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Watching the Olympics is making me want to travel to Japan again. Not that it is remotely possible, of course, given our close companion, COVID.
I love the cleanliness, the order, the food, the hot springs, and the structured culture of the place.
The little bit more than one week of my life that I’ve spent in Japan was not enough. Hopefully I can find a way to get back there at some point in my life.
BBEdit 14
I want to use and love BBEdit. I bought version 13 with a similar thought and feeling. That purchase seems like it was only a few months ago - in fact, I checked to see if I was eligible for the free upgrade. According to my receipt stored in 1Password, however, my v13 license was acquired on 21 December 2019. Time flies, especially in 2020, the year of our COVID.
I am not a coder. I don’t do any development. I understand the theory of regex and grep but rarely use them. I write an occasional blog article in Markdown, such as this one.
I have a bunch of well-designed Markdown editors that are purpose-built for writing blogs in Markdown. They have grammar-checks and nice management of links, images and feature great preview modes. They feature typewriter mode. As best I can tell, this is still not implemented in BBEdit 14.
But BBEdit is a Mac classic. It can do virtually anything with text (if you know how to drive it). That brings up the real weakness of BBEdit - a lack of support for the new user, and modern tutorials. BareBones, the developers, are old men. They write great documentation1 but offer zero modern promotion and support. The manual is great, but how about a YouTube channel with some tutorials? Where does a beginner start with this application?
The features added to BBEdit 14 seem helpful to developers. That’s not me. Jason Snell demonstrated some clever manipulation that can be achieved to help produce blogs. I don’t know how he did it. He talked about AppleScript, but didn’t provide the code. I presume this trick wouldn’t work out of BBEdit’s box.
Herein lies the problem with BBEdit. It’s great. It’s wonderful. It’s built for people who already use it and know how to use it. However, I would say this to the team at BareBones: if you’re building a software application, perhaps at some point you need to turn an eye to the new users. The ones that might otherwise choose the free Visual Studio Code. The ones who might already use the copy of iA Writer they own, or Drafts, Craft or Ulysses. Users like me?
I want to use BBEdit. But why should I? Perhaps I shouldn’t.
BareBones 14. I’m sure its great. But I can’t know, because I’m not experienced enough to say.
The manual for BBEdit runs over 400 pages.↩︎
I’m ‘meh’ about Brisbane winning the Olympics. They’re expensive, a security challenge, and the Olympics are in my view an event that has become too large. Is there the same sense of exhilaration about Brisbane winning as there was for Sydney 2000. I don’t think so.
BBEdit 14.0
I barely scratch the surface with my use of BBEdit. I’m not a coder. I use it for a bit of Markdown text editing (when I’m not using one of the other myriad Markdown apps I own) and for doing other small pieces of text manipulation.
So when I saw that v14 was released, I figured I could skip the upgrade. Reading through the features, I was sure I could skip the upgrade.
Then I read this tidbit from Jason Snell at Six Colo(u)rs:
But there are some new Markdown features, regardless! Dragging an HTML file or an image into BBEdit will now generate appropriately formatted Markdown. Markdown footnotes are now properly syntax colored, for those monsters who put footnotes in their Markdown.
Also, a new feature that I inspired makes its debut: BBEdit now lets you attach a script in order to provide control over the text generated when you drop an image file into a BBEdit editing view. In short, I have modified the AppleScript script that I use to upload images to Six Colors so that if I drag an image into my story in BBEdit, the image is automatically resized, uploaded, and the proper HTML is inserted at that point in the document. (It’s magical.)
Hmm, so I might have to upgrade after all.
🔗 Link Post: “Why Are Young People Pretending to Love Work?”
“From this vantage, “Office Space,” the Gen-X slacker paean that came out 20 years ago next month, feels like science fiction from a distant realm. It’s almost impossible to imagine a startup worker bee of today confessing, as protagonist Peter Gibbons does: “It’s not that I’m lazy. It’s that I just don’t care.” Workplace indifference just doesn’t have a socially acceptable hashtag. "
Office Space was my North Star. How am I so old?
In the latest episode of @hemisphericviews we learn that I’m an expert in cooling your home, @burk discovers an app that no one has ever heard of and @martinfeld gets hung up on spelling and grammar for a moment (surprise!). Pocket Casts episode link
Coffee time. Today it’s that weird Western Australian coffee, “skinny long mac topped up”. Fortunately I’m friendly with the barista else I’d have felt like a complete dick ordering that.
The newest recording of @hemisphericviews is in the can. Or on the SSD. In the iCloud data centre. Look, it’s done, okay?
Another Crack at Git
Not long ago on this site I stated that I was fed up with git and that I was switching back to Dropbox. I did. It was still infuriating because I refuse to install the Dropbox client for this one measly application.
So I’m back to git. Instead of using Atlassian’s Sourcetree for managing the files on my Mac, this time I’m going with GitHub Desktop. I chose Sourcetree the first time around because it was a native Mac app whereas GHD is an Electron app. Problem with Sourcetree was that I didn’t like it. Doesn’t matter how standards-compliant something is if it’s unenjoyable to use. So, despite the Electron-ness of Github, here I am. If you know of something better, let me know. There is an app called Gitfox in Setapp but I remember it didn’t wow me when I looked at it previously.
So this time I’m using GHD and have connected it to BBEdit. Last time I tried to use iA Writer. iA Writer offers a lovely writing environment but I felt I was fighting against it and iCloud sync the whole time. I never quite build the mental model for how it all hooked together. BBEdit is a code editor at its heart and it still a fine, stable writing application. It will do the job just fine.
On the iOS side of things I’ve reinstalled Working Copy. The problem is which text editor to use. Last effort I was using iA Writer. Do I stick with that? My friend Jason uses Textastic. Maybe that’s what I should go with?
Of course, the thing that none of this software shenanigans solves is actually writing. That’s still on me to do.
Today I’ve experienced Lebanese dessert delights from Youssef Sweets. Amazingly delicious. I could become a regular customer.
So what you’re telling me is, patrons of @HemisphericViews also get a monthly “Hemispheric News” newsletter? And if I want to get that, plus all the other perks, I simply go to oneprimeplus.com? Amazing!
It was fun to watch Ash Barty win Wimbledon tonight. What a great player. The level of skill needed to play tennis well is crazy.
I was given the most hilarious product tour of Big Mail today by @Burk. Highlight of my day! He needs to do a video recording of it for all to see.
Doing the Switch SD shuffle getting data off two small SD cards in favour of one big one. My attempts to transfer via computer failed, so now I’m switching cards like I’m playing Wings on an Amiga 500 with one floppy drive.
The Tomorrow War, 2021 - ★★★½
A fun romp with some requirement on behalf of the viewer to be “hand wavey” about time continuity. Perhaps ran a bit long. I enjoyed it though.
Three Things Today | tyler.io
Three Things Today | tyler.io:
So what is Three Things? Well, it’s a calendar that lets you schedule tasks on each day. It’s meant to be excruciatingly pragmatic and realistic about how life works. (At least my life.) It literally will not allow you to schedule more than three tasks per day.
This is a nifty little application. Pick three things. Do them. If you don’t, defer them. That’s about it. I like it.