2023.10.13.

2023.10.12.

2023.10.03.

2023.09.18.

Download iOS icons for Safari web apps using Shortcuts

I love how you can save web apps into separate apps via Safari in Sonoma like you can with Fluid.

Safari tries to fetch the default icon, but sometimes it’s not that pretty or it’s even in a wrong aspect ratio. Finding proper app icons is hard, but a lot of web apps have iOS versions, so why not use their icons?

I created a shortcut, which lets you search the App Store and download the raw app icon. Now you can also use the proper iOS style icon for the web app.

You can download the shortcut from here.

Here’s a video on how you can use it.

2023.09.07.

2023.08.09.

How I get shit done (or at least get started) while having executive dysfunction

I like these ideas, but especially gathering all information.

Let’s say I need to reply to an email. I start by reading the email I’m supposed to reply to. If there’s any more information I need to be able to answer that email, I go and get that information. I then dump all the information I have into an email draft for easy reference, and write my email from there.

I learned this behavior by keeping a Zettelkasten for writing. It is always easier to start with existing content rather than starting from scratch.

These days I even use journaling as a tool for getting started. If I have no idea what’s the next action on something, I begin to write about it in my notebook. Sooner than later, I figure out something by rambling about the problem in my journal.

2023.07.28.

2023.07.06.

So people are running between Facebook and Twitter and vice-versa. And I’m just sitting here relaxed because I give away my last fuck about any social network.

I just want forums, blogs, and RSS.

2023.06.19.

2023.06.15.

2023.06.09.

Saving Siri replies as images

I just discovered that you can drag out complete Siri responses on the Mac and save them as images. It can be useful for saving reference data or images from the web.

Of course, you can also take a screenshot of the Siri window using the ⌘⇧4 keyboard shortcut, then pressing Space and selecting the Siri response.

2023.06.08.

Apollo is shutting down on June 30th.

It means that I officially end up using any social network.

I stopped using Twitter when Tweetbot was killed. I’ll do the same with Reddit too – which I liked better because the community was awesome, but I’m not going to visit a site that kills a superior app like Apollo.

All I need nowadays is a blog and an RSS reader and I’m good.

2023.05.21.

Get A Notebook And Write Stuff Down

Greg Morris writing about notebooks:

You don’t need to start a second brain, or do some weird PKM stuff, you just need to have a place full of things that will help you out. Record things you find interesting, things you need to remember, things that might help you work later on, literally anything you might need later on. You don’t need to start a commonplace book or anything, you just require a notebook around, all the time.

I start to wonder if there is a more straightforward way to manage ideas other than keeping a full PKM or Zettelkasten.

2023.04.13.

2023.04.08.

Twitter Has Stopped Working in NetNewsWire

Looks like Space Karen caught up with NetNewsWire too:

Twitter suspended NetNewsWire today because, according to Twitter, “This App has violated Twitter Rules and policies. As a result, it can no longer be accessed.”

I still have a couple of feeds in Reeder, which are working for now, but I don’t expect them to be around that long.

Honestly, I don’t care about Twitter (or social media in general) anymore. I can do everything I want with this blog regarding publishing my stuff on the web.

I still POSSE my blog posts to Twitter using Micro.blog because some people still follow me there. I may turn that off one day because very few people are coming to this blog from Twitter.

2023.04.07.

Adding Bike Shortcuts integration to my publishing setup

  • Previously…

  • I created two new shortcuts which are helping me to start to write a new post from Bike.

    • The first one called “Open Decoding File”, which opens (and optionally creates) the current month’s file.

      • I have monthly files, because of how my publishing script works.

      • It publishes every post from the currently opened Bike file, so I don’t want to keep the same long outline around for blogging.

        • It regenerates each post every time I’m adding a new one.

        • If there is a breaking change in the system, I can archive old files and just start a new one.

    • The second one just inserts today’s date into the top, with an “DRAFT” block which can be used to start writing a new post.

      • I added a Keyboard Maestro macro to run this one from Bike.

      • I can press ⇧⌥⌘T to add a new date block on the top.

  • These shortcuts are using the Shortcuts integration which is available in the preview version.

  • Here’s a demo video.

2023.04.06.

Fantastical adds broader Shortcuts support

Flexibits just released Fantastical 3.7.9, which adds a bunch of new Shortcuts actions, including the ability to filter events from a given Calendar Set in a given date range, and the ability to generate a simple schedule for a given day.

Nice! I have a shortcut which syncs up calendar events with agenda items in Things. Now, I can automatically do the following in one shortcut:

  1. Get all my meetings for today from Fantastical.
  2. Create or find existing agenda items about them in Things.
  3. Link the Things agenda item and Fantastical event using Hookmark.
  4. Start a new session from Things when the meeting is due.
    • I’ll write about how I manage deep sessions with Things one day.

2023.04.04.

2023.03.31.

2023.03.23.

My Notebook System – ratfactor

This year is going to see my journal/log’s 10th anniversary and 100th notebook.

I read the whole article and took a lot of notes which inspired me to think about how I can consolidate my capture (logging) habit a bit more into one place, but still keep multiple capture tools.

After finishing this essay, it feels like Dave accidentally invented GTD for himself in a different form based on a stream of captured ideas that are moved up in the chain to have projects and next actions.

The part at the end where he writes about weekly, monthly, and yearly recaps feels very GTD-esque.

I actually tracked my time in a notebook like this before. I had a timestamp of when I started and when I ended a session of work. I have a long history of working in sessions, as I used to do a lot of freelance work, which requires time tracking (a session means that I focus on one task for a more extended period of time). My only question is how Dave transcribes his notebook entries into his digital system? I did it by hand, and it was awful.

Anyway, this is an excellent write-up of a fantastic system that I’m going to use as inspiration.

2023.03.22.

Ultra-mobile writing environments

So one thing I consider a compelling use case for a big iPhone and a small iPad mini is using them as a mobile writing environment. I could easily publish an essay from my iPhone or iPad mini just by thumb-typing. I want to explore this use case in more detail in the future.

We have had people doing this for years now, watch and read the following stuff from Patrick Rhone or Yuvi Zalkow.

I have a MacBook Pro and iPad Pro to write, so why am I interested in this phenomenon? I like when people think outside the box regarding their device usage.

The iPhone and the iPad mini are considered content consumption devices by almost everyone, which I’m afraid I have to disagree with. I create all kinds of things using these devices. I take photos, write notes and blogposts, sometimes create/edit Shortcuts, and SSH into remote servers to fix issues. Heck, I even edited an entire podcast episode on my iPhone using Ferrite while I was sitting on the train. It was actually quite fun to do. Being an owner of a big phone like the iPhone 14 Pro Max, I’m even expecting myself to use it more to create rather than consume.

Thumb-typing lengthy notes and blog posts on these devices maybe seems to be an ineffective way to write. Still, there is a focused environment to be found here—especially if you set up iOS to send only essential notifications—so even a smartphone can be a device that makes you focused.

I’m not going into details on notifications here, but let me just tell you, it’s not your smartphone that makes you distracted. It’s your laziness to set up notifications properly that makes you distracted.

2023.03.21.

2023.03.19.

I’m actually re-reading/browsing the archives of minimalmac.com, so there will be a couple of posts linking to old, but still usable Mac tips and workflows.

Sometimes we forget that there is gold hidden in these old blog archives.

Notational Velocity and Twitter as Birdhouse for Mac

This is an old post about how we can select text in any app and send it to places:

Here’s an nice solution to something I’ve been wanting. I love Birdhouse for iPhone, which stores tweets until they’re ready for publication. There’s no Mac alternative, so I’ve been putting potential tweets into Notational Velocity, and then copy-and-pasting them into Twitter when ready.

Today, MacStories points out that Twitter for Mac adds a contextual menu item that lets you tweet nearly any text you’ve selected in Mac OS X. You see where this is going: I can call up Notational Velocity with a keystroke, right-click on a tweet and send it off via the contextual menu. Awesome!

Translating this into the blogging world: we can publish micro posts directly from The Archive – which is the modern version of Notational Velocity – (or any other Cocoa app) using MarsEdit’s new Micropost feature.