Practical Magic is a popular movie that revolves around the lives of two sisters who come from a long line of witches. The film, released in 1998, has gained a cult following due to its whimsical and enchanting storyline. One notable aspect of the movie is its memorable soundtrack, which features a collection of songs that perfectly complement the magical ambiance of the film. The Practical Magic song list includes a mix of both contemporary and classic tunes that capture the essence of the story. The soundtrack opens with "Put the Lime in the Coconut" by Harry Nilsson, a lively and playful song that sets the tone for the film. This is quickly followed by the hauntingly beautiful "Blackbird" by The Beatles, a song that resonates with themes of love, loss, and transformation.

All I Want Is to Re-Enact the Midnight Margaritas Scene From ‘Practical Magic’

Screenshot/Village Roadshow Pictures and Warner Bros.

Brenna Houck is a Cities Manager for the Eater network. She previously edited Eater Detroit and reported for Eater. You can follow her on the internet at @brennahouck.

Welcome to The Reheat, a space for Eater writers to explore landmark (and lukewarm) culinary moments of the recent and not-so-recent past.

I want to be a part of a witches coven, but only if we get to eat chocolate cake for breakfast and dance around the kitchen drinking margaritas at midnight like the Owens women do in Practical Magic. (Dying husband curse, I could take or leave.) While memories of the exact twists and turns of this excellent movie fade with time, what seems to stand out for most fans of this 1998 film is the singular midnight margaritas scene.

Set to Harry Nilsson’s “Coconut,” this iconic ‘90s movie moment feels like a spontaneous eruption of multi-generational joy that’s less magical for the supernatural qualities of its participants, but because it’s so unrestrictedly matriarchal. Now, 21 years after the film released (the movie’s old enough to legally order margaritas of its own), this scene remains the most talked-about. Midnight margaritas is a favorite clip shared by networks and streaming services before fresh airings of the movie, but those cuts generally divorce the sequence from Practical Magic’s sinister undertones, contributing to fans’ selective memories.

In the movie, sisters Sally Owens (Sandra Bullock) and Gillian Owens (Nicole Kidman) go to stay with their witchy aunts Bridget ‘Jet’ Owens (Dianne Wiest) and Frances Owens (Stockard Channing) in a big, beautiful Victorian mansion on a Massachusetts island (scenes were actually shot on San Juan Island in Washington state) after their mother dies from “a broken heart.” Despite the grim circumstances, it’s not too bad of a trade-off: Jet and Frances encourage eating chocolate cake for breakfast and never brushing ones’ teeth. (Witches apparently don’t fear tooth decay.)

The film opens with Channing’s matter-of-fact voice recounting the family’s curse over the aforementioned cake and a mid-day glasses of red wine on the patio. For 300 years, the Owens women have lived under the curse as outcasts in their communities, bullied by locals. Thanks to their witch ancestor Maria who was banished barefoot and pregnant to the island waiting for a lover who never came, whenever an Owens woman loves a man, he’s doomed to die.

Sally and Gillian later witness a scene in which the aunts help a townswoman conjure a questionable love spell by killing a bird. The girls take away different lessons from the transaction. Gillian can’t wait to fall literally madly in love. Sally tries to banish romance by conjuring a perfect man who couldn’t possibly exist.

As they get older, free-spirited Gillian runs off with a boyfriend, while Sally stays home. One day, deciding Sally deserves happiness, the aunts cast a spell causing her to fall for a produce guy in town — thinking because it won’t be real love she’ll avoid the curse. Sally and her husband have two daughters, and then (shockingly) he dies in a truck accident. Sally is devastated and moves back in with the aunts, but vows never to do magic.

Meanwhile, Gillian hasn’t been home in years, but is traveling the country with a “intense” boyfriend Jimmy Angelov played by Goran Visnjic (AKA that guy from ER). Angelov is sort of a Dracula cowboy from Bulgaria, who’s constantly sipping off a bottle of Diablo de Flores tequila (a brand invented for the movie). Gillian tells Sally that she occasionally drugs Jimmy with belladonna, so she can get some sleep. However, in time Angelov becomes abusive and frightening and Gillian calls for her sister Sally to come and help her.

The pair try to escape, but Jimmy abducts them at gunpoint and makes Sally drive into the desert. Elvis singing “Always on My Mind,” plays eerily on the car radio, mirroring Angelov’s dangerous obsession with Gillian. In a panic, Sally overdoses Angelov’s bottle of tequila with belladonna and he dies. The sisters then decide to drive him back to the aunt’s house and attempt to raise him from the dead on the kitchen counter. Jimmy comes to life unexpectedly mid-spell (seems like this magic isn’t so practical, after all) and immediately starts strangling Gillian, so Sally smacks him over the head with a cast iron pan. They opt, instead, to bury him in the yard.

When the aunts return, everything seems normal for a time and the episode with Angelov stays a secret — at least until the midnight margaritas. It’s easy to ignore the foreshadowing as the women party. The camera pans over the dark corner of the Owens family’s yard near the rose bushes where Jimmy is buried and toads slither around the site, but the aunt’s voices are overheard conjuring with a rhyme that riffs off Macbeth’s “Double, double, toil and trouble.” The cauldron here is a blender with lime, tequila, and salt. Gillian giddily wakes Sally up to the sound of the blender and the pair scream, “Midnight margaritas!” while kicking off the sheets to seamlessly fall into boozy uninhibited celebration, elatedly dancing and conga lining around the kitchen island.

In that moment, you want to be those women, freely communing without male interference. Then the party devolves into a more deranged drunken scene where the witches do shots around the dinner table and call each other increasingly mean and nasty names. As the aunts start to lean together and casually sing, “You were always on my mind,” Sally and Gillian turn the bottle of tequila around to reveal the gold Diablo de Flores label — Jimmy’s favorite. When Sally demands to know where the bottle came from, the aunts giggle and sing, “Someone left it on the porch!” to the tune. Sally smashes the bottle into the sink and all the women sober suddenly, as if their bacchanal was the result of possession.

In a way, this casts the midnight margaritas as one of the darkest moments of Practical Magic, with an evil, abusive male spirit invading an otherwise matriarchal sanctuary. But all is thankfully restored when the Owens’s find power in the women in the community who previously treated them as outsiders, but came together to help exercise Jimmy’s invasive spirit from Gillian’s body.

Though it is a harbinger of bad times to come for the Owens family, viewers can’t help but admire this midnight margaritas scene, which feels so real — perhaps in part because the actors were a little drunk for portions of the shoot. Replace margaritas with wine and these women could be my own family, the women staying up late after all the kids and partners have gone to bed, communing raucously over a bottle until someone inevitably ruins the vibe by raising an evil spirit or, more likely, spilling wine on the couch. Women can be guarded, especially when it comes to familial relationships. But if you’re lucky, there are moments when these barriers fall away and we get to comfortably co-exist. If that happens to be over late night/early morning margaritas and some minor spell-casting, so be it.

Practical magic song list

Shouldn't that be pretty easy to implement, too? Just a button that prevents rotation.

people discover these touches in the breech, when they need to move on for some reason or other, and all that's familiar is lost. in the words of Joni Mitchell, "you don't know what you've got till it's gone"

It depends on what kind of app you are making. Text editor is probably where the "craftsmanship" shines the most, cause there are just way too many text editors out there.

(Un)fortunately in many other cases it doesn't work like that. People use a certain app to book train tickets even its UI sucks hard and it asks 100 permissions unnecessarily, because the only alternative is get it over the counter in person.

> People use a certain app to book train tickets even its UI sucks hard and it asks 100 permissions unnecessarily

It's worth questioning why this is, as often as you can. We have a wallet app / payment system on most mobile devices that is card agnostic and gets better interfaces. Meanwhile, other services have to make do until a big player like Amazon or Ticketmaster comes along, consolidates the industry and starts charging high rents.

This is very true, and with regard to product success, the opposite effect here is a sad story - a tool full on lots of small annoyances is death by a thousand cut because each is hard to describe it doesn't seem worth explaining and so you get no telemetry for why nobody uses your product.

Not to steal your thunder about a MacOS-specific text editor, I would say that many Windows devs would say the same about Notepad++ and Sublime Text. While I am not a Windows fanboi, when I am forced to use that platform, I am always searching the Start Menu to run those text editors! I agree: The "TLC" (tender, loving, care) is well transmitted to users over the long run. The endless number of "hacker-friendly" features slowly builds a rabid fanbase.

Having been developing iOS apps since 2009, hard to believe 15 years, this is one of the finest writeups from a developer I've seen. Congrats on your hard work and the decisions you made developing your app. You made some great decisions, i.e., sticking to native development, no 3rd party dependencies, and sticking with Obj-C.

I made the move to Swift when it came out. However, there are many times I miss Obj-C and many of the advantages you mentioned. I often wonder what Obj-C would look like today if Apple had put the time and effort into it instead of Swift.

I was not aware of your app. I just downloaded it on my Mac and iPhone. It is really nice! I like the little things you have done, like the hints on the menu bars for using the Option key, and the hint disappearing when you do. I am going to continue to use it.

Thanks for sharing your experiences. Best of luck!

> I often wonder what Obj-C would look like today if Apple had put the time and effort into it instead of Swift.

It would largely look like Swift, since the goals of Swift (and most modern languages), safety and expressiveness, are fundamentally incompatible with C languages. There's really no point to basing a language on Obj-C if you're not keeping 100% compatibility, so they didn't.

There are a bunch of design decisions in Swift that make it more C++ with the corresponding binary bloat + other issues than reference counted Java/Smalltalk with a C FFI that Obj-C is.

You could've had Obj-C without the C for example, ADTs (enums), strong nullability enforcement and a nicer syntax while reusing most of the Obj-C core and retaining the compile speed, rock solid / fast debugging, function calls as data (selectors), easy mock creation and so on.

The systems programming capabilities is lost on %99.9 actual usage of swift. The swift project should've been split into two different projects IMO, where they modernized Obj-C into a successor language without making the C++ choices they did and created SwiftRust where the %0.1 that want system programming and nondeterministic multithreading capabilities can go do so. Apple second system effect-ed themselves hardcore with the Swift project, and it shows everywhere.

Sounds like you want Mojo, Lattner's statically typed language built on Python. In any case, the language you describe wouldn't be compatible with Obj-C except through an import layer like Swift. "Obj-C without the C" is meaningfully impossible.

And it's funny you mention systems programming, since Swift is still relatively bad at that compared to C++ or Rust, and most of its improvements in that area are recent and ongoing. It'll be another release or two before the memory movement features are fully in place and the language allows full control over ownership (without unsafe heroics at least).

Chris Lattner is on record that isn't something that Apple really cared about, and all Objective-C improvements starting with Objective-C 2.0 were already steps into improving the interoperability with what be later known as Swift.

Safe system programming is one of the key design goals from Swift.

The ability to go low/no-dependencies, as mentioned in the blog post, is one of my favorite things about Apple platforms. It’s not just possible but practical to build a capable, highly polished app without bringing in anything third-party thanks to the richness and depth of AppKit/UIKit. Few frameworks can compete, with even other juggernauts like Qt coming up short in comparison.

Definitely. It can take awhile to get the hang of some of Apple's frameworks, but they're generally very high quality. The best sign of this is you can ship components with them, forget about the details that went into building said component over months, and then come back and evolve them mostly painlessly.

Contrast with a lot of the web frontend ecosystem, where stuff might go stale within a few months. And the overall pervasive feeling of jank that comes when you're building UIs. (Though, I presume this goes away once you internalize browser layout engines better.)

For my two Mac apps, I use very few third party deps. They're simply not needed! They serve small, discrete purposes and could be replaced by bespoke code at a moment's notice. This is how software should be built! We've just forgotten about this because the browser ships with so little in terms of UI components.

I've built my note-taking app[1] in Qt, and while I worked hard to make it look good, I'm very satisfied with the result.

Also, it turns out to be much faster than comparable native apps (performance benchmarks available on the website).

Looks really nice. Just a heads-up, I get a NS_BINDING_ABORTED error on the home page video, so I can't see it. (Firefox 121.0, Linux).

You have one of the few Qt-based apps that looks and feels like it belongs on macOS. Really well done.

BBedit is awesome but it's not a block editor. Can it render a complex Kanban within the same document? Can it do drag and drop? No.

I do see you have block editing in the qualifying statement for your speed comparison list, but Kanban seems to only be in your upcoming features list? I use bear regularly, but none of the features you mention are why I use bear; it's just a nice markdown editing experience and I'm rarely, if ever, dragging and dropping blocks within a document. I suppose if there are enough people who do find that crucial, you might want to emphasise it a little more, I don't think I spotted any mention of it.

I didn't mention it since I'm yet to implement it. I think I'll release Plume's beta in around two months, so I've got plenty of time to work on those. And yes, the Kanban is work in progress, but I'm nearly done[1].

Hmm, maybe that does look kind of interesting, thanks for the pic. Have you thought of any alternative ways to represent the todo checkbox in those Kanban tiles? Maybe aligning to the top instead of vertical center?

I haven't thought about that. In the regular editor, the checkbox is aligned to the top of the text. I'll experiment and see how it goes. Thanks for the suggestion.

I did use Qt Quick and I've been having such a great experience (as someone that used to program GUI imperatively via Qt C++ or using other framework like React/React Native) in my opinion, Qt C++ and Qt Quick is the best combo for a GUI framework. You get the performance of C++ and the simplicity, fluid animations, reactivity of QML, etc. My block editor is build in such a way that the models are in C++ and the views are in QML. This separation of logic and presentation works really well. I'll probably wrote a blog post about it.

Must be Widgets since using QML at work makes me regularly wanna rip my hair out. Its one of the worst frameworks Ive used once you go beyond simple hello world programs.

Nope. See my comment above - I've used QML. I've built a very complex block editor with it. What problems are you facing?

This is also my favourite thing about the Apple platform. My apps usually do not have any dependencies and when they have they are often my own. It keeps it simple.

The insistence that every application/framework must be cross-platform, or its worthless, is so bizarre to me. What is even the point of having multiple operating systems if they can't have distinct features to gain competitive advantage by attracting application developers? If operating systems can't differentiate, we might as well all use Windows.

Cross-platform applications have their place, but sometimes I like having features that I can get in one place and nowhere else. Let them both exist and quit griping about it.

This could be at least partially solved if cross platform frameworks filled in feature gaps between platforms, making their feature set a union of features on all supported operating systems, but this rarely happens. Instead they typically take a least common denominator approach, limiting apps written with them to only the most common basic features.

This fundamentally doesn’t work for UI/UX. You have to pick a paradigm and implementation details at some point and the high level UX design of Windows UI dejure and Mac are just different, in ways that cannot be factored out of a framework without leaky abstractions.

Your choices are: the Qt/Tk/Swing approach write once, a solid if dated UX that is themeable but not truly native anywhere, the web app (or its QML/Flutter/FX equiv), wxwidgets etal which sort of tried to be native everywhere last century and looks and works that way, or at least two parallel independent native UI implementations which is a gargantuan more effort.

Or go whole hog with FLTK or your own custom thing. a11y? WTF is that?

“ Instead they typically take a least common denominator approach, limiting apps written with them to only the most common basic features.”

I wouldn’t call wxwidgets basic, but it is a mess. It can’t be any other way. If it could someone would have made it in the last 30 years.

Just because you use Cocoa/AppKit rather than drawing on a canvas does not magically make your app feel like a Mac app.

Literally 100s of side projects have started down this path. People eventually learn you can’t abstract everything away, at least not the labor intensive part.

It does happen though - Qt tries very hard to do that. I don't know about literally everything, but the majority of platform-specific features/optimizations can be exposed through Qt with enough work.

And what is the result? Everyone complains that Qt is too hard to use, and so it has utterly lost the cross-platform war to Electron, and meanwhile the devs who want the platform-native functionality (like the OP of the article) use the OS-native toolchains instead.

There's no silver bullet here.

Qt is probably closest among cross platform frameworks, but comes with some thorns that can be difficult to ignore and contribute to that “hard to use” sentiment.

The way Qt Widgets is for practical purposes usable only with C++ or Python is one such thorn, as is its use of custom types like QString. Both increase friction significantly as many devs aren’t able to use their preferred language and can’t use the language primitives they’re familiar with. Qt Widgets apps also require a good deal extra elbowgrease to make feel good on all supported platforms due to oddities in widget layout and drawing, and to my knowledge use of newer features (like blurred “vibrant” (macOS) or “mica” (Windows) window backgrounds requires dropping down to native code.

For QML, devs are stuck with JavaScript (which while functional, isn’t everybody’s cup of tea) and face some of the same issues that web/electron devs do with needing to pull in third party frameworks (like MauiKit[0]) to have a usable widget set.

Distribution is a problem across the board in Qt with tooling being a less than great state. It’s a very common issue to see crashes in Qt apps as a result of some incantation being missing.

In short Qt has the right idea, but I believe it’s held back by many of its technical and design decisions. I’d like to see a project that’s like it, but built in a modern language with good C interop so high quality efficient bindings can be easily generated, and has a bigger focus on good DX.

QML is actually pretty amazing. I've been building my block editor[2] view entirely in QML while the model is in C++. This separation of logic and presentation works great. And yes, there are some crashes sometimes (that I find quite easy to debug thanks to the built-in debugger), but take for example a similar app that's built with Rust and Dart[3], in my testing there were still memory leaks that caused my computer to hang. It's better to know you have a bug than for it to be hidden from you.

I agree with parent commenter, saying these cross-platform frameworks will end up supporting the least common denominator set of features. But I found with external open source libraries, the community is catching up very fast. For example, you want the awesome translucency macOS apps have for your Qt app? Here you go[4]. Many such cases. It's also pretty straightforward to add your own custom OS-dependent code, especially so, if someone already open sourced his approach. I recently wanted to move the traffic light buttons on macOS for my app, but couldn't figure the Objective-C code for that. I ended up looking at either Tauri or Electron source code and found my answer.

You talk as if Qt was really bad. Do you know of any toolkit that is better? I mean: Electron is a memory hog by default, Flutter or React I do not see they are available in those many languages you demand from Qt.

Which is that platonic toolkit I do not know of that is easy to distribute, productive, fast and available in any language?

For cross platform, from a technical standpoint Qt is one of best and that’s the problem. The best isn’t good enough, not for the masses that instead chose Electron and certainly not for the sorts of devs making polished Apple platform apps.

Developer experience is extremely important but it’s consistently something that’s swept under the rug with Qt, much to its detriment. Devs at large would rather be limited to a single platform or make huge tradeoffs in efficiency than live with bad DX.

The Telegram Desktop app is written with Qt, and I think they've done a pretty good job. I think there's a certain bias here. Most of the popular Qt apps are either open source or Enterprise software, both don't care much about UX and aesthetics. What I'm trying to get at, is that with some effort Qt apps can be on the same level (or very close) to native apps. That's what I aspire with my Qt apps as well.

I'd like to take the opportunity to mention Slint: a new toolkit in the scene, is inspired by the spirit of Qt while aiming to address its shortcomings https://slint.dev

I've spent (what I thought was) quite a bit of time researching so many of these alternatives posted on this thread and this is the first I hear of slint, so thank you for sharing. It may be just what I was looking for

What happened with using the best tool for the job?

So what if C++ and Python are the only bindings.

I agree that not every app must be cross-platform. Text editors are a good example. The economics may or may not be more difficult. Yes the audience is smaller but the cost may be lower as well and you may have a competitive edge over cross-platform apps.

The problem with starting a single platform app is that you have to decide very early on that you're not going to need any collaboration/sharing features (unless the app is built on top of some cross-platform protocol or file format) and that you're not going to serve multi-platform users any time soon. This is a big decision with far reaching consequences.

I think there's a risk for developers (and tech bloggers) to become so enamoured with the fine details of their platform of choice that they lose touch with the priorities of the user community.

> The problem with starting a single platform app is that you have to decide very early on that you're not going to need any collaboration/sharing features

I beg to differ. Many industries (Graphic design, many engineering disciplines and game development) have a defacto platform for this exact reason

It is a matter of product: better to target more people better than fewer. Technology is usually secondary here.

If you’re an indie dev, that can be a good thing. I find it much simpler to ship for iOS and Mac as a solo dev.

Yes, initially it is easier, but it is more difficult to scale to other platforms later on. It's all dependent on how much work you want to do upfront versus in the future.

As an indie dev, I feel like the greater risk is that you aren't able to release an MVP and find PMF at all, so I'd always err on getting something working on fewer platforms first so you can move quickly. Having the option to go multi-platform later is a good problem to have, but isn't guaranteed, so don't tackle it early on.

Trying to build for multiple platforms is a lot of overhead, not to mention UI paradigms don't always map one-to-one. Even building for both Mac and iOS (versus just iOS, for instance), for me, can be challenging since there are enough to differences between the two platforms in terms of UX that I have to take extra care to nail both experiences faithfully.

Yep that's true, but it's still another reason I'd use Flutter or React Native simply because they make building for even one platform much easier than Swift, in my experience. Then you can build up afterwards because they also make building for other platforms easier too. It's just one reason why Electron for example is well used in companies.

Many B2B apps are built as plain web apps that run in the web browser and connect to a backend (CRUD apps). That's because business customers care less about the presentation, and more about the value that the software might deliver. If it saves them time or money - they will buy it no matter what the UX is. And many of them even prefer a tab in the browser, since they do their work in the browser anyway.

With B2C users often expect a more polished experience. More often than not they pay for a nicer, more polished thing, rather than for something that solves a particular pain point. Of course, the app should be useful, but that's table stakes. The deciding factor often becomes the UX. Thus in B2C, the client technology plays a bigger role. Depending on how many competitors offer a native UX, the users might not even consider you if they see that the app is not lightning-fast or has some weird, custom UI that looks off.

React Native has some native UI elements, but then many other things such as the navigation stack are reimplemented from scratch which results in a UX that appears to be similar, yet may work in weird ways that differ from native behavior. Plus React Native is pretty slow in my experience, and like any cross-platform thing has a ton of other weird edge cases and annoyances.

I have not used Flutter, but from my understanding, they have reimplemented the whole UI stack from scratch, and draw everything on a low-level graphical canvas. This means that it is even less native than React Native. They emulate/copy the native UI, but it is not the same. Not to mention that they have to do a ton of work to keep up with the latest changes in Android and iOS. Feel free to correct me.

For B2B, React Native, Flutter, or even Web/Electron are perfectly fine. For some less competitive B2C categories as well. For super competitive ones native is almost always a requirement.

“Easier” depends a lot on the project in my experience. For example if you need a tableview/datagrid as performant and feature rich as NSTableView on Swift/AppKit, you’re probably going to have to build it yourself with React (of any flavor) and especially Flutter (which has a heavy mobile bent to it) or at minimum settle for a community library that’s got big holes in its functionality.

There’s also the whole third party dependency mess referenced in an earlier post, which is unavoidable with both — anything more involved than “hello world” is going to have a mile long list due to how barebones the frameworks themselves are.

Indeed, Apple customers are quite a big market of course, but as an indie dev especially, there are more markets to bring your products and services to. That is why I use frameworks like Flutter which work everywhere, even if they are worse than Apple's developer platforms (and this is subjective even still). The upside is simply too great to lock myself to only one platform.

Running Track Measurements: A Brief Rabbit Hole

Last week I posted about the update to Garmin’s wearables that now includes a database of running tracks for their running track mode, in addition to the pre-existing ‘learned’ track mode where it learns the running track you have without an entry into the database.

When I did so, someone who runs in the greater Amsterdam area commented on the YouTube video saying that one running track wasn’t actually 400m on the inside lane (Lane #1). A brief exchange with the person via YouTube confirmed it was this specific track, which is the Sports park De Schinkel Athletic Track (officially listed as “Amsterdam Schinkeleiland”).

I found that claim a bit odd for a number of reasons, notably:

• A) I’ve used this track for half a decade, for countless videos/posts viewed by millions of peoples (many in Amsterdam), and nobody has ever said anything
• B) There’s tons of markings on this track, as well signs around the track for all assortment of things, none of which indicate it’s “short”, and the Dutch are very much into being official on stuff
• C) It’s used for some school competitions and club training
• D) It’s also the warm-up track for Olympic Stadium, directly next door
• E) Garmin and COROS track measurement for years has put it at 400m
• F) When Wahoo created their track running mode, knowing I’d likely be testing it on this track (as it’s just 300m from the DCR Cave), they even came up and measured and validated the track
• G) Apple’s own database has it as a 400m track on Lane 1
• H) The old man at the track said, incredulously, that “of course” it’s 400m on lane 1.

Now, with all that said, I was still intrigued – because you know what they say: Never listen to people on the internet.

Obviously, I listened. Welcome to the Rabbit Hole.

But I had good reason. Certainly, I use this track constantly as a reference for testing devices, and thus, if somehow I was running in the wrong lane, or the track length was ‘special’, or whatever, I’d definitely want to know.

Thus, this morning, following a hail storm, I went out with my handy-dandy measuring wheel:

I bought this and another version 15 years ago, when in Washington DC, and doing various accuracy testing then. It’s in feet/inches, cause, America (side note: How crazy is it that I can link rabbit-hole posts from 15 years ago. ). But that’s fine, I’ve got Google to translate Americana to Everyone Else.

Now, the implication this person was making, was that Lane 1 is somehow short. As most readers of this site know, running track lanes vary by distance, getting longer and longer as you go towards the outside. For an internationally compliant track, the distances as as follows:

Lane 1: 400.0m
Lane 2: 407.7m
Lane 3: 415.3m
Lane 4: 423.0m
Lane 5: 430.7m
Lane 6: 438.3m
Lane 7: 446.0m
Lane 8: 453.7m

Now comes the question of *where* exactly do you measure the inside lane from? The left edge, the middle, the right edge? Somewhere else entirely? Well, turns out there are three answers to this:

Answer #1: I initially Googled lightly from my phone, and a few sites/peoples/forums said “the inner most edge of the track”. These sites/people are wrong, ignore them.

Answer #2: Then, I got more serious in my Googling. The next site said “20-30cm”, which, seemed imprecise – but also something oddly specific to note.

Answer #3: More Googling, and I found my answer: It’s either 20cm or 30cm, depending on exactly where you’re measuring it.

Here, let me explain, from the IAAF (World Athletics now) technical information website, the exact specifications are according to the Track and Field facilities manual, as follows:

If the inner track border of lane 1 is raised on curves (e.g. a curb): 30cm
Each subsequent lane (e.g. Lanes 2-8): 20cm

Here’s the applicable section on Page 29 of the most recent manual (2019, Chapters 1-3):

Note there does seem to be references that if the curves lack a ‘curb’, they should also be measured at 20cm instead of 30cm.

In fact, that entire document is absolutely fascinating. It covers more math and measurement craziness than you’d ever imagine. Such as this image:

Ok, armed with this information, I headed out to the track. First, for fun (and totally useless data), I decided to measure as close to the inside curve as possible, right against it. This is obviously *FAR* less than 20cm, but I was curious how much less (and the document said this should be 398.116m). Also, did I mention it was hailing out?

In this configuration, accounting for my imprecision as well as a tiny bit of slippage on the hail (which did *not* stick to the wheel, as snow might have, as you can see below), it measured 397.764m – thus, I was within half a meter. Pretty damn solid!

Next, I gave it another whirl, this time trying to stay about 30cm off the centerline (the official measuring line), or roughly 11.8”. I would occasionally double-check my distance to the curb using a measuring tape, but as you can see below, I’d slowly drift inwards a tiny bit on the curves.

On the first 30cm go-around, I measured 398.983m, and then I came back an hour later and measured 398.861m.

Overall, pretty damn close. Of course, even with my apparent accuracy of 99.75%, there are a few likely logical reasons why it’s still about 1-meter short):

1) My inability to stay exactly 30cm off the edge, notably on the curves where I tended to gravitate inwards
2) Probably a little bit of wheel slippage with the snow/ice/hail (which would under measure)
3) My 15-year old measuring wheel has been boxed up and moved across the ocean once, then again within Europe once, and also just bumbles around the cave/storage room.

But, I was still not satisfied. I need, somehow, more proof than just math and measurement magic. I needed official confirmation.

So, I started poking around those signs. They were useless in terms of measurements, but they did provide contact information to book the track and ask questions.

At that point, I realized that perhaps the city has a website about the track (since this is a totally open community track without any gates/fences around it, nor restricted times), with more details. It didn’t have much in the way of details, but, armed with the exact official name of the track, I went back to Google.

And, more googling later, I found the Dutch authority on inspection and certification of tracks, which does so in compliance with IAAF/World Athletics certification standards. They handily listed the track there, along with the recurring inspection expiration date, showing it as a 400m track:

Even more useful, each track on that listing also has a nifty two-page document indicating exactly what was certified, and which components meet certification standards. For example, this track has four valid lanes for races (it’s a bit smaller lane-count-wise), but some of the secondary faux lanes on the straightaway (used for funnies) aren’t valid. Again, it’s designed as a warm-up track for Olympic Stadium next door, thus, it does not meet the 8-lane requirement for a normal track meet (hence why it shows ‘Nee’ there, because if someone planned a track meet there, they’d be rather disappointed to find it missing half the lanes):

But of course, it shows the 400m type rating earlier on.

Still, I was not satisfied. Nearby, there were some workers with super fancy laser measurement equipment, so I asked if they could come settle this internet dispute:

Just kidding, I didn’t ask them. But was tempted.

Finally, just because…overkill, my wife texted someone we know that: Leads a running club that uses the track weekly, has access to Olympic Stadium to do running events, and works at the local running store. They too, confirmed that it’s 400m, but noted that “some people incorrectly assume it’s shorter” because it has fewer lanes than an 8-lane track, and thus “feels smaller”. But that Lane 1 is most definitely 400m.

Or: Never doubt the old man at the track.

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This is quickly followed by the hauntingly beautiful "Blackbird" by The Beatles, a song that resonates with themes of love, loss, and transformation. Other notable songs in the Practical Magic soundtrack include "If You Ever Did Believe" by Stevie Nicks, a powerful and soulful tune that showcases Nicks' signature voice. The ethereal ballad "Crystal" by Stevie Nicks is also featured, further adding to the mystical atmosphere of the film.

The song list also includes iconic tracks such as "Dreams" by The Cranberries, "Coconut" by Nilsson, and "Amas Veritas" by Alan Silvestri, all of which contribute to the overall magical and whimsical feel of the movie. In addition to these well-known songs, the Practical Magic soundtrack also features a few lesser-known gems that perfectly capture the emotions and themes of the film. Songs like "Is This Real?" by Lisa Hall, "This Kiss" by Faith Hill, and "A Case of You" by Joni Mitchell add depth and emotion to the story, creating a captivating listening experience. Overall, the Practical Magic song list is a collection of songs that showcases a wide range of emotions, from joy and playfulness to heartache and longing. The soundtrack succeeds in creating an enchanting and magical ambiance that perfectly complements the film's narrative. Whether you're a fan of the movie or simply enjoy whimsical and enchanting music, the Practical Magic soundtrack is sure to captivate and transport you to a world of practical magic..

Reviews for "Musical Magic: 30 Songs That Capture the Essence of Practical Magic"

- Sara123 - 1/5 stars - I was really disappointed with the song list for "Practical Magic." The songs chosen felt completely unrelated to the movie and didn't enhance the viewing experience at all. It seemed like they were just thrown together without any thought or consideration for how they would fit into the story. I expected a soundtrack that would reflect the magic and whimsy of the movie, but instead, it was a mixture of random songs that felt incredibly out of place. Overall, I would not recommend this song list to anyone who is a fan of the movie.

- Musiclover88 - 2/5 stars - I found the song list for "Practical Magic" to be quite underwhelming. The selection of songs felt outdated and uninspired. It seemed like the creators of the soundtrack didn't put much effort into finding songs that would complement the film. Additionally, the pacing and flow of the songs throughout the movie were off, making the viewing experience feel disjointed. I would have expected a more cohesive and engaging song list for a movie like "Practical Magic," but unfortunately, it fell short of my expectations.

- MovieLover567 - 2/5 stars - The song list for "Practical Magic" was a huge letdown for me. The songs chosen didn't fit the mood or tone of the movie at all. It felt like they were trying too hard to create a specific vibe but missed the mark completely. The songs felt out of place and distracted from the storytelling instead of enhancing it. I was hoping for a soundtrack that would transport me into the world of the movie, but instead, I found myself being taken out of the experience by the odd song choices. Overall, I was disappointed with the song list for "Practical Magic" and would not recommend it to others.

Creating a Witchy Atmosphere: 30 Songs to Set the Mood in Practical Magic