One of my favorite (under)uses of BBEdit is using Grep in Find/Replace to remove all newline characters. I figured that surely PasteBot would be have a built-in filter to handle that, but alas. I found an article by Michael Kummer that got me halfway there; I was able to figure out the rest.
Happily, I was able to find the Tiles wallpaper and many, many more, at this MacRumors forum post.
In celebration of Mac OS X’s 20th birthday, I’m posting the second oldest pic in my Photos library: a screenshot of Internet Connect, which I used to connect via dialup modem to Earthlink. I’d like to get a refreshed version of that wallpaper.
Launchbar-App-Swticher.mp4Speaking of Keyboard Maestro‘s app switcher, another option I tried out was to remap Finder’s Command-Tab to:
It’s not really an application switcher, but Command-R in LaunchBar shows you a list of running applications. It is sticky, so that the list of applications remains on the screen until you either mouse or use the keyboard to select a running application; macOS’s app switch disappears when you release the Command key. In LaunchBar’s list, you can use the arrow keys to navigate the menu, but the power-user move is to type the name of the application you want to switch to.
As with Keyboard Maestro’s application switcher, friction comes in that you may be so used to Command-Tab and Shift-Command-Tab to switch applications that, for however much you like the feature in LaunchBar, you won’t use it. Replacing Command-Tab with your LaunchBar invocation command and adding Command-R to the chain solves that problem nicely.1
1I’m still sticking with the Finder. Old habits die hard.
I bought Keyboard Maestro back in 2018 after reading good things about it, but have yet been able to make much use of it. This is partly because a lot of software that I’ve already added to my life does what KM does: Launchbar, TextExpander, PasteBot, and others. I have the feeling that I’m only considering a fraction of what it can do.
One of the features that I played with a bit is the application switcher. Keyboard Maestro hijacks one of my most-used keyboard commands, Command-Tab, and shows a grid of running applications over a turquoise background. You can continue to tab over the application icons, or mouse to your selection.
Keyboard Maestro’s Default App Switcher
As with all things Keyboard Maestro, you can customize the background color of the palette, the size of the icons, and more: vertical alignment? Sure. Familiar horizontal row? Of course. Transparent black background? By all means, yes please.
Keyboard Maestro’s Horizontal App Switcher
Keyboard Maestro’s Vertical App Switcher
I very much like this version of the app switcher, and I was ready to have it replace the system default. There is, however, at catch: Shift-Command-Tab does not move your selection in reverse. Tapping the shift key cycles backwards (to the left), but I have too many years of muscle memory for that to work for me.
Caitlin Flanagan, writing for The Atlantic:
Meghan had, in fact, realized the highest aspiration of many married people: She had convinced her spouse that his entire family was a bunch of losers.
Meghan Markle Didn’t Do the Work
Back when I was working as a school psychologist, one of my favorite automations for OmniFocus included AppleScript. I created a script that would generate a project in OmniFocus with all of the steps necessary to complete a special education eligibility evaluation, and create a folder for the student’s evaluation materials in Finder.
I don’t evaluate students anymore, but I do observe teachers, school psychologists, social workers, LDT/Cs, speech therapists, occupational therapists, and physical therapists. We use the Danielson Framework, with additional requirements and structure provided by Achieve NJ.
Without getting into all of the steps, an observation fits the definition of a project under GTD: you have to schedule the observation, schedule a post-conference, score the observation, and more. I detailed how I use OmniOutliner to track this part of my work; as a useful digression, it isn’t that I don’t find OmniFocus useful for tracking observations, but OmniOutliner is a valuable planning tool that lets me review my progress from a higher level than OmniFocus does. OmniFocus, however, provides the granularity I need to manage each observation once I get started.
OmniFocus doesn’t currently support project templates, but it does support TaskPaper import. You can create a TaskPaper file and import it into OmniFocus; for this, I like to use Drafts and the TaskPaper to OmniFocus action.
In order to easily repeat the staff member’s name into through project title and corresponding tasks, I dropped TextExpander into the mix.1
Textexpander Template Snippet
TextExpander is famous for firing snippets by monitoring your keyboard input for abbreviations. This is a core feature of the application, but on the Mac, you can also expand snippets by invoking TextExpander’s Inline Search. Inline Search manifests a Spotlight-like search bar, where you can type to narrow down available snippets to find the one you need.
It’s a roundabout process, but stepwise, I:
Drafts, Taskpaper, and OmniFocus
I could shave a step off what happens in OmniFocus, but I let the project go into the inbox, where I add anything else I forgot and convert it into a project.
And minus the inline search feature in TextExpander, this all works exactly the same on iPad.
1Via Never Miss A Task, With Project Templates (Omnifocus Mini-Series), I found the inimitable Rosemary Orchard’s TaskPaper to OmniFocus Actions collection. Her collection is a bit much for my needs, but you can automate the hell out of TaskPaper templates in Drafts and send them just about anywhere, and as fully featured as you like, in OmniFocus. One of the most interesting features is the ability to create variables that the Draft action will prompt you to fill, neatly solving the same problem that TextExpander does for me. If you aren’t a TextExpander user, or prefer to keep things intimate between Drafts and OmniFcous, check out Rose’s actions.
James Khubiar writes that the Members Only jacket signifies that the lone diner was a hitman. More importantly, though, season over season, the motive is set:
Paulie cut a deal with New York where he would arrange the assassination of Tony and declare himself the new boss of the DiMeo family. New York would back it with their muscle and influence to make sure Paulie’s coup is seen as legitimate within the remaining Soprano family and the Five Families. In return, they would have a peaceful and harmonious relationship with New Jersey, something they had not had in years. This kind of relationship was especially necessary for Lupertazzi Family considering they had been in the middle of a two year civil war and was about to have their fourth boss in less than three years (Carmine, Johnny, Phil, and whoever would replace Phil). Beyond that, a boss turned state’s witness is an absolute nightmare scenario so Tony would need to be eliminated for the benefit of New York.
Here’s an interesting video on YouTube detailing a theory, with foreshadowing and plot-wise probable cause, that it was Paulie who killed Tony in that final scene of the Sopranos. The cat marks the rat.
In addition to looking much more professional than its predecessor, the Kiyo Pro shoots 1080p at 60 frames per second. A nice mic and camera are smart upgrades for anyone who does a lot of remote conferencing. I have a Kiyo here at the office and it’s silky smooth for Google Meets. The integrated LED seems like a good idea, but I haven’t been able to test it in low light conditions.
Via MacSparky, Packal introduces Search OmniFocus, “a workflow that performs free text searches on OmniFocus 3 data.” It looks like you can navigate through your OmniFocus database via an Alfred workflow. Very cool.
The Manual has a nice intro about Brazilian steakhouses, or churrascaria, including the history, experience, and some of the cuts you are likely to encounter (picanha, most notably). There are two in nearby Philadelphia, Fogo de Chão and Chima, that I’ve dined at and enjoyed. It’s a fun experience, a twist on classic menu dining. Newark’s Portuguese Ironbound neighborhood has a number of them as well. There’s usually a varied and sophisticated salad bar before dinner, at which you gorge to your peril: experienced carnivores save room for the parade of meats to follow. You have to try everything (except the chicken, usually), and then go back around for your favorites.
What To Know About Brazilian Barbecue, a Delicious Meat Marathon
Via Chris Hannah, Greg Morris on how to write:
While you are worrying about everyone else’s opinions on the correct way to do things, you’re not writing. While you’re casting aspersions on other people that do not do things what you consider is the correct way, you’re not writing either. There is enough room on the internet for everyone to publish, and not feel like they don’t fit. There is no way you should be writing, no perfect blogging for you to be doing, and no advise that needs giving.
Just write and publish however you want to. Sit in the chair and do it.
The end of Donald Trumps reign of (Twitter) terror ends, predicitbly, with a review of his legacy. As one Facebook friend of mine said, “He did everything he said he was going to do.” That’s certainly not true, but one thing he did do was oversee the passage of a tax cut. He ran, curiously, on a populist platform, but how populist were the cuts, and what is their legacy?
Tax cuts are like pay cuts for the government. Tax is revenue; cutting them reduces revenue. Columbia’s Joseph Stiglitz, writing for the New York Times, notes that Trump’s tax cut led, or will lead, to deficits beyond a trillion dollars.
On the populist note, what’s maddening is the degree to which it’s a ruse. Trump’s not really a populist. He’s a rich guy who cares about himself. And his tax cut contains a swipe at those he pretended to be looking out for:
By 2027, when the law’s provisions are set to be fully enacted, with the stealth tax increases complete, the country will be neatly divided into two groups: Those making over $100,000 will on average get a tax cut. Those earning under $100,000 — an income bracket encompassing three-quarters of taxpayers — will not.
At the same time, Trump has given his peers, people with annual incomes in excess of $1 million dollars, or the top 0.3 percent in the country, a huge gift: The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated the average tax rate in 2019 for this group to be 2.3 percentage points lower than before the tax cut, saving the average taxpayer in this group over $64,000 — more than the average American family makes in a year.
The party has long been about the opposite of what it purports to stand for, and Trump’s populism was only a ruse to get himself elected.
Longtime Mac OS X users surely remember when you could minimize a window to the Dock with a nice slow-motion effect, showing off the graphics capability built into the OS. At some point, Apple too it out, but you can re-enable it (as you should), in Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.dock slow-motion-allowed -bool true && killall Dock