2020-01-13
When and how static stretching can actually work.
Never Be Royals
I’ll be honest: I’ve never really been that interested in the Royal Family, and I’ve only followed in passing the Megan Markle / Prince Harry departure drama. As an American, I don’t read British tabloids, so it was difficult for me to evaluate the whole situation. Was Markle really getting a raw deal in the press, or might the whole thing be overblown?
Until, that is, I came across this Buzzfeed article, comparing coverage of Megan Markle and Kate Middleton. In the same publications. For doing literally the exact same things. After which, all I can say is: boy do I fully endorse the move.
Good luck to them both, and to baby whatever-his-or-her-name-is. Now back to ignoring the Royals per usual. God knows we have plenty of disasters to keep an eye on right here at home.
2020-01-12
Three theories for why you have no time.
Quota
Despite my consistent 2020 start, it appears I couldn’t quite wrangle posts here the last few days. The culprit: a ton of writing and editing I’ve been doing on other projects.
Apparently, I only have some fixed number of words in me each day. Once I hit that hard limit, my brain is cooked.
Sadly, I still have a bunch of other writing left to do, so I’m only popping in briefly, sparing this hundred or so words to try and keep the new/old blogging habit alive. Now back to the salt mines!
2020-01-10
Useful for lifters: your muscle and strength potential.
2020-01-07
Teaching a dog to ‘talk’ using a soundboard.
App-etizing
I remember, years ago, reading (possibly in the excellent Design of Everyday Things?) about an architect who designed a college campus without any paved paths between the buildings. Instead, he simply planted grass everywhere, then came back a year later, and paved over the grassless paths worn down where people had actually walked.
I was thinking of that story this morning, as I looked at my phone. As I wrote about recently, I tend to work best when I can sit down and focus. But, sadly, my schedule is too fractured, and (even with my best attempts at streamlining and focusing) my to-do list too long to make everything fit. So, this year, I’ve been trying to do more on my phone, wedging tasks into the interstitial chunks of my day. I journaled on the subway ride to work this morning, for example, and I’m banging out this post on the small screen while on a quick afternoon coffee break.
As a result, I’m suddenly using a bunch of apps that I hadn’t regularly before. Which meant it was probably time to rearrange my home screen.
But rather than my normal approach – trying to plan the theoretically perfect layout – I’m instead taking a page from that college architect: each time I use an app, I drag it to the top left of my home screen. I’m planning to keep it up for the balance of the week. After which, I should have my apps organized by actual priority, sorted into the paths of my real-world daily use.
Photo coming once that’s done. I’m curious to see how it ends up.
New Year, Old Diet?
M: Too many free radicals, that’s your problem.
BOND: Free radicals, sir?
M: Yes. They’re toxins that destroy the body and the brain. Caused by eating too much red meat and white bread, and too many dry martinis!
BOND: Then I shall cut out the white bread, sir.
– Never Say Never Again
2020-01-06
Ten years later, Kind of Bloop – an 8-bit cover of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue – still holds up.
The Daily Grind
A few years back, mid-apartment-move, I unloaded my kitchen cabinets, and discovered I owned no fewer than a dozen different devices for making coffee. From Nespresso to Aeropress, Chemex to Bialetti, with French Press, vacuum brewer, SoftBrew, and even more obscure options between.
But what I didn’t own was a coffee grinder. Which, as a reluctant coffee snob, was sort of sacrilege. Sure, I knew that coffee ground moments before brewing was far better than a bag ground in-store left to oxidize on the shelf throughout its days of use. But I was also (perhaps penny-wise and pound-foolishly) cheap.
At one point, I purchased an inexpensive blade grinder, but the results were a bit of an abortion. Insert whole beans, pour out an inconsistent mess, a potpourri that ran from large unground chunks to fine silt. A consistent grind required a burr grinder, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to spring the $200 for a Baratza or any of its competitors. So, for years I subsisted on in-store-ground beans.
Until, that is, a few weeks ago, when I stumbled across a fairly excellent review for the Secura 903B. A bit of Googling confirmed: while not anything unusual, it was perfectly capable – an automatic ceramic burr grinder that reliably makes uniform grounds. And at just $40, cheap enough that I almost couldn’t justify not buying it.
The grinder arrived on Friday. Jess and I picked up freshly-roasted beans yesterday afternoon. This morning, I (Chemex) brewed a first test run batch.
The result: why the hell did I wait so long to buy a burr grinder?
If you make coffee daily, there’s no way in the world this sucker isn’t worth the ten cents a day it will cost you to make far better cups through the rest of 2020.