December 2011
1 post
Moved to Squarespace →
As much as I love Tumblr, I don’t trust that it will stick around, and I don’t think that it is going to make the improvements that I want.
So I have moved this site to Squarespace. The direct URL is now http://luo.ma/.
Originally I had intended to import my RSS feed here, but Tumblr has apparently done away with that option.
So I hope that you will follow me there instead.
If...
September 2011
1 post
2 tags
An RSS feed for Dropbox
Dear Internet:
I made you a thing. It’s an RSS feed for Dropbox beta releases.
You can find it at http://feeds.feedburner.com/dropboxmacbeta aka http://bit.ly/rssfordropbox.
(As you may have guessed, it only includes betas for Mac OS X, but if there is interest, I could easily make feeds for Windows and Linux too. Let me know if you’d be interested in...
June 2011
5 posts
4 tags
My dot-source file
At the top of each of my shell scripts, you will see a block line this:
SOURCE="${HOME}/.source"
if [ -r "${SOURCE}" ]
then
. "${SOURCE}"
else
echo "$0: no ${SOURCE} found"
fi
so I thought it would be a good idea to explain what that is, why mine isn’t available, and what you should put in yours.
“What is .source ?”
My .source file is a collection of...
4 tags
Apple: "No Lion on DVD, come use our wifi!"
If Lion isn’t going to be available on DVD, but only through the App Store, how can you download it if you don’t have high speed Internet?
According to Jim Dalrymple of Loopinsight:
Several Apple store representatives have told Computerworld that users can come into their local Apple store and download Lion using their Wi-Fi network. You don’t need to make an appointment, just...
2 tags
Twitter for iPad's terrible Direct Message UI
Twitter, inc. purchased Tweetie, which was considered to be the best looking Twitter application for the iPhone.
Unfortunately, they haven’t done much good with their purchase. The official Twitter iPhone client added the universally-loathed trending topic bar, and then removed it after loud public outcry.
The UI for the official Twitter iPad client is a nightmare. It has improved a...
4 tags
TextExpander shell-script template
In my previous post I mentioned that I have a TextExpander shortcut which creates the basic format for me. I trigger it with ‘/ss’ (an un-creatively shortcut for “shell script”):
Here is an example of what it creates:
#!/bin/bash
#
# Author: Timothy J. Luoma
# Email: luomat at gmail dot com
# Date: 2011-06-16
#
# Purpose:
SOURCE="${HOME}/.source"
if [ -r...
2 tags
Launch Mac apps at specific days or times
OS X’s launchd can be used to launch certain apps at a certain time, or certain day and time.
Let’s say that you want to review your calendar every day at 4:00 p.m. I use BusyCal but you can replace it with iCal if you wish:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"...
May 2011
3 posts
3 tags
1 tag
catchmeadaydream asked: hi I need your advice. Im planning to upgrade my mac but Im confused if I should go for Mac's Snow Leopard or just wait for Lion?
April 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Bad timing and bad grammar
We are [redacted], a developer for iOS devices and we have been working diligently to provide an app for IT and Networking professionals that is simplistic and powerful SSH client for iPhone and iPad.
Bad timing: Panic just released Prompt for $5 which means you are now competing with a well-known Mac development company.
Bad grammar: The word you wanted was “simple” not...
1 tag
March 2011
4 posts
2 tags
Automatically forward email from Gmail to Yahoo
Over at ManageMyLife.com a reader asked how to forward email from Gmail to Yahoo.
To forward email from Gmail to Yahoo (or anywhere else) you have to access your Gmail mail settings.
A link to this can be found at the top-right of your Gmail or Google Apps account. If you see a “Gear” icon next to your name, click it to reveal the “Mail settings” in the drop-down.
...
2 tags
Amazon One (Memorable, Shortened) Click Settings →
I need to access my Amazon 1-click settings quite often, probably more often than most people (please don’t interpret that as some bizarre form of bragging, it’s nothing but a reflection of the oddity of my life).
I have different one-click settings for:
Buy with my personal Discover card, and ship to my office.
Buy with my personal Discover card, and ship to my home.
Buy with my...
4 tags
Syncing Google Contacts and Mac OS X Addressbook
Mac OS X has a built-in method to sync its Address Book and Google. Open OS X’s Address Book.app and look in the preferences and you’ll see something like this:
You’ll notice it has a “Configure…” button. Don’t be fooled, it doesn’t do anything useful except let you enter your Google login information.
My experience with OS X’s built-in...
hellamike asked: What is the best way to share an iTunes library over two accounts so they have the same library? Apple's documentation doesn't seem to be working for me, and I am not sure where to go from here. The Apple Remote app on my iPhone also won't show in iTunes, I'm guessing because the music library is in the shared folder of the Mac. Any suggestions?
February 2011
4 posts
5 tags
3 tags
Dual booting your Mac while sharing your Home...
If you wanted to dual boot your Mac — let’s say between “Snow Leopard” and “another version of OS X” — one way to do it would be to
partition the drive and share the Home directory between both installations.
The Disk Utility program in OS X can partition a drive without losing data on the drive. That said, don’t proceed without a bootable,...
3 tags
Find Twitter RSS feeds for individual users
RSS feeds for individual Twitter users are impossible to find if you are using “New Twitter.”1
Fortunately the format is very simple:
http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/[id].rss
where [id] is your Twitter ID number.
So all we need to do is find the ID number associated with the name. Even better, because Twitter
does not require authentication for accessing user...
January 2011
4 posts
2 tags
Quix shortcuts for searching Apple's App Stores
I find myself wanting to find URLs for apps in Apple’s two App Stores (the iOS App Store and the Mac App Store). I have been doing this using a special Google search which limited results to the site “itunes.apple.com” but today I realized I could make it much more specific and avoid some junk in the results (podcasts, music, etc that matched whatever keywords I was searching...
3 tags
Download your Twitter posts in Terminal
If you’d like to backup your Twitter posts, you can do that fairly easily, with a few caveats:
You have to install twurl and setup OAuth. This is not difficult (assuming that you’re the kind of command line geek who is likely to read these words) but it will take 10-15 minutes to do the first time. Once you have it installed, you can use twurl for a whole bunch of things on the...
cocktailstraw asked: "My Mac OS is just a little...
What is your opinion / thought process on buying a Snow Leopard upgrade?
Snow Leopard on Amazon is $29.
That said, Mac OS 10.7 (“Lion”) is expected to be out “soon” (summer, maybe, definitely sometime in 2010) and it may be $29 or it may go back to $129.
Personally I think Snow Leopard is worth $30 even if you only get 3 months use out of it before Lion comes out....
1 tag
Make 1Password Less Specific
One of my few complaints about 1Password is that when you save a new password, it saves the exact URL that you are at, instead of just the domain name. This can lead to problems and confusion later on.
It’s a good idea to make 1Password less specific. What I mean is more easily shown than explained:
For example, if you changed your password on Twitter, you might end up with something...
Best Comment of 2010
2010 continued the trend of 98% of most comments being completely worthless, but by far my favorite was this:
Just shoot me if I ever write a blog post on how to save $20 a month on a cell phone bill.
That was written in response to an article I wrote about giving up my iPhone where I was intentionally being very cautious about estimating how much I’d save.
I ended the original...
December 2010
4 posts
MobileMe Renewals?
Michael Steele asked:
Regarding part of your recent post … “One last tip: You can usually save a lot by buying MobileMe from Amazon instead of Apple. The only way to save on MobileMe from Apple is to get it when you buy a new computer. MobileMe will ask you for credit card information so that they can automatically renew your MobileMe subscription. Don’t give it to them!...
2 tags
Tumblr appears to be caching
This may be a temporary situation, but I wanted to raise it so that I could share it with folks like Red Sweater and others who may work with 3rd party Tumblr editing software.
It appears that Tumblr is doing some very aggressive caching of posted content, which has resulted in changes not being immediately visible.
A Statistically Insignificant Sample Set of One
This may be a fluke or a...
Site-Specific Email Addresses
One of the nice things about having your own domain name and using it for email is the ability to create specialized email addresses for different sites.
I’ve been doing this for some time now. I started with OtherInbox but have replicated the same setup with my personal domain.
My email is configured to deliver all email to one main address. This is generally referred to as a...
November 2010
3 posts
4 tags
Renaming Mac OS X Screenshots
Summary: Have you ever wanted to immediately rename a screenshot when you take it? This page will show you how.
I’m working on several small scripts which will automatically process screenshots. This is the first of them.
Taking Screenshots on Mac OS X
This part is fairly easy: to take a screenshot, press ⌘+ 3 to get the entire screen, or press ⌘+ 4 to get a crosshair tool which will...
"Weak" Kindle fonts?
(Note: I’m not an expert on fonts, so I may not be using some of these terms in the correct technical sense.)
I’ve been frustrated with a few books Kindle books that I’ve purchased lately. The fonts look “weak” or “thin” to me. Compare this:
to this
The latter is much easier to read. These screenshots are from the Kindle for iPad app, the...
October 2010
2 posts
2 tags
Quix shortcuts for queueing Tumblr posts
Quix is a great way to manage bookmarks, bookmarklets, and other shortcuts. You can easily add/edit your own using a plain text file.
I use the Tumblr Queue all the time and I wanted an easy way to say “I want to create a new Text Post that will be queued, and after it’s created, I want you to show me the queue so I can see what’s in there.”
So I made a Quix shortcut....
2 tags
My Favorite Safari Extensions
Since Safari 5 started supporting extensions, I’ve been checking out some of them, and thought I’d post some of my favorites. All of the ones here can be found at the official extensions page.
Several of these have Firefox equivalents if you take a look around for them.
Facebook: There are a plethora of extensions to clean up Facebook. I like Facebook Cleaner.
Flickr: Instead...
September 2010
3 posts
2 tags
How to turn off Retweets on Twitter
Twitter had the ability to turn off retweets on individual basis, then they disabled it, and then at some point they re-enabled it.
At this point there are some people who seem to know that this exists and it enabled, and some people don’t know that it exists or how to enable it.
So here’s how you turn it on/off on a per-user basis (NOTE: I am still on #oldtwitter so it may look...
4 tags
More Evidence The World Has Gone Crazy
A Google search for msconfig xp turns up a higher ranked (and much more recent) page from
Apple than Microsoft:
Click image below to embiggen.
No doubt this is because a number of Mac users have installed Windows XP in Boot Camp.
But still.
Crazy.
2 tags
July 2010
2 posts
3 tags
Save $30 - $50 on MobileMe renewals
I have heard several people lately who have been wondering if MobileMe is worth $100 a year. My response is that I don’t think it is, but I think it’s worth $70/year, which is about what you’ll pay if you buy MobileMe at Amazon.com.
If you use the MobileMe Family Pack, you can buy the MobileMe Family Pack at Amazon for $100 instead of buying it from Apple for $150 per year.
...
How do I search for this on the Internet?
Google is great for lots of things, but I haven’t been able to figure out a reliable way to search for certain things.
Imagine I’m driving from Chicago to Boston. It’s easy enough for me to figure out the route to take and how far it is: but what if I decide that I want to stop about half-way there. How do I calculate that? What if I decide I want to break the trip up into 3...
June 2010
4 posts
dweingartner asked: In your TUAW post "Time Machine plus a clone secure the day" you say that "Dropbox saves every file change for the past 30 days..." Do you do that by having your Dropbox folder be a SmartFolder with a "last modified within 30 days" filter? Or is there a better method? Thanks. Dave
4 tags
Safari Extensions →
I’m not sure if Safari Extensions will go the way of Firefox extensions (i.e. can’t live without them) or Dashboard Widgets (i.e. “Hey, remember them?”) but I’ll be keeping an eye on this Tumblr until the dust settles, at least.
raptureimage asked: Hey, I have been reading you on TUAW. You've got some great articles, is that all you are into? Just wanted to say what's up, you on Facebook?
4 tags
dropbox-latest.sh: Find latest Dropbox beta
I use and love Dropbox and almost always run the latest beta version from the forum. The only problem is that I don’t always check the forum every day so I don’t always know when a new version is available.
This script is designed to check the forums for me and see:
what the latest version is
what my installed version is (Mac only)
If the two are not the same, the script will...
May 2010
3 posts
caterpillarcombs asked: Hi I read your post on tuaw about syncing google contacts with address book and this seems to be the only way to contact you. You mentioned that amazon sells mobile me for less money and you can just purchase it from amazon every year. This might sound like a stupid question but does that method let you keep your original email address? Thanks!
5 tags
Mobile GMail links for starred and unread messages
I wanted to have shortcuts to my Gmail and Google Apps accounts on my iPhone to show me all of the unread messages and my starred messages.
My attempts to make links to them with fruitless until I figured out the exact URL that I had to use, and that the URL was different on my iPhone than on a desktop computer.
Note that %3A is the encoding for a colon : and I should probably have used that...
3 tags
Get App Store info via the commandline
Apple recently added web previews for the iTunes Store, meaning that you don’t have to launch iTunes to get information about a song or a piece of software.
The problem is that the web previews then automatically launch iTunes which I find to be annoying, especially on a slow Internet connection, and especially when I might have just wanted to see a price for an app.
If I am writing a...
April 2010
1 post
Statement by the Guy Who Found the iPhone...
Wired has published an article about the guy who found the iPhone
prototype.
Since the story is full of quotes from his lawyer, I’ve translated
various parts of the story for your convenience.
Gizmodo emphasized to him “that there was nothing wrong in sharing the phone with the tech press,” according to his attorney Jeffrey Bornstein.
“Don’t sue my client. Sue Gizmodo....
March 2010
11 posts
1 tag
6 Dropbox Mac Tips
The folks at TUAW are big Dropbox fans but I thought I’d point out 5 articles that I’ve written about using Dropbox with various Mac apps to show what it can do.
Sync your 1Password passwords.
Sync your TextExpander shortcuts
Sync notes via Notational Velocity (if you don’t use Simplenote)
Automatically start BitTorrent using Dropbox and Hazel
Use it with Dropzone which...
4 tags
Instapaper Beyond →
A customized userscript for Instapaper. Works well with Fluid.
Don’t use your mouse. If you click links, it will function as it always does. To uncover the awesome, you have to use your keyboard. Just hit “h” on any page for a list of commands. I think you’ll dig it. “j” and “k” are forward and back (Google style), “o” will open a...
1 tag
mod_rewrite for moving Tumblr away from a custom...
Jason asked a really good question:
Quick question, Tumblr Hive:
For the longest time, I’ve been hosting my Tumblr blogging account (jasonpermenter.tumblr.com) elsewhere with a custom domain name (jasonpermenter dot com). Am I right in assuming that if I click the button and revert back to using “jasonpermenter.tumblr.com” in my Tumblr settings, all the previous external links, reblogs,...
2 tags
Who Am I Blocking on Twitter?
I have been curious to see a list of people I have blocked on Twitter.
Turns out there’s an easy way to do this:
curl -s --netrc http://twitter.com/blocks/blocking.xml |\
fgrep -B2 '<screen_name>' |\
tr '\012' ' ' |\
sed 's#<id>#\
#g' |\
sed 's#</id>.*<name># #g; s#</name>.*<screen_name># #g; s#</screen_name>.*# #g;'
It will give you a...