2024.02.28.
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
remindersDatabasePath
property 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.
Bookmarked “Breaks – Focus timer for iOS”
After a stupid rejection from Apple, Breaks finally got released:
Breaks helps you do your best work. Breaks lets you easily timebox your work and ensure you’re taking adequate breaks, so you can focus better and be more productive. Oh, and it’s free.
2023.12.13.
Read “No Influence | skoo.bz”
Speaking of social media, that’s a very distracting place to post to. You see the feed before anything. It’s far too easy to get sucked into that feed before you remember why you came on there in the first place. At that point, I question what my purpose is being on there at all. You’re there to get attention. Bar none.
2023.12.09.
Birdhouse: A notepad for Twitter
Still the best app introduction video ever made.
Stickier
I don’t really have a need for a sticky notes app, but I like the design of this one. I have an affection for yellow notepad designs.
2023.12.08.
Read “Michael Tsai – Blog – Mac Menu Bar Icons and the Notch”
On my 13” Intel MacBook Pro, the icons reached to about halfway across the screen. On the 14” M3 MacBook Pro, ironically a machine with a larger display, at least 3 icons get hidden.
This “design” (or lack thereof) is so dumb. It is utterly ridiculous to me that this is still how it “works” two years after the introduction of the redesigned MacBook Pro with a notch. How hard could it be to add an overflow menu with a “«” (or should it be “»”?) button that shows the remaining apps and icons that can’t be displayed? This entire situation with the notch is ironic, because the iPhone notch and “dynamic island” are so thoughtfully designed with zero compromises regarding the functionality of iOS. In fact, they actually provide a better user experience. Yet on the Mac, how the notch interacts with macOS is laughably incompetent. It is shockingly lazy regarding attention to detail, and results in an outright disruptive and confusing user experience.
Here’s my current menubar:
I try to keep my less frequently used icons (like Hookmark) on the left because I mostly invoke them from the keyboard anyway. But I hate when Docker gets stuck behind the notch, and I have to quit other apps on the right to get Docker back to the screen.
Apple should do something about this behavior because it’s really annoying. And no, I’m not going to install a 3rd-party app to fix these issues, even if I love its icon.
Read “How I build a feature”
There are a lot of good Git workflow patterns here.
Read “Jack Wellborn: “I just recently discovered tha…” – Mastodon”
I just recently discovered that you can select and drag multiple Safari tabs by holding shift or command, just as you would to select and drag multiple items in Finder.
I’m sure it has been added recently or was hidden in the system for like 15 years.
Sadly it’s Safari only, so it doesn’t work on other system tabs like Finder or iA Writer.
My use case is to select those tabs I want to save as a group, right click one of those tabs to add them all to a new Tab Group (to keep things neat and tidy).
Bookmarked “Plaintext GTD using Taskpaper Syntax – GTDist”
A nice tutorial on using GTD with TaskPaper.
Read “What I Miss Most About the iPod”
Little things like this have me thinking more and more about the control I have over my music library. I love having access to any song at any time. But, at the same time, I want more control. Apple could easily allow for smart playlist stacks to exist on the cloud. I’d have nothing to write about at that point. But, as we’ve seen with Sony lately, Apple could take away content at any point, even if you paid for it in their store. It would be a much more expensive route to maintain a physical CD collection that I then rip into a media library.
I still maintain my local music library in the Music app and buy music from the iTunes Store, Beatport, and sometimes CDs from Discogs (which I rip later).
At one point I even turned off iCloud Music Library and synced my music locally, which is still pretty cool, since it’s free and completely peer-to-peer. On the other hand, your music library turns into read-only mode, so I can’t edit my synced playlists on the device, which sucks (if I remember correctly, I can edit new playlists on the device).
I currently have iCloud Music Library turned on, but I always archive music files separately before importing them, and I also keep my library backed up by Time Machine. The problem with this approach is I have 3 Macs, so I have to pay attention to which one is holding the original song since iCloud Music Library doesn’t upload the original file but rather fetches the song from the iTunes Store. To avoid this problem, I basically keep a master library on my 16-inch MacBook Pro since I use that the most; all other devices are using the iCloud Music Library directly.
The iTunes Music Library and cloud streaming destroyed all of this, primarily because it wouldn’t allow syncing of smart playlists built off other smart playlists.
I tried this, and smart playlists based on top of other smart playlists are not synced to iOS devices. I couldn’t check if it syncs between Macs, which I want to know.
2023.12.07.
Read “On macOS, it’s best to start with the default – Six Colors”
But the truth is, unless you’re a longtime Mac user who has integrated your personal collection of utilities into the way you use your Mac, you might not need all that much. So that’s my advice for people getting new Macs who don’t carry that legacy with them: Start with what’s there and then explore when you find where the built-in tools can’t meet your needs.
I developed a coherent Zettelkasten content pipeline
I don’t usually link raw Zettelkasten notes, but I think this one is interesting, even if it’s just an outline.