Nov 25
2011

Well, it’s Black Friday. If you’re not trampled outside of some big box store somewhere, I have a special surprise for you. Five App Store codes for Dropzone (US $13.99), to be precise. It’s one of my favorite Mac utilities and–if you don’t already have it–I recommend jumping on this chance for a free copy!

Oct 03
2011

Yet another giveaway here at brettterpstra​.com. We’re wheeling, we’re dealing… and I got you five licenses for the excellent QuickCal application for Mac (and iOS, but we’re not giving those out… yet). If you haven’t used it, it’s a way to add events and todos to your calendar using natural language. I could say, for example, “End the QuickCal giveaway noon on…

Aug 26
2011

In the interest of actually getting going on app reviews on this blog, I’m mentioning a somewhat obvious one: Byword. While I still write my drafts in nvALT and do the heavy lifting and linking in TextMate with my Blogsmith Bundle, Byword has quickly become the place where I actually do my writing.

Jun 08
2011

I like the Mac App Store. I’ve purchased a lot of apps since it opened, and I dig the centralized update system. I’ve been having this issue on my MacBook Air, though, where trying to update an installed app would trigger a dialog which says “You have updates available for other accounts…” and suggest that I log in with that account to update my software. Thing is, I only…

May 22
2011

Courtesy of Buzan Center Australia.

Most of my projects start out as mind maps (which I may have mentioned before). Whether it’s a packing list, a blog post or a TextMate bundle, I find it easiest to organize my (often scattered) thoughts using what Tony Buzan calls radiant thinking. Lists and outlines are rarely as effective as the non-linear format…

May 03
2011

Hey, you’re just in time for another “stupid trick of the day” script. I have good reason for this one, and it only took me about 8 minutes to set up. It will take me longer to write about it than it’s probably worth, but it might be of use to anyone in a similar situation. Here’s the scenario:

Mar 05
2011

We’ve covered a small truckload of Bash scripting ideas for Mac and OS X in the previous two posts. It’s time to put them to use and create an Automator app that we can use as a droplet in Finder. If you skipped straight here, it probably means you don’t really want to know about the messy details of the scripts, so this post won’t go into a lot of Unix mumbo jumbo.