I know I’ve been a bit slower on posting the madness from the lab lately. I’ve been working on more and more larger projects that have two results on my blogging: I don’t have as much time to document smaller tricks and tips to an extent where I’m comfortable posting, and I’m not finishing as many shorter-term projects to woo you with. I think the end results of the things I’m working on will be of interest to many of you, but they’re taking some time1.
personal, support
This post is about a simple trick for printing a horizontal rule in the Terminal, but I would like to start by saying that the headline is not entirely an attempt at humor. I spent a long time working with the limitations of , with its annoyances and inconsistencies between shells. Then I started using more, and it’s made string formatting and terminal output so much simpler. Check out the man page (and some more info on format strings)if you’re not already familiar with it.
bash, scripting, shell, terminal
Guess what? This is the 100th project (see?) I’ve made available for download on this blog. I don’t know what that means in the grand scheme of things, but I feel like I should celebrate.
macos, markdown, markdownservices, service, titler
I’ve written about Tally from Agile Tortoise before, expressing my affection for its intuitive interface and utility. Tally 2 is out today, looking great and taking advantage of new iOS 8 features.
appreview, appstore, ipad, iphone
Once upon a time, there was a fun personal database app for Mac called Bento (from FileMaker). It’s been a long time since Bento was discontinued and there’s been a several-year gap since we’ve seen a good replacement. Push Popcorn’s Records was released today, and it looks like a strong contender for that title.
appreview, macos
Web excursions brought to you in partnership with CleanMyMac X, all the tools to speed up your Mac, in one app.
automator, bookmarks, programming, scripting
Marked 2.4.10 is out for direct customers and has been submitted to the Mac App Store for review. It fixes some bugs that were introduced when I started working on optimizing rendering speed, improves on existing features, and adds a few new ones.
markdown, marked
Spotlight is great for finding files without digging through folders. It’s great with tagging. It’s even great for finding photos and emails faster than iPhoto or Mail.app can. It has its shortcomings, though.
appreview, macos, search, spotlight
I’ve always recommended using MindMeister as a collaborative mind mapping/brainstorming platform. It’s great for group brainstorming or for sharing ideas in easy-to-parse formats. It recently got even better, though.
brainstorming, collaboration, mindmapping, mindmeister
Web excursions brought to you in partnership with Setapp. Get access to hundreds of Mac and iOS apps for one low monthly subscription fee.
bookmarks, google, learning, notes, twitter
It’s been a while since I brought up keybindings. If you haven’t followed my obsession with them in the past, you can catch up on all the fun in older posts and by browsing through the massive KeyBindings project I’ve assembled. To summarize, KeyBindings on OS X can provide all kinds of text editing assistance that’s available and consistent across every app you use.
bash, cocoa, keybindings, terminal, text
Thanks to Letterspace, a new note-taking app for iOS and Mac, for sponsoring BrettTerpstra.com this week. I had actually recently discovered Letterspace and was quite impressed before they even signed up to sponsor the blog. I recommend taking a look!
sponsor
It seems like everyone has written a retrospective in light of AOL shuttering The Unofficial Apple Weblog except for me. Odd, considering I owe just about everything I have now to TUAW. So here’s mine.
personal, tuaw
