Nine Boxes

Upstream Cannibalization

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 08:27:00 -0500

With the iPad 3 looming on the horizon, here's something that I don't want to readily admit. I don't use my iPad all that much.

Now that's not to say that I don't like it. In fact, it's the opposite. I love it. Every time I pick it up, I still get the same awe factor I had the first time I bought the original iPad, and it has become the go-to device for my kids for just about everything. That said, I probably only use the iPad once a week for an email dash, to quickly check something out online, or catch-up on my RSS feeds.

Why? In what I suppose you could call upstream cannibalization, the 11" MacBook Air I'm using to write this post has largely replaced most of the use cases I had for the iPad.

When I travel, I really don't want to carry any more devices than absolutely necessary. My iPhone always goes with me, but of late the 11" Air (and when appropriate, a Kindle) trumps the iPad almost every time. The difference in size between the Air and the iPad is essentially negligible, so the Air is always winning when I force myself to only bring one device.

At work, I'm all Mac. I tried last year to integrate the iPad into my workflow in the office, but it seemed forced and I gave up rather quickly.

And at home, even though the Air is not the couch computer that the iPad is, it still seems to be the device I pick up more often than not.

Let's be honest though, I'm sure the folks in Cupertino don't mind this at all.

The Lively Morgue [Link]

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 05:53:00 -0500

The New York Times launched The Lively Morgue, a Tumblr site to showcase legacy photos from their archives. How extensive is the collection?

We don’t know. Our best guess is five million to six million prints and contact sheets (each sheet, of course, representing many discrete images) and 300,000 sacks of negatives, ranging in format size from 35 millimeter to 5 by 7 inches — at least 10 million frames in all. The picture archive also includes 13,500 DVDs, each storing about 4.7 gigabytes worth of imagery. When the Museum of Modern Art set out to exhibit the highlights of the Times archive in 1996, it dispatched four curators. They spent nine months poring over 3,000 subjects, working with two Times editors, one of whom spent a year on the project. In the end, they estimated that they’d seen only one-quarter of the total.

If we posted 10 new archival pictures every weekday on Tumblr, just from our print collection, we wouldn’t have the whole thing online until the year 3935.

There are some great photos already, not to mention a nice write-up of the history behind the archive on the about page.

nvALT Public Beta [Link]

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 21:54:00 -0500

Brett and I have been work on nvALT 2.2; which includes Lion compatibility stuff, many bug fixes, a handful of new features, and a new markdown engine. You can read about new features and bug fixes below. We want to get this release beta tested a bit, and we’re hoping you’re up for the task.

I rarely use beta software, but I'm excited nonetheless to see a new version of nvALT on the horizon. It looks like there are some great new features in this new version. If you're more adventurous than I am, download away. It should be great.

How to Check if Growl is Running with AppleScript

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 05:43:00 -0500

I have recently been diving back into AppleScript after a bit of a layoff, and quickly realized that none of my scripts were properly generating Growl notifications. All things pointed to either Lion or the new Mac App Store (MAS) version of Growl, both of which I had installed since I had last used several of these scripts.

When AppleScripting Growl one of the recommended best practices is to first check to see if it is running before you start sending commands its way. In the non-MAS version of Growl, this was done as follows:

tell application "System Events" to set growl_running to exists application process "GrowlHelperApp"

However in the MAS version, this changed. You check to see if Growl is running using this syntax:

tell application "System Events" to set growl_running to (count of (every process whose bundle identifier is "com.Growl.GrowlHelperApp")) > 0

That did it. If you are having a similar issue, this is a good place to start.

OmniFocus as a Water Cannon [Link]

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 06:00:00 -0500

I tried OmniFocus a few years ago and it was too much. Way too much for what I needed. I needed a water hose and OmniFocus was a water cannon capable of obliterating entire armies, flooding the land, shredding foliage, and sending righteous men scrambling to build large floating vessels.

Stephen Hargrove is giving OmniFocus another go, but he describes my experiences with it perfectly. I have stopped and started using OmniFocus at least twice over the last few years, but finally threw in the towel in favor of TaskPaper. I haven't looked back since.

Brett Terpstra's TextExpander tools for AppleScript [Link]

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 05:06:00 -0500

I added a new group to the TextExpander Tools collection this morning: a set of snippets for working in AppleScript editor. The group is pretty barebones right now, but handy nonetheless. Feel free to submit any additions or expansions you come up with, I’ll gladly include them in the set (and credit you publicly).

As Brett states, the initial set is pretty basic, but when is the last time he ever stopped there? I can't wait to see how these get updated over time.

Side note: I can't believe I didn't know about the "Expand in Only These Applications.." setting in TextExpander. That is a killer feature.

An AppleScript to Create a Linked List Post

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 08:44:00 -0500

Nothing overly fancy here, but this is the AppleScript I use to create linked list posts. It grabs the current Title, URL, and selection (if one exists) from the frontmost tab in Safari, and then drops all the info into a BBEdit document that is formatted appropriately for my blog's CMS. I invoke it via a FastScripts keyboard shortcut.

tell application "Safari"
    tell front window
        set linked_title to name of current tab
        set linked_url to URL of current tab
        set linked_selection to (do JavaScript "(''+getSelection())" in current tab)
    end tell
end tell

if (linked_selection is equal to "") then
    set linked_body to ""
else
    set linked_body to ">" & linked_selection & "
"
end if

tell application "BBEdit"
    activate
    set new_doc to make new document
    set text of new_doc to "Title: " & linked_title & "
    Author: Ken Clark
    Date:
    Tags:
    Description:
    Linked List:" & linked_url & "
    Via:
    Type: linked-list
    Body:
" & linked_body     
end tell

I initially hit a snag when getting the selection from Safari because Lion introduced a bug into Safari's AppleScript support, but I found a helpful thread on the Apple Support Forums that explained a syntax change (use '+getSelection' instead of 'getSelection') that gets around it.

Bobby Valentine [Link]

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 23:49:00 -0500

I became a big fan of Bobby V. when he was the manager of the Mets, and the NY Times put together a really nice profile of him this weekend. It's great to see him back in the big leagues, even if it is for a Boston team.

Side note: I loved the sidebar explaining how Bobby V. is (or at least claims to be) the inventor of the wrap sandwich.

Changes to Mail in Mountain Lion [Link]

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 17:16:00 -0500

Macworld covers the new tweaks to Mail in Mountain Lion. Needless to say the first thing I'm going to do is make sure "New Message notifications" are off.

Using My Blog to Remember Stuff

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 16:16:00 -0500

Most geeks have a system for remembering stuff for future reference. Mine is simple. I capture whatever snippet of information that I need to remember into an NVALT note, and then get moving on to my next task. However, it occurred to me that I should start using this blog as a place to also document tips and reference info for "future me."

Doing so not only forces me to be more articulate in the hows and whys of what I am trying to remember, but it feels good to know that I am also building a public knowledge base I can share with like-minded folks. There are some nice examples of other bloggers doing the same, in particular the One line at a time posts by Eddie Smith of Practically Efficient. Eddie's posts have turned into a useful, ever-growing library of tidbits he shares with his readers.

So what better way to get started than documenting how I plan to find all of these "reference posts":

Now that all of my content starts as Markdown text files, they are easily searchable on my Mac. For example, if I was trying to find a snippet of AppleScript code I had written up as a post, I can find it in a snap using LaunchBar, my weapon of choice for just about everything:

Type Cmd-space to trigger LaunchBar
Type 9B (my abbreviation for the Nine Boxes content folder).
Hit the spacebar (to invoke a search within the content directory).
Enter my search term ("AppleScript" in this example).

Bingo, LaunchBar lists every post I have written on AppleScript. If there are multiple posts and I'm not sure which file is the right one, I just scroll through the list and hit space to invoke Quick View for a given file.