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.

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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, βŒƒ + ⌘ + 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 β€œRun Shell Script” encountered an error: β€œ-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 β€” 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.


  1. Kudos to you, 1Password, for registering the domain macassedmac.app in defense of Electron-based 1Password 8. I don’t know what to think. ↩︎

  2. 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.

I taught Benji how sports brackets work. Now he is building his own World Cup version. 😍πŸ₯°πŸ€©βš½οΈ

Elvis, 2022 - β˜…β˜…β˜…Β½

A wonderful telling of the bastardry of Colonel Parker.

I’ve disabled cross-posting from micro.blog to mastodon. Going to try letting each be its own thing.

Ferrite 3

Ferrite 3:

Ferrite 3 offers an enhanced, modernised UI all across the app.

I couldn’t edit Hemispheric Views without Ferrite. Believe me, I tried. If Ferrite wasn’t available, I’m not sure our podcast would be either. Version 3 is an insta-upgrade for me. While it has a list of new features, the faster playback speeds are the real seller.

On one of Jack Baty’s blogs, I saw a reference to neofetch.

It doesn’t do a lot, but it looks pretty. I’ve run it on my three machines:

iMac

Neofetch imac

MacBook Air

Neofetch ubirr

Mac mini

Neofetch mini

Casey Liss on Really Specific Stories

My friend and Hemispheric Views co-host Martin Feld continues to build his other excellent podcast, Really Specific Stories. The latest episode features a guest famous to many of us in Mac-nerd circles: Casey Liss, one of the hosts of the hugely successful Accidental Tech Podcast.

Casey references his experience as a guest on the show on his own blog.

Appearance: Really Specific Stories β€” Liss is More:

On this episode, Martin and I walked through my path into podcasting, starting all the way β€” and I’m not kidding β€” from when I was a toddler. It was a fun discussion, and I’m honored that Martin asked me to be a part of the project.

Of course, I can’t help but mention my own appearance on Really Specific Stories, but I encourage you to binge the whole run.

This is a post mentioning @vincent to help him test @gluon

Excuse me @rosemaryorchard - are you still developing When.Works? Does it work?

I’ve cancelled my Fantastical subscription that expires in March 2023. My need for the bookings service may be declining. That, plus their price increase, means I will go back to BusyCal through Setapp. If it turns out I really need bookings, then I will reassess at the time.

Poor USA. The goalie has been poorly treated by his defenders. ⚽️

The Fantastical price increase is a bummer, because it’s a double whammy for me as an Australian user. Our weakened exchange rate multiplies the scale of the increase.

Spirited, 2022 - β˜…β˜…β˜…Β½

I don’t like musicals but I liked this movie.

Oh no, I’m going down a TaskPaper rabbit hole.

Thanks, Medibank data breach. I really appreciate you holding onto my details as an ex-customer, allowing it to be shared on the dark web following its theft. Great stuff.