Mano a Mano ⇾
Episode 9 of Creatiplicity is available. This time it’s just Shawn and myself talking about things that matter to us. Tools, the abundance of tools and collaborative working environments are on the menu.
Wisdom from Shawn Blanc ⇾
Shawn has a great thought while writing on what makes a great tech writer.
Beginning ⇾
Shawn Blanc is taking the next step. He’s quit his job and as of April 1st, will be writing for his site full time. All he needs is a little help from his readers.
I’m so glad that the web has been discussing the situation of Apple and Readability. Whether you think Readability’s model is a good one or not, it has shown that there is a strong interest from people to support the writers they enjoy. That fact alone is joyful and we simply need a good method of giving our favorite writers support.
I’ve had the privilege of getting to know Shawn fairly well over the past three years. And there is no one I would recommend more or that I would want to support more. When he let me in on what he was doing, I signed up as a member immediately. Even without perks, Shawn’s writing is reward enough.
If you enjoy his writing, do the right thing and become a member as well.
At least, that’s my opinion. Sadly, I somehow missed Shawn Blanc’s apple script for importing bookmarks from Safari to Yojimbo in Oct. 2009. I was probably messing around with Evernote or some such skullduggery. Anyways, after Shawn linked to his post the other day, I’ve been using the script — and loving it!
However, there was one other item I wished the script would do: allow me to edit the title before the bookmark was created in Yojimbo. Sometimes the entire page title is simply too long:
Front-end Maintainability with Sass and Style Guides | Engine Yard Ruby on Rails Blog
Or sometimes it’s a mess:
Quote: You know what we’ve found? Magical things h… - (37signals)
I preferred to have the option to edit the title first. Thanks to Shawn’s nicely commented and organized script, it was an easy update. Here’s the summary of changes I made to Shawn’s script:
1 - Added a dialogue to display the dialogue and allow for a change:
2 - Updated the portion where Shawn allows the user to add tags. I simply updated the variable name:
3 - Lastly, tell Yojimbo to use the title answer variable rather than the title taken from Safari at the beginning of the script:
That’s it. If the user likes the title as is, they simply have to hit Enter and move on.
Shawn Blanc on Yojimbo ⇾
Shawn has written a lot of great in-depth interviews and reviews in the past (although I think, like John Gruber, I almost enjoy his short commentary on shared links more), but the Yojimbo review was probably my favorite.
Third paragraph in, you knew is was going to be a special read:
This is not the same as your tried and true System for saving and finding things. The System is for everything. Your Anything Bucket, however, is for everything else. And you need both.
This is the kind of article where I get so far, then stop. I archive the article and look forward to reading it later. Not at my desk, but in more comfortable confines, with less distractions, when the house is quiet and the day is almost complete.
Oh, and of course a good beverage is at hand (another strength of Shawn’s).
Yojimbo, Dropbox and Symlinks ⇾
With the New Year approaching, I’ve been enjoying the process of a fresh install on my Macbook. In the spirit of Patrick Rhone, I’ve only been installing the apps, settings and preferences that I use regularly.
But I hit a snag when setting Yojimbo up. The app has long been sitting in my Dropbox account, but I completely forgot that a simple alias in the Application Support folder does not work in this scenario. You actually need to create a Symlink. Thanks be to my favorite Mac resource, Mr. Blanc for reminding me what was required.
Shawn Blanc on Coffee ⇾
These days I mostly brew espresso and drink Americanos, but I enjoy reading about the coffee routine of others almost as much as I do reading about office setups. Shawn puts as much care into his coffee prep as he does everything else.
