There are apps that you simply can’t live without. A top contender of mine is f.lux. I truly and honestly don’t want to miss it on any operating system I use.
While I was on the iOS 9 beta, the thought to jailbreak again crossed my mind. The logic behind this idea was that being in a beta, I’m already used to reboots1 — something I always associate with a Jailbreak is seeing the Apple logo pop-up sporadically signifying the OS is currently being loaded.
F.lux was the reason for my last Jailbreak. The app is so good that the tagline on the website (“software to make your life better”) and the domain “justgetflux.com” is a more than appropriate choice.
Alternating the screen temperature is something that Apple don’tin the App Store. It is only possible using system level integrations, so Cydia was the only alternative for a long time to gain access to apps and tweaks that modify iOS (including f.lux). Then came sideloading.
In June 2015 sideloading was introduced with the newly released Xcode 7 beta. I knew it wasn’t going to be a replacement for a Jailbreak since sideloaded apps still basically live in sandbox. To no surpise, even today Cydia apps have the upper hand when it comes to customizability, making nifty tweaks possible via MobileSubstrate Cydia Substrate. It’s Saurik’s way “to provide run-time patches (‘Cydia Substrate extensions’) to system functions” which allows developers deep inter-app communication, adding shortcuts to the home button and all the other good stuff that warms the cold heart of jailbreakers around the world.
Still, sideloading to me is a game changer. I always wished for Apple to be more liberal and give iOS users more freedom and power. It’s not a system level free pass to loosen all the nuts and bolts that hold your OS together, but, for someone like me who just doesn’t need all that jailbreaking brings to the table, this is as good as gets. Having access to a variety of apps that will never be in the app store is great.
Though, there is one thing to consider: use your thinky-think thing before downloading unknown code to your most personal device2.
DISCLAIMER: Don’t use software from developers you don’t trust. As a last resort if you desperately want to use an app, have a friend look at the source code or ask Twitter/Reddit/your mom.
None of the above applies to the guys from f.lux. I vouch for them and would even donate my third eyeball to their cause since they took so excellent care of my other two.
The possible downside I see is that not many developers will adapt sideloading. My best guess is that Apple mainly released it for the corporate world. Plus, as a developer, you basically have open source your code. This is a serious obstacle if you intend to make some profit on your app or just want to keep your code private.
Well, after thinking about a Jailbreak and finding out that there is none available for the iOS version I ran at that time, I dismissed the idea with a shrug of my shoulders.
As cool as sideloading is, I forgot about it until recently. Ten days ago I head out to hunt down some apps to install. I got giddy with excitement as I found out about Thomas Finch’s (@tomf64) GammaThingy. Finch set out to write a f.lux clone and approached it in the best manner possible3 – not as others did.
Since I downloaded and enjoyed GammaThingy, I enjoyed every day night with my iPhone. For the purpose of this article about GammaThingy I also contacted the guys from f.lux. I was curious to find what kept them from releasing f.lux as a sideloading app.
Well, they haven’t answered my email, but my prayers. You can go ahead and download their app now.
Note: you don’t need an $99 Apple Developer account. Just link your Apple ID (or create a new one) in the Apple Developer Member Center.
All-in-all, I find sideloading less cumbersome than dealing with a Jailbreak.4 I always disliked having to stick with old iOS version with possible security flaws and got annoyed by the regular reboots. Sideloading is a great alternative and gives advanced users and corporations some control and power back.
The bottom line (for this post) is, if less eye strain and a better sleep is what you’re looking for, install f.lux. Don’t take my word for it, just check the research page on the f.lux website.
For those of you who have never been on an iOS beta… it’s kind of a thing. Whether your device automatically reboots or you have to do it yourself because of some lame bug you now got a brick made out of one piece of unicorn aluminum which is nothing more than a blinking paperweight. ↩
Nope, not that fashionable watch. For me it’s still the iPhone. I don’t own and can’t afford a wrist band which can tell me how often to stand up. ↩
Read the “Important Information” part on his GitHub. ↩
The guys from f.lux polished their source code and there are no obstacles when downloading it to your hardware. This isn’t always the case as I found out from sideloading other apps; and as someone who doesn’t live in Xcode it can be a bit of a pita to get around those. ↩
I’m migrating some of my Keyboard Maestro macros to LaunchBar since they just fit the app better. So… here’s the LaunchBar version of my Toggle Function Keys with Keyboard Maestro.
PS: RocketINK is a bit on hiatus until I wrap-up my BA thesis. See you soon.
]]>Workflow is one of the coolest apps you can put on your home screen. So it’s about time I write about it and start sharing some workflows I built. The first one with which I’d like to kick off this series is something useful: an emergency web page. I prepared a short video to give you an overview of what I’m talking about:1
Despite this being a useful workflow, I want state right at the beginning that if the unfortunate event occurs you find yourself involved in an accident, you should do the following things first:
I admit I’d find it cool if there was a way to email or sms with additional information to the police, the fire department or the ambulance, but as of today they only support good old reliable technology.
In that respect it seems kind of pointless to use or install such a workflow, but I think it’s not. You can’t predict when something happens, but if it does, at least you’re digitally prepared and are theoretically ready to supply paramedics, the police or as it happens - your own gang of goons with all the essential details when they are on the way to the scene or just arriving.
All instructions and the actual Emergency Website.wflow
file are hosted on my GitHub… but here’s the classic Workflow link.
www.sos.net
in a minute or two and you get additional information”.2x-callback-url
to this workflow and create a reminder in Due.app, then with one click the site is taken down on the scheduled day.Depending on the feedback and my spare time I have some more ideas:
I hope you don’t ever truly need to use this. Stay tuned for more Workflow workflows.
In the GitHub repository is also the lost script from a really bad, and hence unpublished version, of the YouTube video. Is that worth a footnote? I do not know, but I’m bad at throwing things away. ↩
With the new domain names there are enough short and concise names available for about $10 a year. ↩
The first thing I tried was sending a Markdown file to Dropbox. You get a rendered Markdown in the browser, but on mobile devices there’s only a link to the file asking you if you want to add it to your own Dropbox. The Evernote version worked, but was not reliable when appending images – often times it didn’t find the note to append them to. ↩
In part one of this mini-series I already hinted at me questioning podcasts for being a useful source of information. My conclusion was that I learned to take them for what they are: slightly more on the entertaining side of things than on the informative.
Before I reached said conclusion I wondered if there was room in my playlist for podcasts at all. I listen to a lot of music and if I’m not, there’s usually an audiobook playing. Committing to podcasts took some time and I wondered how others came to listen to podcasts and if they had things that they don’t like about the shows they subscribed to. So, I talked with friends and browsed the internet. As it turns out, I wasn’t alone in criticizing them and so I decided to collect some of the perceived problems of the medium which I came across in the last years over and over again.
Rather than listing all possible flaws that the shows out on the bit’n’bytes airwaves have, I’ve picked two things where I felt this is something that pushes peoples buttons: shows where the hosts only talk, talk, talk without saying something, and, the lack of quality content in the podcasting landscape. Since this article isn’t a critique, I try to explain from my point of view why these two problems aren’t as bad as they seem.
Disclaimer: This is by no means an academic study, it’s just straight talk on how I perceive things. I apologize to every podcaster who feels insulted by me using the verb “to babble” – just blend out the minor negative connotations it comes with.1 I like it when you chatter/talk freely/feel right at home on the mic, that’s why I felt “babble” was appropriate here.
The little graph you see up there is suppose to illustrate my average podcast listening experience; it also represents a cross section of all the shows I listen to. It serves as a starting point to give you an idea of my listening habits.
As you can see, for the most part there isn’t any new knowledge to gain for me while listening – no groundbreaking, nor earth-shattering ideas. On the other side, there’s a lot of babbling – even when in-depth information is conveyed. For me hat’s okay. I listen to podcasts, not the 8 o’clock news on the TV. I take no offense in small talk while I’m tuned it. Truth be told, my personal sweet-spot is 25% informative talk and 75% fun packed discussions. Programs that have the goal to “just inform you” and throw raw data at you aren’t my cup of tea. I want to be entertained and want to feel the chemistry between the people talking into a mic. Otherwise the shows feels dull to me; some more adjectives that jump into my mind are cold, monotonous, boring and artificial.
Stepping away from how I personally feel about the matter of chatting when on air, it seems that for a significant amount of listeners this is one major point of criticism. When it comes to podcasts people tend to dislike the fact that their beloved show hosts tend to babble on endlessly. The ratio of words to information seems slightly off when compared with a blog post.
When you look closer, a written article needs “the babbling” only to add some emotions and feelings to a story.2 Whereas when it comes to podcasts this ratio is build by design, so to speak. It’s the heart and soul of a podcast that you can integrate all those unnecessary information and more details for which there would be no room in a generic blog post. For me it’s the ideal medium to show your personality in a more intimate setting and to ask and answer more random question questions.
Personally, I go even further and grant every show host out there the permission to get side-tracked. I don’t take issue if you jump from topic A to topic B at any point in time. After all this happens in a real, organic conversion, too. Lastly, I also like to think that this ratio is an advantage for the listener since one doesn’t need to be in high-focus mode all times.
So, yes: in the case of babbling 99% of the podcasts out there are guilty in my opinion – the big “but”: for me this is totally fine and dandy.
I’m part of a small German podcast (Der Übercast), and some of our listeners were wondering why we don’t talk more about the automation stuff that they find on our blogs. This section is about why talking voices shouldn’t read out a manual and why letters on a screen are the better choice when planning to teach people how to use heavy machinery.
With podcasts you have a medium that is born to take another approach than you would normally do as in a written article.
On the one hand, no one will crucify you if you talk about a Apple rumor. Quick tips fit right in, whilst they often feel too insignificant for a blog post3. On the other hand explaining complex scripts, macros or advanced power user stuff doesn’t fit the medium most times.
Imagine reading out an instruction on how to build a Farnsworthian doomsday device:
It would be way easier the read the 132 steps in the manual. By following the instructions which are accompanied with some illustrations (like in this written article) you can be sure not to blow the roof off while building your shell script Spheroboom 3000™. You will end up having a death bringing, earth shaking doomsday device that will make mankind quiver in no time.
As you can tell by now, despite being pro-babbling following these kind of explanations on a podcast, for instance when someone talks about a (complex) Hazel rule just makes me feel dizzy. My head will start spinning and steam comes out of my ears. In the best case I won’t turn off the volume and just sit it out until the monologue is over thinking “yeah, whatever”.
Surely you know about the major advantage of podcasts. In comparison to their inked twin, the blog post they excel at being consumable anywhere. With written content you most likely need to sit down, focus and just read. Unlike podcasts, where you can listen to a show while on commute, working out or do your actual work – it doesn’t matter. You can even do the dishes while listening to Doing the Dishes with Rafferty Thompson.
On a side note, when compared to classic radio programs, podcasts are still more informative and interesting (to me). It’s no wonder since it’s a on-demand system. You pick the show instead of being at the mercy of your radio dial, you can also choose to listen to it whenever you like instead of waiting for it. Then again, I was never big fan of radio.4
Another thing where I’m quite open is how the hosts approach their agenda. I don’t really care if the show follows a strict plan of action or if the hosts have only a rough outline to work with. Admitted, as a listener, nine times out of ten you can tell if they read out what information they’ve gathered on the topic or if they are winging it. Im any case, if the result is still enjoyable, who cares? Of course some show formats demand a more focussed discussion. I won’t argue with that. But, if it’s not an in-depth workflow episode or one that examines a single topic across the full length of the show, there should be no harm in any sort of diversion.
There you have it. I like it when people are just being themselves on the air and talk with each other like friends do.
There’s one exception to my preferred 3:1 talk-vs-content ratio: infotainment podcasts. I struggle to find a better wording for them. You might know them as narrative podcasts or as Radiotopia puts it “story-driven shows”. However, simply put, I refer to those shows that flip my ratio and offer me 75% information and 25% fun. Since they are so special, let’s talk about them now.
Since many things are being published under the label podcast nowadays, people confusing online radio with podcasts. To be honest, there are no true borders and both formats peacefully co-exist using the same underline framework, namely RSS.5 So, this dichotomy I speak of is basically just in my mind. It’s just a matter of terminology, some people put it all under one roof, some (me) do not.
Nonetheless I find it important to differentiate between different podcast formats. On the one side we have “supported shows” with sponsors, companies, funds or celebrities behind them. The Daily Dot has an article about “Podspotting: Where to start with the podcast networks” which sheds some light on the people behind the most successful podcasting networks in 2012. In their list all networks have some more or less famous persons from the traditional media industry on-board. Hence they had experience, a fan-base, funds, experts, helpers and more right from the start. On the other side there are the “regular podcasts” which don’t have professional audio equipment, no budget behind them and being run mostly as a fun side project with no business plan at all.
You can take a look at the iTunes charts to see which shows are more successful or you can look at my iceberg below. They both give you the same picture. Content-wise it’s a mixed bag, some traditional shows, some narrated shows, plain news or discussions. Diversity is good.
As with most things, often we don’t really know or care about what happens behind the scenes. For instance I still use Google from time to time because they deliver better results. Equally I don’t really care if a show is sponsored or not. What matters in the end is the quality of the content. But as not every search engine can be as good as Google Search, not every podcast can fit under the roof of a network… and for certain not every podcast can produce a high quality story-driven show. The latter is what I wan to focus on here.
I’ve heard from many avid podcast listeners that although they love the shows they are subscribed to, they often wished for a better narrative, little stories that are complete in themselves and if possible a soundscape for more atmosphere while listening. They heard some BBC shows and “99% Invisible - A tiny radio show about design with Roman Mars”, and now they wonder why not every podcaster out there amps up his game and delivers such a stellar product. Some of my friends even went so far an condemned all shows which don’t follow the story-driven model to be of low(er) quality (content-wise). A hardliner statement for sure. For me those two - traditional podcasts and narrative ones - are completely different beasts… hence the dichotomy headline, hence radio versus podcasting enthusiasts, supported versus the average Joe.
Regarding accusation of traditional podcasts automatically being of poorer quality when compared to a narrative show I can say “yes, those shows are darn nice and I’m also a big fan”. But, I can’t and will not compare them with regular podcasts. I’m the same with music. I can enjoy crappy recorded songs the same way I love listening to high-end studio productions.
This (↑) is “guy”, he has Tourette’s syndrome and Asperger’s. The song was performed live in a small pub and was recorded on an iPod. To top it guy didn’t have a working monitoring system and more or less improvised the whole thing. If you listened to it you will agree that the quality isn’t great.
Guess what? As hollow as it sounds, I feel his song. For me it’s one of the greatest songs this year and I can listen to it on repeat. Same goes for Jai Paul and his unmastered leaked album ( – it features overload distortion, songs not being panned out, etc…. The leaked version got it all (but it’s better than waiting three years for an album that might not be released at all)).
If I were asked to compare those songs to Kanye West’s $3 million recording of “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” I most definitely could… but there would be no point in doing so. Music is created to be enjoyed; period.6
There’s this argument floating around that podcasters do what they do because they are in it for the fun (and yeah… it’s great when people actually listen to what you do and like it).
German blogger Niels Kobschätzki (@Niels_K) wrote a nice critique about the German podcasting landscape. In short, Niels wishes for more story-driven shows in Germany. I hear his plea loud and clear, but I honestly think we’re so far behind the United States when it comes to podcasting, that our infrastructure just isn’t there yet.
Niels’ point is that exactly this doesn’t matter, since even people on a budget who are podcasting just for fun can follow his simple plan B: small teams could share the workload. One person is the researcher, another would prepare the material whilst the third could be the one in the limelight telling the story. Whilst money from sponsorships would make justifying the additional effort easier, he argues that it could be done without it.
I think Niels is right. Why don’t we all go the extra mile? It’s such a good question and I tried to answer it for myself. Here are my thoughts on the topic:
Aside from my personal “issues” there needs to be manpower. Not only the one who does the research and writes the narrative, you also need a composer who produces the score, a dedicated audio engineer who is capable of making a good mix (or at least someone who knows what knobs on a mixer you have to dial in what direction) and in Germany some kind of lawyer who takes care of legal issues. We are unfortunate enough in that we can’t just play music or excerpts from TV shows… even tiny bits of samples without making ourselves liable to prosecution. Paying royalties is a huge process, getting a written consent if you want to play a brief excerpt out of a public radio or talk show is another adventure that can take hours, days, weeks or even months.
In short, it’s not that easy. You got to put more time aside, especially if you’re doing it as one person like Mike Hurley did with his excellent Behind the App series for his Inquisitive podcast. More specialists help, but doing such a thing, even with three people on a weekly basis is just not something you could “do well” as a hobby (see the B. Stinson graph). It would be hard to maintain the quality over each show.
In the end infotainment podcasts are a different beast, content and workload-wise. I imagine it’s infinitely easier if you work with one of the podcasting companies out there, but with enough dedication it can be done without them.
Speaking for myself I can say that I can enjoy both types, be it a story-driven podcast or a regular podcast where the hosts tend to babble a bit here and there. The quality is as diverse as the podcasting landscape itself, but if I like the hosts and the content is well-balanced, then I’m satisfied.
I’m aware that there’s definitely more to say about the topic. I haven’t even scratched the surface of what’s possible with podcasts and what’s already out there. For instance music labels using it to release mixtapes (Stones Throw Podcast), TV Shows provided accompanying material, short stories, books and much more. But like stated initially, the scope was just to say my opinion about two problems. So, if you’re raging about the unfocused host you’re listening to, just take a deep relaxing breath and enjoy the human rollercoaster ride.
Side note: I grew up in the middle of Germany (Hessen – the state where Frankfurt is located in); we use the same verb there (“babbel”)… so I have zero negative connotations… quite the contrary (More on the Etymology). ↩
Or… English isn’t your native language and you have a hard time editing your writing to write as concise and efficient as John Gruber does on Daring Fireball. ↩
I love them, but have a hard time to justify publishing them myself… I don’t know why… it’s probably just me being silly. ↩
… But I used to follow some shows in my youth: “Hi kids”, back in the days we used to sit in front of a cassette deck with a blank tape inside, our fingers hovering over the rec and pause button just to make mixtapes out of the best songs playing in our favorite radio show. Glory days. ↩
When I my introduce podcasts to people unfamiliar with the term, I also refer to them as internet radio to get the point across for brevity’s sake. ↩
I like listening to all three artists mentioned above, they are all good, but oh so different from start to finish. It’s also why I don’t get music magazines and album reviews. I tend to find them superficial. Ask 10 people and each one will highlight something different, be it just a sample or riff that triggers childhood memories. Maybe it’s because music is my first love. I’m more open when people discuss movies, food or design. But whatever… one of my weaknesses/strengths is that I manage to find enough good or bad, no matter the topic. If I think something through ninety-nine times out of one-hundred I do a full circle. On every degree mark there are enough pros and cons to do both sides of the story justice. ↩
Another arbitrary comparison, but… podcasts are better than selfies. They are more than just an audio-representation of a mugshot. There’s more work and fun involved (… whereat my girlfriend reminded me that putting on make-up and finding the perfect selfie pose might take some time, too). ↩
In this post I muse on how my listening habits changed over the years.
Speaking for myself, I didn’t know for a long time what I wanted out of podcasts in general. My scope was limited: (1) I only subscribed to a few selected Apple tech podcasts and (2) I primary wanted to gain knowledge. This was my sole motivation for listening to them.
With a few years distance I can now say that what I did was like a Safari hunt. My ears functioned like an archaic muzzleloader, always aiming for the hidden gems in an episode – be it a useful Hazel rule I didn’t know of, or, an interesting use of TextExpander I haven’t thought of myself. Being in an all ears mode for 80 minutes just to get one geeky tip that might boost my productivity - or makes my nerd heart jump - was I admit it “a tad exhausting”.
Being a geeky fellow my loot after such a treasure hunt usually consist of zero to one cool tip in average. In general, the listening experience with this approach didn’t feel (too) enjoyable, nor efficient.
Still, I couldn’t just dismiss podcasts. So what was it with me and them that didn’t work? Although I was fascinated by them, it’s fair to say that we didn’t exactly hit it off. The obvious thing to do was blaming the counter-party. I went on questioning podcasts for being a useful source of information more than once over the last years. The result: in a way I was wrong and right at the same time with this assumption. Hence, the answer is two-folded (at least for me), and I’m going the explain what I believe were the two major mistakes I made.
The first point is a focus issue: I listened to podcasts for the wrong reasons.
Let’s take David Sparks and Katie Floyds excellent tech podcast Mac Power Users as an example. I listened religiously to that show. It’s a great show, but being a power user myself it felt like reading my own diary over and over again. It was equally hard or rather impossible for David and Katie to find me a holy grail in each episode.1
To tackle my focus problem, part of the solution was to stop going on a treasure hunt. Nowadays, I listen to podcasts because I enjoy how the hosts communicate with each other. I’m a bit of a Paparazzi in that I like getting a glimpse of their private lives, witnessing how they mock each other and have a good time.2 It’s infectious, makes me smile; for me is the magic behind podcasts. It is precisely what makes them such a charming medium.
Conclusion number one is that podcasts mainly aim to entertain you. If you’re main reason is to tune in for the hard facts, you’re better off reading a more in-depth article on the internet or going to the library.
The other part of the solution was to broaden my horizon and not limiting myself to the Apple tech scene. Naturally its such an obvious point that it took me a while to figure this out… I’m wired that way – sometimes I take my precious amount of time to get to the bottom of even the simplest thing in the world. Variety is key, after all I don’t want to eat lentils all day.
With 18 podcast subscriptions I still don’t exactly blow the roof off subscription-wise. Aside from the shows I regularly listen to, services like Huffduffer allow me to bookmark episodes that interest me and discover new featured content or picks from other users. I also welcome the fact that apps like Overcast try to make exploring the variety in the podcasting landscape easier. Now, instead of just Apple-centric podcasts, I’m also subscribed to some psychology, science and comedy related shows.
Conclusion number two is a simple one: Like in agriculture, the soil of your fields will stay fertile longer if you mix things up and plant different seeds every now and then. After all, the great benefit of podcasts – and the number one reason why they are so hugely popular – is the healthy variety of topics and interesting people. If you have thought about it, there’s probably a show for exactly that topic.3
Thanks to these two small adjustments there is a happy end and I managed to fall in love again with podcasts.
Yes, I really know most of the magic tricks to make my invisible unicorn jump through hoops. I still listen to them, but only selected shows make it to my queue. MPU is still the show I recommend to new Mac users. ↩
For instance, I tremendously enjoyed the Dawn Patrol team scheming on how to get their absent co-host @macdrifter on-board using an Android device. (← Dunno if I’ve picked the correct episode.) ↩
Finding a subscription-worthy show on the other hand can be a bit harder. ↩
You know what? There’s this guy on the internet who constantly fills my feed reader with useful tools, scripts and services he builds (in the middle of the night). Instead of being really, really mad at him because one lifetime isn’t enough to check out all what he’s doing, I’m truly grateful and in a weird sense also proud like a dad/brother/groupie/zebra that he supports the Mac community – especially in a time when all the cool kids are developing for that smart buzzing rectangles in our pocket.
So, today I retired my homemade Keyboard Maestro macro, bought this guys app and be done with it.
I won’t describe what this little gem does, nor do I feel the need to tell you who developed it. You should know if you read this blog… and you should head over and send him a dollar. Even better… wait until the hype is over and pay the full price (which would be $1.99) – that’s how grown-up zebras in the wild do it. I’m domesticated… so I rushed to the StretchLink site and bought it.
]]>One of things I need to do from time to time is copying text from screenshot. On the Mac there is Condense and on the iPhone I use Textgrabber (because the company behind it, ABBYY, really know what they are doing). So I’m all set. But… if YOU want to perform this little circus trick on your own and don’t want to spend a dime then take a look at the (Google Chrome) browser extension “Project Naptha” by Kevin Kwok.
The website works as a live demo and is a joy to browse trough; you can copy and paste each and every text in the images. There are tons of examples, additional details, an animated GIF and lots of background information. Even the chapter about security and privacy is clearly visible in large letters right on the site. It’s honest, open and direct – I like it:
So there is a trade-off that has to happen between privacy and user experience. And I think the default settings strike a delicate balance between having all the functionality made available and respecting user privacy. I’ve heard complaints on both sides (roughly equal in quantity, actually, which is kind of intriguing)— lots of people want high quality transcription to the default, and others want no server communication whatsoever as the default.
Naptha can also read out text to you and you’re can depend on it even if you use that Windows machine at work.
]]>Let’s start with some sites that you can browse…
\\//
… and then add some single wallpapers for the iPhone 6…
Movie buff’s can also search for “wallpaper” on CriterionCast and Designers are generally a good source for cool wallpapers (cf Louie Mantia or David Lanham) – you can also stalk them on Dribbble.
If it isn’t enough for you to have these wallpapers shining at you from your Mac Desktop what about changing the login window wallpaper on your Mac? Jacob Salmela shows you how to do it – see the comments if you want to do this on Yosemite.
Ben Brooks provides one of the links I miss since MacThemes Forum & Co. have vanished from the internet. You can learn how to replace the system font. It’s a good found by Ben. Although, my eyes are hurting a bit ((fiery red wallpaper)).
]]>This LaunchBar action is my preferred way to get said job done. I trigger it all the time for everything that is more of a short-lived nature, whether it’s setting a tea timer or to remind me checking some website in 20 minutes after I’ve dealed with the task at hand. 90% of my other reminders go in Due.
Yes, Alfred is also nice and super cool. Still, LaunchBar is my go to launcher since I prefer the way it handles file navigation/opening/everything. I use Alfred, too. Mostly for some clever workflows which I don’t plan to port to LaunchBar or Keyboard Maestro.
All in all, I find them to be very close. If you are willing to recreate some workflows/actions you don’t have to be as nuts as me running both. I imagine I’d kick one of them if I had a portable Mac just to save some resources.
Yes, it’s only a few taps on iOS, but when I’m on the Mac it’s still that much faster. I use the hell out of Due.app on iOS. I ♡ it. ↩
This is a meta post. I felt it was about time to talk to you again and tell you what (not) happened to this blog. I try to keep it brief. Promised.
In fall last year I told my parents that I have problems regarding that thing I vaguely mentioned from time to time in this blog: depression. In the last decade I have isolated myself a good deal – I’m a hermit – and only my girlfriend knew about my condition.
In November 2014 I had some financial problems. I knew that by February 2015 I would have no money left. This caused my depression to reach new heights – at least that is what I think is my happening in my brain, I don’t know for sure. I spend a week sitting on my sofa just starring blankly into the abyss, so I’m fairly sure it is depression.
In January 2015 the financial problem was solved – a lucky coincidence. I now have a steady income. I haven’t had one for 10 years. At least in that regard I have more peace of mind now (although I do not know for how long I will get my paycheck… but this doesn’t matter right now).
A month ago I build up the courage to finally see a doctor and currently I’m on the waiting list for a free spot. I started to meditate (and not only do the guided relaxation tapes) and talked with more people who had similar problems. Putting it all together, I’m in a much better place than when this year started.
My thanks to every one of you who checked in on me during my hiatus.
Writing RocketINK was always some kind of antidepressant for me and I will continue writing here. It is a bit hard to get into writing again. I want to, but there’s a barrier at the moment. This is why I’m activating security protocol B2.
As you can see there is no “teaser image” at the top. I’m trying to streamline my writing process. As little work as this picture is/was, from now on I won’t put it on every post – it always kept me from doing short link posts and sometimes from writing larger articles, too.
I have a few other ideas in my head and will go back to the drawing board for RocketINK V2.
]]>WLPPR is a great resource for everyone who wishes to see our little planet from out of space. They got beautiful wallpapers and even have a couple of shots from Mars.
]]>Quick question: What is the best way to get back to posting on one’s blog after a long dry period? The answer is easy. Write a short post about an awesome piece of design, preferably a Mac app.
Now witness doing exactly that. The subject of todays post is not just any Mac app… it’s an ASCII art editor. And what an editor it is: Monodraw by Helftone is a nerd manifest – think Photoshop for ASCII art.
Plain text has been around for decades and it’s here to stay. Monodraw allows you to easily create text-based art (like diagrams, layouts, flow charts) and visually represent algorithms, data structures, binary formats and more. Because it’s all just text, it can be easily embedded almost anywhere.
The Monodraw beta is now publicly available. Go ahead download the trial and decide for yourself if it’s something for you. If your answer is “Yup. An ASCII art editor is most definitely what I dreamed of in those cold lonesome nights” then you can put your order in and get the early adopter price (which is 40% off aka $29.99).
As you can tell by now, I find the idea of a pro level ASCII art editor utterly cool. Since I first read about Milen Dzhumerov’s (@milend) and Atanas Mahony’s (@amahony) idea to build such an app, I couldn’t wait what these two guys bring to the table. The wait was worth it. Some of you might argue that $50 for this app is a steep price, but keep in mind: the market for an ASCII art editor is assumably smaller than for a Photoshop or Illustrator alternative. Feature-wise the price is also justified. In short: I hope $50 from enough people will support the development up to a version 2.0 someday.
Some of the use cases for the nerdy folks out there are outlined on the website. If you want to create a unique mind map or flow diagram, this is a strong contender. If you want to beef up the documentation for your latest command-line utility, go Monodraw and make them shine. Enough talk, more pics.
PS: Good to be back.
]]>The iPhone is not a Mac. On my big fat desktop computer I have multiple the lovely ImageMagick to take care of all my image merging needs. If you’re desperate to script something, there’s a way to do it on iOS, too – it’s Dr. Drang’s infamous cleanbar script.
The strange thing with being a Mac guy is… sometimes I don’t want to overcomplicate the simplicity that iOS is (and should be)… (for me). In those cases I’m always glad when “there’s an app for that”.
One of those cases where I like it simple: image editing. More precisely, merging screen shots. Welcome to LongScreen.
For $0.99 you can…
LongScreen makes use of the beauty that iOS 8 is or better - has brought to us: once you have created your newly merged screen shot, you’re only one tap away from passing it of to Transmit or Dropshare.
I haven’t tested the results in cleanbar, but when LongScreen cleans-up the statusbar there can be issues sometimes:
… like blur issues you see ↑ and ↓. It is iOS 8’s new transparency which provides a certain challenge.1
The app is relatively young, so I’m sure those issues will get ironed out over time. I’d also like to see more options, c.f. creating a tile like…
1 2 1 3
or
3 4 2 4
… having an optional resize option or choosing to fill the transparent padding in-between the images with a color.
The last pet peeve is that there should be a tiny bit more documentiation on the existing URL scheme. So far I figured out that longscreen://
will launch the app. Obvioulsy there’s also an auto-merge option since the developer is hinting at a parameter for the x-callback-url:
- Set url parameter count=0 will now find the latest image sequence and merge them automatically.
UPDATE: Here is the LongScreen x-callback-url API documentation along with merge and copy/save actions for Launch Center Pro.
It would be nice to a have a small website along with the documentation. For now, you can get it touch with Shing Cheong Cheung via Twitter or App.net.
In the end I’m glad that I have another useful addition to my screen shot tool-belt on iOS. I even find LongScreen this useful that I ignored my personal rule of not purchasing something from a developer who doesn’t have a website.
PS: Another minor wish of mine is that the rather odd time of “9:41” get’s exchanged with something visually more appealing like 8:00 or 12:00. UPDATE: On the other end, I get it after reading this (Thanks @michaelj).
]]>Notes are the alpha and the omega of my digital existence. Everythings starts with a few lines of text. Here are a my findings of the last couple of weeks which stood out:
mkdown
mkdown
makes Markdown gists beautiful. Check out this preview or that one.Man, I love classic point and click adventures like no other gaming genre. It was the Monkey Island saga, Maniac Mansion and Sam’n’Max I grew up with.
Back then I teamed up with my best friend Alex and we bought the games together. We spend days if not weeks solving the trickier puzzles together. That was before the times of www.walkthrough-for-even-the-simplest-game.com. Whilst sometimes it felt a tinzy bit frustrating, this was an essential part of the game. The ultimate reward was longtime fun. Simply put: you had to suffer from time to time to enjoy a LucasArts adventure to its full extend.
Okay… strictly speaking this Kickstarter campaign isn’t by LucasArts, but Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick who are the masterminds behind Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island. But what gives? This is as good as it gets and I haven’t been this excited about a game since over decades.
As I wait for the final floppy disk to get shipped by Ron and Gary. I hold on to me beloved little LucasArts packaging collection (… Alex owns the other half… damn… I should go and check eBay).
If you don’t have your boxes anymore, here are some links to pass the time:
]]>As a Markdown users and 99% plain-text guy I always wished there was a Markdown-driven task manager. Back in 2012 Sam Soffes (… who has worked on a ton of other cool apps) heard my cry of help and released Cheddar.
Cheddar is a super simple task list manager which supports Markdown. It also comes with a super fast sync - which was at this time the fastest I’ve ever seen - and a basic URL scheme.
I was a beta tester of his app, but what ultimately kept me from using Cheddar was that I couldn’ afford to pay the $20/year subscription since I already had my Simplenote subscription going and was still happy with OmniFocus at that point in time.
Things changed, Cheddar is now free and under new ownership. Still, it isn’t for me, but maybe it is for you: if you’re looking for a Reminders.app alternative with tags and Markdown support, I suggest you give it a try.
On June 28th, 2012, Cheddar started out with a web app and iOS app. A couple of months after the launch Sam also released a Mac app.
The old version of Cheddar. Still a beauty.
Regarding the pricing. Cheddar was a free download, but if you wan’t to use it without limitations (aka write more lists), you’d have to subscribe and fork over said $20 for one year of Cheddar.
Updates to the app weren’t as frequent as one wishes as a feature-hungry users. On January 6th, 2013, roughly after about one and a half years in the App Store, Sam made the decision to sell Cheddar:
I simply don’t have the time to give Cheddar the love it deserves. Lots of you have asked for tons of great features that I personally wish Cheddar had as well. I think it’s better for everyone if it moves on to a new home where some can give it the love it deserves. This makes me a little sad to see all of my hard work go to someone else. I’m excited really to see where they take it though! Sam Soffes on the Cheddar Blog
Fast forward. End of October 2014 the guys from Wide Open Technologies bought Cheddar and answered the question “who moved my cheese?”. After two weeks and some tweaks they released Cheddar Plus as a completely free successor of the original Cheddar (= no subscription needed anymore to go nuts with lists).
PS: if you’re interested in the source code, the old version is still open source and hosted on GitHub:
Cheddar has a solid API for all the hackers out there.
The iOS version of Cheddar has an in-app browser in which you can open a Markdown link. Inside the browser you can pass the URL to Safari, copy or email it to someone.
There’s also an URL scheme, but I couldn’t find any documentation on it — maybe it’s because the transition to a new team of developers takes some time to take care of all the little details. Let’s just hope it isn’t gone.
Talking iOS, the iPhone version isn’t yet optimized for the iPhone 6 and the 6 Plus.
On the Mac there are a handful of keyboard shortcuts, but most of the ones listed on the website didn’t work for me. Basic support is there, but if Cheddar wants to appeal to more Mac users, the team behind it needs to kick it up a notch so that it is possible to swiftly navigate trough the minimalistic interface without using the mouse.
That’s about it for the device specific features. Here coem the global ones.
Cheddars tags work as filters inside of lists. So, if you’re a dude who is on the hunt for his #carpet
and click on the #carpet
tag you’ll see all the tasks which have it assigned inside the current list.
When it comes to tasks, adding them is easy; the “What do you have to do?” input field is always at the top of your screen.
On the other hand, deleting a task or list isn’t possible. The only option is to archive them. I guess this will be one of the top priorities Wide Open Technologies will fix. After all, if you accidentally enter a task, the only way to complete get rid of it is to rename it and convert it into an actual task.
Speaking of the archive, you can archive your tasks everywhere, but only the web app allows you to access the archive (where you can look at your old projects or unarchive tasks).
The most interesting new features are the offline mode and the option to share a list to somebody. Your invitee has to join Cheddar to use this collaboration feature. Currently there isn’t much detail about this new feature available. If you’re inclinded to find out more, the best thing is to subscribe to the official blog to get updates.
My résumé: Cheddar shines at simplicity. If you don’t need subtasks, notes and are happy with using your favorite Syntax for writing in a task/list manager which syncs instantly, then this app is made for you.
With a larger team behind the app I hope we hear more about Cheddar in the near future.
]]>If your iPhone is your main camera and you shoot a ton of pictures you probably know the drill: at some point there are just too many pictures and you are the person in charge to clean up this mess before you share them to family and friends.
Photo management has become easier in the last years. Several iOS apps now offer automatic uploading of your latest and greatest. Personally, I’m a fan of CameraSync because it allows you to setup a naming scheme of your own. Plus, it offers background location sync, meaning, if I return home the app recognizes my trusted ol’ WiFi network and the photos I took get automatically uploaded to my preferred destination.
In the App Store description of Camera Sync there’s a quote from Lifehacker.com:
Call me lazy, but I don’t like plugging my phone into my computer just to get all my pictures. CameraSync fixes this annoyance by wirelessly sending all new photos you take to Dropbox [or] Flickr, Amazon S3, SkyDrive, an FTP server or Box.net….
This is exactly me. Shooting away, auto-uploading and just being lazy about it.
For me, one problem remains with this approach: I end up with a ton of pictures which I don’t want to archive anyway. My Mac with its 24″ display attached to it is perfect for plowing through pictures and getting rid of them. Still, the last time I sorted my pictures was 6 months ago. This is downside of being lazy. I tend to defer this task because when I’m at it, I will also edit the pictures to have them ready to share. With editing being time intensive this leads to a vicious postponing circle.
Working in batches is fine - it would even be better if I do it monthly (which was my initial intention) - but wouldn’t it be even better to pre-filter pictures manually by hand even before uploading them with CameraSync? After all our phones are bigger now and have such a nice display. The upload would be faster without the additional ballast.
Well, now we can do it in the most easiest manner: meet Cleen and enjoy triaging with swipe gestures.
Cleen is a free iPhone app and was made by the same team who brought the nifty cloud-based photo book app tapsBook to the iPad. Cleen is equally clever and has three interactions to assist you:
The workflow is much like the one from Triage (the self-titled Email First Aid Kit). Cleen applies this gesture driven fast filing system and let’s you sort out unwanted photos.
At any point you can drag a faved or trashed photo back to main area for revision.
Once your done, you can delete all files at once… and they will vanish from your iPhone’s camera roll.
The last part is actually the exciting part. Cleen is the first app I saw using this new iOS 8 feature and I can’t wait for a screen shot app which makes use of this feature. Screenshot Journal and I Love Screenshot can already copy screen shots to dedicated folders, but being able to move (or copy + delete) would be make those apps much more useful for bloggers.
The one minor issue is that I’d have wished for a more trimmed down UI where I can see more of my photo. To work around smallness of the cards which representat of your photos, you can tap and hold to zoom in on a photo. I would also like an option to just “keep” a photo instead of marking it as a favorite. Marking a photo for reviewing “later” keeps the photo and doesn’t add it as a favorite. So there’s kind of a workaround already build-in.
Currently you can’t select a default folder in the settings. If working with the cameral roll is your main use case for Cleen, you’ll have to swipe all the way to its folder first. Having an option to open Cleen with a default folder would be a nice little time saver.1
Cleen is not optimized for the iPhone 6 (Plus) yet. But my guess is that it won’t take long until an update is available which adds support for it.
In short, I think Cleen is excellent and does a stellar job at simplifying a crucial step of photo management: taking out the trash.
And… an URL scheme for all those Launch Center Pro addicts would also be great – just to launch the app. ↩
maildrop
` behind this is what I’d use.One of my dad’s passions is cooking. He used to write up recipes in MS Word, print them out and collect them in a folder. Some of those sheets he shared with his friends and family. In the last years he was active in various forums and a blog turned out to be the easiest way to get his information out.
At first “blog” was only the magic word, he built websites with RapidWeaver for each of his projects. This wasn’t the solution, he moved on and tried Google+ and Facebook. The social network approach was nice, because he got some likes, but there was no real interaction and the own brand, so to speak, was missing. He was used to click plugins and expect everything to work and be customizable.
After this forth and back I suggested using Markdown for the tenth time and set up a WordPress installation for him. It’s a new world for him and he struggles getting WordPress configured to do what he wants to do. Again the RapidWeaver plugins where a tad easier to use and often times I get a mail with “nothing works – gonna quit soon (again)”.
It’s frustrating to watch since live could be so easy. I only have to find a simple blogging platform that just works for him. It should be one that’s easy to understand, customized and manage – especially handling pictures.1
Whatever I eventually will come up with, there’s a good chance Markdown will be involved. It’s just the best way to write on the web – there’s no arguing in my opinion.
But Markdown is a barrier for people who hear it for the first time. What to do about it? Well, we’re heading straight for the holiday season I thought to myself “what better to do than to put the gift of Markdown under the tree”.
There are gazillion articles on the web which explain it. But I think there’s a better way:
Creating Content with Markdown: Learn by Video: Simple, future-proof writing with plain text by Brett Terpstra (currently $37.45). Instead of a DVD you can also watch in online on Peachpit. It’s 56 min full of Markdown.
Brett has built several Markdown utilities over the last decade. He’s the author of Marked and nvALT. In brief: it’s his thing and he’s damn good at it. Just check his blog and search for Markdown.
Now Brett’s gone back to basics and created a video which explains every aspect of Markdown.
What I hope to achieve with this gift is that my dad feels obliged to watch it. If he does, he will learn everything that’s to know about Markdown. Simple as that. A hopefully bulletproof plan since there’s no text to read and an instructor who walks him through all the obstacles.
Brett was kind enough to hook me up with a copy after he released his tutorial back in May. As usual when it comes to linking to the latest and greatest I’m a bit late to the party. In this case I hope it doesn’t matter too much that I skipped buzz-phase. After all, we’re dealing with a classic.
Before hitting play on the video I’ve found myself sitting with a reflective gaze traveling through the last years of me using my keyboard. I’ve been writing in different Markdown flavors for about 5 years and initially the thought that I know all the tricks was predominant. More precise: I imagined this to be a nice easy ride where I just sit back for an hour and see what people like my dad can learn from Brett’s tutorial.
My natural nerd-arrogance was casted aside and struck down after I reached a certain chapter. It’s a bit embarrassing to admit, but I actually learned some valuable “tricks”. Truth be told, with Markdown there are no tricks. It’s just how you suppose to use the Markdown syntax. I didn’t know or forgot about the tiny details that can make your life easier when writing Markdown, c.f. now I can dismiss my workaround for keeping lists intact when throwing in a blockquote or code block.
The bottom line is, it makes for a great gift but also works like a PRAM reset for users like me. Now I have a refreshed memory and can use 100% of my knowledge again.
Brett starts out nice and explains what Markdown is, who it’s for and what the benefits are. He continues how basic structuring of a document works and of course the syntax of Markdown.
A basic knowledge of HTML is recommended to understand everything, but if you follow the examples you should be fine.
One last thing: it’s also nice to know that Brett developed the same style preferences as the ones I’m using now (excluding reference style links… FoldingText and inline links rocks – it’s my personal dream team).
If you’re curious, here’s the table of content:
I was thinking about suggesting Kirby or statamic. If you have suggestions, I’m open. Send me a tweet. Budget is also import, Squarespace is not an option. ↩
Making the Internet a nicer and visually appealing place is always a good idea. An even better one is to share how to do it.
Today I read an article about the state of underlines on the web and how they are almost as bad as this strikethrough text to do it better.
The article is called “Smarter Link Underlines For Every Website”. You should definitely read it; there’s also a nice example of how Apple’s Safari and Messages app are ahead of the curve typography-wise.
In all honesty, this was supposed to be a simple link post, but as you might know I have an ongoing struggle doing those. So, after checking that the underlines on my site looked fine as usual, decided that this topic is quite interesting and worthy of a post.
Users having more control over their own site is always a good thing. So here are more words with which you can embalm your iris.
Static sites gained popularity over the last couple of years. Recently there are popping up more services which aim to bring the convenience of WordPress plugins to the masses, no matter if you run WordPress or something else.
Two of these services I want to introduce to you today go by the name of Eager and Filament.
If you’re capable of adding JavaScript snippets to your code this might not be for you, but if you do a site for someone else – which I happen to do from time to time as a freelancer – tools like these could come in handy.
The advantage of Filament is that it’s really just one bit of JS, then the rest of the management and maintenance happens elsewhere. For a web designer/front end dev, it might seem like relinquishing control, but handing over the control to a client, giving them access to their own dashboard etc. could be seriously useful. Ian Yates (Tuts+ Web Design Editor)
I have nothing to add to Ian, so we can move on here.
Zack Bloom and Adam Schwartz run Eager.io, it’s a web service which provides plugins every website owner can use no matter if they are code-savvy or not.
If you decide that you want to apply the glorious css-hack that the SmartUnderline plug-in is, but don’t have the expertise to code it yourself, you have to do the thing. You sign-up for Eager and become a member, then you can install their plugins and start to sprinkle magic snippets all over your site.
A word of warning: don’t overdue it, you’re page performance might suffer.1
Currently Eager offers 13 plugins:
… and lastly it is:
Free forever if you join now
Any app you add to your website during our Beta period is free for life. So strike now while the iron is hot!
Filament also provides extensions that everybody can use on their own site.
WE WANT A BETTER WEB
We’re a UX and Design company, so design and usability is our way of life. However, that’s not true for most people. Great design is a process, and typically it’s expensive. This is why we’re dedicated to building a better web by making great design more easily accessible to websites and their owners. A better web is our goal with Filament
Here’s a link to a Tuts+ article who should get you up and running: Filament: Website “Plugins” That Work Everywhere
Filament have 6 apps ready and another 8 which are yet to be released:
It also goes without saying that it’s solely up to you whether you feel comfortable with embedding other peoples JavaScript in your site. ↩
When talking about consuming and working with RSS feeds, I’m a creature of habit: the client and reader have to be customizable, sync has to work and the one thing that is of the utmost importance to me, I simply can’t picture myself in a world where I can’t file RSS articles like I’m used to. Especially the experience of the latter was missing on my iPhone. Well, at least until I discovered Fiery Feeds by Lukas Burgstaller (@voidStern).
Due to managing RSS being a topic of special interest to me, let us go a little bit further back in time, because I have…
On the Mac, I use ReadKit which has proven to be an excellent reader — it also receives updates more frequently than the RSS crowds darling, Reeder. Fore ReadKit I have a set of Keyboard Maestro macros - all linked in the post above - which I use to file interesting articles into one of my many buckets.
On the iPad, Mr. Reader, an excellent RSS reader (which I happen to had the chance to design the icon for) is my weapon of choice. The form factor of the iPad and the versatility of Mr. Reader make this a winning team for me. It’s by far the best solution to RSS {verb: to indulge in reading an article provided by RDF Site Summary}
. The actions I use with the Mister are the same as those on my Mac.
On the iPhone, there was no satisfying way for me to read RSS. My app of choice was Unread for a long time. I read a lot, but I also file away many articles for dealing with them later on, when I have more time at hand. Whilst Unread is an excellent reader, I felt limited by its filing capabilities. I always had to jump through hoops when I found an interesting article which I wanted to include in my link list here on RocketINK. The custom share sheet from Unread didn’t make this any easier.
Typically, an article which is a link list candidate gets formatted as (1) a Markdown list entry with a Markdown link, (2) followed by another list entry which is indented and (3) has an interactive prompt so that I can provide a little summary for the link:
- Example: [Link to Captain NES](http://thebestgamesiteever.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/nintendo-fanboy.jpg)
- If you want to take the reigns and become Nintendo's fanboy no. 1, don't talk to me unless you have a NES scepter.
So, with iOS 8 finally having a better native sharing dialog things did become easier and indeed made a lot of my actions dispensable. Finally I could use my favorite Pinboard client (Pushpin) and add a link. Brilliant. All I had to do was switch from Unread to another app which support the native share sheet. Happy end? Well, we’re not quite there yet.
While having more options with better integrations is indeed part of the solution to my filing woes, some essentials still are only possible when using URL schemes. That’s also the reason I wrote “why we still need URL schemes when iOS 8 brings the sharing dialog to every app” and came to the following conclusion:
To conclude, for the way I work within iOS, the current state of inter-app communication is superb, but not sufficient for my particular needs. The best solution for power-users are the kind of apps we will hopefully see more more of in the future. Those which will function as a bridge between the x-callback-url protocol and existing native integrations. This way we can use the best of both worlds.
Admitted, the more powerful and versatile extensions become, the more redundant URL schemes will be. But for now, they still are the swiss-army knife for iOS automation.
In the quoted article I also promised to introduce to you an application which handles “updating” a virtually deprecated custom share sheet for iOS 8 in a smart way. Well, this day has come. This day was also…
On the 9th October I bought an iPhone 6 Plus. Soon I realized what I had feared all along: this device is made for reading. The huge display absolutely shines at it. I had toyed with the idea of ditching my iPad mini before, but only after spending enough time with my new phone the idea started to appeal more and more to me.
Fast forward, the short answer is no, I haven’t sold my iPad. It stays, although it would certainly be nice to have one device less to manage. After all, it is a completely different gadget with is own advantages and drawbacks. A comparison between the differences of the iPhone 6 Plus and the iPad mini could fill books in my opinion.
In brief, the top argument for keeping the iPad was “apps”. There are exactly three iPad-only apps which I rely on heavily; one of them was Mr. Reader. Another one is Paper by FiftyThree which I depend on for my teaser images on every blog post. Doing it on the iPhone is possible, but it’s just not the same experience.1
So, a couple of days later after the big purchase for my bigger phone which burnt the biggest hole in my pockets for a long time, I went looking for a new RSS reader. Like I said many a times, Mr. Reader rocks my RSS world and I want this experience on my iPhone, too.
If you’re an automation nut like me, you were probably looking for an RSS reader which offers good support for custom URL schemes. Until recently the situation on the App Store for a niche product like this could be summed up with “no app fit the bill”. Nevertheless, after several pages of RSS clients (most of which I already tried at some point) I finally came upon a new one (or, at least new to me): Fiery Feeds.
The description sounded too good to be true. I downloaded it immediately, opened it up, entered my first URL scheme and heaved a sigh of relief. Everything worked as advertised. So let’s talk about it.
Lukas updated his app to version 1.4 two days before I bought my new phone. Fiery gained support for iOS 8 and the new iPhones. It’s also a Universal app. Although, I haven’t tried it on the iPad since I won’t delete my Mr. Favorite.
I’m syncing my feeds with Feedly since I snatched a lifetime subscription when they offered it. Otherwise Feedbin would have been the chosen one. Both services and a couple more are supported by Fiery.
Fiery Feeds supports Feedly, Feedbin, MnmlRdr, Feed Wrangler and Fever. You can even add multiple services or multiple accounts of one service.
Regarding the custom sharing dialog of Fiery, Lukas was smart by adding the option to use the native iOS 8 sharing dialog instead. Depending on your needs, you can go with one or the other. Matter of fact, if you go with the custom share sheet solution you can still access the iOS default. At the top left is the usual suspect, a small sheet icon with an arrow pointing upwards. The unmistakable sign for sharing something on iOS. Press it and the native dialog will slide up as a layer above the custom one.
The cool thing is that your custom URL actions also show up in the iOS sharing dialog. And, that’s also why I set “Use System Sharing Dialog” as my default instead of the custom share sheet.2 I disabled almost all actions and only added the URL schemes I really missed. Thanks to Launch Center Pro’s list feature there aren’t many custom solutions I need anymore.
Here are all the different actions that ship preconfigured with Fiery:3
Web Actions | URL Actions | Mail Actions |
---|---|---|
Pinboard | 1Password | Mail Article |
Instapaper | Todo | Mail URL |
Instapaper | Mail Preview | |
Readability | Firetask | Mail Image |
Delicious | Velocity | |
Evernote | OmniFocus | |
SendToReader | Safari | |
Buffer | Readability | |
One Note | Things | |
Copy URL | Drafts | |
Messages | Felix | |
Copy Image | Riposte | |
1Password Fill Login | Chrome | |
Clear | ||
Simplenote | ||
Stache | ||
Keep Everything |
The action I use most frequently is an action which sends a Markdown Link to Drafts, then forwards it to Launch Center Pro where I can select from a list in which bucket I want to drop the generated link. In the example below it’s my scratch file in Dropbox; there’s also a prompt to enter additional information.4
Fiery comes with several options. That said, it isn’t en par with Mr. Reader where you can even manage your subscriptions (e.g. adding feeds, unsubscribe or rename them). The Mister is hard to match in terms of features. Fiery has a plethora of customization options and comes in close second.
For instance, a nice feature which I came to appreciate is that you can scroll horizontally through articles with a swipe. Speaking of it, Fiery of course supports the landscape mode… where you can browse horizontally, too.
With Fiery, all the basics settings one needs are there. The look can adapt to your layout preferences, for instance the preview length of (I’m always down with the lowest amount of lines possible). And, besides selecting your favorite font (Open Dyslexic)5 you could also port your favorite theme over in a few simple steps (by editing a JSON file).
If you come from Reeder, you might enjoy Lukas’ sepia theme which has a similar color palette:
By the way… the horrid theme you saw in the GIF above goes by the name “Bonfire”. It’s inspired by my favorite infrared theme from Unread “Campfire”, and I took the liberty to port it over to Fiery since it’s a great theme to read in the dark and feel like you’re in a submarine.
You can download it here:
Attention to detail is always important in the apps we use on a daily basis. I spend a good amount of time reading articles, so it’s highly appreciated that Fiery supports fullscreen reading. Whilst scrolling through a larger article the top and bottom bar slides away and makes for a distraction-free reading environment.
Another feature worth mentioning are keyboard shortcuts. Not only are there enough swipe gestures, but if you own an external keyboard “you can control the entire app with your keyboard”.
For the crazy ones there’s even a Today widget which can display up to 12 items. Another feature I can’t picture anyone with more than 20 subscriptons in their feed reader using is push notifications for new articles. But that’s just me.
What I absolutely love on Big Hubert (my iPhone 6 Plus) are the image previews which Fiery (optionally) displays in its list view when it finds images in articles.
Lastly, quick actions come to the rescue of those which subscribe to sites with a huge output. They are accessible with a right swipe over an article in list view and allow you to favorite an article _(this option might vary depending on the service you;re using)__, mark all items above or below as read, and, open the share sheet without even having opened the article in the first place.
As usual you can swipe left and mark an item as read.
The background sync works great, but in my case I also had to activate “Sync On Launch” and “Sync On Exit” because Fiery became unresponsive from time to time. This however, fixed it for me.
A personal preference would be another default color scheme than the sophisticated blue. Something more fresh and vibrant that reflects the name more… along with a nicer icon. But that’s just my having odd wishes again.
Otherwise I had zero problmes with Fiery and highly recommend it to power-users and people who like a versatile, URL scheme supporting Feed reader for their iPhone.
I came close to selling my iPad. But the sole reason was to have the money worth a months rent. I didn’t because I need it to keep the look of the blog intact. ↩
You can this option in Fiery’s settings under “Interface”. ↩
Note, the Drafts action needs to be updated from drafts://
to drafts4://
; that is, if you’re using the latest version… which I definitely recommend. ↩
I hope to have my Launch Center Pro post ready before Christmas this year. Then you get a peak behind the curtain. ↩
When selecting a font the whole UI gets that font assigned to it. I find it a bit odd since I’m used to only having the articles displaying in my ever odder font. Then again, it makes up for it by being consistent. I’d still prefer to have two different fonts, one for the UI and the other just for reading. ↩
My Internet pal Gabe Weatherhead (@macdrifter) released and iOS app with his buddy Jeff Hunsberger (@jeffhunsberger).
If you enjoy a malty beverage from time to time, go ahead and read Gabe’s post on TapCellar.
With all the detail, smart thoughts and small touches that went into the app, it’s exactly the app I’ve been waiting for… if only it would be for cheese.1
I especially like the rating mechanism, it’s really well-thought through. Also the sync with BreweryDB.com is straight forward — it’s a good choice.
You should listen to the TapCellar introduction episode on their dedicated beer podcast “Nerds on Draft” to get the whole picture.2
As you can already tell, they are serious about beer and their app is the nerds beer client of choice.
Official site: TapCellar by Gravity Well Group
Buy it: iTunes Affiliate Link
On this note:
]]>Apple is a phenomenon in that they on the one side are pushing out new features and functionality by the mass in their recent releases, and, on the other side trying to take things slow. This article is about why slow sometimes feels pretty annoying to us (the customers).
To illustrate a typical case of ‘Apple slowness’ I decided to focus on the current state of the iOS keyboard (incl. the new integration for 3rd-party keyboards). Take it as a minimal case study on the basis of the iOS keyboard fiasco.1
I preferred typing in portrait mode since my first iPhone. However, now we have bigger phones and a Home screen who went iPad, sporting a landscape mode, too — just like his bigger sister.
I found myself actually using the landscape mode more and more. Especially with the 6 Plus it finally made sense to me — I couldn’t bare the squeezed view before, with only 2/5 of the display left and the rest of the screen all keyboard there was nothing for me to like about it before.
I’m also pretty sure we will see more apps over the time which add this functionality. Matter of fact, it will become good practice to offer support for both views in most apps. The user should have the option to decide which view is convenient at the time, and, with Apple leading the way I have no doubt others will follow soon.
With the mass of new additions to iOS, Apple themselves are in need of tying up the one or other loose end. One of the things that really bugs me is the Apple keyboard itself, more precisely the landscape mode. It’s just not user-friendly for avid typers.
I’m no exclusion, the current design dichotomy renders the landscape mode keyboard 88% useless for me. Now I want to officially join in the chorus by pointing out the obvious:
The keyboard integration is broken on iOS 8. Patrick Welker
My brain refuses to switch modes when I switch my keyboard and in my opinion it shouldn’t. Apple will eventually fix this… with time.
Time is the keyword here. If have learned one thing about Apple since joining the party in 2005 then that it’s always baby steps with Apple. No matter if it’s hardware upgrades, software updates or additions to the OS. Apple wouldn’t be Apple if they haven’t planned every step meticulously… and throw out a boom every once in a while.
Part of Apple’s slowness or adversity of rushing things is marketing related, the other half is the managing part. Owing to the fact that the have (too?) small development teams, the latter has to be divided upon different parts of their product palette (which isn’t narrow at all with two OS’s, software, their online presence, et cetera).
In principle this is a smart move, since this is also what makes us anticipate the next Apple keynote each and every year.
Time is also the magical word, when we think of the restrictions for users and developers. Think back to when Touch ID was brand new and we all gasped. I wondered back then what a useful companion it will be(come). It took a whole iOS cycle to open up Touch ID for third-party apps like 1Password, but now it’s one hell of a feature. I wouldn’t want to miss it anymore.
Hopefully they allow more access to system specific options again in other areas… with time.
For instance, it would be nice, not to have browse through all installed Keyboards before being able to return to the default Apple keyboard. The default Apple keyboards have the touch and hole shortcut to display a menu of all installed keyboards, third-party keyboards aren’t allowed to use it.
Here’s another consistency issue I illustrated for you2:
If you want to get the full picture, here’s a link to the extended version without the keyboards being cropped: large + extended version.
To round this post up, let me start by saying that I’ve currently nine keyboards. I divided them up in these three groups ordered by priorities:
Essentials | Nice to Have | Gimmicks |
---|---|---|
Default US | Swype | Emoji++ |
Default German | TextExpander | Kaomoji |
Clips | Cell | GIF (Riffsy) |
Gifmoji |
In consequence, since I already stated that the implementation is broken in my opinion, I only have the essentials activated for me. Of course I’d really like to use the one’s from the second category, too… and if every thing would be buttery smooth, I’d even throw in the gimmick section.
The initial statement and fear of fellow Apple enthusiasts was, that the market will be flooded with Keyboards like it already happened with Twitter clients, weather apps, text editors, soundboard and fart apps. There will be gems and there will be quite the opposite.
Another thing where a lot of the canon appeared to agree on was that the effect of keyboard extensions - being a new toy to play with - will wear of and most reasonable users would end up with maybe one or two additional keyboards.
For me, I don’t see this minimalism happening. When I look at my Mac, I see a jam-packed computer with services, scripts and neat little apps that do one thing well. This is also the category I’d put the new keyboard extensions in. Hence, I don’t like to limit myself and only have the bare essentials on-board. To say it with the words of one of my all-time favorite bands:
Although this post has some nagging in it, the message I want to bring across is: try to be patient.3
I say the following with confidence and belief: I’m sure that the first keyboard I see out of my nine keyboards, won’t be random anymore in a year. Apple will figure it out, the OS is new and the rough edges will get smoothen out over time (just like sorting extensions will some day just starting to work).
Okay, I couldn’t leave it at that because I feel that “being patient” should only address people who are already used to Apple products. You guys know the drill of the past couple of years and are probably aware of the fact that Apple needs to sort out their self-inflicted dilemma with rushing features out and providing a product that stays true to one of their core principles:
People who are new to the world of Apple count on having a functional close to zero errors release in their hands on launch day.
Since iOS 7, codename bugaboo, I’m became careful myself with recommending updates to family members – in hindsight, I even wish I never suggest version 7.0 of iOS to any iPad owner.
Remember, there are two sides to every story, and I hope Apple will find their rhythm. Better sooner than later.
Dramatized version (depending on how you read it). ↩
I saw something similar in my Twitter timeline a while ago. I couldn’t fit the it/the author again, so I had to do it myself again. No credit taken for the idea from my side. ↩
Feel free to mumble it repeativly as you do with any mantra. I can come in handy in those times when you wait another year for that Retina Cinema Display. ↩
Good question. Glad you’ve asked.1 Before I answer this question, let’s back up.
Personally, I love automating my Mac, that’s for sure. And, despite of not posting many articles here about iOS automation, I’m a big fan.
Although, getting to a point where I was comfortable with customizing and enhancing my iOS experience was quite an odyssey. Automation on iOS has come a long way. The road was nothing but rocky… here’s a brief recap of what was and what is to come.
You probably aware that apps like Launch Center Pro, Drafts and Mr. Reader provided a variety of ways to send and interact with data. I refer to them as my “hub” for triggering actions or opening other apps. These powerful iOS applications can allow a sort of interaction between apps which wasn’t possible before, c.f. exporting data from the app you’re currently in to another app. All this works thanks to their excellent use of URL schemes.
This was huge in the pre-iOS 8 era because it was a bridge to do more with iOS than what was originally intended and within the limited scope that Apple enforced upon it’s users. In early 2011 one of the pioneers, Greg Pierce, the developer of Drafts invented the x-callback-url protocol and added the necessary base for something that quickly grew over everyones expectations – even Greg’s.
The x-callback-url specification is intended to standardize the use of URLs and registered URL schemes for inter-app communication and messaging on Apple’s iOS platforms.
More and more developers followed and added support for URL schemes to their apps. Depending on the app, integration varied from basics actions like opening an app, up to advanced features with several parameters which users could edit. For example, one of my favorite apps, 1Writer, allows for replacing the content of a document. Another one which is incredibly useful to me is Due.app, a timer and reminder app with an excellent documentation and many parameters to tweak their URL schema.
In the beginning users had to fear that Apple might even take away support for these kind of hacks, but somehow they survived. Apple just silently tolerated them.
The biggest drawback of URL schemes still persists today: ultimately they are just not highly accessible – especially the advanced ones where you chain actions together, which is usually what your after when you trying to automate a task. It takes time and a willingness to learn them and to get it right.
On the educational front, URL scheme evangelist Alex Guyot (who published an insane amount of actions on his soon to be retired blog “The Axx“) wrote a guide to Launch Center Pro for MacStories to explain how to properly encode URL schemes to get them working and do what you want.
Others who publicly made an effort to shared their wisdom about iOS automation are…
Those guys aren’t the only ones, but their websites were the ones I most frequently visited when I wanted to learn some advanced automation techniques.
In addition to everything that was already in the App Store, in July 2012 Ole Moritz (@olemoritz) changed the game with the release of Pythonista. Not only did his app support the x-callback-url protocol, the main attraction of his app was providing a complete Python IDE on iOS. Combined with URL schemes this was the next level of iOS automation. If you were fluid in Python, the possibilities on the once restricted platform that iOS is suddenly became a lot less limited. Ole kicked it up a notch and his next app – Editorial, a Markdown editor – followed the same principle featuring a fully fledged Python IDE, but the app introduced another feature: workflows which made chaining different actions together easier then ever before. Later on, followed a UI Editor which allowed users to build own little interfaces on top of Editorial.
Alex Guyot’s FTP Client UI for Editorial
However, let’s head back from Ole’s Python-powered apps to URL schemes. Over the time developers lowered the entry bar and stepped it up, too. For instance Contrast, makers of Launch Center Pro, came up with some nifty solutions. They added special operators which could handle different kind of encodings for the user and a list builder to simplify the process of generating a useful dialog like this…
… which could free up space on you’re Home screen since otherwise you would have these sticking around (instead of storing them in a folder away along with other ‘nice’ apps like Newsstand):
But once you taste blood, you want more. A simple list builder isn’t enough, as you want nested lists. Consequently this means that you still have to do some handwork. Furthermore, regarding the special operators… I haven’t seen many people use them so far. Most users on Twitter seem a bit daunted by them and still encode there Launch Center actions by hand with several layers of percent-encoding, rendering their URL unreadable in the process.
In the past month we passed the peak of URL scheme high point. With well-established apps that provide good documentation of what is possible within their application, like: and a user base that has contributed tons of actions ready to use – even for beginners since most of those actions can be imported with one tab.
- Contrast: Launch Center Pro Documentation
- Launch Center Pro Actions
- Agile Tortoise: Drafts 4 Documentation
- Drafts Action Directory
- omz:software: Pythonista Documentation and Editorial Documentation
- Pythonista Forum
- Editorial Workflow Directory
Some examples of quality documentation and support.
But no matter what… the truth is, even once you get the hang of building your own URL schemes, you still need to do the old trial and error routine from time to time to make an url scheme work because some apps provide functions that can render advanced chains of URLs useless if not treated with care.
In short: iOS automation with URL schemes is still something only an approximately small amount of iOS users is willing to indulge.
As sad as it is, I think the golden age of URL schemes was over the moment Apple introduced its solutions to inter-app communication at the WWDC on June 2th, 2014. It will continue to exist and will have its loyal user-base, but it won’t be the center of attention anymore when it comes to automation.
iOS 8 was released on September 17, 2014 and while it’s only on the market for a short period of time, Apple has already put their foot down several times rejecting and removing quite useful and promising apps.
First, there was the banishment of Launcher from the App Store - a Today view widget in the Notification Center to launch other apps via URL schemes - and second, the rejection of Craig Pearlman (@blackfog)’s Workflows app - a graphical URL workflow builder - which he worked on for more than half a year:
Now that I’ve exhausted all avenues of appeal, I can safely say that Workflows is, indeed, dead.
— Workflows App (@WorkflowsApp) October 21, 2014
Craig had to find out the hard way that his app conflicts with Apple’s policy of what is allowed and what not. They made changes to the document about 2 years ago defining that new apps2 shall not have the sole purpose of launching other apps. Don’t ask me where they draw the line… but it’s a shame. I’d have wished for a peaceful coexistence between powerful apps and Apple’s latest additions to their OS: keyboard extensions, photo editing extensions, lockscreen widgets, the document provider API and the revamped sharing dialog.
Another restriction is that apps aren’t allowed to replicate existing functionalities on iOS. I guess the formulation of the relevant paragraphs is that broad on purpose. It certainly does feel a bit random when apps like Launcher and Workflows happen to meet the exclusion criteria whilst others like Quick-Tap get approved.
But Apple being strict is no news at all. If Apple where my girlfriend, I’d say she got a tad too much control issues. (I think now is the perfect time to throw in a MF Doom quote… it’s either now or never.)
She f***ing with your head and got your heart in a tight curl. MF Doom »Favorite Ladies«
With the general train of thought in this article being iOS automation and Apple slowly opening up, I can’t conceal what I would be most exciting about: NFC. More precisely, automation with NFC. Trigger (formerly NFC Task Launcher) from the Google Play Store is the one app in which I envy Android users for years now.
The procedure is the following: you get yourself some stickers (tags) or configure another trigger and configure them to perform certain actions when you tap with your device on the tag. It’s also a bit cheaper than placing iBeacons in your living room and the bedroom.
Sample applications are…
It would get even better if we can hook up x-callback-url’s with it. Basically you could build an analoge Launch Center Pro for starting Backups, publishing blog post and uploading the last picture in your camera roll3 automatically to your Twitter – you know, the awkward one of you clipping your dogs toe nails wearing a kilt and smiling affectedly.
Of course Trigger has even more features and options than you and I can imagine, we’re iPhone users…. That’s also why the realistic timeframe for such a support would be in 7 years or, more likely, never. In case this would be possible with a trusted Cydia developers app, I’d be tempted to jailbreak again. The last time I did it, was for f.lux.4
Here’s a general introduction…
… and a home automation demo:
Despite Apple acting arbitrary like with the rejections mentioned above, it is more clear what their motivation is when considering their grand scheme: keeping iOS safe, simple to use and doing this by preserving their own design aesthetic.
It seems Apple wants developers to focus on implementations which take place within their delimited parameter, ultimately making their vision of “iOS as a whole” better. As long as you stay away from the fuzzy lines which mark borders in their policy you’re okay as a developer.
Presumably, some other advantages for customers are that…
With extensions, widgets, the document provider integration and whatnot the new road is paved. So let’s cut the chase:
Why Do We Still Need a URL Schemes When iOS 8 Brings the Sharing Dialog to Every App?
There are advancements in more than one area, but I decided to pick the new sharing dialog as an example. It’s a large piece of the puzzle which went put together, is Apple’s current solution to the problem that inter-app communication was on iOS… and (unlike the document provider API) all your favorite apps already seem to support it.
Coming from zero “automation” this must feel like heaven. Speaking as someone who has a background with a decent set of automation I can say, this was long awaited and it is a fantastic feature.
In brief, things drastically changed for most people. Apart from that, some things won’t change so much for others.
Despite some extensions being valuable additions to my automation and worfklow toolbelt, I still have a good amount of bookmarklets in Safari for apps that have no extension yet or only have simply extensions. My hunch is that I will have to wait quite some time until I can replace these bookmarklets. They give me options to trigger a variety of Launch Center Pro lists acting on a websites title and URL in different ways (which you will hear about soon).5
But in all honesty, now that extensions are here, using bookmarklets feels like a workaround. Most times it’s exactly that, an extra step which manifests itself by having to tap the bookmark icon, eventually opening the folder with my bookmarklets, searching for the right own (without any visual aids other than emojis or unicode characters) and then in the final instance touching them to trigger the action. If you have the bookmarks bookmarklet folder always open you can cut a few steps. Still, it’s not ideal, but for power-user stuff this is status quo.
Whereas some workflows remain untouched, others get a breeze of fresh air. Clips.app for instance, a clipboard manager for iOS, is great if you don’t want to send the content far far away but rather act upon it soon. Linky makes sending of web findings to social networks a joy. Lastly, the Drafts extension takes care of the rest. I hope Drafts will be capable to customize the extension with selected Drafts actions soon, then I can get rid of each and every bookmarklet.
In a nutshell and without all the back and forth, the new sharing dialog with extensions and actions is a bliss and I’m certain it will be the biggest part of the future what iOS automation is. The greatest benefit over URL schemes is, that it is available in every application.
The only ones in trouble are apps which use a custom sharing dialog like Mr. Reader, Unread and Riposte. Those apps went the extra mile and created something which was superior to Apple’s outdated approach. Now they are missing out on the increasing availability of new extensions. The latter two apps are both developed by Jared Sinclair (@jaredsinclair) who created the OvershareKit – a custom share sheet - which he developed to provide “better inter-app communication and sharing APIs”. Jared stated that he will not publish any updates, but to make sure that OvershareKit is iOS 8 compatible.
Extensions are Apple’s answer to the problem that OvershareKit was created to solve. It seems to me that it’s better for all involved – both developers and users – for any app that’s using OvershareKit to migrate to Extensions and the UIActivity frameworks. … Evernote has a rich and complicated API. It doesn’t make sense for outside developers like me to spend limited resources building support for Evernote. Jared Sinclair
Ditching ones own creation is hard, maybe too hard. I hope Oliver Fürniß (@curioustimes) from CuriousTimes finds a better way for his Mr. Reader. I will share with you what such a way could look like this week. Until then, lets take the shortcut to the finish line of this article.
To conclude, for the way I work within iOS, the current state of inter-app communication is superb, but not sufficient for my particular needs. The best solution for power-users are the kind of apps we will hopefully see more more of in the future. Those which will function as a bridge between the x-callback-url protocol and existing native integrations. This way we can use the best of both worlds.
I depend on hubs – be it Launch Center Pro or Drafts, both are in my 3-app dock on the iPhone and provide the convenience I seek for to send files to remote locations, to launch a set of actions or provide me with a menu of different choices when I’m not yet decided where to put the data in question. Powerful and versatile apps will always have a place on my phone and I’m still glad if a developer add support for url schemes. X-callback-url apps are not dying, they are just getting old like the rest of us. Let’s grow old in dignity together.
I’m a gemini, speaking astrologically, not enzygotic. ↩
Read: Launch Center Pro is safe. ↩
Yet another example where Apple was willing to listen to their customers and “fix it”. ↩
I hereby admit that I’m eager to try out a good Android phone for over one year now. In all honesty, it’s a tinkerer friendly platform and this is exactly what appeals to me. It would be of the greatest interest to me to see if I could life without one part of the eco-system of what Apple is. Of course if I’d happen to make the switch, all the money put in the App Store so far is kind of gone. Then again, I pay for premium upgrades anyway. The family would be okay with using Skype or WhatsApp, that I know. ↩
I heard Federico Viticci speak of some developer (quite possible it was Ole Zorn) who works on an extension which allows to collect bookmarklets or x-callback-url and display them as options. This would be the missing link for me… please, ominous developer, if you read this then beta me. ↩
My father was a business man. In his spare time he enjoyed building things with his own two hands. It was more than just balancing out his job in the office, he had an urge to build things he used and enjoyed looking at.
In my childhood I grew up in a rural area and watched him building things up from nothing to absolute stunning results. He had a Japanese phase and styled part of the house and the whole garden this way. He added to it by building smaller detail and also bigger architectural projects like a bridge, a tea house and a 13 feet (4 meter) tall gate with two golden Mortal Kombat dragons on the sides — guess twice who delivered the inspiration for those.1
He’s 63 years now and due do some unfortunate events in his career — a real white collar crime bombshell story, like the ones you’d normally read in a novel — today he hasn’t even 1/12 of his monthly income. Regarding his big-scale side projects, I thought that’s it because even the resources and the material costs some cash.
But necessity is the mother of invention. He proofed me wrong. In the last couple years my parents moved twice and with the tools at hand and a minimal budget he build several smaller things around the house they lived in. More recently he also constructed two stone ovens (yep, the ones which are also the best way to bake a pizza), because I infected him with the baker virus. It’s when you bake your own bread… and since it’s a virus you’re forced to bake at least two loafs of bread a week (not the whitish, toast-like sweet stuff).
PS: Every stone in that picture is placed and arranged by my dad.
You know what they say… like father, like son. Actually, with 33 years I can say it has never been more true then now. I’m starting to see more and more similarities each day. The good and the bad ones. You have to picture my girlfriend nodding in agreement, because obviously I inherited not only the good traits. But I’m still young and there is time to grew, be it forwards or backwards.
One of the similarities I got in common with my old man is that I’m a tinkerer. Although I’m rather the digital version. With apps like Keyboard Maestro, bash scripting and AppleScript I can replace many smaller and some bigger apps that I’d have liked to purchase. I try to make the best out of it, and often I end up preferring this hand-crafted customized solution over a UI.
Since I build stuff for me on a daily basis I need some tools. Luckily OS X ships with most of them. With the UNIX base, extra Ruby, AppleScript and so on, there are enough of them at hand. If you’re a craftsman, you know the feeling. Plus you need something extra if you always want your tools at hand and build prototypes swiftly. What you need is a tool-belt and a working room.
For OS X CodeRunner by Nikolai Krill (@nikolaikrill) was my long-time favorite to test scripts. It is able to run code written in AppleScript, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Shell and many more. It’s a superb app which does one thing well.
However, since I’ve signed up up for the Yosemite beta CodeRunner constantly freezes. Luckily, 97% of the time you just had force-quit the app, reopen it and wait until the crash message vanished after 12 seconds – the latter could be because my Mac is 6 years old, dunno.
Today a new app with a similar set of features was released: Peppermint by Ioannis Zafeiropoulos (a.k.a. Dr.Kameleon)
The name sounds like a homage to Panic’s Coda and is not to be confused with Peppermint the color wheel app.
Ioannis also runs INSILI.CO, his company has over 40 apps in the App Store, almost all of them are tools for people who live in code. Normally, I’m cautious if developers sell more than 4 apps, since I doubt that they can provide enough care, attention and support to all of their apps on an equal basis. But reading their blog posts I got the feeling that Peppermint is an absolute love child. It was planned 3 years ago and now the bun is out of the oven.
This is what Ioannis told me about Peppermint:
It’s something I’m really devoted to, almost a dream: make an editor that I really love, the way I have envisioned it. And since I’ve been a coder in-love for the past 20 years, I believe I fully understand a programmer’s heart and indset.
His version 1.0 also has some nice tricks up its sleeve. Here’s the list of features straight from the developers website:
Features:
- 50+ different syntaxes supported
- 10+ different themes
- Lots of different plugins/tools for everything you need
- Instantly Run/Preview your code, without ever living Peppermint
- Included FTP/SFTP mapping support
- Live JavaScript console
- Fully customiseable & scriptable
- Advanced Editing: Snippets, Autocompletion, Multiple cursors
I already added to it and build a theme called Neo Berlin (v1.0) for it which is based on Ahmet Sülek’s Flat UI Terminal Theme (which again is inspired by the colors in the Flat UI kit).
For now, you’ll have to put the theme into /Applications/Peppermint.app/Contents/Resources/Data/Themes/
. In the upcoming V1.1 you can drop them in ~/Library/Application Support/Peppermint/User/Themes/
.
Disclaimer! I just installed this app today and like my theme, it’s a version 1.0. This also means that the app isn’t perfect yet. Preferences are basically not existing. Currently there are four options to toggle on/off by default: sidebar, tabs, status bar and panel.
The ground work is definitely done and the app is more than usable. Besides the themes, there are also templates for all supported languages to give you a starting point. Another bonus is code-folding, which I always find useful in larger scripts.
The utility view is a neat idea, too. It’s a panel on the right side which can…
The prospect of having more plug-ins and/or snippets available is also what really sets Peppermint apart from CodeRunner. If people with a bit more JavaScript knowledge than me customize the app, I imagine it can become quite versatile. Just like my favorite text editor FoldingText you can already do a ton of customization with a bit of code and a JSON file.2
For said reasons I haven’t really dug into the advanced editing capabilities. Right now I happy that I can test drive my scripts again in the quickest manner possible.
The tabbed view isn’t fully implemented yet, you can only have one tab at the moment, but you can still switch files in the sidebar. you can right-click on a file to add a tab, but the good old trusty ⌘+Click
isn’t supported (for now).
I wished there was an option in the preferences to set a favorites in the sidebar, so that all of my folders or files are there when Peppermint starts up. A recent files smart folder would also be handy. Another minor UI thing is that it would be nice to have a setting where I can put the status bar at the top. It’s quite a way down to where it sits when the window spans from the top of the screen to the bottom.
Commenting/uncommenting worked for most file types I tested, only HTML didn’t work.
Lastly, good old CodeRunner has a feature that is really cool. You can take care of command line arguments or input sets which you might need to run your code. Plus, you can interact with your scripts and apps while they run. I guess this might be possible with Peppermint, too, but there’s no menu or plug-in for it at the moment.
Since I want to end on a positive note and haven’t found a major problem that keeps me from using the app, all I can say is: if you need a program like this and can spend $14.99, then Peppermint might be for you. Speaking for myself, I’m glad it’s here and works without hiccups in Yosemite.
I’m also eager to see what the future will bring for this little helper. After all, the real tool-belt from my father is a bit to wide for my waist and this app fits me much better.
Sadly I couldn’t find better quality pictures. Those are ancient. I’d have really loved to show you the Mortal Kombat dragon up-close. Here are three slightly larger shots. ↩
Brett Terpstra might take care of some additions since he’s a big CodeRunner fan already. But I know he won’t ever read this, since this is a larger blog post (ᵔᴥᵔ). ↩
There are some browser extensions which occupy valuable space in my text file where I collect link list items. Since I’m a Chrome user on the Mac (not on iOS anymore) and I have my reasons why Google Chrome is my favorite browser, I decided to do a link list special.
~/Applications/Chrome Apps
to LaunchBar/Alfred it’s also quick to launch.= TAB search term
. I still prefer the LaunchBar action to search Wolfram.Dropbox is the home for your most important stuff—now we’re bringing it to life with a growing family of products. As we scale our global brand, there’s plenty of space for you to grow alongside us and simplify life for millions of people around the world.
There’s something about Dropbox that just clicked with me years ago. While this has been the case for many other tech brands, only a few were capable of keeping it that way. I still feel literally connected to Dropbox. Sync.
Despite slowly offering more than just sync, I still put the company in the category ‘one thing well’. With Google deemed evil some years ago and Apple focusing more and more each year on how to perfect their marketing, Dropbox has been “a constant” in my life.
In my mind I still see the 2007 version of Dropbox, 12 nerdy people hacking away to deliver the perfect sync every other major company chases after. The sync which the one company I own a lot of devices from just can’t deliver yet.
Anyhow, the truth is that Dropbox has become a huge company with over 300 million customers. This has it’s benefits like solid improvments, add-ons (Photo galleries, the PDF view, an iOS app, …) and it’s downsides. For me the latter mostly consists of (waiting longer for) nerdier things like an ignore file à la GitHub, Markdown support and generally more customization options.
I can live with that. Their core product is just so different from other big companies I like because they don’t have a vast range of products to offer. I thinks it’s this dedication, this belief in their product1 and the subliminal nerdiness at their foundation why I still feel good vibrations when I see that blue logo with a blue box.
That’s that. I just felt like getting this out. But the main reason why I started this post is, that the Muppets explaining for over a week now on YouTube what it’s like working at Dropbox. I just wanted to let you know.
One of the reasons why they produced this cool video is… they are constantly hiring. And if you feel up for the task, I’d give it a try. It might can’t beat working at Panic, because Panic is Panic, but it’s the next best thing.
On another note, Dropbox has recently published some beautiful manuals for users and admins. They sure to nice things and the manuals are definitely worth a look. Your design-spoiled eyes will enjoy the view.
PS: I envy those puppets for the Dropbox T-Shirt they own.
Remember that they also didn’t like the idea of an acquisition and selling out? ↩
This is as nerdy as it gets. A brilliant article by Matthew Mueller for the aspiring hacker as well as developer teams.
By setting up automation, you can get up and running on a new Mac faster, you will stay up to date with the latest security fixes and you can minimize inconsistencies among your teammate’s computers.
Don’t forget to take a look at the comment section. And, most important: keep your fingers positioned over your ‘send to Pinboard.in’ shortcut.
]]>More Macros! Yesterday I posted »Trello this with Keyboard Maestro« and I submitted a ticket on Brett’s GitHub site asking if it was possible to add a proper multi-line description.
Turns out this already ought to work. Brett fixed it and now it works.
This is brillant since now we can generate Markdown reports from Trello. The possibilities are endless. One can create reports of just one list, of selected lists across different boards, a whole board or your complete Trello account in a flat folder structure with Markdown files.
A next step could be to automatically email these reports to team members or your boss at the end of the week.
However, to get you started I have setup a simple one which creates a Markdown formatted report and saves the file on your Desktop as “name-of-your-list.txt” with the following syntax:
# CARD TITLE (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM)
## 1st Card Title
Description text here
***
## 2nd Card Title
Description text here
Optionally opens the report in Marked.app (enable the corresponding action in the bottom).
This is the macro in action:
In addition, yesterdays macro which generates a numbered list from all card titles in a specific list is now updated to work with Version 0.2.0 of Brett’s Ruby Gem.
UPDATE: I wasn’t exactly crystal clear and some of you guys seem to run into trouble. Here’s the thing. The two macro’s here are “extensions” which depend on the macro’s from the last post. I updated the download package below – everything you need is in there, but make sure to read the instructions from the last post to set it up properly, c.f. without running 00) Trello: Setup Trello API key
one time these won’t work. Here’s the new link:
If you need help with any of this or your own Keyboard Maestro workflow just leave a comment or contact me via email.
]]>Today I’m publishing my Trello macro for swiftly filing notes or websites to Trello. I’m actually a bit excited about it because it has been really useful so far for me.
If you work in a team and don’t know about Trello, go and check it out now. It shines at collaboration and their iOS app was the first one1 (that I know of) which implemented drag and drop in a elegant manner. It’s one of those services where you wonder why their free plan is so damn good. If your still not convinced let me play the power card: It has Markdown support.
This Keyboard Maestro Macro will enable you to post to any Trello list on any Trello board by prompting you to select a board and list.
You can drag and drop a note from Finder to the droplet that comes with the macro. The first line will become the title (any Markdown header from #
to ######
gets stripped) and the body renders as the description of the card.
Beside the droplet app there is a macro which works the same way, only it acts on a text selection.
Another one will try to guess the active (aka frontmost) browser and takes the title of the active tab as the cards name and puts Source: <URL>
in the cards description. Since there’s also a prompt you can change the cards name and description to your liking.
You can cancel the transmission process on every prompt and the macro should fail gracefully, deleting all variables and stopping the rest of the macro from firing unwanted information at Trello.
Lastly, you can also copy a numbered Markdown list into your clipboard of a specific list:2
As I tend to write more modular macros recently, you should be fine modifying this to your needs by looking at the existing macros. I also put enough comments inside the macros to explain what happens in each step.
To get you up and running follow all the steps outlined in this post.
Behind the scenes my macro uses Brett Weavnet’s trello_cli
. You have to install it via gem install trello_cli
in Terminal.app.
Thankfully Brett’s documentation is very detailed and you should be able to accomplish the mission even if you only know ‘the shell’ from Mario Kart or Discworld.
Head over to the GitHub repository and follow his instructions. Here’s the gist of it:
Sign-in to trello.com as the user you want to use for trello_cli.
Get API key (open this link in a web browser):
https://trello.com/1/appKey/generate
The top field contains your Developer API Key. Use it to replace YOUR_API_KEY in the member token links below as well as the TRELLO_DEVELOPER_PUBLIC_KEY environment variable.
Next, get a member token. You will need to replace YOUR_API_KEY in the links below with the API key obtained in the previous step.
…
To get a read / write member token:
https://trello.com/1/authorize?key=YOUR_API_KEY&name=trello-cli&expiration=never&response_type=token&scope=read,write
In case you want to use his Ruby gem on the command line to also do the last step of the instructions on the projects GitHub site, namely “set the api key and member token environment variables”.
If you want to learn more about Token creation and so on, you can pay the official Trello documentation a visit.
UPDATE: This macro now also contains the Markdown export macros from the follow-up post.
NOTE: Check via Terminal.app that your installed trello_cli
gem is globally accessible (= accessible form anywhere without cd-ing into the folder where it’s located). The best thing is to symlink it to your /usr/local/bin/
folder.
To put a symlink there:
(1) Go to Terminal.app and type trello
. Copy the path of your gem. Example output:
/Users/patrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p451/bin/trello
(2) In Terminal.app make the symlink with ln -s source-path target-path
. Example input:
ln -s /Users/patrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p451/bin/trello /usr/local/bin/trello
If you type trello
in Terminal.app and get a response you’re good to go.
My thanks go to Brett Weavnet (@brettweavnet) for his trello_cli. I build this macro around his Ruby gem, so without it there would be no TRELLO THIS!
GitHub: https://github.com/brettweavnet/trello_cli
In addition, Rob Threw (@complexpoint) isn’t a FoldingText users lifesaver, he has a nifty snippet to make sure your Keyboard Maestro (or Alfred or LaunchBar or Hazel) installation uses the default shell:
Calling the FoldingText Command Line interface from KeyBoard Maestro
It’s way better than what I did before and thanks to it every one of you should have no problems running Brett’s Ruby Hem – so this is what I used in the macro to make trello_cli
run properly without exporting additional RVM paths.
The droplet contains 99% of Evan Mullins (@circlecube) “Copy Path script droplet” AppleScript and a tiny bit of Keyboard Maestro to make it work. Oldie but goldie.
Standard Markdown should work just fine, but if your text starts with tons of hyphens there’s a good chance the macro will fail. The macro will convert every list that uses hyphens into an asterisks list, but there could be scenarios, like a text with ---------
in it where the whole grummy thing chokes.
In case you find anything else, shoot me a mail.
Transmit iOS also pulls this trick of, but it was definitely not the first app to support drag and drop. ↩
I wish the macro would also add the description of the individual tasks, but trello_cli
will only output the one line… and this is the actual title of the card. If you know how to pull it of or have another CLI tool that does the job send me tweet – I’d love to have/build a working Trello List to Markdown export. ↩