I’ll admit I’m a bit perturbed by the disappearance of all of the decent web search APIs (Yahoo, Google, Live.net, Bing went paid…). Google Ajax Search is still active, I think, but I don’t like working with it from the desktop. So I’m back to scraping, though this is some pretty light scraping.
markdownservices, scripting, service
I had the pleasure of hosting Merlin Mann1 for episode #6 of Systematic. Advance warning, it’s longer than an hour. You’ll live though, and it’s my sincerest hope that you have a good time doing it.
podcast, systematic
This tip is not highly technical, but may be of use to you if you use a trackpad on your Mac, be it laptop or Magic Trackpad. It came up while talking to Rabbi Eric Linder about workflows; a seemingly mundane problem, but it struck a chord with me because I had the same issue when I first got my Magic Trackpad.
macos, quicktip
Twitter was a great idea. It wasn’t alone, but it’s the only micro-blogging platform that stood the test of time. I knew them all, thanks to an old app I wrote called MoodBlast. If you’ve never heard of it, you’re probably in good company. Suffice to say that it was a way to post to Plurk, Pownce, Facebook, Twitter and others in one stroke. Only two of the nine services it worked with survived in any meaningful manner.
app.net, social, twitter
Wherein I discuss an array of topics with Joe Workman. We mull over work and relaxation, web development, movies and go into too much technical detail on a few subjects.
podcast
So, yeah, TextMate 2 is Open Source (GPL 3). I have no idea what this ultimately means or indicates. I stopped following the list a while back, just because it was overload at the time, so I don’t know if there’s a backstory I missed.
textmate
I added a couple of new snippets to the Tools section of the TextExpander tools this morning. One expands bit.ly urls, and one grabs the direct link to a Cloud.app upload.
snippet, textexpander, tools
I got to talk with Paul and Ben—creators, designers and developers of Day One—for this episode of Systematic. We talked about Day One, of course, and about design motivation, creativity in coding and how working within confines is a freeing experience.
podcast, systematic
Over 250 entries showed up for the Day One giveaway. Thanks to everyone who entered, below are the names of the lucky 10 winners (with links to the original comment to confirm that it is or is not you1).
apps, giveaway, ios, macos
That’s right, brettterpstra.com got its hands on a Kinder Surprise. Illegal to sell in the US, this Italian technology is difficult to procure. Our UK connections smuggled the confection back for us, and we’re bringing you the exclusive unboxing.
humor, personal
Yesterday I found a handy little command line utility for checking whether a modifier key is held down. It’s great for scripting of all kinds. The solution came from this post on the Apple Mailing List:
quicktip, scripting, shell
I’m prepping for a very busy week next week, and I won’t be able to put any more time into this project for a bit. I wanted to share it, though, so I present to you—in a beta state—Slogger.
logging, slogger
I’m not sure why, but it warms my heart to see an update to Paparazzi!. This has long been a useful tool and I had assumed that it would eventually die off. The latest version came out yesterday with the usual Mountain Lion goodies.
appreview, apps, productivity
