2023.12.06.

Read “Web Apps Are Better Than No Apps”

Since web apps can’t just use the components provided by the operating system, they have to recreate everything from scratch. And this creates a lot of burden for developers and, I think, lowers the quality floor. Creating beautiful, compelling apps is possible, but it requires so much work. People building native apps get it all “for free”. In fact, this could be one of the reasons Apple still has such a vibrant ecosystem of great artisanal apps since developers can build most things out of nice ready-made components.

Well, yeah!

2023.12.05.

2023.12.02.

2023.12.01.

2023.11.29.

Follow-up on Liked “MailMate”:

I just bought MailMate a couple of minutes ago. It turns out I love to use plain-text email for writing and reading. It’s just way easier to edit my emails in MacVim than to fuck around with the Mail.app compose window.

The Things integration is also pretty cool. I can get the complete plain-text email in the to-do note, which is way more excellent than the jumbled text-fest I had previously parsed by the Things mail service forwarded from Mail.

I’m still developing my workflow around the rule-based smart mailboxes, which are pretty powerful.

I’ll write more about this app in the future.

2023.11.27.

2023.11.25.

2023.11.23.

Publish bookmarks from DEVONthink

  • I’m messing with my bookmarks today.

  • I keep a lot of cool articles in DEVONthink as my central repository, but I also want to share some of these links here.

  • I’m testing a simple workflow for this using a DEVONthink smart group, which shows me all my bookmarks from my Decoding database that aren’t published yet.

  • This workflow desperately needs automation, but I want to start as simple as possible and see how it works in practice.

  • Here’s a demo video.

Liked “MailMate”

MailMate is an IMAP email client for macOS featuring extensive keyboard control, Markdown integrated email composition, advanced search conditions and drill-down search links[…]

Sometimes, I wonder if I should try to use MailMate instead of Mail.app (at least for some specific tasks). It’s an app made for nerds.

I think it’s even have MacVim integration, and still makes emails available in the filesystem instead of closing them away for Spotlight only.

Related

2023.11.01.

Apple and journaling

Jason has concerns about the format of Apple Journal:

Like Apple Notes, the Journal app works without the Files app. Instead of your journal entries being discreet text files or similar that can be managed in the file system, they’re built into the app itself. It might work, like Apple Notes, using a SQLite database within the Journal app container.

I’m also moving into using more open formats for journaling, although I think there is a slight difference between a journal and a diary.

  • Keeping a journal in general is a mindfulness practice for keeping track of what I’m doing throughout the day.
  • Keeping a diary is more personal on the other hand. It helps us to write about our feelings and nice or bad things that happened to us.
    • This is the reason why I like to have the On This Day notification from Everlog in the morning.

Both of these practices provide a clearer picture, bringing us closer to the state of the past than just a simple memory.

Our memories give a false image because we can only remember the good things. This distorts the past and overvalues things that were not as good as we remember.

We can’t trust our memories, but we can trust a diary/journal, since it acts as a bookmark to the past, showing what happened in our lives. It functions as a backward tickler file, bringing things from the past to us. This retrieved information helps us to better understand ourselves in the future. We can see the difference between the past and our current state clearly, which can provide a new perspective on how we handle a current situation.

In essence: both of these practices allow us to compare our present self with our past one and draw conclusions.

So back to Apple Journal…

The only thing I see myself using Apple Journal for is the missing “add a description to multiple photos” app for now.

Sometimes I want to have a short description of an event that is stored in Photos, and since both apps are from Apple, hopefully, the integration will be better than duplicating my photos into yet another app as attachments.

Otherwise, I don’t see myself migrating away from Everlog in the foreseeable future.

2023.10.31.

TaskPaper as an interstitial journal

I mentioned that I want to find a use case for TaskPaper, because I adore the app. Turns out™ it’s actually pretty good at being a journal and an outliner app. I created a new file and started logging today’s stuff. This is what it looks like.

Screenshot 2023 10 31 at 16 32 41

It is a mix between a capture tool, a journaling tool, and a temporary task management tool. Basically the digital replica of my Field Notes notebook.

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.

2023.04.06.

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.

2023.03.19.

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.

2023.03.18.

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.

2023.01.31.

2023.01.30.

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.

Add to Kaleidoscope

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]

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.

2023.01.20.

Twitter Officially Bans All Third-Party Apps

Twitter today confirmed that it is no longer permitting third-party developers to create Twitter clients, with the information quietly shared in an updated developer agreement that was spotted by Engadget. A new clause under Restrictions says that developers are not able to “create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications.”

The continued genius of Space Karen just impresses me.

This is the final nail in the coffin of Twitterrific and Tweetbot. These were great apps!

2022.12.26.

Downloading YouTube videos with DEVONthink

  • How I download YouTube videos into DEVONthink automatically.

    • 1. While browsing YouTube or checking my subscriptions from Reeder, I can save videos to my Decoding playlist.

    • 2. By subscribing to the channel using its hidden RSS feed from DEVONthink, I can get saved videos into my Decoding database.

    • 3. DEVONthink watches this RSS feed via a smart rule and downloads videos using yt-dlp.

    • 4. The script saves videos into my inbox folder at ~/Library/Application Support/DEVONthink 3/Inbox, which automatically gets imported by DEVONthink.

    • 5. From here, I can organize downloaded videos, start watching them and take notes.

Tweaking workflows

  • I constantly tweak my workflows this time of the year. I usually provide tools for others—that’s what I do for a living—but I also have to keep my knives sharp.

  • This year I’m tweaking two things.

  • Take better notes while watching a video.

  • Moving my Zettelkasten over to Bike.

    • I like to think about my Zettelkasten being a large outline. Keeping it inside Bike could be beneficial.

      • I’m trying to mimic the analog Zettelkasten (or Antinet).

        • I won’t use an analog one since I like the digital one’s benefits better, but I also want ideas from the analog one.

        • I’m a programmer and I use my Zettelkasten to understand coding concepts. I have some code snippets stored in SnippetsLab, so it’s easier to link to those from my Zettelkasten outline than keeping them on paper.

      • I can use the classical Luhmann IDs to add an ID each note.

      • I can nest notes under each other.

        • I can easily link notes together thanks to the Bike and Hook integration.

    • Disadvantages

      • I don’t have backlinks, but I’m not sure I need that inside a Zettelkasten.

2022.12.23.

Blogging with Bike

  • I had this short post from a couple of years ago, where Dave Winer showed how he could blog from an outliner in a video. Basically, he edits an OPML file that gets synced to his blog—the website also looks like an outline.

  • I still like this outline-based blogging approach. It is so easy to change and publish. I wanted to have this for myself too.

  • Jesse Grosjean (the guy who did TaskPaper) recently released an outliner app called Bike, which I often use. Since Bike is just using HTML behind the scenes, it occurred to me that if I feed that into a Ruby script, I could create something similar to what Dave has.

  • So, I created two scripts.

    • One is called publish_from_bike.rb, which accepts a Bike file and pushes changes to my blog.

    • The other is a simple AppleScript which starts the Ruby part, saves post permalinks into the Bike outline, and does some general housekeeping.

  • I have a small system to publish from my blogging outline. I use the following format.

    • 2022-12-23

      • 10:40

        • Posts with a timestamp are a published.

      • DRAFT

        • I can create drafts by marking them as DRAFT (or IDEA).

      • SKIP

        • I can also add notes or just bullets which will be skipped with the publishing script.

  • Here’s a video in action.

  • Plans

    • I want to have a proper toggles for these outline type posts, like Bike does.

    • It would be nice to mark them with a custom icon, like my other post formats has.

    • I may release these scripts if there is a need and they are well tested.