Brett Terpstra - Some of my Favorite Mac apps in 2011
When Brett says an app is good, you listen.
4 months ago
An Interview With Notational Velocity Developer Zachary Schneirov
I think in Notational Velocity you can see the genesis of this wave of text editors and note taking applications we’re currently riding. I switched to nvALT when it first came out, but that application wouldn’t have existed without the original.
Macdrifter - Safe URL System Service
A nice example of how to integrate Python with Automator. I can definitely see myself using this in the future.
Interesting Links - Week 52, 2011
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Python - Just a rough outline at this point, but could turn into something promising
Raspberry Pi - A $25 ARM-powered Linux box. I might buy one just for the hell of it. The price is certainly right.
Asciiflow - An online flow diagramming tool done completely in ASCII characters
Proposed New Calendar Would Make Time Rational
Not Mac related, but I’ve always been fascinated with calendars and the measurement of time. Personally, I think the Discordian calendar is far superior to anything we have going right now: none of this 30 days hath September bullshit. It’s all arbitrary anyway.
Running a website with VoodooPad
VoodooPad is one of those applications that I’ve had for years and never quite found a good use for, despite trying. I have the iPhone/iPad version installed just waiting for something to click. But Gus makes great software (Acorn is my image editor of choice) and Brett, as usual, finds a way to make it sing.
Weekend Project - Exploring /usr/bin/ and /usr/sbin/
Have you ever wondered what all that stuff in your /usr/bin/ and /usr/sbin/ directories does?
Probably not, but I have.
True UNIX geeks will most likely scoff at me for my ignorance, but everybody has to start somewhere, right? The brute force approach to exploring those directories would have been to get a listing of every command and run man on each one individually. But that strikes me as awfully tedious and it seems like something that is just begging to be automated. So in my usual hacky manner I did.
The NAME section of a man page usually gives a nice, succinct description of what the command does. I found a shell script that would extract sections from a man page. Unfortunately, OS X does weird formatting things when you pipe man’s output to a file, so I had to pipe it through the col command as an intermediate step. I then wrapped everything up into a Python script that would iterate through all of the commands in those two directories, grab the NAME section, and finally output it to file.
This is far from a perfect solution, and I’m sure I’m missing out on some useful information or better ways of doing it. For example, error handling is managed by piping stderr away and then completely ignoring it. But it’s good enough for my casual browsing needs and it taught me a little bit about sed and some of the other tools available to me on my system.
Interesting Links - Week 51, 2011
Pygame Examples - Pygame is something I’ve been meaning to look into. I’m not much of a game developer, but it supposedly does a good job just teaching you about Python.
Brati’s Lover - AppleScript Collection - A nice collection of useful AppleScripts. (via Macdrifter)
Linux Distribution Chooser - I’m not sure why I put this here, but if you should be looking for Linux distribution that fits your needs, this is a pretty neat way to go about it.
Interesting Links - Week 50, 2011
Platypus - Turn scripts into applications (via Brett Terpstra)
CodeRunner - More than a text editor, not quite an IDE.
Wake In Progress - Finnegans Wake, illustrated.
DeckPub - Interesting approach to publishing on iOS.
Evernote Quick Search with LaunchBar
For the next installment of my Evernote and AppleScript series, I present a really simple script that allows me to search my Evernote database from LaunchBar:
Instead of switching to Evernote, clicking on the search field and typing my search, this lets me do it all from the keyboard without leaving whatever other application I happen to be using. I just invoke LaunchBar, switch to text entry mode, type my query and hit Return. Boom. A new Evernote window pops up with my search results.
Interesting Links - Week 49
Stallion Python Package Manager - A simple local-running web app that shows what Python packages are installed on your system.
SiriProxy - Hacking the Siri protocol for fun but not profit (incidentally, The Siri Protocol would make a great science fiction title).
Move The Web Forward - A bunch of great links about web technologies and how you can get involved in making the web work better.
How to use Firebug on your iPad and iPhone - Ever wanted to debug web pages on your iPad or iPhone? Well here you go.
Macdrifter: Python and the Mac Clipboard
Besides just being generally useful, this post is also a great example of making a simple prototype and iterating to make it better. Because how often do you land on the “best” answer on your first try, especially when it comes to programming?
Gabe was also a guest on a recent episode of the Mac Power Users podcast. They talked extensively about Keyboard Maestro, which is a tool I have on my radar to check out. If you’re interested in automating things, it’s definitely worth a listen.
TechCrunch: In Defense of the Stylus
Devin Coldewey:
…despite being a third-class citizen in our world of capacitive touchscreens, being publicly ridiculed by Steve Jobs, and generally being considered a nuisance, the stylus isn’t something we should relegate to the company of floppy disks and CRT monitors just yet.
I can’t believe I’m linking to a TechCrunch piece, but I actually agree with most of it. A stylus can be extremely useful in certain circumstances. Ever tried signing a contract or endorsing a check with your finger? It comes out looking like a five year old got into a pack of magic markers.
I had the pleasure of hanging out (read: drinking) with Daniel at the Voices That Matter iPhone Developer Conference in 2009. He’s a great guy and an awesome Mac developer. His products MarsEdit and FastScripts make this blog happen.
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