M.G. Siegler touts a powerful iOS accessibility feature:
Basically, whether I’m in Safari or Pocket or Medium reading, I use the iOS ‘Speak Selection’ functionality to read things to me. You can do this almost anywhere within iOS (once you enable the feature in ‘Settings’) by selecting a block of text and hitting ‘Speak.’
This works nicely in the Kindle app as well. I’m embarrassed to admit that, as an Instapaper subscriber, I didn’t know about the reading function.
Listen on 500ish
Deadwood from HBO returns:
[I]t’s about the town’s maturing and becoming part of the Union and what that event sets in motion, in a very personal way for the people that it brings in town and what ensues. The toll of time has not just struck Deadwood and the characters but all the people making it as well, you get to see the faces of people 12 years later. And it was really profound. Actors were crying at the table read — not necessarily from the script but the emotion of being back and doing something we all loved doing so much. You normally have a great experience and then it’s over. You don’t normally get the chance to do this in life. It was kind of a gift.
David Milch is a true auteur in this franchise.
Mark Baruth of The Truth About Cars on the turbo, 4-cylinder Camaro:
Not a fan. All of things that make a Camaro bearable are missing from the four-cylinder turbo, and you still get all of the fun of a ridiculously small trunk, non-functional backseat, and WWI bunker comfort and visibility. Combine that with all-season tires and you’ve got a real loser on your hands. The EcoBoost Mustangs are superior in every way.
The week between Christmas and New Year is a good time to fart around with new software, some of which is often available on sale.
PilotMoon’s PopClip utility is an extension that hovers an iOS-style bar over text that you select. You can then select actions from an extensive gallery of options. Your PopClip bar is customizable; you can add and obscure services you are likely to use. Likewise, you can interact with text from sources (i.e. look up a word or phrase, or tweet out a selection) or edit text of your creation (capitalize, title case, etc.).
PopClip Selecting Text in Safari
PopClip will not appeal as much to users who keep their hands on the keyboard, as it’s primarily a mouse-driven interface. It will, however, appeal to iOS users who rely on the text selection menu that appears inline when selecting text.
PopClip Actions Menu
PopClip is on sale for 50% off ($4.99 USD) on the Mac App Store.
PopClip Selecting Text in Drafts
Keyboard Maestro was around when macOS was “OS X” and had pinstripes. In short, this utility allows you to automate functions of the Mac by assigning keyboard shortcuts. Pre-programmed samples include searching Google for selected text using control-shift-g, and invoking a clipboard history using shift-control-command-v. You can, of course, create your shortcuts.
In the wake of TextExpander becoming a subscription service, Keyboard Maestro emerged as a viable replacement for those of us who shunned the new payment model.
Learning OmniFocus offers a selection of Keyboard Maestro macros for users who want to wrangle their task list from the keyboard. This is a great way to jump from any application to your OF inbox or any other perspective, for example.
KeyBoard Maestro Macros for OmniFocus
Gladys and Yoink are both emblematic of “shelf” apps; these are apps that allow you to park text snippets, images, or links, ideally for temporary storage while you decide where to put them. Both Gladys and Yoink offer iOS and macOS versions, and sync between devices. Gladys offers both a free and paid version ($0.99 USD); the free version allows you to keep 10 items in the application. Yoink offers a demo on macOS and paid versions on both platforms ($7.99 and $5.99 USD respectively).
Yoink on macOS
Both applications offer some advanced features. Yoink looks more like a proper Mac utility, with a transparent tray that slides out and varying ways to invoke the tray’s behavior. Gladys offers unique export options, like creating and expanding .ZIP archives.
Gladys on macOS
The New York Times sets out to answer the question you didn’t ask: what is glitter?
Most of the glitter that adorns America’s name brand products is made in one of two places: The first is in New Jersey, but the second, however, is also in New Jersey. The first, the rumored farm site of glitter’s invention, refused to answer any of my questions. “We are a very private company,” a representative said via email. The second is Glitterex.
The bulk of Glitterex glitter is made from plastic, though some varieties come from other sources, like aluminum. Clear glitter looks like tiny pieces of a dead jellyfish. “Then,” he said, “we go into the next iteration of a substrate, where the clear film is metalized.” He picked up a shining silver strip of material. “Potato chips bags start with the same polyester film; it’s metalized with aluminum.”
Mylar, aluminum, and corporate intrigue!
Mark Manson’s *The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life* is ostensibly about not giving said f*ck, but it’s really about figuring out what you do care about. Manson exhorts the reader to sever ties to the notion that seeking happiness will lead to it, and to, as the Marines say, “embrace the suck.”
One of Manson’s most useful recommendation in terms of finding a semblance of happiness is to spend your time doing what you would do if you didn’t have to:
True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.
Manson is at odds with the idea that life can be sunshine and roses all day; in his calculus, you will encounter suffering no matter how hard you try to avoid it. Simply thinking about how things could be better, in effect, makes you less happy. How are we to deal with this? Find out what version of struggle you would take on irrespective of need.
What determines your success isn’t, “What do you want to enjoy?” The relevant question is, “What pain do you want to sustain?” The path to happiness is a path full of shitheaps and shame.
In fact, it’s in the encountering of problems that we find meaning:
Problems add a sense of meaning and importance to our life.
It’s internal control, rather than external, that provides meaning. Steer your own ship, in a sense.
Manson lets the reader know that trying to be exceptional, as well, is likely to lead to less, not more, happiness. Manson wants you to know that it’s OK to be average:
This sort of thinking is dangerous. Once you accept the premise that a life is worthwhile only if it is truly notable and great, then you basically accept the fact that most of the human population (including yourself) sucks and is worthless. And this mindset can quickly turn dangerous, to both yourself and others.
Manson cautions the reader to avoid finding meaning from things beyond our control. Take popularity:
Popularity, on the other hand, is a bad value. If that’s your value, and if your metric is being the most popular guy/girl at the dance party, much of what happens will be out of your control: you don’t know who else will be at the event, and you probably won’t know who half those people are. Second, the value/metric isn’t based on reality: you may feel popular or unpopular, when in fact you have no fucking clue what anybody else really thinks about you.
Manson rejects the Platonic notion of self-knowledge; you will be far happier if you reject making decisions based on who you think you are and experiment–and fail.
I say don’t find yourself. I say never know who you are. Because that’s what keeps you striving and discovering. And it forces you to remain humble in your judgments and accepting of the differences in others.
There is much more to the book, including Manson’s ultimate test–accepting mortality and measuring everything you find important against this inevitability. There’s a lot to ponder. There’s also plenty of Stoicism and shades of both Nietzsche and Existentialism in the book. But it’s not about caring less. It’s about caring about the things that will give you a greater sense of satisfaction with your life. That’s, at least, what Manson is shooting for.
Yoink! has been getting some positive press lately, and it (and a similar iOS app, Gladys) put me in mind of the excellent Fresh by Ironic Software. Fresh, which is macOS only, has a drop zone like Yoink!, but is a touch more complex. It shows recent documents as well as things you’ve put manually in the Cooler, and allows you to tag files. It’s fiddlier than Yoink! in a good way.
Federico Viticci gave a shout out to Keep It in his My Must-Have iOS Apps, 2018 Edition:
A reimagined Evernote with support for iCloud, iOS automation, rich text and Markdown notes and, more importantly, desktop features such as saved searches and full-text search. I’m glad I switched to Keep It before the summer, and I’m looking forward to major updates in 2019.
You may remember Together for Mac OS X, which was a digital shoebox in the vein of Yojimbo, Evernote, SOHO Notes, StickyBrain, and my current favorite, DEVONThink Pro. Keep It looks and feels like a modern Mac app, with accompanying iOS apps and sync via iCloud. You can buy directly from Reinvented, or subscribe on the Mac App Store.
A commercial on Adage, “A Boy Finally Comes to Appreciate ‘Dad Dancing’ in This French Holiday Ad”:
A holiday spot by French telecom brand Bouyges tells the story of a father and son through the years, as the boy finally comes to appreciate his father’s “dad dancing.”
If you have kids and this doesn’t inspire the waterworks, you’re not hooked up right.
David Sparks describes a custom perspective in OmniFocus to help you see tasks that are upcoming:
While I don’t use a defer-date management system for my tasks these days, I do use defer dates on flagged tasks. This perspective shows me all of those tasks on their defer dates going forward. It’s a great deal for a little weekly planning on Sunday.
David’s screenshot is a v2 perspective; created one for myself in version 3.
Anthony Bourdain’s Vassar classmate, Miles Borzilleri, in a collection of some hilarious, and some touching, remembrances:
”I was on campus for a couple years when he was around. The thing that I remember is Tony used to have two samurai swords. They were holstered around his waist, and he would just go through the day like that. That was part of his little persona.”
The Last Curious Man: The enormous life of Anthony Bourdain, according to those who knew him best.
Despite the many options available on iOS to replace the stock mail client, Apple’s Mail for iOS is the most powerful solution for people seeking a focused view of a lot of email. One caveat–a lack of push notifications–limits its utility for some users.
I’ve been managing the email deluge using a setup that I first described here, and which I’ve adapted to MailMate. I effectively narrow my daily email view down to email:
This keeps me focused on what’s happening now; I review older email when I have time, and try not to let anything build up past 72 hours (it’s either archived, responded to, or sent off to OmniFocus).
Today: Mail on iOS has several useful alternative inboxes (effectively smart folders) that are hidden by default. The subject of this article is the “Today” folder, which will limit what is displayed to user to emails received the current date. This immediately winnows down the list of email to today’s email.
Reveal Mail’s Hidden Inboxes
Mail’s Today Mailbox
To:Me: You can additionally filter the Today mailbox by tapping on the filter button in the lower last hand corner of the Today inbox. Seeing only email addressed directly to you, which was sent today, can help you, for example, by obscuring distribution lists, which might be important but more appropriate for a review later on, or messages you’ve been CC’d on but aren’t the primary recipient.
Unread: You can filter out messages you’ve already read but haven’t archived, responded to, or otherwise processed as well.
Mail’s Flexible Mailbox Options
You can dynamically change what is shown in the Today mailbox as you go about your day; seeing only email sent to you might be necessary if there is a high volume of organizational announcements at the begging or the end of the day. If you’ve had some time to triage your inbox, however, you might want to see everything.
There are certainly still limitations to using Mail on iOS. If your organization uses Gmail, you can’t get notifications through Mail, and setting up Gmail as an Exchange account doesn’t work anymore unless it’s a paid account. Hooks into other applications, such as you might enjoy by using Airmail, are not present in Mail.
Ever find yourself needing to get back to OmniFocus’s home screen, after having drilled down multiple levels to view a list?
Quick tip: long press on the Back button in the upper left hand corner. One of those delightful affordances that you discover just by trying.
Via Kotke.org, the New York Times’ The Strategist ranks the 100 best pens.
There are many surprises here, not the least of which is that some of the cheapest pens in the world rank with or above some of the more expensive pens you can buy. The omission of the Fisher Bullet Space Pen surprised me, not necessarily because I have an opinion on it (I really like the pen), but because of its design. (There is a Fisher product in the list.)
I’m considering a Lamy or Kaweco for my next purchase.
Via Michael Tsai, Microsoft has redesigned their Office icons and will be rolling them out gradually to 365 subscribers.
These look good, but Outlook is still blue. It used to be yellow, and it would make more sense, from a user perspective, to be able to see the icon in a crowded dock by color and shape.