Sunday Serial: PasteBar, PowerToys Workspaces, and Fall

  1. PasteBar: PasteBar is a cool clipboard manager and snippet utilty for Windows and Mac. You use PasteBar to collect snippets of text and other digital errata and keep in its database. You can organize your snippets using Boards, and create tabs of Boards (say, a coding board, and then a board with vehicle information and part numbers). It’s incredibly flexible. It doesn’t appear to support any kind of keyboard launch for snippets, a la TextExpander or AutoHotKey, which would be a natural fit for an app like this. I don’t see where you can sync across devices, either, but I haven’t dug very deep.

  2. PowerToys Workspaces: One of the surprising things about Windows is that, while there are a lot truly bespoke Mac apps in that ecosystem, Windows suffers from a lack of choices. That said, Microsoft adds a lot of features themselves to the OS, obviating the need for some analogous must-have Mac utilities. PowerToys is a perfect example of this; it’s an optional installation of utilities made by the Windows maker, but not installed by default. I’ve sung the praises of PowerToys Run before, but this update adds a workspaces utility handy for multiple display users. I will definitely check this out at the office.

  3. Fall: I suppose this should be its own post, but I was outside walking the dogs, pondering a third topic for this weekly listicle I am fond of writing, and it was unmistakable: fall is upon us. It’s been cool all day, but as the sun bows in the west, the air is downright crisp. Fall is paradoxically inviting and foreboding. It signals the end of summer, culturally a time we consider fun and light. But it’s a slow ramp up to the holidays, when its cooler but not cold, and there’s lots of merriment. The colors, the dishes, the waning daylight: these are all things I like about fall. It is, of course, foreboding in that it signals the denouement of another year, another spin on the globe, and the slow roll of winter.1 The grim steeliness of winter lies just over the crest of the holiday season. Memento Mori, as the Stoics advise.

If you are given to reflecting, fall is hard to resist.

PasteBoard Clipboard Utility
PasteBoard Clipboard Utility
Fall Flowers
Fall Flowers

1We have, in some sense, licked the problem of winter; we live in hospitable indoor climes and temper the limits of the shorter days with interior delights, be they cooking, watching, reading, or something else. But the memory remains.