I’m Mike, an essayist and blogger. I write about culture, tech, psychogeography and web spaces.
2024.07.07.
Read “Blogs as Modern Commonplace Books”
I rarely feel an urge to write about things I fully comprehend. More often than not, such regurgitation feels like a chore. I might do it to spread awareness on an issue, but rarely for its own sake.
Instead, I find it more exciting to write about things I don’t yet fully understand, where new information has become available or where I want to clarify my thinking. In other words, to “write so that I know what I think,” or to “write what I need to know.”
2024.07.03.
Bookmarked “RSS Please – Generate RSS feeds from web pages”
rssplsgenerates RSS feeds from web pages using CSS selectors to extract parts of the page and turn them into a feed.
Bookmarked “yums.email”
I use Mela for recipe storage but this one is interesting as well.
Yums is a recipe storage system built on top of email. Content on the web disappears with time, but email you have control over forever.
2024.04.12.
Read “An ode to Things・The Jolly Teapot”
But using it after spending the day on Things really makes it look like a baby app, like an Electron-packaged web app made by people who haven’t smiled in decades.
😃
2024.04.07.
Read “What We Give Up”
Whatever regulation that required these kinds of policy-change notification emails greatly failed us. A notification is not enough. If a company changes their policies, individual user data should be made completely inaccessible to that company until that user explicitly agrees to the new policy.
Yes, this should be the default. However, companies would heavily exploit a rule like this, like they abused the cookie consent UIs on the web.
2024.04.01.
Read “Digital Homesteading”
If your passion or livelihood depends on a set of tools or capabilities, don’t rent those tools from someone who can deny you access or claim your output at any time. Own your tools. Be a digital homesteader.
2024.03.26.
Read “Welcome to Canva, Affinity!”
Oh shit, I smell bad stuff.
2024.03.18.
Read “The best blog posts are genuine”
This is what differentiates blogs from newspapers, journals, and academic writing. This is supposed to be a space where anyone and everyone can express themselves. I’d hate for someone to be put off sharing something because they don’t meet a hypothetical bar of wit.
This is something I also talked about couple of days ago.
2024.03.16.
Read “Building a Stronger Web Without AI”
If we all build our own places, we can live the dream of the web, now. We can create the web that was always meant to be. By connecting our websites together by—spoiler alert—linking to the people who inspire us, we build a stronger web than a search engine can index, one that won’t be littered with content we can’t control.
Amen!
2024.03.05.
Read “All-New Shortcuts: iA Writer 7.1”
We’re releasing a huge upgrade to iA Writer’s integration with Apple Shortcuts today. With 18 built-in actions and 22 ready-made shortcuts, iA Writer 7.1 makes it easy to automate common tasks.
Finally!
2024.02.28.
Read “The future needs files – Scott Jenson”
2024.02.22.
Bookmarked “Ruby on Mac: Get Ruby working on your Mac in minutes with a single command.”
I am still not sure if I need this or not, but interesting nonetheless.
2024.02.20.
Sonar – Mac App for GitHub/GitLab Issues
Sonar is a beatiful (and native) Mac app for managing Github and GitLab issues. I used the beta in the last couple of weeks for managing GitHub issues and it’s really good. The high-level outline view changes how you manage issues.
If you use Hookmark, I also made a integration scripts for it which is pretty useful for linking OmniFocus/Things projects to issues in Sonar.
2024.01.13.
Bookmarked “extratone/siri: complete list of siri voice commands”
complete list of siri voice commands
2024.01.06.
Bookmarked “Soonie”
Managing time during a busy day can be a challenge. Focusing on your free time between your meetings or appointments helps you navigate through this stressful day more calmly.
From the makers of Tyme, my time tracking app of choice.
2024.01.05.
Bookmarked “Mind map & Outline Ideas – Escape”
Escape is your place to jot down notes & ideas, connect and develop them, and bring them to life.
2024.01.01.
Bookmarked “Minus”
Minus is a finite social network where you get 100 posts—for life.
Bookmarked “Tofu · Amar Sagoo”
Tofu was designed to help you read text on your Mac.
Text is often very wide, making it hard for your eyes to jump from the end of one line to the beginning of the next. That’s why newspapers have narrow columns: it makes them faster to read. Another problem is that vertical scrolling can be disorienting, as lines of text all look pretty much the same and are hard to track as they move.
Fuck yeah, there is an update to Tofu!
2023.12.30.
Bookmarked “Tech Independence | Derek Sivers”
2023.12.26.
Bookmarked “Card Buddy | Card Buddy: organize your thoughts and ideas using index cards on the Mac.”
A Virtual Corkboard for Your Notes
Index card lovers rejoice! Your brainstorming tool is here.
2023.12.24.
Bookmarked “OpenAny: macOS app and file launching springboard”
macOS app and file launcher for simple scripting.
Read “Jack Baty | I won’t be joining RSS Club”
Mostly, though, it’s that blogging itself has enough problems with adoption. I’m not sure it’s a great idea to be “hiding” blog posts. Good blogs are hard enough to find these days. Why limit your writing to only those people who’ve already discovered you?
These are exactly my thoughts about this RSS Club thing. I don’t want to make my readers search for hidden content on my site (there is hidden content on my site, but it won’t be accessible by RSS), I want them to find my stuff easily.
It is already annoying that social networks, like Twitter, hide otherwise free content behind a login page; bloggers shouldn’t force readers into subscribing to something (maybe this is why I wouldn’t say I like newsletters too).
If you enjoy hiding your content, that’s fine, but we have a sparse number of good blogs these days. I want good content to be more discoverable, not hidden behind login pages and RSS feeds.
2023.12.23.
Bookmarked “iA Markdown Dictionary”
Need to quickly learn or recall Markdown syntax? Our Markdown Dictionary is here to help. It’s a standard macOS dictionary built for the Dictionary app, so it’s compatible with iA Writer, iA Presenter, and other Mac apps too.
2023.12.21.
Writing a Book with Unix
Follow-up on Using iA Writer as an end-to-end writing system.
2023.12.19.
Read “Getting an Unread Badge Count For the Docked Gmail Web App in macOS”
New Hookmark scripts for Reminders
I updated my Reminders/Hookmark integration script recently to make it faster on Sonoma. I also made sure that I have a “New Item” part too, so I can create reminders directly from Hookmark.
The “Get Address” script uses the backing SQLite database to find the ID of the selected reminder by title.
There are some caveats to keep in mind:
- We have to replace the
remindersDatabasePathproperty with the proper database path which is different for everyone. - Reminders are matched by title, so if we have multiple reminders with the same title, the script may fail to link the proper one.
Here are the scripts updated for Sonoma:
Get Address
use AppleScript version "2.4" -- Yosemite (10.10) or later
use scripting additions
-- Replace this with your Reminders database path.
property remindersDatabasePath : "/Users/yourusername/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.reminders/Container_v1/Stores/Data-some-UUID.sqlite"
tell application "System Events"
tell its application process "Reminders"
tell its window "Reminders"
tell its splitter group 1
tell its UI element 3
tell its UI element 2
tell its UI element 1
set reminderOutline to first UI element whose selected of UI element 1 is true
set theReminderName to value of UI element 2 of UI element 1 of UI element 1 of reminderOutline
end tell
end tell
end tell
end tell
end tell
end tell
end tell
set theSQLCommand to "/usr/bin/sqlite3 \"" & remindersDatabasePath & "\" \"SELECT ZCKIDENTIFIER from ZREMCDREMINDER WHERE ZTITLE = '" & theReminderName & "'\""
set theReminderIdentifier to do shell script theSQLCommand
set theURL to "x-apple-reminderkit://REMCDReminder/" & theReminderIdentifier
return "[" & theReminderName & "](" & theURL & ")"
New Item (this one can be a bit slow unfortunately)
tell application "Reminders"
set theName to "$title"
set theBody to "$user_link"
set theReminder to make new reminder with properties {name:theName, body:theBody}
set theReminderURL to the id of theReminder
set theReminderURL to do shell script "echo \"" & theReminderURL & "\"|sed 's/x-apple-reminder:\\/\\//x-apple-reminderkit:\\/\\/REMCDReminder\\//g'"
activate
end tell
theReminderURL
I haven’t tested these on earlier systems.
Bookmarked “Integration script for Sonar – Share Hookmark automation – Hookmark Forum”
I just started using Sonar which is a new GitHub/GitLab issue tracker client available as a TestFlight beta.
I found that the app has a URL scheme, so asked developers if it was implemented, and they were kind enough to give me a brief documentation, just enough to create a starter script for myself.
2023.12.17.
Bookmarked “Exporter”
Export all your notes from Apple Notes to Markdown/HTML with attachments.
I don’t have a need for this, but it’s good to know that it exists.
Bookmarked “Sonar – Native App for GitHub/GitLab Issues”
Sonar is a new native Mac app for viewing and editing GitHub/GitLab issues. It’s lightning fast and stores your tasks locally so viewing, searching, and editing is instant (even offline).
I was looking for something like this for a while now.