The Book of Eli

Rewatched the Hughes’ Brothers “Book of Eli” last night. Ebert reviewed it back when:

The Hughes brothers have a vivid way with imagery here, as in their earlier films such as “Menace II Society” and the underrated “From Hell.” The film looks and feels good, and Washington’s performance is the more uncanny the more we think back over it. The ending is “flawed,” as we critics like to say, but it’s so magnificently, shamelessly, implausibly flawed that (a) it breaks apart from the movie and has a life of its own, or (b) at least it avoids being predictable.

Denzel Washington is one of those actors you can’t not watch… which put me in mind of the interview Terry Gross did with him on Fresh Air. As is her tendency, she asked a question based on a detail that caught her eye:

GROSS: There is a scene in this where you’re holding two guns on someone, and you kind of scrape the guns against each other as if there two knives that you’re sharpening.

WASHINGTON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: Was that a bit of business that you came up with when you were holding the guns?

WASHINGTON: Of course. I mean, you know, it’s just rhythm. You know, acting is like music, you know, and you improvise and you, it’s like jazz, you know, there’s no rhyme or reason to it. It’s not a plan. I just did it. You know, it’s just rhythm. To me it’s just a rhythm. It’s like you do – Stanislavski said, you know, you cut 90 percent. You do all your research and you prepare and then you let it rip, you know, and that’s how it is. You know, you practice to music and you just play it.

Denzel Washington Remembers ‘Malcom X’ And ‘The Wizard Of Oz’

A fine public-private partnership if ever there was one.

Via Boing Boing, here’s how to fold Gaff’s origami unicorn.

In the theatrical cut of Blade Runner, the unicorn is a clue that Gaff had been at Deckard’s apartment. But the symbolism gained greater import in the director’s cut, suggesting that Deckard was a replicant:

For instance, in Ridley Scott’s 1992 Director’s Cut of the film, the filmmaker added in the famous “unicorn scene” dream sequence that appeared to confirm the Deckard-as-replicant speculation. Early in the film, Deckard dreams of a unicorn during a drunken reverie. Later, one of Deckard’s fellow blade runners, a wigged-out dandy named Gaff (Edward James Olmos), leaves an origami unicorn for Deckard to find. This suggests that Gaff knows Deckard’s memories, which means they’re implanted, which means he’s a ‘bot.

I don’t personally think he was a replicant, but I love the debate.

How to Fold the Blade Runner Unicorn

Launchbar-App-Swticher.mp4Speaking of Keyboard Maestro‘s app switcher, another option I tried out was to remap Finder’s Command-Tab to:

1. Invoke LaunchBar,
2. Execute Command-R, which is LaunchBar’s application switcher.

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

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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:

1. Open Drafts
2. Fire the TextExpander Snippet
3. Export the TaskPaper note to OmniFocus

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.

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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.