I found MarkEdit through this post about BBEdit; there’s a new version out, and while I usually upgrade, I don’t use BBEdit for most of what it’s intended. I mostly just write and do some basic sorting in it. Something lighter would be fine for my needs. Something like MarkEdit maybe.
One of the benefits of being a blabbermouth is that you’re easy to shop for during the holidays.
This isn’t anything that should have surprised me, but I was making a quick list of things to do for tomorrow and I wondered if I could drag a text list into an OmniFocus project. You’ve been able to drag text all over the place in the Mac forever, so I figured it might work. I opened up a quick Stickies note, made a list of things we need to gather for an appointment, and dragged them into an existing project. Voilà!
Here’s a quick video of what it looks like:
Here’s this week’s list of things to check out:
Acorn is the Mac indie developer alternative to Photoshop. Mac users have been lucky lo these many years, having both Acorn and Pixelmator as affordable options to a subscription full of features you don’t need. I bought acorn way back in 2010, and always jump on the new release pricing. It’s a Mac-assed Mac app.
This was a Christmas gift from the girls in the office, featured in this evening’s manhattans.
I’m luckier than a lot of people. It surely explains, at least in part, my unadorned affection for this little season.
I don’t remember where exactly, but if I recall correctly John Siracusa discussed setting Finder windows to look more like classic Mac OS windows. A pretty typical Finder window, invoked anew in Mac OS 9, would look like this:
I grew to prefer list view in OS X, which is my default these days. I also like column view, but never use icon view. List view isn’t new to the Mac; it looks like this on OS 9:
The macOS Finder still handles the same tasks as the original Finder, but it has changed considerably ever since the OS X Public Beta. There’s a Toolbar that expands the size of a Finder window greatly; it includes a sidebar and a customizable set of actions and options.
I don’t generally have any objection to the macOS Finder; early iterations were slow, and then the icons got kind of big and horsey looking, but the slow march of progress has generally improved Finder.
The podcast or wherever I heard about turning off all of the options that make a new Finder a new Finder window, in comparison with the
I’ve been playing around with Keyboard Maestro again recently, and I found an old action I’d been messing with that was intended to turn off the additional Finder settings, leaving me with a classic Mac OS-style window. You can easily turn these off via macOS’s GUI in Finder:
This would be three clicks of the mouse or three keyboard shortcuts executed each time you wanted to toggle. It’s the repetitive kind of thing that begs for an AppleScript or Keyboard Maestro utility. Or both.
Keyboard Maestro is an obvious choice; I figured I could pick one master keyboard shortcut, and have that key sequence active all three of the Finder shortcuts. But then I thought, recalling something that Jason Snell said on a recent MacBreak Weekly, ChatGPT is really good at AppleScript.
So I asked ChatGPT, “write an applescript to hide the Toolbar off in the finder if it’s visible.”
I got this:
tell application "Finder"
activate
try
tell application "System Events"
tell process "Finder"
-- Check if the toolbar is visible
if value of attribute "AXToolbar" of window 1 is true then
keystroke "t" using {command down, option down}
end if
end tell
end tell
on error errMsg
display dialog "An error occurred: " & errMsg buttons {"OK"} default button 1
end try
end tell
I went through a few iterations of this, realized that this needs to be a toggle (ie, if there’s no active Finder window open, one should be opened and set to my notional classic Finder window style; but if there is a modern macOS Finder window open already, the same keystroke should set that window to the Classic look). ChatGPT was fast and accurate all along the way. Here’s the final script:
tell application "Finder"
activate
if (count of Finder windows) = 0 then
make new Finder window
end if
end tell
tell application "System Events"
tell process "Finder"
try
-- Toggle the Toolbar
if exists menu item "Hide Toolbar" of menu "View" of menu bar 1 then
click menu item "Hide Toolbar" of menu "View" of menu bar 1
else if exists menu item "Show Toolbar" of menu "View" of menu bar 1 then
click menu item "Show Toolbar" of menu "View" of menu bar 1
end if
-- Toggle the Status Bar
if exists menu item "Hide Status Bar" of menu "View" of menu bar 1 then
click menu item "Hide Status Bar" of menu "View" of menu bar 1
else if exists menu item "Show Status Bar" of menu "View" of menu bar 1 then
click menu item "Show Status Bar" of menu "View" of menu bar 1
end if
-- Toggle the Path Bar
if exists menu item "Hide Path Bar" of menu "View" of menu bar 1 then
click menu item "Hide Path Bar" of menu "View" of menu bar 1
else if exists menu item "Show Path Bar" of menu "View" of menu bar 1 then
click menu item "Show Path Bar" of menu "View" of menu bar 1
end if
on error errMsg
display dialog "An error occurred: " & errMsg buttons {"OK"} default button 1
end try
end tell
end tell
Here’s a quick video of the script working:
Living in southern NJ, we don’t get much snow, especially in December. I’m a sucker for a white Christmas.
I have a list of games to check out this week. And here we are:
When I turned 21, a friend of mine at Ursinus, Mike Walter, took me out to a quirky bar in Kutztown, PA. They had Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale on tap and we had a few pints. It was a memorable night for me; it was a warm, dim bar, with a low-slung ceiling and a fire going. It was a cold night on an otherwise quotidian turn of the calendar make special by companionship and ale.
Our local pizza haunt, Villa Fazzolari, has Celebration on tap right now. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it on tine beer list; the waitress even had to check with the bartenders. But have it they did, and I had two. It was great; piney, resinous. I suspect I it will hang around.
Rhonda and I nipped out to the Greenview again last night. We’ve been doing this more, letting the boys get dinner via GrubHub. It’s cheaper and we get to have a nice date.
I had a great time last time we went to the Greenview and sat at the bar, and was eager to repeat. It’s an interesting place to say the least. We were lucky to get a table; we had no Rez and it was a Friday during the holiday.
We ordered a bottle of Chardonnay and at one point, I realized it was sitting too close to the table candle for its own good. Just before moving it, though, I realized the label was nicely lit. So I took this quick shot:
I had the halibut special; there were an overwhelming number of them, and I was hard pressed to decide. Rhonda had the duck, which is what I had last time. Hers sat atop chopped beats, which were good but a little al denté for I would say most tastes. They were good though. I didn’t intend to eat all of my polenta, but I did. I have no regrets.
One downside of digitally whoring around from notes app to notes app is a trail of digital knowledge, much of which may be errata, but some of which may remain useful.
Case in point: I help with the newsletter for a professional association. I must have been using Workflowy when I started, because that’s where the style sheet is. This by itself isn’t a big deal, but when you scatter bits of info across a half-dozen or more apps without being able to (or willing) to export and import everything from the old app to the new app… well, you know.
This is compounded by Workflowy’s being web-based/ an electron app. If you don’t use the app on your machine for a while, you’re prompted to log in. This requires you to receive and paste in an access code, which I don’t prefer to running a native application on my machine locally.
I’m working on the newsletter now and I knew to head to Workflowy for the style sheet. Once I had the style sheet up, I wondered to myself what kind of file formats at export Workflow supports. Happily, OPML is one of them.
It makes perfect sense that Workflowy would support OPML as an export format, but good on them for doing so.
OPML means that OmniOutliner can open the file and save it in their native format. So that’s what I did. I now have a file called “Workflowy” on my Mac that won’t ask me to log in all the time.
I even made it look like the original.
Last year, my mom was kind enough to surprise us for an overnight stay in historic Cape May, New Jersey. This is a nearby destination that I had just really never been too. We stayed and dined at the Washington in, and had a great time. We returned this summer for dinner at Peter Sheilds Inn, and we enjoyed our dinner. We got to talking one night that it was our anniversary and my 50th birthday, so maybe we should stay somewhere.
And so we did. I was able to book Room 7 at Peter Shields and make a dinner rez for the same night with no problem. We took the opportunity to do a little Christmas shopping Saturday night, so we found ourselves at the Lobster House for a drink and some apps. We had a Manhattan and a Martini each, the escargots, and some Cape May Salts oysters. Everything was excellent. It’s a weird old place that’s probably been run the same way forever. We hated the giant line of people waiting for a table at four pm (they don’t take reservations).
The area around the Washington Street Mall was so crowded that we decided to get a bottle of wine and check into the room. We glugged some chardonnay while we waited for dinner. Dinner was amazing, just like in August.
We started off with their excellent bread and the whipped butter, which is so good, I ate a whole timbale of it myself at breakfast. We shared the homemade cavatelli and the shaved Brussels sprouts salad. I had a NY Strip, while Rhonda ordered the short ribs with mashed potatoes. We finished with salted caramel cheesecake and the apple crumble. More wine, too; Cape May chardonnay, which was so good we stopped on the ride home to pick up a bottle for home (got some rosé, too).
This morning was breakfast at the Inn and then some shopping. I nipped out early because I was up for a few things at Wawa, and found (thankfully) my Apple Pencil just behind my car in the street parking. No damage either. I turned on FindMy right away. I thought about where it might be all night long.
We stopped, as we do, in the Peanut Butter shop, and I had some awesome samples. We got a jar of this stuff. I won’t eat it but it was delicious to try.
We just blew in from Cape May, and I have some things to write about that trip. In the meantime, here’s this week’s list of things to check out:
iOS 18.2 dropped for me Saturday morning, and with it came Image Playground. I’ve been pretty excited about Image Playgrounds for two reasons. First, my inner prankster was dying to create a Christmas elf from a picture of Rhonda and show it to her. Secondly, and more seriously, is that I like to use these image generators for written communications in lieu of stock art. I have never done any kind of work for anyone with a stock photos account, and I find this more satisfying than looking for images without watermarks or worse. I do have a device with an 18.2 beta on it, and so while I was able to try out Image Playgrounds late Friday night, the official release is much more polished.
And interesting direction Apple took with Image Playgrounds is that you have to start with an image from your photo library: it won’t create an image of a person based on your written (or spoken) input. On the other hand, Image Playgrounds takes your input–no matter how innocuous or impersonal–and translates it so profoundly that it doesn’t much resemble the starting image. This jibes with Apple’s public statement on photos, which is that they are digital representations of something that happened.
I’ve taken to using Notes for all of my note taking again; essentially, my setup always involves some kind of task list manager, a notes app, and an email application (not webmail). There’s a lot of ancillary software and utilities that I run, too, but that’s the core of my setup.
I recently noticed the Smart Folders feature available in Notes, and I was excited to use them to good end (showing the notes I’ve edited over the last couple of days, irrespective of filing). But they bring me a touch of nostalgia, too, for they remind me of the smart playlists in iTunes. I still have a bunch of them that don’t auto-update anymore.
I read about this digital file system organization scheme on Reddit. I’ve been using the Para method to organize my digital files, and I like it plenty, but I have found organizing by Home/Work/Professional to be a challenge in that the structure tends to want to impose itself everywhere within Para if you use it in one place. This system reminds me a bit of the very cool Dendron projects I adopted for a while.
Image Playgrounds is finally available. I was able to try it out the night before it installed on my phone, and this newer version is significantly better.
I made holiday pics of the four of us:
Here’s this week’s list of things to check out:
Cheap Dollar Tree Hats: One consequence of losing weight is being cold. And I mean, in my case, to where I’ve thought maybe I should add some pounds to feel more comfortable just being. Short of such weighty decisions, I can always apply more immediate solutions, like putting on a hat. Dollar Tree around the corner had some nice ones.
PaperMate Write Bros, 1.0 Pens: Speaking of Dollar Tree, I always wander into the stationary aisle to see what pens they have for sale. I’ve gotten an impressive variety of surprise delights this way, including some interesting colors of Zebra Sarasa pens. I did not expect to like these PaperMate pens at all, but I recalled, standing there before the pen section, that the NY Mag’s list of 100 best pens featured some true cheapies. So I grabbed a pack of 10 and took most of them to work. I don’t know if I’d feel the same way about these if they were .5 or .7; I really like 1.0 pens, but they’re few and far between in most stores. The barrel is pretty wide for a cheap pen, and the writing experience is smooth.
Readwise Plugin for PopClip: I have been using Readwise for a while now to sync highlights from ebooks I’m reading to the Readwise service, and then reading over passages as the service presents them in the Daily Review feature. It’s a great way to use Readwise, and I’ve been not just delighted, but sometimes gobsmacked, by something I’d highlighted while reading but had Readwise unearth for me. My issue with Readwise is getting content into it; it’s easy to turn on sync to Kindle and Kobo APIs in the app so that highlights come over, but it’s a more browser-based affair on the Mac. (iOS and iPadOS benefit from the Readwise share sheet extension.) Happily, there’s a PopClip extension that works in Safari or anywhere else you can select text. I just tried it on a PDF, and it synced to Readwise right away.
