It’s pseudo-fall in the Bay Area, with high 70s days and 50s nights and a chance of massive forest fire. I’m preparing for my Japan ride, and wondering if it’ll be cold this year there. Broadly, it’s been the hottest year on record in many places, but I’m hopeful it’ll be 50-60 all day while I’m riding around Kita Kanto. Today as I rode for four hours to Paradise Cay and back, I tested my new little light mount which will allow me to use a front bag without completely going lightless. If bike trip reports are your thing, watch for one by the holiday times.
There’s a song for hundreds of names, but this is mine. Haley sent this to me, and I don’t think either of us know why this guy makes these songs. I’ll chalk it up to weird YouTube.
There are a lot of fascinating note taking ideas out there lately, but this one is both strange and compelling. Despite writing a lot, I don’t take a ton of notes. Most meetings I attend have a note-taker, or primarily exist to check-in or come to a decision, and usually I create a to-do for any follow-ups. I think if I did product management or wrote fiction and long-form prose I might employ one of these strategies. With any seemingly complex note app/system/plan, I do worry it can get in the way of actually writing. I keep a paper diary most days, with a light smattering of the days work and feelings, but sometimes this is just an excuse to use a cool pen.
Online, and even for this newsletter, my favorite pen is IA Writer, using the ink of markdown. That’s a tortured metaphor but hey, this is my newsletter. If you’ve never learned markdown, it’s pretty simple, and I prefer it to manually writing HTML for my blog posts. Even if you’re writing for other means, I’ve found it easier and more pleasant to type markdown syntax than faff around with clicking to insert or change styles in a rich text editor like Google Docs or shudder Microsoft Word. Most good editors, and even Google Docs, now allow you to view a preview of your doc that renders the markdown into viewable rich text, or HTML, and exporting to a doc file or something else is simple.
Summer is over, but before it was I enjoyed a bit of summer sausage, which I found out is related to cervelat. Growing up in Texas I ate a lot of sausage and liverwurst—cheaper meat offcuts were a favorite of my downwardly mobile family—and still have a taste for cured goodness. I try to eat more unprocessed food as I age though, because I’m eternally conscious of my dad dying at 53 o colon cancer. If you ever wonder why I exercise so much, part of it is in an effort to not follow suite.
That got dark, so let’s bring it back up with a little language fun. Both for its long history of usage, and the reality that language changes, “comprised” can be used in different ways:
1. The peloton comprises the twenty cyclists.
2. The peloton comprised of twenty cyclists
One man really hates the latter use. Maybe he’s a humorless pedant, but you don’t have to be—if someone you love says “comprised of” know that it’s fine and you probably understand them.
Closing
My legs are tired and Snorri is sleeping next to me, which is a sign I need to finish this newsletter, schedule it for the morning, and get to the serious matter of deep relaxation and rest. I’ll try to send a few more of these before the end of the year, but if you’re reading this right now, thanks so much! It really means a lot when friends have told me they read my newsletter, or found something cool from it. I don’t ever intend to “monetize” this thing, and if I can’t mail it out easily in the future, it’ll probably revert to just a blog, but until then let me know what you think (if you want), or hit me up if you’re in the bay and ever want to get a drink or talk about weird internet things. Happy spooky season, space cowgirls~