2023.03.15.
2023.03.14.
How to Plan Anything by Email Alone — and why it’s Faster – Just Use Email
Interesting article about how we can use emails to collaborate on projects:
For something temporal, and for groups of eight people or less, I believe email is superior for planning. Pretty Trello boards may look like you’ve got your act together, but you still have to type it out, get others to agree, and not forget important details. Trello can’t help you think. Even though software like Trello is quite easy, that doesn’t mean its universally understood the way email is. The documentation for Trello still must be read and understood.
I’m one of those people who like to communicate over email because it’s quick, and you can organize your end in any way you want.
The problem with a planning approach like this is that some people can’t use email appropriately. They create new messages when they should reply; they forget to answer questions etc. It happens on other platforms too. Usually, they are terrible with planning in general. So people blame email for being old and unusable.
Nowadays, a lot of people are in love with Slack.
Let me tell you a secret: it is even worse for work-related communication and project management in any possible way because it is closed, everyone has to use the same horrible client, and people expect instant communication from it (and don’t get me started on people who want everyone to use the status field as team Twitter).
People who couldn’t manage their emails started to blame it, which made companies switch to Slack, where these people are still the bottlenecks in the process, but now everyone has to use the same crappy client.
Bookmarked “Personal Knowledge Management is exhausting – Baty.net“.
2023.03.09.
Liked “ The iPad, Apple pundits and reality“.
2023.03.05.
The first demo of RubyGPT integrated into macOS
As an AI language model, ChatGPT has gained a lot of attention lately. It is widely known for being quite powerful and having impressive natural language processing capability (especially for programming). This is why I decided to create a Ruby gem, RubyGPT, built on top of the newly released ChatGPT API which will enable me to chat with ChatGPT from the command line.
I recorded a demo of how RubyGPT works. I encourage you to watch it to understand better how this tool can make interacting with ChatGPT more efficient. It can be used directly from the command line or integrated into almost any editor and used like an interactive REPL.
I also created a corresponding AppleScript that passes the currently edited file from BBEdit into the `rubygpt` gem, parses the request then updates the file, making it feel like an editable conversation.
RubyGPT can be helpful in programming sessions, brainstorming, or general inquiry. It feels like you’re editing a Markdown text with an AI pair.
I may release this tool if there is a demand for it.
2023.02.18.
Bookmarked “Galaxy: Mac OS X Wallpapers Remastered“:
Classic desktop pictures modernized in 6K resolution and P3 Color Gamut.
Bookmarked “Scarlet“:
Scarlet is a personal issue tracker that saves to a file that you can include in your project directory, or anywhere you prefer. No accounts, no cloud services, no syncing, no third-party integration. Just a simple place to file away your project’s to-dos and close them when they’re complete.
2023.02.16.
Bookmarked “Montaigne“.
Make a website, blog, or portfolio using nothing but Apple Notes.
2023.02.08.
Other than Apple’s official documentation, what are the best sources on learning AppKit?
2023.02.07.
Follow-up: I got my Things Box!
2023.02.03.
Bookmarked “Teenage Skeuomorphic Desktop Designs“.
2023.02.01.
This is a test
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I’m just testing Hookmark integration with my Bike blogging script.
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Update
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So now I can…
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Blog freely in Bike using a new outline for each month.
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I can keep posts private using the SKIP keyword.
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Or I can publish them on the blog by adding a timestamp.
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I removed embedding the permalink into the root node. Instead I use Hookmark to navigate between the post and the Bike node.
My Clearing Out My Work Inbox
We can watch Chris Coyier going for a 13 minutes ride of cleaning newsletters and spam from his work inbox.
I usually try to unsubscribe from these type of emails too.
If I can, it goes into the trash. If I can’t, then it goes into spam. I don’t archive these like Chris does.
2023.01.31.
Replacing Craft with Bike as a thinking tool
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One of the best features of Craft is daily
pagesnotes, which can be used as a starting point for many ideas and drafts. -
I’m thinking of giving Bike a go as a daily logging app.
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Still, I like Bike better because there is so much power behind this simple app.
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I can automate things around my notes using standard Apple Script.
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I can parse Bike files using Ruby and Nokogiri.
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It can link to other parts of a document, even link to other rows in other Bike files.
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One of the best things about using Bike as my daily logging tool is that I can write blogposts inline and post them instantly.
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I can’t do that with Craft.
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Craft is excellent for writing documents, so I’m not getting rid of it, but as a thinking tool, I like Bike better.
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I can consider Bike as a starting point for everything I do creatively.
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Enhanced with Hookmark, I can even start a new anything and still go back to the source.
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I can continue a line of thought in a different app, like TaskPaper, which can be better for the task at hand.
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Previously
The next decade of innovation is ahead of us, which means that the Web 2.0 “r” suffix (Flickr, Tumblr, etc) will be replaced with InsertNameHere AI.
Liked “Things Box 5×5 by culturedcode“.
My wife is gonna kick my ass, but I ordered one. It’s so cute!
Bookmarked “Auxl“.
Auxl is a native API client for macOS. Its powerful node based system provides a whole new way to organise, test, and develop APIs.
Bookmarked “CodeEdit“.
A lightweight, natively built editor. Open source. Free forever.
2023.01.30.
Actually not a bad idea for nested CSS. 🧐
Greg Pierce: “Really Bad SwiftUI Advice: Use…” – Mastodon:
Really Bad SwiftUI Advice: Use @Iconfactory‘s xScope alignment guides so you can find where the dang closing brace if for the views you nested way too deeply!
The Open in Kaleidoscope Service
The Services menu is getting a well deserved love from the Kaleidoscope blog:
The Services menu, originally part of NeXTSTEP, was introduced to the Mac with the advent of OS X in 2001. Throughout the entire history of OS X (now called macOS), Services never received a lot of love or major updates. Luckily, Services continues to work to this day and can be remarkably helpful.
One of the things I like about LaunchBar is its integration with the Services menu. There is no need to install a bunch of LaunchBar plugins; you can simply reuse already provided system services and share extensions from installed apps.
Browsing the web – 14 years ago!
I found this old video of me doing a morning browsing session on my old plastic MacBook. This video was recorded 14 years ago! Please don’t ask me why I recorded this.
Here are some interesting tidbits:
- We still had Google Reader.
- We still had MacThemes.net (man, I miss that!).
- Facebook was only used by Web 2.0 Starbucks hipsters.
- I still had my old blog.
- I was using Gmail and Mailplane.
Posting digital garden seedlings from Bike
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I added a way to post digital garden seedlings to the blog.
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What are seedlings?
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Seedlings are half-done articles/notes kept in a digital garden.
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They are like drafts, but we keep them public because not every one of them will be finalized.
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I can also use seedlings to privately reply to people using my blog and send them the link.
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Seedlings are entirely hidden, but you can find them if you know their URL.
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The goal
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The goal of my Zettelkasten is to develop my notes into posts I publish here.
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I’m migrating my Zettelkasten notes from Craft into Bike because it’s more open, and I can do fun things with it, like post directly from it to my blog.
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Posting seedlings from Bike
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There are note branches in my Zettelkasten, which can be migrated to a seedling, so I can start working on it.
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I extract these notes into separate files, naming them using their number from my Zettelkasten.
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I can invoke a simple Ruby script, which is going to prepare and post to my blog.
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The script also links them using Hookmark, so I can switch back and forth between writing the post and previewing it.
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Demo
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Previously
Bookmarked “My Knowledge Wiki | Everything I know“:
This is my personal wiki where I share everything I know about this world in form of an online wiki built with Docusaurus on GitHub.
Bookmarked “Grila – Calendar for keyboard addicts“:
Calendar for keyboard addicts instantly available on a hotkey
2023.01.29.
Numbers can be used to store next actions and projects in a GTD system
I was thinking about making a more advanced GTD system in Numbers other than just using Reminders in macOS. This post lays out this idea in more detail.
First, create two tables for lists
We can store next actions of a GTD system in Apple Numbers by creating two tables for “Next Actions” and “Projects”.
- The Projects list is just a list of projects with a completion checkbox, a title, and an optional due date field.
- We could add optional notes or a project support field to link notes and other assets or link them using the title field.
- The Next Actions list contains a completion checkbox, a title, a due date, a context, and an optional project field.
- The context field can be a drop-down listing of all of our contexts.
- The project field can be linked using a formula for the projects table title field.
Add groups for contexts
- Grouping on the next actions table can be used to group next actions by context.
- Contexts groupings can be folded, depending on where we are and what we want to see.
- We can create sums for the number of next actions in a group.
Optionally, sync with Reminders
Writing an AppleScript for syncing with Reminders should be possible.
- The script can create different Reminders lists for each context like Kinless GTD did for iCal back in the day.
- The due date field should be assigned as a Reminders due date.
- Next actions can be added to each Reminders list using the following format:
- ✓ Next action title [Project Title]
- ✓ Next action title [Project Title]
Questions
- Could it be possible to sync changes from Reminders back to Numbers using AppleScript?
- How would we store task-related notes?
- A new field can be long, but we can’t have fields under row without merging rows or columns.
- What would be the benefit of this system other than just using a proper task management app like OmniFocus or Things?
- I guess the reason is that Numbers is more flexible than Reminders and comes with every Mac.
2023.01.28.
Bookmarked “Infinite Mac“.
2023.01.27.
Bookmarked “GTD Dictionary“.
2023.01.25.
Excellent app, but you can switch tabs from the keyboard in Safari by focusing on the URL bar and typing the tab’s name. Safari will offer you to switch to a matched tab.
It works on iOS and macOS too.
2023.01.20.
I was thinking about installing a new Mastodon instance and creating a new account. Still, this blog is already capable of RSS and ActivityPub, so I’m not sure if I need the social aspect of yet another social network. I simply want to blog. It’s an easy to follow concept, and I have comments open if you want to leave a reply.
There is a way to follow me on Mastodon, though; you can do it by pasting the following handle into Mastodon’s search bar:
@zsbenke@decoding.io