Despite the grandiose title, this post is pretty specific: converting RegExRX files to Markdown so I can include them in my nvALT snippets collection. Despite that, I’m sharing it because you can use it as a base to modify and start “rescuing” your own data out of other applications. I understand why applications of any complexity store their data in structured files, whether XML, JSON, or a database format, but I like to keep my data portable. Since the Data Liberation Army isn’t…
markdown, scripting, search, source
You probably know that I’m a big fan of keyboard shortcuts. I try to learn them all and rarely click a button or pull down a menu. There’s one area where I had a big question I had to pose to Twitter: how do I trigger the “Delete” button in an “Are you sure you want to close…” dialog. I got the answer from Sören Kuklau: ⌘⌫. I figured that, since those are harder to find, I’d write out a few of my favorite dialog box shortcuts.
keyboard, macos, shortcuts
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analytics, bookmarks
I have a longer home automation post in the works. It’s actually more philosophical than “how-to,” so I’m taking my time with it. My discovery this week bears mentioning on its own, though.
alexa, homeautomation, plugin, siri
I find the bash commands and overly mysterious, so I’m often playing with them to try to get a better grasp on all of the poorly-documented options. is a shell built-in, no man page, just output. It’s vague.
bash, scripting, shell, terminal
Hey, I made a new video for Marked 2. It covers multi-file documents created with Marked 2’s syntax, MultiMarkdown and iA Writer syntaxes, or Leanpub and GitBook formats. This one doesn’t go into Scrivener and Ulysses capabilities, but those are pretty straightforward to begin with (just drop a Scrivener file on it or use Ulysses ⌘6 preview).
markdown, marked, writing
There was over a year between Marked 2.5.10 and the 2.5.11 update I finally shipped on May 10th. That was way too long, and I realized I’d developed the habit collecting enough fixes, improvements, and new features to make it feel “justified” to release an update, even after I knew it was long past time to ship. That doesn’t fit with modern software practices, especially because it was ultimately an incremental release.
marked, marsedit
I don’t know what it is, but inspirational memes (and office posters) make me feel sad. Depressed. Sometimes annoyed or downright angry. Demotivational versions of the same, though, have always brought me joy. I don’t wallow in sadness or revel in insulting others, but the humor of them brightens my day. It reminds me that not everyone is simple enough to be inspired by a non-contextual quote or cute kitten, and that gives me hope.
dimspirations, wallpaper
Ok, so KillZapper was kind of cool in the way it let you target specific elements, but after running into issues on sites like CNN where I couldn’t easily control the click handlers and determine parent elements, I decided to just make this simpler. Click this bookmarklet to just kill all iframes and HTML5 video elements on the page without prejudice.
bookmarklet, video
I whipped up a quick bookmarklet this morning that allows you to immediately remove anything on a web page that annoys you. This was inspired by a question from Patrick Ford and that was enforced by my own annoyance with the autoplay videos on Macworld.com that follow you down the page. I love you, Macworld, but those are seriously annoying.
bookmarklet, browser, video
I use a bit of UI scripting to automate some of the screenshots used in Marked marketing and documentation. One (significant) part of that scripting is sending keyboard commands, so I’ve built a few routines to help out.
applescript, keyboard, scripting, shortcuts
