RocketINK

Link List – June 18, 2013

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Image reference pane with CSS in Marked
- Brilliant idea of Sid O’Neill: A Marked CSS style to preview all referenced images in a sidebar like manner.
Jony Ive Redesigns Things
- A hilarious Tumblr blog about the upcoming iOS design and the mastermind behind it. If you had a bad day, click the link above. via Admartinator.de
The Interview about flat design that wasn’t cool enough for the media
- An nice read. Michael Flarup’s points out why flat design isn’t the holy grail of design.
gdocs2md
- Convert a Google Drive Document to the Markdown format, suitable for publishing via @zettt
IFTTT Update - Gmail Attachments
- It’s one of these services which just keeps getting better and also one which I’d like to pay a small fee to make sure that it stays around.
Xavier Naidoo - “Bei Meiner Seele”
- German Soul… Just wanted to get the word out that it exists… (here’s a very rough translation).
What Aristotle and Joshua Bell can teach us about persuasion
- Why it matters where and when you show your brilliant work.
CodeMirror
- Edit your code in the browser with this piece of JavaScript. Could definitely come in handy in some situations.
Unsplash
- Free stock photos (Creative Commons CC0). There are even some with Apple products. If you’re a sell accessoires or software check it out.
Chatology for Mac
- Flexibits - the developers behind Fantastical - provide an easy way to search your chat history with their latest application. You have predefined filters for images and links and can limit the focus on a certain date range.
Horizon for iOS
- Natural language support, the weather forecast and a clean interface. Horizon Calendar knows how to impress me (– I still won’t switch from Fantastical).
Poster + Automattic
- Well… it happened again. Like with Sparrow, I always see acquisitions like this more with a crying eye than a smiling one.
colourcode - find your colour scheme
- A superb web application to find color schemes.
404 Not Found
- Most awesome error page ever. via Webdesigner Depot
Origami - Your Family’s Home.
- I’ve been beta testing Origami for a while now. My verdict: it’s one of the most beautiful ways to share your photos, videos and messages with your loved ones. It’s a crowded market and with my Synology’s Photo Station I’m no longer in need for a service like this. But Origami is now out of beta and here’s your link to test drive it.
Apple Mail Plugins and Tools
- A collection of (all?) plugins for Apple Mail. via @simplicitybliss
Mail Pilot for Mac
- The beta for the Mac app has started and you can sign up now. I totally don’t get the trend to make a to-do manager out of your Mailbox, but it seems to gain popularity. I can only assume people who don’t what to use a dedicated task manager are using these kind of productivity tools.
Roon
- For people who just want to blog. The interface is simple as can be. Supports Markdown and soon also custom domains. By the way, it’s also free. If you missed your chance to get early access to Ghost here’s your chance to play around with something different.

➡ Mango — a new Markdown editor web app

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 10:10:00 +0200

If you ever wished there was a web application that works just like FoldingText, you can now breathe a sigh of relief. After releasing the plain text outliner Oak a month ago now Jesse Grosjean from Hog Bay Software added another piece to the puzzle; Jesse’s plan on releasing a complete plain text productivity suite certainly received a major bump with its latest addition. Mango comes with the most prominent features of his OS X counterpart: Folding & Focusing. If you know FoldingText you will feel right at home when using Mango.

FoldingText is my default editor on the Mac because I love how inline links just disappear and I can take a look at my Markdown document without the additional markup.

Mango is a great way to show a text to people who are unfamiliar with Markdown. You can paste your local document and edit it without people getting lost/mad because you added all that unnecessary characters. Plus you can focus on important topics without accidentally scrolling through the whole document.

I really like where this is heading and I’m wondering if there are any plans to support connecting popular cloud storage solutions like Dropbox or Simplenote at some point in time.

PERMALINK: http://rocketink.net/2013/06/mangomarkdown.html

Every Time Zone to get an overview over just that

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 11:37:00 +0200

Apple’s WWDC 2013 keynote is due today. Like always I have to do the math to see exactly when I can open my favorite sites to follow their live blogs. The most beautiful way to get the correct time on my Mac is to browse to Every Time Zone by Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs.

The shame is, I always forget the domain name (despite the fact that it’s quite memorizable) and searching through is an extra step for a website that I use more and more often and that is so well build that "an app for for this" would make sense.

In short: it was about time to setup a Fluid app for Every Time Zone.

If you like the concise look above and own a Fluid license you can make use applying custom Userstyles. Just create a rule and add the following pattern to get the right URL *everytimezone.com*.

In the code section you can add these couple of lines to hide the header and the footer as well as pushing the content a bit up and limiting its height.

/* Hide the Header and Footer for a more concise app */

#header, #footer { display: none; }
#wrapper {
    margin-top: -3.5em;
    max-height: 900px;
}

More ideas for using fluid:

TextDrop
YouTube
Vimeo
Tumblr
Simplenote
Hootsuite
Newsblur

Toggle Function Keys with Keyboard Maestro

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 07:18:00 +0200

Here’s a little trick how to toggle the function keys on Mac OS X with Keyboard Maestro. I’ve set my F1, F2, etc. keys to perform their standard function not the special features printed on each key. I’m used to holding down the function key to toggle the system sound, brightness and so on, but if you’re in the other camp this macro could be interesting for you.

I have it in my global macros palette which I call up via ^SPACE then I press F to toggle the functions keys and get one of these little growl notification:

This is how the macro works.

The first step is to read the current function key state with a shell command action and set it to a variable FN_Key_Status.

defaults read "Apple Global Domain" com.apple.keyboard.fnState

In the next step we use AppleScript to toggle the state of the function keys. It’s as easy as pasting this into an AppleScript action:

tell application "System Preferences"
reveal anchor "keyboardTab" of pane "com.apple.preference.keyboard"
end tell
tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
click checkbox 1 of tab group 1 of window 1
end tell
quit application "System Preferences"

The macro now works, but we want it to look good and be informative. I use GrowlNotify to display a Growl notification with a keyboard icon:

(a) if the variable of FN_Key_Status matches a 0 then the special functions keys just switched from on to off, so the following shell script should get triggered:

/usr/local/bin/growlnotify -n FunctionKeys --image /System/Library/PreferencePanes/Keyboard.prefPane/Contents/Resources/Keyboard.icns  -m "OFF: using all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys!"

(b) vice versa, if the variable of FN_Key_Status matches a 1 then trigger this shell script:

/usr/local/bin/growlnotify -n FunctionKeys --image /System/Library/PreferencePanes/Keyboard.prefPane/Contents/Resources/Keyboard.icns  -m "ON: using special features printed on the keys!"

This is what the complete macro looks like:

The cool thing is that you can also use the AppleScript when launching or quitting applications. Let’s say your standard setup is that you use the special function keys, but you want to switch to standard function keys whenever you open an app from the Adobe Suite:

Then you duplicate the macro and tell it to toggle the keys again if you quit on of the apps.

This is only to give you some ideas. Arguably the better way to do this could be to set a up a If Then Else action in Keyboard Maestro and use to only toggle the function keys if Adobe Photoshop is the front window.

If you don’t want to trouble yourself with using Keyboard Maestro there are apps, like Palua or FNable available in the Mac App Store to rid you of the fun that you would otherwise have if you choose to use Keyboard Maestro for automating this.

DOWNLOAD¹

For some people downloading single Keyboard Maestro doesn’t seem to work – they get an error when importing. Try downloading the whole repository as a zip file, this usually works.↩

➡ LaunchBar 5.5 Update

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 20:45:00 +0200

My launcher of choice - LaunchBar - just received a really nice update. It’s now v5.5.

This version brings support for text snippets, a finely tuned integration with Automator workflows, better iTunes support and many more features to the table.

Workflows

LaunchBar now provides tight integration with Automator workflows, allowing you to run them from within LaunchBar, optionally pass text or file arguments, and to return the results back to LaunchBar.

Various Automator actions for getting workflow results back to LaunchBar and for accessing LaunchBar features from within your workflows.

You can read the complete release notes here.

I’m a longtime LaunchBar user and a fan. I tried Alfred, but somehow I always just felt more at home with LaunchBar. To be honest, I haven’t really sat down and gave Alfred 2 a fair chance because the dynamic duo I have with LaunchBar and Keyboard Maestro is all I could wish for.

With Keyboard Maestro I don’t have to remember what to type. I fire up one of my global palettes and can read from there on what I want to trigger next.

LaunchBar is the perfect companion app for me. I like that it just displays a small window at the top and I’m a frequent user of the folder navigation that comes with a fuzzy search algorithm. If I drill down a folder structure and type “12” it finds all files with “12” in it and not only the ones that start with this number. I never got it why I have to use a wildcard in Alfred to achieve the same thing. That’s one of the few tiny extra steps that make using Alfred permanently hard for me.¹

Side note: I understand completely why Alfred 2 is the epitome of awesome written in all-caps. I just don’t need everything it has to offer.↩

PERMALINK: http://rocketink.net/2013/06/launchbar5.5.html

Link List – June 5, 2013

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Outbox — A beautiful inbox for postal mail
- I certainly have no use for a this service but the idea is brilliant. It sounds like a dream come true for busy people. Of course you have to decide for yourself if you’re going to trust your private mail to a company and be ok with the extra security measurements you have to do on your own when it comes to accessing your digitalized mail (no public WiFi, no insecure account password, etc.).
Whistle
- FitBit for dogs. Looks pretty cool, I guess I have my Christmas present for my parents.
The Cockroach - The Perfect Creature
- Fascinating facts, nicely animated. And since the Cockroach is our topic for this link, here’s another one by the NY Times.
Wallpapers by Davis
- If you like those blurry wallpapers, this one is for you.
JavaScript Regular Expression Enlightenment - Tech.Pro
- Note to self - continue learning JavaScript, start learning RegEx.
A Client- And Server-Side Approach — Providing The Best Mobile User Experience Possible
- Only if you really interested. It’s a long read and probably only interesting for those of you who have something do to with making websites or web apps.
fartscroll.js - Everyone farts. And now your web pages can too.
- This must be the best thing since the invention of the Internet. I just used the bookmarklet to fool my girlfriend into thinking I’ve “improved” her site. via Codrops
Finder Color Labels
- I’m always keen to know how people use the color labels in Finder. Sadly there are only a few who post about it. So, inspiration is hard to find. Luckily @brandonpittman jumped in and posted an interesting article about it.
Twitter + Feed RSS = Siftlinks
- “Siftlinks is a service that monitors your friend stream on Twitter, pulls out the links and creates an RSS feed for you to peruse at your leisure.”
On “Geek” Versus “Nerd” - Slackpropagation
- A wrap-up on the differences. In Germany these borrowed anglicisms often get mixed up.
Productive Macs Bundle
- Nine applications for $29.99. Nothing wrong with that. Crossover is great for Windows stuff, A Better Finder Rename is one of my favorits for batch renaming files and Dropzone is a time saver for drag and drop file operations of any kind. I can’t vouch for the rest, but these three alone make it a good bundle. PS: My dad enjoys ArtText… he’s crazy about beveled and glossy text. I bought him a license some time ago.
Why Twitter’s Bootstrap is Seriously Important
- I get Jonathan’s point. Still, I don’t like seeing default Bootstrap sites everywhere. On the other hand it beats crappy design any time.

➡ Flavours - effortlessly theming your Mac

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

I’m a Mac convert since 2005 and one of the first things I did was hanging around MacTHEMES (RIP)[^1] and starting to mod my Mac.

[^1}: MacTHEMES was a ressource for all things theming. Ever since iOS came along it went downhill being flodded with cheap icons on a daily basis until the admin decided to take it offline.

I did everything from modifying my SArtFile.bin to building up an enormous CandyBar library. I did the same to my first iPhones and my girlfriend’s Mac. On her MacBook I changed the boot image and background color of the startup screen with BootXChanger. She has a sweet tooth and so I put a cupcake on it instead of that healthy gray apple. In addition I tweaked her login screen to display “Cake OS - 100% sugar free”.

I stopped theming a few years ago. OS X looks pretty sleek out of the box and way too often I uglified my OS instead of beautifying it.

However, I know there are a lot of people out there who still like to tweak the default OS X appearance a bit. Also being aware of the fact that it’s quite the task to modify some aspects of OS X, I always find it nice to see new applications appear which focus on an easier user experience to theme one’s Mac.

A couple of days ago Flavours was released and apart from applying themes you can also share you’re own creations.

Here are some screen shots from the official website so you can get a ruff idea what you can do with it:

PERMALINK: http://rocketink.net/2013/06/flavours.html

Waiting for the RSS Enlightenment

Thu, 30 May 2013 00:00:00 +0200

I tweeted about Mr. Reader’s public statement right after he published his post because I’m most excited about what will become of my favorite iPad RSS reader – I check the blog every day to see if there’s something new. Today the link above appeared and I was eager to read it. Here’s my little story how I tackle the issue we all have: (soon) being without Google Reader.

After Google announced that they will abandon Google Reader I was bit upset. To be precise, I had a higher pulse for about 20 seconds and then realized that this is a great opportunity to improve RSS, which practically stagnated for about a thousand years when using the modern calendar of technological inventions. Using this technology always felt like the industry doesn’t care anymore with to consumer crowd only being a relatively small fraction of internet people and Google having a kind of monopol. The stereotypic consumer tends to use the big social networks to get his information and in economic thinking the though of mass trumps minority is still the most popular when it comes to earning cash. But where there is a market, there shall be opportunities. With the major player disappearing over night there must be something good in it for the RSS loving crowd. At least that is what I strongly believe in with technology being my chosen religion.

So, I tried to stay calm. My intention was to keep it that way until 10 days before RSS doomsday. The idea was to wait since 2 months isn’t a very long time span to develop a replacement for Google Reader or to restructure an existing service. Besides, I tend to dismiss a service or application quite fast when it doesn’t fit my needs. In my calculation every day I’d wait longer will provide me with a more mature service when finally taking a look on what is being offered on the menu. This seemed fair to me – who knows what the different services will bring to the table on the last 5 days before end of June? In addition, my plan B was crawling back to Fever waving an I’m sorry sign (at least until I found a fitting new RSS syncing service).

But, what I also knew was that sitting and waiting would be very hard. I’m not good at holding my fingers still when it comes to testing new applications and services. My natural curiosity is to big and owing to that on the next day I hunted down possible alternatives. After I hunter-gathered enough mammoth wool I realized that my initial thinking was right. Waiting is better. It was like having found a treasure chest with a lot of cozy warm furs for the coming winter. The thing is, as a fashion forward Stone Age man you have to wear matching boots – having a great RSS syncing service is nothing without a great iOS companion. I read about 70 percent of RSS in a web app and the rest on my iOS devices. I can’t just wander of if the latter isn’t equally good as the first.

Fast forward. I managed to do nothing about it, but two weeks ago I read “Feed Wrangler: A New RSS Reader With Smart Streams, Filters, Read Later Integration” from Federico Viticci and the next day I bought a subscription. I simply trust Federico’s opinion since he’s an overall good guy with a keen sense on what is or could become practical and useful.

My test drive with Feed Wrangler was a relative short one. Despite the idea behind the service being a great one, I missed folders too much. I’m old fashioned and like working on one feed at a time: opening a folder, drilling down and reading one feed, then advancing to the next. Having the ingenious “smart folders” was more than welcomed, but it wasn’t enough to convince me to stay (for now). I’ll check back on July 1st and can’t wait to see what’s new at that point in time.

Shortly after I got the ball rolling (aka trying on some of the new furs and matching boots), Gabe came along with his The Feed Reader Reviews: Newsblur and I felt right at home reading the article. I bought that one too. So far I’m happy, but also not too impressed. The good things that Gabe highlighted were definitely there, but having just tried out Feed Wrangler I already felt that I miss something. The smart streams are a real innovation – like Federico, I’d would love to see this kind of forward thinking more in other apps and services. What I also miss is a proper search function and moving folders in my custom order. One the one hand I’m nitpicking because all the basic features are there, on the other hand Newsblur has been around for a couple of years and I expect them to make bigger steps than a service which just launched.

Another very important point in deciding which service will be the right one was waiting for what Mr. Reader will support – to stick to the Stone Age metaphors: these are the fur boots that I’d like to wear; they are good looking, comfy, versatile and they are good for hiking as well as chasing mammoths at a high speed. You can only throw a spear far and precise if you have a good grip. The iPad is a great reading device and Mr. Reader makes it easy to file, forward and archive important articles. I really hope Newsblur gets up to speed with improving their API. To be frank, my hopes aren’t high in that regard – I can image that it will take some time and (scenario two:) I can imagine that they might not be interested in tweaking their API. An official statement would be more than welcome.

Overall I’d characterize my needs as very basic:

A decent minimal web interface (preferably close to the screen shot in this post = one preview line is enough for me) and shortcuts would also be most welcome.
Folders, folders, folders (preferably rearrangeable).
iOS clients (preferably a superb API which makes it easy for existing apps to use the service – actually the API should be #1).
A non freemium business model.

And, to repeat myself: although I think the list above is a simple one, I know that those small wishes add up and take time for developers to accomplish them.

For me, what it comes down to is this: I’m as wise as I was before. I (will) wait. Regarding developers I think their RSS service will rise and fall with their API. The mobile market with native RSS clients build around a service is too important to neglect it. The consumers like having a choice, some prefer simpler clients, others are in need of power tools. Making the transition as easy as it gets to the developers of these apps is crucial.¹

Last words:

Follow the (Mr.) Reader and get your API straight – then there’s a good chance we will meet again.

I have no idea if building a standard protocol modeled after the Google Reader API allows for adding new features like the Feed Wrangler smart search in a uncomplicated manner and fashion. I imagine it could also be a restricition… I have no clue. I just understand that it makes sense to build something standardized.↩

Link list – May 29, 2013

Wed, 29 May 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Pixel Press
- Ever wanted to create your own Super Mario levels? With Pixel Press you can draw your own video game – a super awesome idea for getting a home made interactive gaming experience with zero coding skills. Watch the video.
This Tiny Gizmo Could Be A Very Big Deal In 2013
- Minority Report navigation for everybody pt. II
txtio
- Web service which creates a bookmarklet from your Omni Sync Server Mail Drop address.
My app design workflow
- I love to read Bjango articles. They are always a good read for everyone who works with Photoshop or wants to gain a behind the scenes look into a developers life. via @marcedwards
Ghost: Just a Blogging Platform
- This sounds like a very cool project. The backend looks awesome, the editor supports Markdown and Markdown Previews and there is no PHP just JavaScript. via Tools & Toys
42
- Want to know what the answer to the ultimate question of life, the Universe, and everything is. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams gives you the short answer: 42. However, here’s the extended version.
Wry for App.net
- A command-line App.net tool.
Adium Liberadzki concept
- Some fresh thinking on how to breath in new life to the old duck.
Minbox
- CloudApp/Droplr for really large files with a lot of smart additions like auto-sending emails when the files are uploaded. Check the website or read the full article on Mac.Appstorm.
The Apple Timeline
- Nice to look at.
ExpanDrive 3
- ExpanDrive always a nifty way to mount network drives (supporting SFTP/FTP/S3/WebDAV). Now it has become even better: you can mount Dropbox. This is great for preserving some space on my small 128 GB MacBook SSD.
PhotoAppLink
- It’s a bit like Audiobus for photos apps. They got an API ready and I can’t wait until more developers support PhotoAppLink. This is what the iPhone misses – internal communication. I already loved Audiobus for bridging one gap and seeing other creative minds picking up where Apple left the users in the cold is awesome. That’s the way to go, if Apple doesn’t support it, build something smart that everybody can use. via MOSX Tumblelog
Full CSS NES
- Fantastic. Love it. via @beautifulpixels
Creating an AppleScript to Switch Between Multiple iTunes Accounts
- A nice alternative to iTunes Account Switcher
Organize videos by groups in iTunes
- Nifty little organizing trick if you use iTunes for organizing video files.
Cursor Icon Magnets Set
- Featuring the spinning beach ball of death.
The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We’re All Going To Miss Almost Everything
- A good read.
List of Music Used by Apple
- An Wikipedia entry which sums up what we all wanted to know.
OmniFocus & Reminders
- Nifty business. I’ll keep an eye on how this develops.
GistBox - The Beautiful Way to Organize Code Snippets
- Although GitHub updated Gist and blogged about it in December 2012, I have to admit that I’m still hesitant to use it because I read so many comments that the future of Gist isn’t a fixed constant in GitHub’s roadmap. Maybe I shouldn’t be so paranoid (thanks Google…) and just use the service. After all this is a beautiful client. via Gridwriter

Keyboard Maestro as QuickCursor replacement

Tue, 28 May 2013 00:00:00 +0200

When writing Emails or replies to friends I often find myself typing in the browser until I remember that it things can go pear shaped resulting in me having to start from all over again. This happened way to often to me… mostly when writing longer replies. My usual procedure is to copy the text and fire up my favorite editor and continue writing there. Since Lion native text editors provide a more secure writing environment which prevents you from losing data thanks to the auto-resume feature. When I’m finished I return to where I started, paste the text and send it off. Every time after such a copy and paste action I see an equation in my head, on its right side is a text in all-caps, bold and colored in a kind of redish orange saying “AUTOMATE THIS”.

A few days ago I was fed up with this repetitive task and remembered QuickCursor from Hog Bay Software. It’s an app that is build for exactly this purpose: continue writing in your favorite editor.¹

So, instead of postponing the matter again I opened up Keyboard Maestro and started fiddling. I got stuck and didn’t know how to make Keyboard Maestro remember the app I copied the text from, making it impossible to return to that exact application. Bummer.

The next best thing was to search the web for a smart person who already made this happen. Turns out there is one and I already had Kaushik Gopal’s “Edit with BBEdit” in my Keyboard Maestro Library.

Koushik has a lot of smart stuff going on and I rewrote his macro to work with FoldingText. His macro had the same flaw that it didn’t remember the starting point of writing. So, if one is switching applications while writing, the macro’s “Activate Last Application” is like a call for trouble.

Today I started from scratch with my own macro to see if I missed something. Turns out there is a token called %CurrentApplication%. I stumbled upon this by trial and error – it’s not in the Keyboard Maestro documentation - and thanks to the token I was able to make to macro work like I want it to.²

Update: The macro now remembers the initial application better even when it is not located in the Applications folder. The download and the screen shot are up to date too. Also… there’s indeed a token in Keyboard Maestro to set the FrontApplication. My thanks go to @peternlewis.

Here’s how the macro works:

Where ever I write I can press ⌘⌧.
All text gets selected and cut. FoldingText opens with the selected.
When I’m done I press ⇧⌘W, FoldingText closes and edited text appears in where I’ve started writing.

So, if you’re really want to replicate QuickCursor’s functionality and also want to choose your editor I would advise you the fine-tune the macro to work with all your editors³ and put all those macros in a Keyboard Maestro palette.

DOWNLOAD

It’s no longer on sale but that there’s a link to the source code which is available on GitHub. It wasn’t the solution for me since in the FoldingText forums there was some talk about it having problems with FoldingText (which I wanted to use).↩
As of writing this little post I wanted to make sure that it really isn’t in the documentation. In my researched I found the following post: Keyboard Maestro Variables: Remember Current Application. Turns out Gabe already found this out in 2011 (Why am I not surprised?)… and I have to practice on my search query skills. ↩
For instance when trying to close Byword, it doesn’t show you a “Delete” button but rather a “Don’t Save” button.↩

Dealing with Repetitive Links on a Jekyll blog

Sun, 26 May 2013 00:00:00 +0200

My blogging engine is the static site generator Jekyll and I’ve come to love it. In my attempt of being able to blog on my iPad at some point in time, the first plugin I set up was Olov Lassus smart Markdown references plugin.

To shed some light on why this is a great plugin for mobile bloggers here’s a one sentence explanation about what it does:

You can gather your markdown reference links in one file and refer to them up anywhere inside your Jekyll installation, be it posts or pages.

The setup is as simple as it can get, you put the plugin in your plugins directory, add a file named _references.md in your root directory and you’re done.

Here’s an excerpt of my _references.md:

[TUAW]: http://tuaw.com
[MacStories]: http://macstories.net
[Macdrifter]: http://macdrifter.com

[Gabe Weatherhead]: https://twitter.com/macdrifter
[Ben Brooks]: https://twitter.com/BenjaminBrooks
[Sven Fechner]: https://twitter.com/simplicitybliss
[Brett Terpstra]: https://twitter.com/ttscoff
[Ethan Schoonover]: http://twitter.com/ethanschoonover
[Federico Viticci]: http://twitter.com/viticci
[Michael Schechter]: http://twitter.com/mschechter

[Huffduffer]: http://huffduffer.com/
[ADN]: http://app.net/
[Glassboard]: http://glassboard.com/

[Keyboard Maestro]: http://keyboardmaestro.com
[Hazel]: http://www.noodlesoft.com/hazel.php
[TaskPaper]: http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper

So everytime I want to link to one of Gabe’s post I could write something like "This is a link to [Gabe's Twitter account][Gabe Weatherhead], follow him!" and I don’t have to think twice about what his Twitter handle is.

It’s a great plugin and it looks tremendously useful. The only downside is that your Markdown documents won’t be useful outside of Jekyll since the links are broken. That is why I spend some significant time today to replace all references with real links. I could have kept the plugin as a backup solution, but I figured once I got a working iPad workflow I can always install it again.

Why I write about something I just abandoned? Well, like I said it’s a super nifty plugin and I think some of you Jekyll bloggers might like it. In conjunction with TextExpander for iPhone it certainly has some serious nerd potential.

Keyboard Maestro Control for iPhone Examples

Fri, 24 May 2013 00:00:00 +0200

A couple of days ago David Sparks wrote about how to put your Mac to sleep with iOS Drafts. His post reminded me of the fact that I haven’t yet given any credit to Keyboard Maestro Control for iPhone. It’s a little helper which enables you to trigger your macros from your iPhone.

If you’re a Keyboard Maestro user and haven’t checked out this free add-on to the world of Keyboard Maestro here are some examples for you:

Locking, Unlocking and sending your display to sleep

Although it hasn’t been updated recently I use an utility application called Lock Screen 2 which mimics the iPhones slide to unlock mechanism and brings it to the desktop.

You can use it with the keyboard or a Magic Trackpad. In addition you can assign a custom pattern, for instances in the screen shot below I used the combination of holding down ⌘⇧ and then sliding over the keys from A to G. When using the Magic Trackpad you can also specify which hotkey combination to hold down and with how many fingers you’d have to perform the slide gesture to unlock the screen.

Here are the macros for locking and unlocking the device. The hotkey on the left is the shortcut I assigned to lock my screen whilst on the right the foremost mentioned slide gesture get triggered to unlock the screen.

If you don’t want to purchase another application you can also lock your Mac with this shell command: /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\ Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend

With this solution it isn’t possible to unlock the screen with Keyboard Maestro Control since all this piece of code does is triggering same behavior like the build-in Fast User Switching menu and you’ll end up on the login screen of your Mac.

Still, there are other free solutions, c.f. this app.

If all you want to do is sending your display to sleep you can use a hotkey action in Keyboard Maestro to use the system wide shortcut ⇧^⏏ or the build in Sleep Screen action:

The icons I used for these macros are from the Iconic set by P.J. Onori. Good ressources for additional Keyboard Maestro icons are iconmonstr and Iconfinder.com, just to name a few.

Log Out, Sleep and Shut Down macros

Often times in the evening when I’m on the couch I wait for my Mac to finish a job. After the task in question has finished I want my Mac to shut down or go to sleep. If I know the ruff time frame I just fire up one of the macros on my iPhone.¹

Starting and Quitting a Menubar Application

There are some applications that need to run on the Mac to use their iPhone counterparts. I don’t want them running all the time, so a macro to toggle them is a good solution for these kind of apps.

In my case it’s (1) AirVideo which enables me to stream movies from my Mac to my iDevice and (2) AirFoil Speakers which makes your Mac an Airplay receiver.

The solution is pretty simple. Go to one of the best ressources of the web for all things related to scripting (aka Justin Lancy’s’s site) and download the Toggle an Application On / Off AppleScript (which I mentioned before but since it’s one of my favorites I can’t praise it highly enough). The first and last step: add your application in the specified line and put the whole script in an Execute AppleScript action.

Start SuperDuper! Backup

I haven’t set up any scheduled SuperDuper backups since I don’t leave my Mac running (or sleeping) over night. But there are enough times over the week to run my backups. So, in the application I configured the Copy tasks I usually perform and saved them. Then I initiate them from my iPhone with a macro that looks like this:

More Ideas:

Read Gabe’s post where he explains the basic setup of Keyboard Maestro Control and gives some use-case examples: Remote Macro Execution.
I’m a big fan of MyPhoneDesktop. The Mac app comes with a shortcut (⌘CC) which sends your clipboard to the connected iDevice. I use it to send me a screen shot of an application to my iPhone. It’s not as simple as calling up iTeleport, but if it’s what you want Keyboard Maestro can make it happen.
If you don’t want to spend money on Panic’s Prompt and have a Mac which is always on Keyboard Maestro Control is a great and cheap alternative if you just want to call up some scripts.
Force empty your Trash. The macro could look something like sudo rm -R ~/.Trash/* + RETURN + USER PASSWORD + RETURN (I don’t recommend it since you’d have to put your user password in Keyboard Maestro)².
Set up some Volume controllers on your iPhone – a mute macro could come in handy.
Switching from your speakerbox to headphones.
Force quit stubborn applications.
Flick through the System Control actions in Keyboard Maestro and see if there’s something useful in it for you, c.f. setting the network location or switch user accounts.

Last words: I really like Keyboard Maestro Control and hope Peter will find the time some time in the future to give the app an update – just iPhone 5 support alone would be nice enough for me.

Another application I tend to use on a regular base is iTeleport - especially if I just want to know what’s happening on my Mac right now.↩
I know there are ways around this. My guess is editing your bash profile, but since I don’t know the exact steps I won’t recommend it.↩

Save Keyboard Maestro Screen Shots Macro

Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Keyboard Maestro 6 brings a lot of new features, some of them slipped my attention and wouldn’t it be for Gabe’s post about the update I’m sure it would have taken me a couple of months to figure out that there is a new option to export macros as a screen shot.

As a blogger who frequently posts about Keyboard Maestro I felt like this needs to be one of the first macros to set up in the new version.

I tried building a macro which outputs an image with the macro’s name automatically, but haven’t found a token which could work for such a scenario, so I went with a user input action. All I need to do is select the macro and fire up ⌘⇧S, name the macro and I get the screen shot saved to my desktop:

But what if you prefer a more concise view of your macros? The overhauled default view of macros (i.e. not the editing view) is really nice without the old Keyboard Maestro trademark blue bar and goes well with the design of any blog. It also takes up less space:

If you like that view better you can add another Select in menu action to the top of the macro. I already had a Toggle macro editing macro, so all I had to do was adding an execute macro to trigger it.

Here’s what the toggle editing macro looks like:

➡ Keyboard Maestro 6 is released

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:00 +0200

On a rare occasion I use the classic link post format. This is such a rare occasion:

Keyboard Maestro 6 is live.

Head over to the site to find out what’s new.

By the way, Keyboard Maestro now officially uses Jono Hunt’s fantastic icon.

And just in case you haven’t noticed… I really like this app.

PERMALINK: http://rocketink.net/2013/05/keyboard-maestro-6.html

Still no Dark Sky in Europe

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Hello. My name is Patrick and I’m an addict. I check the weather multiple times a day (no pun intended). The first time I recognized that I have a problem was around April 16, 2012. That was the day Dark Sky was released in the United States. I was overwhelmed by the slick presentation of precipitation data. A minimalistic UI with a strong graphical and typographic appeal. I knew instantly that living in Europe and being a weather addict equals to living with 2nd class applications on my devices.¹

Now you now the introductory part, but let’s take a closer look at my profile: what I want most of the times is to see whether it rains when I’m on my bike or when I take a walk on the waterside. I’m also interested in how the weather develops over the course of a day and in addition I like to have the most precise data available.

Matter of fact, all of the above is possible and there are apps that suite my needs more or less. Like many others I’ve tested quite a lot of weather apps. The easier I reach the information I need with as less friction as possible, the better the app.

Still no Dark Sky in Europe

Yes. This is what it all comes down to. There are no push notifications for me when it rains in the exact location where I am. At least not with a stunning UI and the level of precision Dark Sky has.

Let It Rain (aka the Workaround)

As much as I like Fred Astaire, personally I don’t like singing in the rain. I stated above that for me a precipitation forecast is one of my main priorities. Naturally I have an extra app to let me know when it will rain. Here are my two options to compensate the lack of a Dark Sky with support for Europe:

Rain Alerts

Rain Alerts is an universal app which ships with push notifications. You can set the accuracy to as high or low as you want it to be – 10 km, 3 km, 1 km, 100 m and 10 m. The reason I used metric measurements here is simple: Rain Alerts only works in the Netherlands, the British Isles and Germany.

You’re allowed to read on because the developer Paul Wagener responded to my question if the app falls back to cell-tower triangulation when it makes sense (just like Dark Sky does) with a informative link to a Stack Overflow question where it is explained at which setting supposedly the fallback to cell-towers is initiated:

Here is an educated guess at the mechanism used to determine the accuracy. List is ordered with (1) being the highest battery drain.
1. GPS - kCLLocationAccuracyBestForNavigation;
2. GPS - kCLLocationAccuracyBest;
3. GPS - kCLLocationAccuracyNearestTenMeters;
4. WiFi (or GPS in rural area) - kCLLocationAccuracyHundredMeters;
5. Cell Tower - kCLLocationAccuracyKilometer;
6. Cell Tower - kCLLocationAccuracyThreeKilometers;

A thing to keep in mind when setting up OmniFocus or Checkmark locations. I never have seen it explained that simple, alhtouh it’s just a vague categorization with no actual proof. After all Stack Overflow is a trusted source with a lot of smart people contributing in the various posts.

Lastly, the map displays the rain clouds in a little blurred manner, so you have an aesthetically more pleasing experience than with the traditional pixelated and boxy rain clouds.

MeteoEarth

MeteoEarth for iPad was released December 2012 but since a couple of weeks there’s also an iPhone version which has to be purchased separately.

I’m pretty impressed, the way MeteoEarth displays weather data is gorgeous. It’s the best I’ve seen so far. You have five layers of information: temperature, precipitation, cloud cover, wind and pressure. You can active just one feature or display multiple data streams at the same time.

To get a better picture of how the app works here’s a short (53 seconds) video:

MeteoEarth for sure is a nice way to look a the weather. And, if you purchased the subscription² from the Meteo Group - which works with WeatherPro and MeteoEarth - you have a solid 5-day forecast (just like the one in my video).

Rain Alarm XT

For a long time I used Rain Alarm. This is an one purpose app, so the only screen you see when opening the app is a radar map with the good old pixelated precipitation clouds hovering over the screen. It’s not a thing of beauty but on the plus side it comes along with push notifications.

The applications isn’t the best choice when you want a forecast for your exact location. The smallest radius one can set in this app is a 12 Miles radius (= 20 km). So it often happens that the Rain Alarm triggers multiple notifications a day but I still won’t see a single drop of rain where I life.

Over the months I came to ignore the notifications but hesitated to turn them off completely since I could always take a closer look at the radar map in the app – or in another app which makes the map data actually look nicer (like MeteoEarth).

Like the FAQ hints, Rain Alarm doesn’t run in the background:

RainAlarm for iOS has been designed to delegate the tracking of precipitation to an external server. This way the App does not need to run constantly in the background nor will it drain your battery.

The official website also doesn’t provide more information on where the data comes from:

RainAlarm relies on radar images provided by weather services to calculate when to trigger an alert

In conclusion, it is a decent application which I can only recommend to people who are fine with the 12 miles radius limitation and just want push notifications.

Weather Apps

As nice as MeteoEarth’s presentation is for having a quick glance at the weather, it doesn’t cut the chase when all you want is a simple list view with raw statistics.

Although all of the following three apps are either universal or have an corresponding iPad version, I only focused on the iPhone since this is the device that I personally use for retrieving information about the weather – it’s always in reach when I’m out and about.

My go-to application is WeatherPro and this is why:

As you can tell from the screen shot, for Germany it tends to have the most accurate rain forecasts. On that particular morning it was raining cats and dogs.

In this case precision trumps usability. The results seem to vary by where you are located at. Today Weather seems to perform pretty good in Italy, as you can read on Federico’s review at MacStories.net.

The interface isn’t as clean as Today Weather’s or Check the Weather, it has more features than I need and it uses touch gestures rather than a slide gesture to get a detailed view on the day. Lastly it’s also the only app out of the bunch where you have to pay extra for the iPad Version.

WeatherPro

On the left side is the main view and a tap on the day brings you to the detailed view which I actually like quite a lot. I just wish there was an option to set this as the default view – I’d be much happier then.

Today Weather

Its clean and simple UI is what Today Weather shines at. What I like most about it is the in-app purchase for Dark Sky Alerts. The coverage is just not there yet to supply details on par with US Dark Sky Alerts.

Check the Weather

Again, a very clean and minimalistic display of data. I really like the simplicity, especially on the day view where you can see when the sun sets and the temperature usually drops.

Additional Information

All three apps provide more information, none of them has support for push notifications. At least for WeatherPro there seems to be hope.

Like I mentioned beforehand, I really dig Today Weather’s Dark Sky Alerts, but as you can see there’s something missing aside form push notifications - the next hour has no data to display. Otherwise an excellent integration.

The last candidate’s extra information is sadly of no use for Germans – Check the Weather might perform better in other European countries.

The Status Quo in Europe

In conclusion, there is no application available which has reached the point of excellency Dark Sky has. Even the Forecast.io API doesn’t help much here since the coverage is too spotty in Europe.

I’ve written to the guys from Dark Sky pointing them at the MeteoGroup Weather API but haven’t heard back from them. My best guess is, since the Meteo Group provides weather data to TV networks all over the world, their licensing fees are a bit to steep for a relative small company like Dark Sky.

I’m still hoping that they find a solution to make their fantastic application available worldwide. On the other hand I’m looking forward to the progress the other contenders make.

I still haven’t had a hands-on experience with Dark Sky but I saw enough footage to be mad excited about the possibility that this smart app might include Europe one day.↩
$1.99 for three months or $5.99 for a year↩

Link list – May 16, 2013

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 +0200

FileBot - The ultimate TV and Movie Renamer / Subtitle Downloader
- I recently purchased a NAS and now I’m in the process of converting the rest of my DVD’s¹ to enjoy my new media center. This tool is the s**t. I wonder why I haven’t come across it before. By the way, it’s available for nearly every platform plus you can also use it from the command-line. If it’s not your cup of tea, this might be.
AppleScript improvements in Rdio Mac v2.19
- Chapeau for the Rdio guys. I tip my hat to every developer who is still willing to integrate AppleScript support into a modern app. I’m currently back on Rdio myself (and I miss Spotify’s folders… but the recent builds made the application so slow that I switched again).
Ivy - Import your playlists into Spotify
- And when I switch again, this is the application that will keep me busy for a few days on Spotify. Ivy converts iTunes playlists into Spotify playlists. I always missed that feature.
Who loves music and 27-inch monitors?
- Brett Terpstra.²
ofexport - export to text, taskpaper, html, opml
- Another really cool command line tool that emerged on the Omni Group Forums. It uses the OmniFocus database to write text files. I love it. You can follow this blog to keep yourself up to date when new builds arrive. Thanks Poor Signal.
Melon: A Headband and Mobile App to Measure Your Focus by Melon
- I read about it some time ago. Now the finished product is on Kickstarter and it still looks like a nifty gadget.
What happens when pirates play a game development simulator and then go bankrupt because of piracy?
- Best idea ever. There’s nothing not to like about this ingenious idea.
Advanced Gmail Search with Regular Expressions
- I knew one could use google docs for scripting Gmail, but regular expressions never occurred to me. A smart hack.
Safari extensions for tab addicts
- Two Safari extensions for tab addicts brought to you by the talented guys from Many Tricks. Speed our browsing.
Heads Up!
- “Heads Up! is a new game for iPhone we’ve designed and developed for the Ellen Degeneres Show.” There’s only one bad thing to say about this app: it isn’t available in the German iTunes App Store (and I dislike switching accounts just for updating an app – I might have to make an exception here).
The iOS 7 Power User Challenge
- Excellent read via MacStories
Make JPEG droplet
- For everybody who doesn’t want to get their hands dirty this droplet by Minimal Folio developer Simon Heys is a nice addition to the app fleet.
Pixer
- While we’re at image manipulation and not using automator or scripts… this one resizes and converts images in batch.
IFTTT / Philips hue Channel
- Everybody who has read the article about my Sweet Mac Setup on Shawn Blanc’s site knows that I’m a big fan of the stuff that Philips does with their mood lights. IFTTT basically sealed and I have to start saving some money now to get my hands on the hue lights.

Just kidding. I’ve put my DVD’s in the cellar and keep them there till they rott to be on the safe side legally speaking. I’m downloading Torrents which is way faster than ripping each DVD one by one. This also spares me the horrible sound a DVD drive produces.↩
Do I really have to say more?↩

The GTD Duo - TaskPaper and OmniFocus

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 +0200

I haven’t heard much about GeekTool lately. The same could be said about my blog. So it’s time to do something about (both of) it.¹

Today I’ll write about how I keep track of my tasks. My first post on RocketINK was about OmniFocus. It is the backbone and main brain of how I manage everything. But to be honest, I still get overrun by it on a regular basis and I have been guilty of neglecting it completely for a few weeks many a times.²

While I’m still working at figuring out what my ideal setup is and more important if there ever will be one, I have found a way - outside of OmniFocus - to deal with tasks that need to be dealt with. I’ll come to this later. First, here’s what goes into my OmniFocus – in short: I keep every actionable task in OmniFocus. Admitted, I pause a lot of projects and some are stalled for over a year now. I still want to keep these tasks inside the application since I use OmniFocus as my personal library of things I want to do. Even if this means that I clutter my OmniFocus database with projects and tasks that are not of an immediate importance. I’m open abou it, there are definitely projects which I won’t be able to tackle for the next 5 years. For me it’s good to know that I’ve written my ideas and possible actions down and to have a fixed place where I can look them up when I finally have the time to do them. This gives me a certain peace of mind and I don’t have to live in fear of forgetting any of my possible flashes of wit.

I maintain my OmniFocus library to a certain degree but I don’t do it as often as I should. Don’t get me wrong. I keep it in shape so that it I’m still able to rely on it to keep me aware of everything that is due (I love those little notifications on iOS – that’s what makes OmniFocus bulletproof for me). But then again, since there is so much else inside of the database, it’s a bit of lumpy and has a far-from-optimized feel to it. Despite of having perspectives that help me to deal with the overload of tasks I’ve gathered, I get overwhelmed frequently. But I’ve also found shelter outside of the OmniFocus ecosystem: in the arms of TaskPaper.

What helped me tremendously - especially in those days or weeks were I don’t open OmniFocus - is to have some TaskPaper files of ongoing projects. Even when things go pear shaped or you’re suddenly in panic mode and see the right lights blinking, you know what do to next without a full-fledged task management system. In the last month, times were rough for my family and I wanted to be there for them. I wrote a short list what I need to bring with me and off I was in my car driving 500 miles. What it comes down to is this: deep down you know what really important is and in the worst case you could survive with pen and paper when it comes to task management.

For my daily life I choose to narrow it down to these four areas for which I created TaskPaper files:

Name	Description
Today	Everything I want to do today.
Blog Todo	The next actions for RocketINK.
Web Development	The projects I currently work on.
Study Todo	A list of my home assignments, papers, etc.

I have a couple more TaskPapers - notably lists that I migrated from OmniFocus to maintain them in nvALT or Simplenote/Listary - but the ones in the table above are the ones that I put right on my Desktop with the help of GeekTool. I frequently take a glance at them with the default OS X shortcut “Show Desktop”.

I guess a good part of my problem when opening OmniFocus is, that there’s a plethora of tasks which are paused and undone. This subconsciously affects my self-esteem, leaving me with a feeling that I haven’t accomplished that much. Since I use the app as a library and the amount of ‘unfinished work’ stands in no relation to the tasks I checked off, my mini TaskPaper projects are more rewarding to me. It might just be a simple psychological trick, but it works for me (a bit better than just relying solely on OmniFocus). That also justifies the amount of hand work that is needed to populate the TaskPaper files with tasks that are already in OmniFocus. On the positive side, I get to check off completed tasks twice (how awesome is that… be quick about it and your brain might won’t recognize that you basically just checked off the same task).³

What else I like about this attempt is…

it’s a system which, for the most part of it, can and does work independent from OmniFocus
the smaller scope gives me the feeling of having more control and it forces me to sit down and face the tasks at hand
the visual cues that I added to the TaskPaper files with a few bash commands are unobtrusive, but I’m yet still aware of them

In addition to these files I also use some of Rob Trew’s⁴ scripts from the custom OmniFocus action lists on the desktop, using Geektool thread in the Omni Group Forums. At the moment there are some overlaps since Rob’s scripts show me my flagged tasks, the due soon or in last fortnight tasks, my obligations single-action list and my study folder.

I was tempted to dig into how to add some color to Rob’s scripts (= quite difficult task for me), but then I’d miss out on the positive side effects which TaskPaper brought to the table.

TaskPaper Example

Here’s the script for my TaskPaper files:

#!/bin/sh
echo "==== STUDY TODO ====" 
cat "path-to-file.taskpaper" | grep -v @done | grep -v Archive: | grep -v ^tags | sed 's/^[[:space:]]*//' | sed ''/^#[[:space:]].*/s//`printf "\033[32m&\033[0m"`/'' | fold -s -w 65 | sed ''/.*@today/s//`printf "\033[31m&\033[0m"`/''| sed ''/.*@due\(`date '+%Y-%m-%d'`\)/s//`printf "\033[31m&\033[0m"`/''

What it does is:

grep -v @done removes every task which is marked done.
grep -v Archive: removes the TaskPaper archive.
grep -v ^tags removes the meta tags which I put at the beginning of each file in nvALT.
sed 's/^[[:space:]]*//' removes the indention at the beginning of the tasks (but also puts sub tasks on the same level as the parent tasks - decide for yourself if you want this).
sed ''/^#[[:space:]].*/s//`printf "\033[32m&\033[0m"`/'' turns every line which begins with # green (and afterwards reverts to the default).
fold -s -w 65 sets the max width of the text
The last two comments turn all tasks that are due today red. My thanks goes to Gunther Groenewege who posted this on macosxtips.co.uk in 2011. Matter of fact the whole thing here is based on his work.

What’s left to do

Getting better at maintaining OmniFocus more regularly (maybe there is a way without TaskPaper, e.g. migrating or deleting more tasks… although I’m not sure this is what I want).
Plan the week with TaskPaper. Be it a single Monday to Friday taskpaper file or separate ones for each day. I can image planning my whole week with TaskPaper instead of just one or two days.
Use StatusBoard to display todays tasks, my week and upcoming tasks – not sure if it’s useful to me, but sounds like fun. Again, I’m not alone.

What else

I’m excited about FoldingText. At the moment I’m not willing to give up on TaskPaper because I like that it’s more concise with a narrow focus, but FoldingText is the quasi successor and it’s a great app which has a lot of potential.

I’m also curious about how fast entering dates in OmniFocus 2 will be when I use it on a regular basis. I dropped the beta for now because some features I depend on were missing.⁵

The unplanned hiatus is now officially offer. Glad to have a writing pen again in my hand.↩
Last month I finally watched “The OmniFocus Setup” and it was a relief to see that I’m not alone with this particular problem.↩
Yes, that’s a true pro tip… I know. Lying to yourself to make you feel better. It won’t work for everybody, but if you have a bad short-term memory like I do, you’ll soon have forgotten about all the white lies that came along in the garb of a finished task.↩
OmniFocus Scripting Hero - haven’t you heard the legends? Visit the Omni Group Forums and read to whole saga.↩
I won’t go into details here since the thing is still in private beta and I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say anything about it.↩

Link list – Apr 14, 2013

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Screenhero - Collaborative Screen Sharing
- Working on a computer with two persons and two mouse pointers… this might be confusing at first, but I can see the advantages. I haven’t tested it, but it looks interesting enough to check it out the next time I show my parents how to do something.
There Will Be Flood
- Great article about certain types of apps that flood the App Store. Nate Boateng puts the focus on weather apps and he is to blame for yet another weather app I just purchased: Today. Thanks Nate.
Led Zeppelin: Sound and Fury coming to iBookstore
- I’m a die-hard Led Zepplin fan(I really like their slower tracks.) and looking forward this this release.
Comedy Hack Day SF
- Shoutroulette is a hilarious idea. I guess that’s one way more to practice my English.
Copy-Paste from Website to Terminal
- Scary stuff.
Solve for X
- Neat idea. A forum for the lateral thinkers in the science scene which tries to engage the people to collaborate.
How My Co-founder’s Dog Boosted My Productivity
- Some of my favorite topics in one post: dogs and productivity.
How I Busted a Thief Who Tried to Sell My Camera on Craigslist
- I always enjoy reading articles like this one.
Digested
- Let’s just go with a quote from the website here: “Quickly import bookmarks and notes from iBooks on iPhone, iPod, iPad export to PDF and Evernote on Mac”.
Replace your iPhone 5 battery in 2 Minutes
- If you’re out of warranty and your iPhone has a malfunctioning home button or you are in need to replace the battery it’s often cheaper to handle the task at hand yourself than to pay the standard fee at the local Apple Store. The current price is $229 for an iPhone 5 replacement.
FAQ’s answered by the Canadian Space Agency
- If you ever wondered how tears in space behave and how astronauts shave in space you got it all here. Chris Hadfield, commander of the international space station ISS gives you all the answer. It’s just like watching the childrens education channel. Great stuff.
AeroFS: A Self-Hosted Dropbox Alternate
- An article from Mac.Appstorm. Read it to find out if it’s something for you.
PaintCode
- A vector drawing app that renders Objective-C code. Reminds me of some of the plug-ins for Photoshop like CSS Hat or CSS3Ps.
Edge Reflow
- Adobe is hard at work on the web developer front. Their latest product is a visual editor for creating responsive websites. The guys from Webdesigntuts+ have two videos on their website if you rather watch a demo than getting your hands dirty right away.
How Do Users Really Hold Mobile Devices?
- After updating to the iPhone 5 I had initial troubles hold to hold the device in one hand and reach all the prominent spots on my homescreen. After wrapping my iPhone in the BookBook case (oh the sin… I know the iPhone shouldn’t go into a case) I’m comfortable holding it in one hand again. I was always interested in how other smart phone users hold their device. This article from UXmatters satisfies my curiosity a bit. I still would like to take a peek at Apple’s own research which the did before releasing an iPhone with a new form factor.

Flashcards Deluxe Keyboard Maestro Macro

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0200

In my Sweet Mac Setup post for Shawn Blanc I mentioned how I use Markdown to format my flashcards for Flashcards Deluxe. This post is about the Keyboard Maestro macro that formats Markdown into a compatible format for Flashcards Deluxe.

Since there are so many Flashcards apps on the iOS market and the range of different flashcards styles within Flashcard Deluxe grows from year to year this post will undoubtedly only be useful to a handful of people, but hopefully you might get some ideas for other use cases.

Some of the basic functions of the macro

It takes a level 3 heading in markdown and converts it to a new question card.
Every list item is converted into a new line too.
A double space is also a new line.
Two asterisks are converted to bold text
Everything in a quote is the answer card to the question.

Example 1

This is the easiest and most bullet-proof way to setup a flashcard. Use a list for the different answers, copy everything you want to have on the answer card and put it in quotes.

### Task Number 1

**What is the answer to life, the universe and everything?**

- a. Finding a needle in a haystack.
- b. Planting a tree.
- c. 42.

> - a. Finding a needle in a haystack.
> - b. Planting a tree.
> - ***c. 42.***

The result is this text:

Task Number 1||<b>What is the answer to life, the universe and everything?</b>||a. Finding a needle in a haystack.||b. Planting a tree.||c. 42.	a. Finding a needle in a haystack.||b. Planting a tree.||<color lime>c. 42.</color>

In Flashcards Deluxe the question and answer cards will look like this:

Example 2

In this example I use Markdowns “two spaces” equals a new line syntax instead of a list. This has proven to be more prone to errors so I would only suggest to use it if you want a more readable Markdown document.

### Task Number 2: Mark all correct answers.

**1. Is it a fruit?**  

◦ Banana ◦ Tomato ◦ Pear ◦Potato

**2. What software really exists?**  

◦ iPod ◦ iMovie ◦ iTunes ◦ iPad Mini

> **1. Is it a fruit?**
> 
> ***◦ Banana*** ***◦ Tomato*** ***◦ Pear*** ◦Potato
> 
> **2. What software really exists?**
> 
> ***◦ iPod*** ◦ iMovie ***◦ iTunes*** ◦ iPad Mini

The result is this text:

Task Number 2: Mark all correct answers.||<b>1. Is it a fruit?</b>  ||◦ Banana ◦ Tomato ◦ Pear ◦Potato||<b>2. What software really exists?</b>  ||◦ iPod ◦ iMovie ◦ iTunes ◦ iPad Mini	<b>1. Is it a fruit?</b>||<color lime>◦ Banana</color> <color lime>◦ Tomato</color> <color lime>◦ Pear</color> ◦Potato||<b>2. What software really exists?</b>||<color lime>◦ iPod</color> ◦ iMovie <color lime>◦ iTunes</color> ◦ iPad Mini

In Flashcards Deluxe the question and answer cards will look like this:

For customizing the macro to fit your Flashcards Deluxe needs visit the developers site and check out the “Creating Your Flashcard Text – Formatting Text” section.

There’s much more possible with Flashcards Deluxe and you might see me posting some other use cases involving pictures sooner or later.

DOWNLOAD

Bonus. Okay… if you made it this far you might want to see how much I suck at regular expressions:

Spotify Playlist Separators

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0200

In yesterdays post I wrote about sidebar separators and by writing this sentence I try to make a smooth transition to a recent find I dug up in the Spotify community board: separators.

I really like the direction Spotify is heading to. My iTunes is well-organized and I’d like to see the same kind of options in Spotify to sort the content. Besides folders, the separators are another option to structure and arrange playlists and end up with something visually more appealing.

All you have to do is create a new playlist and name it -. Congratulations. You’ve added a separator that looks like this:

The Vanilla Finder

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0200

The Mac OS X Finder is a great application. Despite using Path Finder I also work in the default Finder. There’s a plethora of add-ons for the Finder and it took me quite some time to realize that the Finder doesn’t necessarily need any heavy additional tweaks. After using a variety of apps that sit on top of the Finder over the last years, nowadays my life with the Finder follows a much simpler doctrine: back to the basics and away with the additional bulk.

This post is about the Finder. It’s a very basic one too, so you might not find anything new or secret tweaks. However, since I personally enjoy to see how other people use their Mac - especially how they use more common applications - I decided it’s about time to show you my Finder setup.

General Appearance

If you take a look at the screen shot you can see that I like my OS and therefore also the clothes of the Finder to look a little bit more subtle than the appearance you get with the default settings.

Unlike most power users who prefer to work in the column view I like the list view a lot better. I find the fixed characteristic of it works better for me. In addition I choose the icon view for some of my image folders. If I set icon view as the default for a folder I usually also enable “Show item info” along with it in the view options. Instantly seeing the dimensions of an image is very helpful when doing web design or trying to clean my wallpaper collection. If there was an option to display it in list view I’d probably use it too.

One of the first things I missed in Mountain Lion were separators for the sidebar. In former OS X builds there was a smart guy who provided a pack of dummy applications with a transparent icons as a download. The trick was that you couldn’t click on the applications, this way they really felt like part of the UI at some point.

In Lion this trick didn’t work anymore. All applications in the sidebar suddenly got a generic applications icon assigned to them. So, I had to come up with a workaround - it’s quite old now, but I still use it since I love my separators. Here we go:

Since I barely use smart folders in my sidebar I assigned an empty icon to them. You can do the same with applications in case you don’t use them in your sidebar. The downside of the latter is that the Applications folder itself will be invisible… of course you could remove it from the sidebar and simple access it via in any Finder window by pressing the shortcut ⇧⌘A.

Update – Here’s how to setup the Finder sidebar separators by changing the smart folder icon:

The “Drop here - Resources” folder is an alias to the system folder where the icons are stored. So the first thing you need to do if you want to replace the smart folder icon with an empty icon is to drag the “SidebarSmartFolder.icns” in there. You might need to log out and back in again for the changes to take effect or opener Terminal and killall SystemUIServer.

The last step is to copy the “Smart Folders” folder from the disk image to your Mac and drag a folder to the sidebar while holding down the command button.

The “Originals” folder just contains a backup of the default icons for smart folders and applications for your convenience.

You can spot the drawback of using this method at the bottom of my sidebar. The smart folder “Dropbox Conflicts” doesn’t have an icon assigned to it.

The rest of my sidebar is pretty self-explanatory. I tried to keep the number of folders to a minimum as I access most parts of my file system via LaunchBar.¹

PS: Don’t ever name one of your hard drives “Home” (see the bottom of my sidebar again).

The toolbar is a great place to collect frequently used apps, locations and even scripts. For me it only makes sense to put just applications in it that function as droplets (by which I mean that they accept drag and drop operations).

I have 5 zones which - before Mountain Lion - were divided by a separator. Unfortunately Apple decided to drop that little feature.

Zone 1	Zone 2	Zone 3	Zone 4	Zone 5
Documents	Movies	Images	Locations	Tools

Although I use LaunchBar most times, I find it handy to have certain apps in the toolbar. I convert a lot of documentaries from the German public broadcasting services. So, having QuickTime and MediaInfo in my toolbar makes sense in my case. Anyway, here’s a more detailed look on what has made it into my toolbar:

Marked is my previewer for everything text. It has the most prominent place in the toolbar.
Kaleidoscope is right beside it because I need it from time to time to analyze differences in files (yeah, mainly text files).
Sublime Text 2 for randomly droping snippets, scripts and coding stuff on it.
MPlayerX. I might replace it with Movist which supports resizing from windows from all window sides (I’d like that).
QuickTime Player 7, more precisely: the pro version. It’s very handy to quickly trim, rotate or convert video material.
Photoshop is still my go-to image editor, even for minor edits.
ViewIt is an old and ugly on the one side but on ther other it’s a very fast image viewer.
The box icons is a folder where I drag stuff to which is supposed be on my Laptop. On the MacBook the same folder links to a corresponding folder in my Dropbox for the Mac Pro.
MediaInfo Mac displays all relevant information about a media file. This is the old free version of the app which is way better and feature rich than the new paid version. If you look for a similar app, grab the old version or check out VideoSpec.
Activity Monitor. I had cases where my keyboard wouldn’t respond anymore. Having the Activity Monitor in the toolbar leaves me with the option to open it and force quit the culprit with the mouse.
LSelect for making complex Finder selections. It’s actually pretty cool once you get the hang of it (here’s a link to a demo video).
(Enhanced) Open Terminal Here has some cool features that the original AppleScript by Marc Liyanage misses.
The default Arrange item from Finder. I don’t use it that often and might remove it sooner or later.
Honestly, I don’t know why the Share button is still in the toolbar. I barely use it.
The Label item is also neglected and vegetates in the toolbar since Keyboard Maestro is the faster way to label selected files.

Dismissed Tweaks

However, if you’re all-in for tweaks here’s a small list of what I tried over the years. Admitted this list isn’t complete at all but it’s all I managed to remember… I didn’t put window managers, task switcher replacements and so on the list either because I feel this would beyond of the scope of this article.

XtraFinder and TotalFinder - what I like most about these apps are the tabs. It’s the only thing that could tempt me to run one of the two applications again (and I just made a clean cut ditching TotalFinder on the Mac Pro and I admit that I still use it on my MacBook).
HyperDock - I forgot that it was installed on my latop all along until I did my spring cleaning and got rid of all the unecessary ballast.
TotalSpaces - initially I missed the old Spaces in from the pre-Lion OS’s. However, now I can do without it. Side note: I also barely use Mission Control. If I want to reach a specific window I use the switcher (⌘+TAB/⌘+⇧+TAB) or move the focus to the next window via cmd+`.
Colorful Sidebar » SideEffects - I loath having to face the monochrome sidebar introduced in Lion, but still I decided to drop the colored sidebar.
Afloat (or WindowShadeX by ManyTricks or Deskcovery or WindowMizer). There was a time when I liked using collapsed Finder windows and floating windows. I still can see use cases but I also know that I can do without them.

I’m willing to give Alfred 2 another try soon. Navigating to folders is the thing that troubled me the most with version 1. I felt that LaunchBar with it’s fuzzy search was superior in this aspect or at least it’s my preferred way of navigating to folders. We’ll see if I finally make the switch.↩

Link list – Mar 30, 2013

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0100

dArt
- A simple artwork downloader for all kinds of media (audio, audiobooks, podcasts, apps, …). If you don’t like the GUI, the script is also available as download.
Replacing Omnifocus
- If you leave behind OmniFocus because I linked this post, then I’d feel guilty because I like OmniFocus so much. I would say that this is only a read for the daring. I wouldn’t even cross my mind to replace OmniFocus with a Fantastical and Alfred combo, but it’s an interesting setup that’s for sure.
Seed Mail
- After trying Mailbox and dismissing it Seed Mail could have the stuff to replace Sparrow on my iPhone. With Dropbox support, multi-account support, delaying mails, good support for gestures and many more features it certainly is an appealing app. What I miss so far is support for aliases. By the way: it’s free (although I’m not sure if this is a good thing).
Satechi 10-Port USB 3.0 Hub
- In my Sweet Mac Setup I introduced my beloved EXSYS EX-1177 USB 2.0 HUB which I bought because I always had problems with the amount of power supplied from the Mac to the USB sockets. I searched for a hub which is easier to order from the United States for my buddies there but haven’t found one until I came across this post from TUAW. With 5000 mA it sounds like a solid product to me, so here’s my non-Europe USB hub suggestion. I can’t really vouch for it, but the hard facts and TUAW review speak for themselves.
French Girls
- If you enjoy self-made art at it’s worst like I do and have some time to kill this TUAW find is definitely worth a download. It’s for the iPhone and it’s free.
Croissant de Triomphe
- Mickey Mouse was my first Disney love (I don’t know why, Donald seems much cooler in retrospective). I had a big plush Mickey which accompanied me for many many years. To see something knew from the most famous mouse on the planet is fantastic news for me. Take a look at the new animated short an decide for yourself.
Interface Hall of Shame - QuickTime 4.0
- If you only have joined Apple you’re lucky this OS 9 beauty hasn’t crossed your digital desktop.
Matt Groening’s Artwork for Apple
- This one has made it to the link list just to keep the artsy link list theme going…. Interesting none the less.

➡ My Mac Setup

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0100

If you want to take a peek behind the curtain visit Shawn’s site were I’ll tell you more about my work environment and the software I use.¹

Hint: It’s not a short read.↩

PERMALINK: http://rocketink.net/2013/03/my-sweet-mac-setup.html

How To Assign A Hotkey To Almost Anything

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Here’s a short and sweet addition to my ongoing series of Keyboard Maestro macros. In this example I use Google Chrome once you get to basic principle you can make it work in any browser (or any application as a matter of fact).

A couple posts ago I told you the reason why Google Chrome is my favorite browser. In the section where I introduced my favorite extensions I mentioned SingleFile which mimics the “Save as Web Archive” function in Safari. My only problem with the extension was that it doesn’t let you assign a shortcut to it. But as you already might have noticed, the word “no” does not exists in the official Keyboard Maestro dictionary. There’s only a blank page where it should be.

In the following Macro I make use of the “Find Image” action in Keyboard Maestro to trigger the extension, wait for it to process the page and then click on the link to save the quasi web archive.

What you need is (1) Keyboard Maestro, (2) the SingleFile extension installed and (3) these three image files:

I would have provided the images here, but as you can see from the picture above, I use the non-default black and white extension icons in Google Chrome (which you can read about in the aforementioned posts if you’re curious).

This is the macro:

Note: In the “Pause Until Condition is Met” action you can also use a picture of the “Click here to save the page” notification which I use the subsequent step. My subjective impression was that Keyboard Maestro was able to identify the smaller confirmation button a bit faster that’s why I setup the macro with three images instead of two.

The deletion of the ‘location’ variable we created is optional. But since we don’t need to clutter up our token library it’s as easy as setting a variable to the text %Delete% to get rid of it.

In addition, this macro won’t work if you have two browser windows open side by side since Keyboard Maestro woulnd’t know on which window it should save the page.¹ However, you could always hit ⌘M on the window that isn’t needed and you’re good to go.

Finally, although I have some macros set with the “Find Image” action I wouldn’t advise you to go nuts with it. Keyboard Maestro takes a while to find the image on your screen. So the use cases are too limited to use it everywhere. Still, if you need a very special macro it certainly can put the shoulder to the wheel.

That’s also the reason why you should hide your Keyboard Maestro window with the macro when testing it.↩

Keep Calm And Carry On

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 08:31:01 +0100

The last few months I barely read RSS feeds… not willingly. I’m on a RSS diet because I just hadn’t the time to deal with my unread queue. This is the first time for about 6 years that I took a longer break (and it feels strange). I still checked in on a handful of feeds once a week. After all it’s a diet not a torture.

I think I can extend this “hiatus” for another 2 months. Then I still have 15 days to find a good Google reader alternative. Hopefully by then there will be a web oriented service which offers sync and has an attractive API so that my favorite iOS clients have no trouble building support for it.

This is a really exciting day. It’s good to finally have a date, to know when the doors close is better than using a product which is in abeyance. It was a great power tool and I will miss the shortcuts on the web application.

Here’s a motto wallpaper to help you get over your RSS depression (iPhone 5 and widescreen desktop versions included):

Download

About Link Posts and more

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 11:05:02 +0100

I’m afraid of link posts. That was my initial thought when I read the title of Shawn Blanc’s post «Whither Link Posts?» on the 29th of January. How come, you might ask and for quite some time I couldn’t put my finger on it. I planned to respond immediately to Shawn’s post because it is a topic if been thinking about a lot – even before I had my own blog. As you can tell by now, the prompt reply didn’t work out. I had to let things ease down and re-evaluate why this is a topic with meaning-bearing capacity for me.

Now I’ve pondered long enough about it and came to a conclusion. So, let me explain myself and tell you why the first sentence stands as it is.

A Note Of Thanks

But before we go into the nitty gritty let me first emphasize that I really had a blast the last two months. My first blog post went live on 5th of January and within the first week half of my favorite bloggers which are in my personal Top 10 mentioned me in one or another way. It was a great feeling to get positive feedback from the people I regularly read – and more important which I enjoy the read.

My special thanks (in alphabetical order) goes to Shawn Blanc, Benjamin Brooks, Federico Viticci and Gabe Weatherhead. Those guys were the absolute first ones who mentioned me (and I’m glad they did).¹

I’m fully aware of the fact that my last post was a “thank-you” post. I put this thank you note up there because it is likely that you, my dear reader, came across this blog in the first place due to recommendations of internet personalities like the guys above. This is the immediate effect of a link post and therefore works nicely as a smooth transition to….

The author and his link post

I like link posts a lot. To me they are like “browsing suggestions” – that’s the phrase I use most of the times when announcing a new link list on Twitter. Gabe Weatherhead’s answer to Shawn Blanc’s post reflects the same feelings about this topic and adds one of the most important points:

But here’s the truth for me: If Shawn stopped writing link posts, I probably would stop thinking about his site. I care about his opinions precisely because he posts links. A link post is like a book recommendation. It actually means something when it comes from someone I already respect. It also tells me a bit about the person making the recommendation.

It’s not only a suggestion where to click next, it is also a deliberate choice of the author what part of his personality he would like to share with his readership.

Our interests build a good part of the person we are, so creating meaningful link posts is definitely a good thing to do if the output is coherent with the blog and/or author; be it a link post focused on the content which is usually published on the blog in question or the more detached alternative in form a recommendation from one of the authors fields of interests.

Web Celebrities vs. Real-World Celebrities

One of the most striking character traits of the human kind is our curiosity.

A trivial phenomenon which is more prominent in our modern society than ever before are celebrities. Their existence is based on our natural curiosity.

I don’t know about you, but the c-word has a negative connotations for me. The picture that pops into my mind when thinking about celebrities is a Hollywood star. The negative part for me has to do with the fact that all things I know about this person are not necessarily the truth because the information gets filtered through tabloids, the manager, PR agencies, etc.

In short: the public image of such a celebrity is nothing I’d put my trust in. It’s artificial and this renders the person behind this image invisible too. The implication is that I’m not interested in the latest gossip about movie stars.²

However, this doesn’t seem to apply to internet celebrities. They are the ones who form their public persona and they have no filter attached to what they publish. All the information that leaks out is handpicked. Overall it feels more honest and trustworthy to me and that’s what I like about it. At the same time, when publishing link posts – here compared to a PR-like public announcement – it doesn’t feel too face-bookish³ to me. This is why I click on links of people I trust. It has nothing artificial, I’m just interested about their point of view, how they see the world and I like to muse about what sparked their interest in a particular topic.⁴

For me it was important to come to this conclusion (as a reader and a writer). I followed too many blogs that put out link posts just for the sake of having something to feed the archive with. I unfollowed these and kept the ones which I trust and whose authors actually added value to the content or their author profile.⁵

The Content of Link Posts

Shawn Blanc wrote an excellent article - «The Link Post» - where he put together a collection of the different link post formats and goes into detail about the most popular ones. You should definitely read it if you’re interested in the topic (and if you’re a link blogger, read the last section at least two times).

I stated above that I was afraid of link posts, after narrowing it down it is clear to me that there are some specific kind of link posts that “scare” me:

The Jar Jar Binks

If your link posts are not on par with the content you publish they will become the “Jar Jar Binks” of the story you tell.

Instead of supporting your story (the general theme of your blog) they often feel out of place.

In my case jar-jar-binksing my blog would be making link posts about art and cooking recipes I like.

The Sidekick

I like Batman. Batman with Robin is still okay, but I prefer the stories where the hero acts as a lone ranger.

If Batman would blog and most of his blog posts would evolve around his sidekick I doubt I’d read his blog. Even if its Batman we’re talking about. After all, the attention should still be on the main character.

Here on RocketINK posting 3 link list posts in a row would feel like the sidekick is starting to steal the show.

The Double Bind

Besides having started this blog as a personal journey, I also want people to like it. I think that’s second nature to most blogs.

All my former blogs were “simple and plain fun projects” and I soon recognized that this blog is special to me. While I enjoy writing it, I found myself investing more time in it, which added a little bit of seriousness to the whole project.

My goals regarding this blog’s content were:

At least one big post a month.
1-2 times a month a more analytical piece.
No huge gaps between posts (max. 3-4 days).

To be absolutely honest: I wouldn’t have guessed that it takes that long to write an article. Part of it has to do with the fact that I’m no native speaker but that I’m absolutely in love with English and want to deliver a translation of my thoughts that is vaguely accurate and still captures my style of writing.⁶ And the other part is just me having underestimated that this is work (fun work, but work).

I soon realized that reaching my goal isn’t possible with all the other commitments I have. I haven’t written something analytical yet and rather tried to focus on keeping the gaps between the posts not too wide.

I find the gaps to be the most stressful part, because I’m still hesitant about link posts when it comes to my own blog, despite the fact that I’ve got accustomed to them up to a point were I don’t want to miss them in the blogs I’ve subscribed to.

I imagine readers would like a more consistent blog – yes, that’s how I picture you. Proof me wrong. And putting up three link list posts in a row would feel like cheating to me although by this the gap between post would shrink dramatically.

That was the status quo until I read Shawn’s latest article (the one I mentioned in the introduction). Here’s what he has to say about “the time” aspect:

If I were to shift the time I spend posting links to be time spent on original articles instead, it’s not like there would be a new article every day. Because I would still be spending time reading and researching and working behind the scenes. And I’d still be discovering the same stuff I am now — I just wouldn’t be linking to it.

Shawn nailed it. It’s no wonder that such simple truth can only come from an experienced person who is blogging for over 6 years now. He’s one of the few who has already mastered the thin line where link posts are on one end of the spectrum and quality articles are on the other end. I just have to let this sink in, keeping in mind that I won’t be ‘jar-jar-binksing or side-kicking’. Matter of fact I think I’ve already found a solution for how to cope with this kind of content.⁷

As you might have noticed I do two kind of link posts here: the classic “DF-Style” link post and the link list which I saw first on Brett Terpstra’s blog. Here’s his point of view:

It allows me to gather link collections for posts as I browse and generate a single post with multiple links rather than a ton of individual “link list” posts”.

And the corresponding footnote:

Link list posts are great for some people, and I’m not against them. They just don’t fit my style.

I totally dig his approach and since I’m a lover of lists I’m quite sure that I would have ended up with a list even if I hadn’t come across them in Brett’s blog. Still, honor to whom honor is due.⁸

I use link lists for things I’m fond of but that are either (a) way out of the scope of this blog or (b) things were I simply have not too much to say about because they stand for themselves.

Also, these lists are perfect for passing along a link which has absolutely nothing to do with technology, Apple or design. And by putting it inside such a list I want readers to know that the link marked a special day in the place of my browsers history.

I choose the classic link post for findings that absolutely grabbed my attention and which I would like to highlight separately. Gabe and Erik’s CriticMarkup is the best example – it felt like a lightning bolt went through my body when I first read about it.

Conclusion and Preview

I didn’t realize it at first, but this setup with two kind of link posts should work for reducing my “fear of link posts” and it lead to trust my gut feeling more. Case closed: there is no double bind. If I trust blog writers who frequently post link posts, there’s a chance that people will trust me with my more infrequent post rhythm.

The only difference is that due to the lists the RSS feed looks a tad cleaner. But it’s closer to the blog experience that I wanted to create for this site.

My only doubt is that it still feels slightly different from a readers perspective (especially when looking at it through the eyes of a RSS client). This is a thing to keep in mind when you got a certain responsibility for your readership – like the one that every blog owner has who offers a subscription model. Then again these writers can dedicate more time to their blog and writing.

Here’s were the preview part starts: my next term is my last at the University. I will write and finish my bachelor thesis. In the meantime I will also sell my car which isn’t really necessary in the city anyway. After the thesis is done I will have a small nest egg and emulate writing this site full-time to have a good idea of what it will look like and to know how it feels to work the whole week on RocketINK (aka a thing I love).

Admitted, it sounds rather drastic when seeing it written down in front of me on the screen. But I’m curious and I was always the kind of person who followed his dreams rather ruthless. I “switched careers” and started to study English and German when I was 26 (- yes, that’s pretty late -) because I wanted to get to a point were I can use English frequently to master it at some point in my live, and to read and write more. In my mind this blog could be a potential next step. Knowing that I only need a small amount of money to be happy in life a membership might work for me. I prefer pursuing my dreams anytime over a bigger paycheck (… as long as I can pay the rent and there is food on the table⁹). And that’s exactly why I’m sold on the idea.

If I can check of the small list of my (content) goals with ease while doing the project then I would allow myself to slowly start thinking about offering a membership. At the moment it feels too soon, especially when keeping in mind that there are people out there which I respect who earned their place by constantly proving their credibility over the years and keep publishing quality content.

Side note: I thought about discarding the “preview part” of this last section because it could come across as me being a unworldly dreamer, a newcomer stretching himself to far and so on. The post would have definitely worked without it and I could have send the “preview part” to two or three people I trust with this matter. But anyway, I like being honest – it’s highly therapeutic for me.

Other people I love to read also mentioned me, but I wanted to keep this list concise and like stated above only include the “first pilgrims” so to speak. Sorry for not including you and thank you for putting out your awesome content.↩
I’m not free of errors, I still follow book authors I like (c.f. Jasper Fforde and Terry Pratchett) to get a small glimpse of the world they live in. Also I happend to find Rock stars more easy to track, because “you live freely if you haven’t a reputation to lose”.↩
Welcome to my Facebook profile: here’s a picture of me shaking the presidents hand, here’s on with me standing on the top of Mount Everest, here’s the rest of the top events in my life – anyway, I won’t show you anything were I actually failed.↩
I even clicked on a link to a set of beautiful photographies of Snakes this week. I’m terrified of Snakes (although it has gotten better of the years).↩
I know the celebrity example stands on shaky ground, but it helped me to grasp why I had an aversion against link posts when I first saw them a couple of years ago.↩
Sadly this isn’t possible – there’s no perfect solution and I will probably explain in an upcoming blog post why it isn’t possible to write 100% English articles when you’re not a native speaker.↩
Still, three link lists in row would feel like cheating… either I’m hopeless or I will grow to accept it. I’m positive that I’ll find my way soon.↩
Brett got the whole thing running on auto-pilot, check this out. A jaw-dropping workflow.↩
If things go pear shaped I can always resort to doing a bit of freelance work or trying to get a job with my degree.↩

iPhone 5 Wallpaper Pack

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 05:42:42 +0100

I want to say thank you to all the people that read my blog, to those of you who got in touch with me and to everybody that linked me. You all made the last 2 months a blast for me.¹

I kept thinking about a nice way to show my gratitude and came to the conclusions: what better way than to do this with a visual gift that you can carry around. So, here are 15 wallpapers for the iPhone 5 I made for you guys. Enjoy.

UPDATE: I updated the “Stripes” wallpapers (see screen shot below) – they are now aligned properly.

Download

PS: A side note → I have shimmery white overlay on all images here on RocketINK. And, I’m currently rocking this one…

At the moment there’s nothing I like better than writing this blog.↩

Open In Favorite Editor for Keyboard Maestro

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Opening files in Finder is straight forward, either you double click a file or you do a ⌘↓. But what to do if you want to open the file in question with another application?

The normal procedure is to open up the contextual menu or Alfred/LaunchBar to choose the application which should open the file in question. Four years ago I came across an AppleScript from Andreas Zeitler which is called Open in favorite app. It fitted my needs perfectly since Andreas’s setup was just like mine: one default application (which is the one that opens files the fastest just to get a quick glance) and another one which is the go to application to edit certain files (the favorite application).

Today’s macro here on RocketINK is Open in favorite app for Keyboard Maestro. The above mentioned AppleScript works well in Keyboard Maestro as it is, but I wanted to use a Keyboard Maestro only solution. The macro gets the file extension and if you press ⌥⌘↓ it will open the file in the specificed application, not in the default one. The macro uses several if conditions to set a favorite application for the various file types as follows:

Update: I’ll have to figure out how to make this work in Path Finder. Currently it’s not rock solid when using Path Finder.

So, if I have a PDF selected in Finder ~~or Pather Finder~~ I can hit the shortcut and it opens in PDFpenPro.

Here’s a table of the standard file associations I made:

Extension	Favorite	Default
DOCUMENTS
txt	Marked	FoldingText
md
mmd
markdown

pdf	PDFpenPro	Preview

opml	MindNode Pro	OmniOutliner Pro

IMAGE FILES
jpg	Photoshop	Preview
jpeg
png
gif
psd
tif
tiff

ai	Illustrator	Preview
eps

MOVIE FILES
mp4	QuickTime Player 7	MplayerX
mpeg
avi
divx
wmv
flv
mov
mkv
mpg

Bonus tipp: setup BetterTouchTool to have even more possibilities to open the files, for example:

DOWNLOAD

Link list – Mar 6, 2013

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 12:30:45 +0100

Maid
- This Hazel-inspired Ruby gem brings the functionality of Hazel to the command line.
A Defense of Comic Sans
- A psychological analysis of why we hate Comics Sans.
The OmniFocus Setup
- The videos from Macworld 2013 with Michael Schechter & Thanh Pham, Tim Stringer, Dinah Sanders, Sven Fechner are online. The rest will follow soon. For now there is enough to take in I guess. /via @veritrope
Cloudier
- An iOS client for CloudApp with a very sleek and smart design. And if you want to go pro with CloudApp it’s 20% off at the moment (checkout code: “cloudier).

The Reason Why Google Chrome Is My Favorite Browser

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 12:32:52 +0100

Browsers are a matter of taste. It’s simple as that. Each one has certain features that set it apart from the competition. There are people who swear by Firefox or Opera, both of them are browsers which I’d pull to pieces if someone would ask me for my personal opinion. But they have their loyal user base just as Google Chrome or Safari. To clarify one thing up-front, this post isn’t about bashing browsers, it’s about why Google Chrome works for me and how I set it up.

The Basics

Let’s start from top to bottom:

The “Pin Tab” feature of the tab bar is a welcome addition for someone who spends his day with certain tabs always open. Having collapsed tabs who are always in the pole position of the tab bar only taking up a minimal amount of space is pretty useful. When I know some websites will be open the whole day I simply pin them. I also like the fact that I can auto-enable this feature for ‘bookmark apps’ in Chrome’s new tab page [the one that pops up when you do ⌘T – you can also make your own Google Chrome App Icon Bookmarks in case your favorite sites isn’t featured in the Chrome Web Store.)

The omnibar was the thing I missed the most when having one of my periodical ‘today I’ll use Safari only’ days. Now, Safari 6 finally has an omnibar though Apple prefers to call it the “smart search field”. I have to admit that I happen to find the contextualization added by the divisions for Bookmarks and History links better than what Chromes has offer.

Sandboxed tabs - when a tab crashes I can close it and don’t have to render my whole browsing session useless. From a short excursion to the support forums on the Apple Discussion board this still seems to be an issue with Safari 6.¹

Google’s sync works just great if you have multiple devices – it’s more than felicitous, especially on iOS I can straight away continue right where I left off, be it tabs, sites which need my password, etc. It’s all there. This makes things easy for me on iOS. Google Chrome is my preferred browser there too.

Colored extension icons. Yes, when I switched to Google Chrome I was glad that there were shiny, bright and colorful icons. Because I’m a visual guy icons work great with me - even when there only is the slightest hint of color I’m alright and can identify them swiftly. I’m no fan of the whole monochrome movement that OS X is pushing GUI-wise – in Finder I used to spot the folder I aimed at in the sidebar from the corner of my eye… until “the gray” happened. But I can see that it looks sleek and clean. That’s why I switched to monochrome extension icons in Google Chrome in the end too. Well, that and because I only have a few extensions in Chrome which have no option to assign a shortcut to them. I can tell those chosen few appart without the visual aid that a bit of color would provide.

I also enjoy the out of the box support for Greasemonkey. Browsing sites like userscripts.org, double clicking a file and I’m set without any SIMBL-like extras.

The Bookmarks Bar

I love my bookmarks bar (I can image some of you will find it quite tacky):

When I’m in a browsing mood, leaning all the way back and celebrating the most non-ergonomic posture that could possibly exist, that is when I use the Bookmarks Bar most. The option to delete the name of a bookmark and just have the favicon sit there is not the most pretty thing but I still like it.

Matter of fact I liked it so much that I tried to emulate the effect in Safari by using emoticons. If you think the picture above looks horrid then close your eyes and skip the next picture:

Lastly, I even went the extra mile and added favicons to those bookmarklets that deserved a prominent place in the Bookmarks Bar. If you wonder how to do this rest assured - I asked myself the same question some time ago and luckily I’ve found an answer:

Step by step guide: favicons for bookmarklets

Open the Bookmark Manager and export your bookmarks.
Open the exported html file in your favorite editor and look for the bookmarklet you want a favicon applied to.
Convert the 16x16 px favicon you want to use into the BASE64 format (there a lot of free online converters out there in case you have no native application – I used CSS Image Encoder from the App Store).
Now you can add the favicon via adding the ICON="data:image/insert-your-base64-image-code-here" attribute in the link.
Save the file and import it in the bookmark manager. If the favicon doesn’t show up try clicking on the bookmarklet. Afterwards the changes should stick and you can delete the imported bookmarks. If you have sync activated the favicons on your bookmarklets will also show up on your other Mac.

In case you need more visual guidance and a detailed explanation, here is a link to an article which was posted shortly after I was able to answer my own question on StackExchange.

Side note/blow: Google Chrome allows rearranging bookmarks per drag and drop. You don’t have to go into the bookmarks manager for making some small changes in a bookmarks folder like in Safari.

Extensions

Ok, let’s cut to the chase. I know why you’re here: you want to know what extensions I use and if there’s the slightest chance that one of them could be of use to you. No problem, here’s a mixed bag for you:

Extensioner

With Extensioner you can toggle single extensions or whole groups. It’s a great tool to save some resources. My “Standard” tab incorporates all extension that I want to keep running. The rest I activate only when needed.

Vimium

With this extension you can cut the cord (or toggle off the bluetooth connection) to your mouse because you won’t need it any longer. Vimium makes browser navigation with the keyboard possible. It does this in a very smart way. Watch the demo video and be wooed:

URL Pinner

In the first section of this post I mentioned that I’m quite fond of the “Pin Tab” feature. What always bothered me was that there was no way to assign a hotkey to that feature. With URL Pinner there now is a way, and it brings even more to the table:

you can define which URL should automatically open as a pinned tab
you can use regular expression to filter URL’s
you can specify the order of your pinned URL’s (just like the feature of Bartender for Mac)

Pinboard

One of the extensions I use all the time. The Pinboard extension of Jacob Buck suits my needs perfectly. You can assign shortcuts to bookmark a page and to browse bookmarks. It has auto-completion for tags and when browsing you can drill down by tags, c.f. search for the first tag “pinboard” then search further for an “extension” tag to narrow down the list of results. Brilliant.

Pinboard Tools

I haven’t found a way to write a bookmarklet for the “Save tab set” function of Pinboard.in – that’s the sole reason why I keep this extension around.

Mario Fischer, developer of the Safari Pinboard Extension was so kind to provide me with the Javascript to write such a bookmarklet, but I just started learning Javascript and a failed rewriting the snippet. If you’re interest in building a save tabs bookmarklet just send me an email.

Dropbox Plus

Dropbox Plus adds a tree-view of the folders in your Dropbox to the right side of the web application. Nifty.

Google Reader Absolutely Customizable

The name says it all. When I read RSS feeds on my Mac I use Google Reader’s web interface. It’s fast to navigate through my subscriptions and with this extension the whole look can be trimmed down to have something more concise.

Unburner

Strip stupid junk from end of links opened from Google Reader.

Yes, that’s exactly what I want. I already hit the install button. What about you?

Gmail right hand pane Removal

The author states in the description…

Other scripts that claim to do this didn’t work for me.

His script did work and I use it.

Instachrome

One of the few extensions where I could use just a bookmarklet to achieve (nearly) the same result. The advantage of Instachrome is that not only it let’s you assign a hotkey, it also closes the tab after the link is added to Instapaper. I wasn’t able to pull this off with Keyboard Maestro (although it might work if one could read out the number of the active tab).

SingleFile

SingleFile is the closest thing to Safari’s superb webarchive file format that I dearly love and miss in Google Chrome. I rather archive sites in such a format than as a PDF.

iReader

Another thing I loved in Safari was the “Reader” function. Print a page or email its content to somebody or some web application like Evernote was great. iReader works the same way as Safari Reader but sometimes fails to accepts sites that work with Reader.²

Extensions that I don’t use but that still deserve a honorable mention

Markdown Here
TextDown
Bookmarks Bar Keyboard Shortcuts
BookmarkBar HotKeys
I hate your favicon - For monochrome favicons

Tweaks

Two links for further customization:

Black and White Extension Icons in Chrome

A hazel rule which converts all extension icons to a monochrome look. I had to tweak it a little bit to get all icons in monochrome, plus I exchanged some icons which had two states. The active state on this ones have a black icon on my machine, otherwise it’s hard to tell if the extension is active or idle.

Keyboard Maestro and your browser are friends

One of my first posts here on RocketINK. It’s about how to use Keyboard Maestro to trigger bookmarklets to save resources.

Although, tabs themselve are sandboxed… In short: I can’t say anything about Safari since I only use it on rare occasions.↩
I just tested Safari Reader again and I thought before Safari 6 it was possible to email someone the whole content of a stripped down site. Option A: I remember it wrong. Option B: the feature vanished.↩

RocketINK

Link List – June 18, 2013

➡ Mango — a new Markdown editor web app

Every Time Zone to get an overview over just that

More ideas for using fluid:

Toggle Function Keys with Keyboard Maestro

➡ LaunchBar 5.5 Update

Workflows

Link List – June 5, 2013

➡ Flavours - effortlessly theming your Mac

Waiting for the RSS Enlightenment

Last words:

Link list – May 29, 2013

Keyboard Maestro as QuickCursor replacement

Dealing with Repetitive Links on a Jekyll blog

Keyboard Maestro Control for iPhone Examples

Locking, Unlocking and sending your display to sleep

Log Out, Sleep and Shut Down macros

Starting and Quitting a Menubar Application

Start SuperDuper! Backup

More Ideas:

Save Keyboard Maestro Screen Shots Macro

➡ Keyboard Maestro 6 is released

Keyboard Maestro 6 is live.

Still no Dark Sky in Europe

Let It Rain (aka the Workaround)

MeteoEarth

Weather Apps

WeatherPro

Today Weather

Check the Weather

Additional Information

The Status Quo in Europe

Link list – May 16, 2013

The GTD Duo - TaskPaper and OmniFocus

What else I like about this attempt is…

TaskPaper Example

What’s left to do

What else

Some additional TaskPaper related links

Link list – Apr 14, 2013

Flashcards Deluxe Keyboard Maestro Macro

Some of the basic functions of the macro

Example 1

Example 2

Spotify Playlist Separators

The Vanilla Finder

General Appearance

The Sidebar

My Toolbar

Dismissed Tweaks

Link list – Mar 30, 2013

➡ My Mac Setup

How To Assign A Hotkey To Almost Anything

Keep Calm And Carry On

About Link Posts and more

A Note Of Thanks

The author and his link post

Web Celebrities vs. Real-World Celebrities

The Content of Link Posts

The Jar Jar Binks

The Sidekick

The Double Bind

Conclusion and Preview

iPhone 5 Wallpaper Pack

Open In Favorite Editor for Keyboard Maestro

Link list – Mar 6, 2013

The Reason Why Google Chrome Is My Favorite Browser

The Basics

The Bookmarks Bar

Step by step guide: favicons for bookmarklets

Extensions

Extensions that I don’t use but that still deserve a honorable mention

Tweaks