It was wonderful to have a conversation with @heyscottyj today. Another cool friendship in the making.
My App Toolkit 2023
At the beginning of 2023, an update to my 2020 post about my App Toolkit.
It is still overflowing with tools, although I think it’s in better shape than at my last review.
| Purpose | iOS Primary | iOS Secondary | macOS Primary | macOS Secondary | Best Cross Platform |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blogging | Gluon | Micro.blog | MarsEdit | Micro.blog | Drafts |
| Report Writing | Word | Ulysses | Word | Word | |
| Meeting Notes | Agenda | iThoughts | Agenda | iThoughts | Agenda |
| Daily Notes | Agenda | Logseq | Agenda | Logseq | Agenda |
| Tasks | OmniFocus | Reminders | OmniFocus | Reminders | OmniFocus |
| Brainstorming | iThoughts | MindNode | iThoughts | Bike | iThoughts |
Does anybody know what has become of @smokey - no activity for a couple of years on any of his sites.
I’m going through a tough time. Day One has been a blessing to capture thoughts, feelings and emotions. The subscription is worth every cent.
Finished reading: A Guide for Grown-ups by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 📚
Strange World, 2022 - ★★½
A story of climate change wrapped up in some impressive animation and characters that I didn’t warm to.
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, 1992 - ★★½
1992 really seems a different era, back when you could board a plane because you assumed your parents were on it. Slapstick cruelty is still fun, though.
Oiling the Deck
There are some household jobs that I procrastinate over. Oiling the deck is a new one I can add to the list. Our deck was installed a couple of years ago as part of a backyard renovation. I knew at the time this would be a necessary maintenance job that I would despise. I dutifully entered it into OmniFocus as a task for the future.
That OmniFocus task has been deferred for about 9 months. I did the prepartory work of buying the expensive Cutek Extreme CD50 oil and the fancy Deck Boss applicator. The task of actually oiling the deck, though? That sat for a long time. Most of the time because of my own laziness. Sometimes because of the weather. I contemplated outsourcing the job but knew deep down within myself I wouldn’t trust anybody else to care enough to do it right.
Finally, the time came and I went for it. The first step was to clean the deck a couple of days before the oiling. That went well. I used Cutek Quickclean.
A few days after the clean, it was time to oil. The weather was hot - over 32ºC. I had to do the work in two shifts: one in the morning and one in the evening. The morning shift came to an end when I almost vomited from exertion in the heat. I’m too white, too old, and too unfit for manual labour in the burning sun.
This is how I looked after the first shift — just a touch pink:
I completed the second shift, and the job, with a minimal amount of oil left in the can. Maybe there’s enough to do a second coat on areas that look to need a little more. There is definitely not enough remaining to do a complete second coat. I think I’m okay with that.
Now I have to schedule the next maintenance coat into OmniFocus…
You Always Own Your Blog
My Blog, My Home - Geoff Graham:
That’s why I love my website. It’s apolitical. It can’t be bought by a billionaire (maybe). It doesn’t care when I last logged in. It doesn’t push me to gain an audience and could care less if I have a one or not. And the feed is spot-free of algorithms and sponsored content.
But it’s always ready for me to say something if I need to. It’s all signal and no noise, and gives me the peace of mind to write without abandon.
I pulled up my old (now lost) blog, twosittingducks.com, on the internet archive the other day. There were posts there from 2004. While I don’t think of myself as a blogger, I’ve run a blog site for a long time now.
Like Geoff, I love that my blog is always here for me.
Swearing in of Hannah Beazley MLA as Parliamentary Secretary
Earlier I posted how happy I was that my wife, Hannah Beazley MLA had been made Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Emergency Services; Innovation and the Digital Economy; Medical Research; Volunteering, within the WA State Government.
On 14 December, 2022, Hannah was officially sworn in by the Governor. It was fantastic to share the experience with her, and also with her Dad, former Governor of WA, Hon. Kim Beazley AC. It coincided with his 74th birthday, so it was a great birthday gift from his daughter!
Stephen Hackett on "Really Specific Stories"
My friend and Hemispheric Views co-host Martin Feld continues to bring incredible guests to his interview show, Really Specific Stories. This week he welcomes Stephen Hackett, founder of Relay.fm.
This time on Really Specific Stories, I’m joined by @ismh, who delves into the history of Relay FM and explains his shift to podcasting and running a business—all the while balancing the needs of advertisers, co-hosts, members and of course, family.
…
Really Specific Stories: Stephen Hackett – 512 Pixels:
I recently sat down with Martin Feld to talk about the history of Connected and Relay FM, as well as my story as an indie content person on the web.
On Episode 073 of @hemisphericviews I talk about shoutouts.lol by @vincent
Hemispheric Views 073
Hemispheric Views 073: I Can Delete You from this Note!:
In the second to last episode for 2022: I have a big shoutout for Monster Cables. @martinfeld solves my audio (or is it video?) problem. @Burk does some inefficient shopping for Kangaroos.
Rate, review, subscribe!
My 11 year old kid woke me up to watch the World Cup (3am). It’s half time and I might go back to bed. ⚽️
Congratulations to my Wife, Hannah Beazley MLA
New McGowan Cabinet Ministers elected:
Wanneroo MLA Sabine Winton and South West MLC Jackie Jarvis will be sworn in as Cabinet Ministers tomorrow, along with new Parliamentary Secretaries Jodie Hanns, Dr Jagadish (Jags) Krishnan, Meredith Hammat, Pierre Yang and Hannah Beazley.
The Premier will announce the allocation of portfolios tomorrow, with Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries to be officially sworn in by the Governor of Western Australia at a ceremony at Government House.
I’m extremely proud of the work my wife Hannah has done for the community as the Member for Victoria Park, and I know she will continue to do that while also fulfilling the role of Parliamentary Secretary with skill and diligence, irrespective of the Portfolio provided to her by the Premier.
Quality Tech Support from Indie Mac Developers
How good is the Mac indie developer community?
I have been a long-time user of the SearchLink service developed by Brett Terpstra. I use it so regularly that I have it tied to a button on my Stream Deck, as well as keyboard shortcut, ⌃ + ⌘ + L.
Last night I attempted to use SearchLink while typing in the all new MarsEdit 5. Instead of it working as it always has, I received a confounding error:
The action “Run Shell Script” encountered an error: “-e:1778:in `scan': invalid byte sequence in UTF-8 (ArgumentError)
from -e:1778:in `ddg'
from -e:987:in `parse'
from -e:2147:in `<main>'”
This was beyond me. I knew that MarsEdit 5 had a new foundational text editing platform, so I assumed whatever had changed was probably a bug related to that. I also tried SearchLink in BBEdit (another great Mac app made by legendary Mac developers, Bare Bones Software) and the problem appeared there too - which shot somewhat of a hole in my MarsEdit theory.
Nevertheless, I emailed Daniel Jalkut, developer of MarsEdit, with a support request. He quickly responded saying that he doesn’t use SearchLink, but would look into it.
I also sent a support request to Brett. Very quickly Brett asked a further diagonostic question, then while I was asleep (welcome to Australia-USA relations), he emailed me through an updated version of the SearchLink script. Brett had determined that DuckDuckGo, the engine powering SearchLink, was suddenly providing results in a zipped format. The new version 2.2.27 fixes the issue.
So within hours of noticing a problem with SearchLink, I again have a working version that supports the all-new MarsEdit 5 — and every other Mac-assed Mac app1 that works with services2.
The Mac indie developer community is amazing. I thank them, and encourage you to support them by buying and using their products. Let’s keep this thing alive.
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Kudos to you, 1Password, for registering the domain macassedmac.app in defense of Electron-based 1Password 8. I don’t know what to think. ↩︎
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I’m looking at you, Electron. ↩︎
I got a new pair of glasses a couple of days ago. They’re playing havoc with the muscles of my left eye. It’s early so I guess I wait a few more days to see if I become accustomed. This is the worst part of getting new glasses.