I tend to spend a couple hours every weekend hacking new features into this website. A lot of them are convenience features on the back end that really have no visible effect on the user experience, but some of them do. I think a lot of them fly under the radar. In order to make myself feel a little better about the time invested, as well as helping me to remember what all I’ve done, I thought I’d point out a few of the prominent, front-facing “tricks.”
hacks, jekyll, webdesign
My Jekyll build takes a while, and when I’m at my machine I like to know at a glance if a build is running. I’ve gone to great lengths with and GeekTool to put status lights on my desktop. I do the same for multiple long-running tasks. I realized the other day, though, that Growl could do this very easily, and could be automated as part of a script or Rake task.
applescript, apps, growl, jekyll, notifications, scripting, status
This isn’t a brand new trick. It’s based on a Bash function for “alias last” that I’ve seen in a few places. The original version uses to get the last command you ran and turn it into a temporary alias. I expanded it a little with some escaping for quotes and trimming whitespace, but it’s the same function.
function, scripting, shell, source, terminal
I’ve obviously been on a PopClip kick lately. I run a lot of my little scripts through Services, but there are only so many shortcut combinations on a keyboard (and in my memory) and right clicking to run a Service is cumbersome. PopClip streamlines it for me, so I’m exploring…
apps, extension, hacks, popclip, quicktip
I haven’t gotten my Curio brainstorming article together yet, but I did want to mention that there’s a sale on it right now until August 31st. You can use the code BACKTOSCHOOL at their online store and get 20% off of Curio 8 (usually $99).
apps, brainstorming, curio, macos, productivity
It started last night when I put together a little app that could generate PopClip extensions. I’m embedding the video for it at the end of this post because it was really fun to make, but I’ve decided not to distribute it for a while. I have future plans to make it useful, but for now its functionality can be replicated with the “Options” dictionary that I hadn’t noticed before in PopClip extensions. It allows you to build a config panel right in PopClip.
popclip, text
I got the chance to talk to Gil Hova, a programmer-cum-board game designer. We dive into the psychology of board games and board game design. It was enlightening for me, and brought up a lot of concepts I hadn’t thought about before.
podcast, systematic
I’m building an AutoTag system for my Jekyll setup. Unlike the Zemanta system I use for additional keywords, this tool is designed to match your content to existing tags you already use on your blog, helping to keep a consistent taxonomy and better post relationships. It’s more like the TextMate/WordPress version I created. Like that version, there are two parts to it: a tag plugin on the blog side and a local tool for pulling information from it and processing it.
autotag, blogging, jekyll, jtag, tagging, text
I have the honor of being directly sponsored by Smile this week. In addition to being great people, as the creators of TextExpander, TextExpander touch, PDFpen for OS X, and PDFpen for iPad and iPhone, Smile is one of my favorite groups of developers.
smile, textexpander
