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
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.
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.
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:
Open Drafts
Fire the TextExpander Snippet
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.
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:
a history of straddling the line between the New York and New Jersey families;
suspicions that Tony works with the FBI;
a number of grievances about decisions and leadership.
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.
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
Mobile devices make for great time wasters, with simple, casual games you can dip into without a major time commitment. Some of my favorite games are word games, most often spelling-focused games. Some greats:
Letterpress
Letterpress is a spelling game, where you pull tiles from a grid in order to score points for yourself, take points from your opponent, and attempt to lock up portions of the grid. It is the kind of game that you play at your pace; there’s no timing for a turn. You can invite friends to play, or allow the app to match you up with an opponent.
This august title is a take on the classic game of Scrabble. I paid for it once a long, long time ago. There are features you can pay for through microtransactions, but a good player is a good player.
## NYT Spelling Bee
Subscribers of the NYT Crossword puzzle can enjoy more casual fare in both the Daily Mini and the newer Spelling Bee. In Spelling Bee, you spell words from a wheel of seven letters; the words you create must contain the center letter of the wheel. You can rotate the wheel to get a fresh look at the array. Longer words yield higher scores. The board refreshes daily, and you can go back to yesterday’s puzzle and see what you missed. Spelling Bee appears simple but is delightfully beguiling.
If you like Spelling Bee, then WordSmyth is up your lexical alley. In WordSmyth, you spell words of varied length from a grid of nine letters. Unlike Spelling Bee, however, you can’t use a letter more than once. The game is feast for the senses; the music is tranquil, the visuals fluid and smooth, and the tap and swipe gestures make smart use of your device’s touchscreen. Like Spelling Bee, you can play one new grid per day; unlike the NYT’s offering, however, you can always go back and work on an older puzzle.
I have an unusual setup in that, while I am left handed, I mouse right handed. I suspect this is not terribly uncommon in left-handed users, since a number of circumstances conspire, both inside and outside of the computing world, to encourage (if not require) non-dominant hand use among us southpaws.
About 12 years ago, I developed some soreness while mousing in my left forearm and hand. Seeking a short-term fix, I switched to a right-handed setup, switching back only when playing a game. Over time, I grew to prefer right-handed mousing, a happy side effect of which was an increased number of third-party mice.
And then I moved to using a laptop full time, and, consequently, a trackpad. Most recently, I tried out a Magic Trackpad at the office, since I spend considerably more time at my desk due to the pandemic and school closures.
The Magic Trackpad is one part computer trackpad, one part iPad screen. The multitouch gestures that power iOS’s interface are largely available on the Mac, thanks to the Magic Trackpad. The standalone is larger than that on a MacBook of any size, and brings an almost iPad-like experience to using a desktop Mac.
I immediately placed the trackpad to the right of my keyboard, as it is a mouse replacement. Having used it for a couple of days, I realized it felt strange to me, more than I would have expected considering that I now mouse comfortably with my right hand.
I took to the iPad to see which hand I used to swipe and poke the screen. It’s mixed, but I largely use the right hand. With iPhone, it’s more 50/50. So the Magic Trackpad should feel at home with right-hand use… but it didn’t.
I then tried a trackpad on the iPad’s Magic Keyboard. And there it was: turns out I trackpad with my left hand. Somehow I had moved over from my left hand to my right hand in almost all of my interactions, but continued to use the trackpad with my left hand.
I’m still going to try getting used to the Magic Trackpad with my right hand. I like the challenge of making simple, rote tasks more challenging, like switching my clocks to military time.
## NYT Spelling Bee
