellent MarsEdit) that collects your AppleScripts and gives you access to them via Finder’s menu bar. You can set a global keyboard shortcut to expose the menu, and even per-script shortcuts, and search your scripts. I’ve tried pushing a lot of my favorite Applescripts to Shortcuts, but in cases where I’m just executing scripts via Shortcuts, why bother?

One of my favorites is this script to create what I call a “classic” Finder window: no sidebar, toolbar, nuthin.

tell application &quot;Finder&quot;
    activate
    if (count of Finder windows) = 0 then
        make new Finder window
    end if
end tell

tell application &quot;System Events&quot;
    tell process &quot;Finder&quot;
        try
            -- Toggle the Toolbar
            if exists menu item &quot;Hide Toolbar&quot; of menu &quot;View&quot; of menu bar 1 then
                click menu item &quot;Hide Toolbar&quot; of menu &quot;View&quot; of menu bar 1
            else if exists menu item &quot;Show Toolbar&quot; of menu &quot;View&quot; of menu bar 1 then
                click menu item &quot;Show Toolbar&quot; of menu &quot;View&quot; of menu bar 1
            end if

            -- Toggle the Status Bar
            if exists menu item &quot;Hide Status Bar&quot; of menu &quot;View&quot; of menu bar 1 then
                click menu item &quot;Hide Status Bar&quot; of menu &quot;View&quot; of menu bar 1
            else if exists menu item &quot;Show Status Bar&quot; of menu &quot;View&quot; of menu bar 1 then
                click menu item &quot;Show Status Bar&quot; of menu &quot;View&quot; of menu bar 1
            end if

            -- Toggle the Path Bar
            if exists menu item &quot;Hide Path Bar&quot; of menu &quot;View&quot; of menu bar 1 then
                click menu item &quot;Hide Path Bar&quot; of menu &quot;View&quot; of menu bar 1
            else if exists menu item &quot;Show Path Bar&quot; of menu &quot;View&quot; of menu bar 1 then
                click menu item &quot;Show Path Bar&quot; of menu &quot;View&quot; of menu bar 1
            end if

        on error errMsg
            display dialog &quot;An error occurred: &quot; &amp; errMsg buttons {&quot;OK&quot;} default button 1
        end try
    end tell
end tell

Bellview Winery’s San Marco ’23

Bellview owner Jimmy Quarella said the ’23 San Marco was just bottled, but it’s not for sale in said vessel as it has to settle a bit. It is, however, on tap at the winery, and after a taste yesterday, I couldn’t help but commit to a growler to take home. It’s a dry red, medium-bodied by my tastes. I’ve had San Marco blended into other reds they concoct, but this is my first time having the pure distillation.

Thoughts on the Future of Liquid Glass After Alan Dye’s Departure

Adam Engst:

Liquid Glass can look elegant, particularly on the iPhone, but iOS wasn’t unattractive before. More importantly, I haven’t yet felt that Liquid Glass’s vaunted transparency does anything to make me more productive. Despite Dye’s departure (which appears to have been a surprise to upper management), Apple is unlikely to reverse course on Liquid Glass. We can hope that Dye’s successor focuses more on enhancing functionality to better align with the Steve Jobs quote that Apple badly misused when introducing Liquid Glass: “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

Macworld:

I hope that means we see a return to the ideas that made Apple software great in years gone by. A stronger emphasis on user experience, an obsession over small details, and a renewed passion for interfaces and controls. An appreciation of the foundational ideas that helped Apple’s products reach the pinnacle of software design.

Eric Schwarz:

I actually really like how Liquid Glass came out on iOS, although it does need some tweaks to be better from a usability standpoint. I hate it on my Mac and would gladly go back to the Leopard through Mavericks era if I could—there’s so much that feels unpredictable and cluttered, despite every marketing blurb being about clarity and focusing on content.

MG Seigler:

It’s obviously insanely hard to overhaul a UI – let alone across multiple major operating systems – but I’m going to go ahead an guess that Liquid Glass will transform to be both less liquid-y and less glass-y starting in relative short order.

Louie Mantia:

I don’t expect any big changes because I don’t think he or Apple are looking at this as an opportunity to undo Jony and Alan’s influence on the company, but I do sincerely think this will all feel better with Lemay’s leadership.

I like a lot of things about Liquid Glass on iOS and iPadOS, but there are some horsey interface elements that I’d rather see gone for good. The Mac might be the least impacted of those three platforms, but it’s my favorite place to be and necessary for me to get things done, and I generally see it as, at best, as livable, and in some cases a serious regression. And OmniOutliner 6’s beta? Yuck. I’m hoping that the swole interface elements shrink and sharpen.

OmniOutliner 6, with Liquid Glass, on iPadOS

The Inspector Button on Tahoe in OmniFocus

22nd Wedding Anniversary

Rhonda and I got married 22 years today, also on a Sunday. There was a football game on I didn’t care about. We were off to Bermuda the next day. We celebrated today with a spritz and some Chinese takeout. We did plenty of celebrating Friday!

Sprtizing

Us Kids

Nifty Fifty: The Panasonic Lumix G 25mm f/1.7

As is the case with baseball, I have intended to learn about photography for a while now. Since upgrading my Olympus E-PL5 with an OM Systems E-M10 Mark IV, and then subsequently finding a new use case for my E-PL5, I’m starting to pay more attention to gear and technique.

The E-PL5 came with a kit lens, an M.Zuiko zoom that shoots from 14mm to 44. I understood that this was some kind of zoom lens, which to a budget-minded buyer dipping a toe into the prosumer world of digital cameras, makes a lot of sense. I had, in short order, added a 17mm Panasonic Lumix 1.7 pancake lens to the E-PL5, and that was pretty much curtains for the kit lens.

For the rare instances when I might need some serious magnification, I purchased a cheap Olympus 40-150mm 1:4–5.6 Zoom Lens.

The kit lens, though, is neat in that you can switch between focal lengths that equal 35mm and 50mm, a lens shooting at which is referred to as a “nifty fifty.” And having researched lenses a bit, the kit lens actually is well regarded. It is, however, plasticky.

I decided to order a used Panasonic LUMIX G 25mm f/1.7 off of eBay in the interest of experimenting with this length. I have nothing but praise for the 17mm wide angle LUMIX, but the temptation of a “nifty fifty,” with its lifelike perspective, was too irresistible to bear.

Sunday Serial: Cape May, NJ Edition

Rhonda and I celebrated our 22nd wedding anniversary this weekend. We both took off on Friday and headed down to Cape May, NJ, for an overnight. My mom was generous to send us for our 20th anniversary in 2023–we stayed at the comfy but swanky Virginia Hotel, and dined at The Ebbitt Room. We liked it so much that we went back and stayed at Peter Shields Inn and Restaurant the following year, and then again last spring at the Buttonwood Boutique.

Christmas in Cape May is a busy time, and it’s hard to find a room period, let alone one at a reasonable price. Because we decided on this trip a bit late for planning purposes, we ended up staying at the Cape, which is a nicely converted motel on Route 9, just outside of the historic downtown area. I would totally stay there again, especially if Cold Springs, Cape May Winery, and Hawk Haven are your points of interest. If you want the historic downtown experience, it’s a bit of a drive and a crowd to navigate to boot.

Cape May Winery

Our visit to the Cape May Winery was not our first, but we were excited to go back, as we really enjoyed our visit there last April. Sadly, they did not have their excellent rosé available. We ordered the brie plate, which was a menu special. It was kind of disappointing; for eight bucks, you got three pieces of cold bread smeared with an uninspired brie. The charcuterie plate was good, though. We tried their Chardonnay and White Blends, and I preferred the latter. The Chardonnay was pretty bright and tart for a barrel-aged specimen. We took a few bottles with us so that we’d have some choices to take with us to dinner.

Il Riccio

I made a rez at Ił Riccio , which is a BYOB in the heard of the madness that is Cape May at Christmastime. It is a charming old house, a la Peter Shields and the Washington Inn, and we dined in a dim corner of a small back room. We split the fried calamari, and then one of the whole fishes, which was filleted and served table side, with a side of spaghetti. Everything was great, and the dessert we split was excellent as well. Eight bucks will get you some bread, too, which made us roll our eyes. But hey: limoncello shot on the house after dinner.

Home Again Home Again Jiggity Jig

We came back home via Route 47, which is always how I got down to Wildwood when I was younger. We had omelettes at Mel’s Place, a nice diner in Villas. We had some of our own salami and cheese, and Rhonda redeemed yesterday’s brie let down by making her own version. So that was dinner!

Duck and Demeter

I forgot to include this pic in last night’s duck post. We grabbed a growler of Bellview’s Demeter Friday. It’s a dry red, blended from their San Marco, Merlot, Chambourcin and Petit Verdot. Paired nicely.

Sous Vide Duck Confit

Dad was kind enough to ship eight duck legs to us. With Aaron home for a holiday visit, we figured it would be a good time to make them. Rhonda vocalized an idea, briefly, that we could just nip out for a bite with him, but he had mentioned to me over text that he hadn’t had home-cooked food for a spell. So I voted for the duck legs.

I did a little research on Serious Eats and found some compelling articles on the value of sous vide for this particular version of preparation, but used this one as my guide. I put the legs in on Saturday afternoon at 155 after a quick sprinkle of garlic and salt, and let them go for about 26 hours.

I lit the grill using Kingsford briquettes, hoping for a slower, more stable burn that I get with lump (my personal favorite for most applications).

While the grill came up to temp, Rhonda roasted some Yukon Gold potatoes in some duck fat (which Dad also generous to send along with the legs), some beets, and broccolini.

I checked with Kagi Assistant for the grilling instructions; it recommended (without obsequiously complimenting my intentions or taste) that indirect heat, covered, for 10-15 minutes would be good. I sprinkled some apple wood chunks from Thursday’s turkey on the grill and covered about 10 minutes before I put the legs on.

I would have left them on the grill a bit longer, but we didn’t want to delay dinner since Aaron was getting picked up around 5 pm. In hindsight, we did have a bit more time, but we all enjoyed every bite.

Sunday Serial: Black Friday & Cyber Monday Software Deals

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone, and with that, another birthday. In addition to hosting Thanksgiving, my parents took Rhonda, Aaron, and me out to Rocco’s Townhouse in Hammonton to celebrate my turning 51. It was, once again, excellent. I have some duck legs in the sous vide tank right now, which we’ll have around 4 pm before Aaron heads back up to New Brunswick for the final act of his first semester as a Freshman.

Black Friday is a great time to score some deals on software you’ve been ogling. The other side of that coin: It’s also an opportunity to drop some virtual coin on apps you don’t need, but want. All good! Here are some notables for you Mac nerds. I also ordered a Samsung T9 to replace Rhonda’s iMac’s spinning hard drives, which I’ll repurpose for something else.

Unclutter App Editors Choice

Unclutter has a collection of very cool utilities. It’s also a great way to update your Cleanshot X sub if you’re due soon. I grabbed Downie, which was featured on the latest Talk Show, as well as Forklift 4. I like apps like Forklift for interfacing with Google Drive instead of running the native app.

Take Control Books

Take Control Books is offering 25% titles, and 50% off their subscription-ish Premium tier (free updates to books after iterative updates). I grabbed these:
• Take Control of Photos – Ebook
• Take Control of iPhone Photography – Ebook
• Take Control of Notes – Ebook

Supasend

I tried Supasend when it first came out. I reminds me a bit of Drafts and Remind Faster, both of which apps prioritize input and quick filing to another application (in the case of Drafts, just about any app, and in the case of Remind Faster, Apple’s Reminders).

Acorn

Acorn competes in the same creative space as Pixelmator, and I’ve owned a license since it came out. It’s a photo editor for people who don’t need or want the complexity or expense of Photoshop. Developer Gus Mueller has been creating great Mac software for decades, and Acorn is his crowning achievement.

Retrobatch

I also have been trying out Retrobatch; I take a lot of pics for Uncorrected, and would very much like to streamline my resizing workflow (WordPress doesn’t like photos above a certain size). The excellent MarsEdit will take care of this for you, but I often post from Ulysses, because I like to be able to use my iPad to post as well. Retrobatch’s layout reminds me of Audio Hijack, with modules you string together into a module and save for batch processing images.

MailMaven

I’ve been using MailMaven since it came out in beta earlier this year, and I have a great affection for it. I can’t stop using MailMate for work email, but I do like having all of my accounts in this productivity beast. I figured I’d pay the first year introductory price and decide if I wanted to continue the subscription after that, but this price was hard to pass out.

DevonThink

DevonThink is an impossibly feature-rich document manager and note keeper. The most recent version, version 4, is available for a 25% discount. I stopped using DevonThink after moving to Windows for a spell, and now that I’m back in the Apple ecosystem, I’ve been using Notes because I love handwriting notes and Notes’ amazing Smart Script.

More Black Friday 2025 Goodies

I was peeking around in Glass for samples of pics taken with the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 7-14mm f/2.8 PRO and saw that they’ve partnered with Darkroom to advertise Darkroom+ for $19.99 for a year. So I grabbed that.

Thankful for Turkey

Dad got a fine turkey from Butcher Box for Thanksgiving. I did the dry brine thing and smoked it on the Weber Bullet. The bird, near the end of the dry brine, was a grim sight. It produced a great dish after a leisurely smoke on the Weber, though. As good as could have wished, happily. Stuffing, Brussels sprouts, cranberry sauce, mushroom gravy, family.

Turkey, Dry Brining Just Before the Cook

Bike: A Stellar Outliner for the Mac

I mentioned OmniOutliner 6 in a recent Sunday Serial. It’s a great Mac app, incredibly powerful if you need it, and a simple outliner if that’s all you need, too. I harbor a great affection for OmniOutliner; it came bundled with my some of my earliest Macs from the heady early days of OS X, and in those days, there was a dearth of software. OmniOutliner was a NeXT app that moved over to the Mac, and will always have a place in my heart–and my SSD.

But this post isn’t about OmniOutliner. It’s about Bike.

Bike launched nearly twenty years after I found OmniOutliner, from the great developerJesse Grosjean, who operates Hog Bay Software. Hog Bay has always made fascinating writing apps: WriteRoom, one of the earliest Markdown writing apps available for both the Mac and iPad, FoldingText, TaskPaper, and most recently, Bike.

Digression Alert: TaskPaper

I have always loved Hog Bay’s TaskPaper, even though I don’t use it. I have a license, because I want this app to thrive. It’s a simple, text-based task manager, and there’s nothing about it I don’t like. My professional life and its attendant needs don’t scale to its parsimony, but that’s not TaskPaper’s fault. It is, in spirit and function, essential–not in the sense that it’s a must-have, but that it’s born of a pure, distilled focus. It could not possibly attract any kind of casual fan base; the person who downloads, uses, and purchases TaskPaper is a rare bird.

What’s beautiful about TaskPaper is what’s beautiful about html: you type plain text, but the interaction you have with what you typed is decidedly–magically– rendered. In the same way that modern Markdown writing applications render your Markdown syntax on the fly, TaskPaper recognizes particular formatting characters, and render the results in a functional way that harness the power of the Mac’s GUI.

Mac Nerds Only

Hog Bay’s wares are pretty much Mac only. You can open most of their file formats on your iPad or iPhone, but it’s not a simple multi-platform affair a la Notes, OmniFocus, or OmniOutliner.

Again, this isn’t so much Hog Bay’s hangup as mine. As I need the complexity of OmniFocus, I want to hop between Mac, iPad, and iPhone.

I do, however, like to imagine myself as the inevitable old duffer I’ll become, with simpler needs than I have now, using TaskPaper for imposing a modicum of order to what will surely be an inordinate amount of farting around.

Bike

Back to Bike! I found myself this week needing to write a summary for our legal counsel, and in a fit of indecision, prevaricated on which text app to write up my thoughts. BBEdit? Notes? Drafts?

And the thought seized me: Hey! Bike!

You can easily cobble together a simple outline in Bike. It tis built for outlining. But it’s a great rich text editor, too, so you can use it that way. It’s less intimidating than an IDE or text editor like BBEdit, but it’s dead simple to use. It’s markdown friendly, but boasts its own file format, which you can render simply by changing the file suffix.

At the office, I tried to format some text, and Bike prompted me to upgrade my license, which had lapsed. I didn’t need to–but I wanted to. I want Bike around. I want it around for a long, long time. Just like TaskPaper.

It’s on sale for Black Friday. Check out Bike!

Whitman Divination at 51

The Marginalian:

Each year on my birthday, I perform a “Whitman divination”: I conjure up the most restless question on my mind, open Leaves of Grass with my eyes closed, and let my blind finger fall on a verse; without fail, Whitman opens some profound side door to my question that becomes its own answer, one inaccessible to the analytical mind.

An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days

I’m 51 today! I tried the Whitman Divination in observance. I landed on “I Sing the Body Electric,” #9:

O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women, nor the likes of the parts of you,
I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the soul, (and that they are the soul,)
I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and that they are my poems,
…
The exquisite realization of health;
O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only.
but of the soul,
O I say now these are the soul!

This live–our lives–at once independent and subjective, yet connected, intersubjective. Individually and quietly navigated, yet concentric with each other.