10NOV2024

Happy Sunday, everyone! It’s been a week. We all have our own unique ways of handling stress, and here are a few of mine from the last several days—watching Harrison Ford deliver some of the best performances of his career in the excellent second season of Shrinking, finally starting the hilarious No One Wants This, revisiting Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, and doubling down on my meditation practice with Henry Shukman’s beautiful Zen-inspired app The Way for iOS and Android. I also started Neal Stephenson’s latest book, Polostan, which has been a blast.

Most importantly, I’ve been really trying to focus on gratitude for all the wonderful people in my life and online communities. Thank you all for reading, sharing, supporting, and being a part of this awesome little group. It means a lot.

On to the good stuff:

• 💪🏽 ‎Dropset: Gym Tracker - After a series of injuries, I’ve been in a rut with my workout tracking. The app I’ve used for years feels abandoned by its developers and is clunky to use. Enter Dropset: a robust, Scandinavian-minimalist app that makes it easy to create and track routines so you know exactly what weight to lift, how far to run, ruck, or row, etc., on any given day. Best of all, it’s built by an indie dev who’s very engaged with ongoing updates.

• ⛺ HEST Memory Foam Camping Mattress* - Cooler weather in central Texas means it’s time to start planning our first camping trip of the season. Last year, we got two HEST foam camping mattresses that totally upped our game. They’re big, heavy, and pricey—sold yet? But hear me out: they’re almost as comfortable as my bed at home, which makes camping way more restful. No more waking up feeling like a stale extra-crispy chalupa. Love these things. *Amazon-affiliate link to support the site.

• 👨🏽‍💻 Alcove for MacOS - Alcove is a beautiful, simple utility that recreates the iPhone’s Dynamic Island on your MacBook Pro’s notch. It displays info like the current song, volume changes, screen brightness, and more. I’ve seen other apps try this, but Alcove’s attention to detail and animations make it a standout. Thanks to Tyler for the tip!

• 📲 OneTap for iOS - Ever find yourself typing out the same text over and over, or constantly sending the same images or files? Whether it’s a standard customer support reply or directions to your house, OneTap is a game-changer. Unlike Text Replacements, which can handle quick phrases but not long blocks of text, OneTap is a “magic clipboard” that sits in your iPhone’s keyboard, letting you insert frequently used text, code snippets, URLs, photos, PDFs, and more into any text field. This app has saved me so much time over the last month.

• ⌨️ Yuzu Keycaps - Speaking of keyboards, Yuzu Keycaps just launched as a platform for making custom keycaps for mechanical keyboards. I love the look of their keycaps, and the user interface for customizing colors, fonts, legends, etc., is super smooth and approachable. I’m excited to give these a try!

That’s it for this week! Be kind to yourselves and each other.