This actions watches a specific folder for new content and saves text file contents as new task in OmniFocus’s Inbox. The first line will be used as task title, all other lines as note.
set fileContents to read theFile
set taskTitle to paragraph 1 of fileContents
-- compose taskNote
set remainingLines to {}
repeat with currentParagraph from 2 to (number of paragraphs of fileContents)
set the end of remainingLines to (paragraph currentParagraph of fileContents) & "
"
end repeat
set taskNote to remainingLines as string
tell application "OmniFocus"
tell default document
set newTask to make new inbox task with properties {name:taskTitle, note:taskNote}
end tell
end tell
The folder I watch with Hazel is aptly called “Send to OmniFocus”.
MindNode now has a Demo version available. This app replaces the previous Lite version of MindNode Pro. It doesn’t have iCloud but has all the features of MindNode Pro.
MindNode Pro Demo has some limitations though. You can add up to 30 nodes per mind map only.
Because DynDNS retired its free Dynamic DNS service I was quite happy to meet someone at PrismCamp who created a new and free Dynamic DNS service named nsupdate.info. The service is open source and it works with many routers. If you happen to live in Germany, they have instructions on how to get it to work with the highly popular FRITZ!Box.
Procrastination Technique: How to Be a Fighter, Not a Quitter
Basics
In many of my older posts you have seen me talk about how I tackle my procrastination problems. My techniques that help me to overcome myself so that I can work on “the big things”, have become very sophisticated. One of the techniques I’ve come up with is a little bit unusual, considering I am into meditation, Zen, and kindness.
Essentially, if you think about a tough person, working on a task. How do you imagine that person doing their work? A tough person wouldn’t moan about a hard task. They would just do the job they are supposed to be doing, no matter how hard it is, and they pull through and stand as a winner at the end. Right?
Mindset
Sounds great, right? So how do we get into that mindset?
Let’s talk about something else before: computer games. Computer games are awesome!
You can play a game on an easy level, you can play puzzlers, or you can play Super Meat Boy. Everyone who played Super Meat Boy knows how hard this game is. It was still a big hit though. It got lots of people glued on their chairs to beat that stupid game. It’s not just Super Meat Boy, other games as well. Flappy Bird? “Hell, am I really that bad at this game? That can’t be true. I have got to beat this game, no matter what!” That is the right mindset.
Life is the biggest challenge you have, and it is here for you to be beaten! You are the one who can determine where your life goes. So do something! You can’t let yourself stand in your own way so that you don’t reach your dreams. So you want to reach your dreams and now you’ve got that stupid thought in your head and it’s the only limiting factor whether you take steps towards your goal or not? Are you kidding me?
Isn’t that annoying? Want more?
How much of a grownup are you? So you are sitting there whining about the world that everything is so bad and you got that thing in your head and you know it’s not real! But still, you let it control whether you get rolling. Does the little kid want baby-soother? Do you want your mom to help you? Maybe somebody else? Maybe you need to work on your anxiety techniques some more. I think you don’t have those down just yet. Maybe you should read a little on the Internet. Maybe you should improve your personal communication skills. Maybe you should procrastinate actively? Because, you know, sometimes that’s just the right thing to do.
Or maybe you just show up and give this world what it wants from you!
You can sit and be paralyzed, or you can do great things. After all, that’s what everybody expects from you. Nobody hires someone they think is not equipped for the job. Everybody expects you to do the best you can do!
There are hundreds of idiots out there right now, that have the same business idea that you have. You have two options: you can be the idiot that is so stupid to let fear decide what he or she cannot do, or you can be that idiot that is stupid enough to think that this could actually work. And then what? At the end of the tunnel you are what you always wanted to be. That’s horrible, isn’t it? What a cruel world where you have reached your goal, where everybody thinks you are great and you are rich and whatever you fantasize about.
So next time. Ask yourself, do you want to act like a child or as a grownup? See life for the challenge it is! Realize that sometimes life is just really really really really fucking hard! The fear that you feel is there to comfort yourself. This fear let’s you feel that where you’re going is not safe. This fear can become so daunting to paralyze yourself. Do you want to act out that child or do you want to be the strongest version you can be?
Disclaimer: This article contains profanity! Read at your own risk.
What happened in the last ten years? I honestly don’t know. Somewhere, along the path from puberty to adulthood, some souls got lost, opinions got formed, and stereotypes were built. People built walls around themselves, because… I don’t know. Maybe because everybody’s a dick?
If that’s the case, then I’m really sorry. If this is your reality, where all a guy wants is to fuck women, excuse me, girls, then this is a fucking shitty reality.
I was at a party recently. It was nice. Not my usual clientele, but still nice. I got to talk with new people. But as soon as I started talking with women there, they, for some odd reason, seemed to assume that the only reason I started talking with them, is that I want to fuck them. I have no idea why. I go to a lot of other events and don’t have that problem elsewhere.
This behavior is so wrong on so many levels, I can’t write this in passive voice:
Equality: Guys, I mean, men, if that’s what women assume, then there’s a lot we need to set straight here. If so many women assume that’s all we care about then there’s a lot of ground we need to cover. I mean a lot. There are so many emancipated men out there. Men who take care of themselves, and don’t run around fucking every pussy they can get their dick in. All this hard work in terms of equality gets destroyed in a world where becoming a "pickup artist" is a desirable lifestyle for a grown man. Men, we can do better!
Chauvinism: In a world where so many women think sex is our only desired outcome of any interaction, I wonder how many want to express their sexuality, but suppress their needs because, I don’t know… society, maybe? I think there is nothing wrong if you don’t have a desire for a monogamous romantic relationship. I think we can have that. But if you want to have this, you should be clear about it. If no word, ever, slipped your mouth leading to the assumption you want to have sex, then there shouldn’t be assumed that’s what you want. Do I think you can go out at night, meet someone and have sex with them just for the fun of it? Of course. But I also think that it’s wrong to assume that’s what everybody wants. Everybody has different needs, and we should account for that, not just assume.
Sexism: The more I think of this, the more I can’t resist the thought how sexist it is for women to assume that all I care about is sex. I don’t know, but I never make any comments in that regard, as long as I don’t feel she likes me as well, I feel we can go that route, and she’s comfortable with it. But assuming that’s what I want, without me saying it, feels wrong. I feel powerless in such a situation, because someone just assumes an intention I don’t have. It makes me be someone I don’t want to be. The bad thing: I can’t make them feel any other way. The damage is done, the conversation is over.
Lately I’ve been wanting to replace the habit recorder that I am using on my phone with something else. I wrote about Logsit recently. Really a great app, just not for me as I found out. I’m using Goal Streaks because it’s the most flexible one I found. Runner-uppers are Good Habits, Balanced, Way of Life (new version is coming which looks promising).
However, this is all way too unfancy and dependent on closed source apps and it’s just more fun to create something by myself. This started again with a look at Tally by Agile Tortoise. I’m trying to come up with ideas for this app, but I just can’t. In this particular case Tally lacks the ability to record the date and/or time when a tally was increased or decreased. What a bummer.
I intend to use Due for this. Due can have really flexible reminders. They are almost as flexible as the habits you can setup in Goal Streaks. Goal Streaks can have stuff like “5 times a week” or “every other day but exceptions on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday”. Due can’t do that.
This is the Dropbox action for Drafts:
"[[date|%d. %m. %Y %H:%M]]","[[draft]]"
It is set to append to a .csv file on Dropbox. The action is named “Record Habit”.
The beauty is that we can use Drafts URL scheme to create a new text. Every habit has its own text. Makes sense, right?
Brush teeth at night drafts://x-callback-url/create?text=Brush%20teeth%20at%20night&action=Record%20Habit&afterSuccess=Delete
Filter lets you hide the news you dont want to see, or only show you the news you care about. Filter by keyword or regular expression. Highlight and simplify Feedly, InoReader, and The Old Reader.
If you read RSS with your browser, check this out.
I just wrote a small Keyboard Maestro macro. Essentially I am thinking of ways to bring some of the iOS Launch Center Pro goodness to my desktop. Jealous as I am, I want something like Launch Center Pro on my Mac. In this particular case I wanted something that allows me to get some sort of text into OmniFocus as task, because sometimes I just write something down in a text editor, as it’s the case on iOS, and later I realize this is actually a task, and the text I wrote is giving me a hint on how to complete this task. So I insert a task name at the beginning and launch a URL in Drafts that takes the first line and yadda yadda. You know the drill.
Keyboard Maestro now does this too. My macro also actually uses the OmniFocus URL scheme on the Mac to do its thing, so it’s as close to the iOS original as possible.
The macro uses the first line as task name, everything else will become the note. If you want to improve this even further, like put in particular project and/or context, feel free to share your changes with me!
Basically TJ has created a way for him to track what he was doing through an entire day with Keyboard Maestro. He takes a screenshot every 30 seconds and saves them somewhere. At the end of a day, he can then go ahead and look at what he was doing.
I liked the idea, but his macro was way too basic for my taste (as you can imagine). So I came with something more fancy and snazzy. I took his original idea, but my macro writes a timestamp onto the image. Not just anywhere, but on the bottom right corner.
A small modification to this macro creates dated folders, if that’s your thing.
One of my most favorite media pro apps got a 3.0 update. Invisor is essentially the same thing as MediaInfo (Mac app, also available as CLI tool), but Invisor just added the known MediaInfo functions to image files. Max makes my day with this release. Thank you!
Invisor now also has a QuickLook plugin. (separate download)
A free version is available which doesn’t have export and comparison functionality.
Recently I had a need to find some vectorization tool. Since Vector Magic is highly outdated, and Super Vectorizer did’t work so well, I’ve been looking for alternatives. AutoTrace can be installed via Homebrew and is a command line utility. Check out its documentation here.
I’m converting some of my older audio recordings to re-import them into iTunes and therefore need to create a lot of folders with names, etc. It seemed complicated to create an existing folder structure from scratch without copying folder contents as well, so I used my computer to automate this.
Easy workflow:
Select folders in Finder
⌘C
Execute macro
Drag new folder to a (Keyboard Maestro) Prompt action
Click OK
Done
Just make sure that the text box has highlight when you drag the new folder to the prompt. Only then will it be able to take the new folder location. After you click OK, the lines that are on the clipboard will be used to create new folders. I write this so that you can use this macro for other things as well. You don’t need to select folders in the Finder, you can also just copy lines of text, execute the macro to select a new folder and *poof* new folders are created.
