Welcome to the lab.

Historical weather for Journal CLI

I pushed a couple updates to Journal, my command line journaling tool today.

As a reminder, you can add a natural language argument to your journal command which will set the date of the entry, e.g. journal mood "yesterday 8pm". This allows you to create entries in post with historical data you might have missed. One thing that it didn’t do well, though, is to get the correct weather for any weather type questions in the journal when using past dates. This latest update is able to get historical weather data and insert it correctly in the entry. No changes required for the user, just enter a past date and Journal will figure it out.

Second, I’ve noticed my mood and sleep shifts with the moon phase. I’m not into astrology or anything, but that seemed like useful data to track and start to draw better conclusions from. So now a question type of weather.forecast will include the moon phase as a moon_phase key, and you can use weather.moon to get just the moon phase for its own entry. The forecast in Markdown will also now include the moon phase.

That’s it, just tying up some loose ends. Journal is working pretty well for me to collect data and provide my therapist with detailed mood/behavior information. Let me know if there’s anything it doesn’t do that might help you out!

The latest version can be installed with gem install journal-cli. Visit the Journal project page for more info.

The CleanShot X giveaway winners!

The Winners

The CleanShot X giveaway has ended, and I have three winners to announce!

Congratulations to:

  • Scott Rychnowski
  • Darren Everden
  • David Brown

Each winner should have received an email with a redeem link/code, please let me know if you didn’t hear anything!

But I Didn’t Win!

If you didn’t win, sorry, but CleanShot X is still worth checking out. It’s by far the best app for screenshots on the Mac, no matter where or how you’re using them.

You should also consider a subscription to Setapp, which will include CleanShot X among a couple hundred other amazing apps.

Coming Soon

Next up is Timing (the perfect app for automatic time tracking on Mac). Check back every Monday through December for more giveaways. Upcoming apps include:

If you want to suggest an app you’d like to see in this series, let me know on Twitter or Mastodon, and join the email list for early access!

Web Excursions for September 26, 2023

Web excursions brought to you in partnership with MindMeister, the best collaborative mind mapping software out there.

Toolbox Pro, Logger for Shortcuts, and Nautomate
Snailed It, run by my friend Rosemary Orchard, has taken custody of several apps developed by Alex Hay after his tragic passing last March. They’re in good hands, and will see the love he would want them to.
iPhone 15 Pro facts and estimates
I love it when Dr. Drang nerds out about Apple stuff.
The SSD Edition: 2023 Drive Stats Mid-Year Review
The semi-annual drive stats report from Backblaze is out (SSD edition). I love the amount of data they collect on hard drive reliability.
Adding sound wave overlays to videos and pictures using FFMPEG
I did not know ffmpeg could do this. Thanks, Christian!

Check out MindMeister and start brainstorming, collaborating, and boosting productivity.

CleanShot X giveaway!

I’m super excited about this one, as I consider CleanShot X to be one of the best Mac apps developed in the last few years. Hands down the best screenshot/recording app, but also just a highly elegant app all around.

Note that if you’re reading this via RSS, you’ll need to visit the site to enter! Check out the CleanShot X website for more details on this amazing app.

I have three licenses ($29 value) to offer to BrettTerpstra.com readers. Sign up below and I’ll draw random winners on Friday, September 29th.

Sorry, this giveaway has ended.

Stay tuned for more giveaways every week through December (and maybe beyond).

If you have an app you’d love to see featured in this series of giveaways, let me know. Also be sure to sign up for the mailing list so you can be the first to know about these!

The Tap Forms giveaway winners!

The Winners

The Tap Forms giveaway has ended, and I have two winners to announce!

Congratulations to:

  • Jonathan Laniado
  • Doug Lionetti

(I swear the giveaway robot has no preference for last names starting with L. It’s purely chance.)

Each winner should have received an email with a redeem link/code, please let me know if you didn’t hear anything!

But I Didn’t Win!

If you didn’t win, sorry, but Tap Forms is still worth checking out. You can easily store and work with any kind of data. It’s the missing database app for Mac and iOS. If you didn’t win, you can still save 30% on the direct version with the coupon BRETT-TF5-2023. Go to the site and click the Buy Now for Mac button to use the coupon, or download the free trial version and enter the coupon when using the in-app purchase.

Coming Soon

Next up is CleanShot X (the best screenshot app there is). Check back every Monday through December for more giveaways. Upcoming apps include:

If you want to suggest an app you’d like to see in this series, let me know on Twitter or Mastodon, and join the email list for early access!

Journal updates with weather types and conditional questions

In case you missed it, I recently released Journal, a CLI for keeping a journal with structured data that can be queried and analyzed. An update is live with a couple of nifty new features.

First, instead of just a type of weather for a question (which inserts the current condition and daily forecast), you can now specify sub-types of weather.current and/or weather.forecast. This outputs separate data entries to the JSON, and creates individual answers in the Markdown/Day One versions. You can still just use weather as the type to insert all data.

Second, you can now apply conditions to questions to determine whether they’ll be asked or not when creating an entry. Right now only time-based conditions are implemented, but I plan to add some functionality around basing a question’s appearance on the answer to a previous question, like “if health rating is less than 5, display the health notes question.” But for now you can add condition: before noon or condition: > 2pm to any question or section to only display the question(s) at certain times of day.

I needed these conditions because I like to create a mood entry in the morning with data about sleep and coffee, and in the evening I don’t want to repeat that data, but do want to ask some different questions about how the day went. I could create two separate journals for these, but this way I can compile all of my data in one file. Questions that are skipped get a null entry in the JSON, so when I’m parsing I just test for nil and skip entries that don’t contain the information I’m trying to output. Unanswered questions don’t get added to the Markdown/Day One entries at all.

This release includes a couple of bug fixes as well. I recently removed the requirement for the gum CLI, if it doesn’t exist it will now just use Readline for input. When using the gum inputs, you can’t CTRL-c to cancel an entry, which I’m trying to figure out a way around right now.

Update using gem install journal-cli. Visit the project page for more info and installation instructions.

Tap Forms for Mac giveaway!

I’m starting up giveaways again on BrettTerpstra.com, and I’m exited to kick it off with 2 free licenses for Tap Forms for Mac. It’s an amazing database product that lets you organize and access your data on any device. It’s available on Mac, iPhone, iPad and even Apple Watch. This giveaway is specifically for the Mac version.

From the developer:

Accounts, recipes, expenses, inventory — life is full of things that we don’t want to forget or misplace. Tap Forms helps you organize all kinds of things in one place — secure, searchable, and accessible on your Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.

Check out the Tap Forms site for more info.

Sign up below to enter. Two winners will be randomly drawn on Friday, Sept 22, at 12pm Central. Tap Forms for Mac costs $49.99, so this is a great chance at saving $50!

Sorry, this giveaway has ended.

I reached out to my mailing list to see what products people were interested in, and Tap Forms was a top pick. I have several more developers lined up to offer free stuff, so stay tuned. If you have an app you’d love to see featured, let me know. Also be sure to sign up for the mailing list so you can be the first to know about these!

A silly Jekyll plugin and a big Marked sale

So, a long time ago I wrote this Jekyll plugin that does countdowns and I don’t think I ever really used it. You just give it an end date and it inserts a countdown into the post. But I needed something to count down to, so I’m running a 40% off Marked sale using the coupon COOLPLUGINBRO until Saturday, September 16th. Here’s your countdown:

Time’s up.

Did it work? I hope so. Use this link to apply the coupon directly, or enter COOLPLUGINBRO at checkout. Learn more about Marked at marked2app.com.