I fly a fair amount. It’s a necessary evil, I guess. Road trips are for teenagers and very tolerant parents of small children. Trains are slow and expensive. Walking is usually out of the question if there’s a plane involved anywhere in the equation. So I fly.
personal, quicktip
Gabe Weatherhead (a.k.a. MacDrifter) made a special request yesterday that — after some discussion — made sense in the spirit of readable Markdown. He wanted to be able to use the inline footnote converter in the Markdown Service Tools, but needed to be able to name his footnote markers instead of just assigning them sequential numbers.
footnotes, markdown, markdownservices, multimarkdown, service, tools
There are two new footnote-related additions to the Markdown Services Tools. One is an older project for converting an easy “inline footnote format” into regular MultiMarkdown footnotes, and the other replaces all footnote markers in a document with unique strings for avoiding conflicts when concatenating multiple documents or rendering multiple posts containing footnotes on a single blog page (for example).
footnotes, markdown, markdownservices, multimarkdown
With help from Tobias O’Leary, the Markdown Service Tools can finally do in-place conversion from (Multi)Markdown to RTF. The primary reason for wanting this was to allow people to write Markdown directly in Mail.app, then convert it immediately before sending. Put a shortcut key on it and it’s a snap.
markdown, markdownservices, multimarkdown, service
A year ago Jarrod Glasgow was driving trucks for a living. Now he’s making awesome iOS apps. His first app, AeroPress Timer is a really good-looking app that holds some of the best recipes for making AeroPress coffee.
appreview, iphone
A big thanks to George Browning of Zengobi Software for joining me this week on Systematic. The creator of Curio talked brainstorming with me (collaborative and personal) and shared some great top picks.
podcast, systematic
When you’re editing the design and scripts on a static site that has good caching implemented, seeing your changes can be tricky. The easiest way around it is to add a “cachebuster” version string to the file includes.
jekyll, webdesign
I really enjoyed doing episode 024 of Generational with David Sparks, Dr. Drang and, of course, our gracious host Gabe Weatherhead. The topic was text editors and the result was nerd porn. There were so many interesting (to me) aspects to the discussion that I couldn’t list them all here. If you’re interested in text, text editors, Markdown or have any fascination with serious nerdery, check it out.
podcast
I’m among the many who are discontent with the latest version of Skitch. I’ve reverted back to the previous version and have been using it happily, but there’s a new alternative.
appreview, macos
App Design Vault has gathered tips from a few recent articles and books on pitching your app to blogs (including my own and Pitch Perfect by my friends Steve Sande and Erica Sadun). I maintain that getting blog coverage is the #1 path to app success, so I consider this a great resource.
marketing, quicklink
I had the pleasure of hosting Merlin Mann for a second time this week. The topic was “failing gracefully,” and the conversation was surprisingly on-point. Suprising for me, not for Merlin. He’s a pro.
podcast, systematic
Thanks to a big hand from Joe Workman, the Markdown Service Tools are at 2.0. There aren’t a lot of new tricks in there, but everything should be codesigned to avoid Gatekeeper issues and there are many improvements to functionality:
markdown, markdownservices, multimarkdown, service
