OmniFocus is great, but there’s really only one option for adding reference material, it goes into the task notes. But I don’t like to keep my reference material in OmniFocus. I like to keep it in my plain text notes on Dropbox.
The best solution for my workflow is to use a TextDrop file URL in the task notes.
This provides the flexibility of letting me edit my notes in a real text editor but also makes those notes available on any device that is connected to the web.
I still use paper and pen. It’s the most efficient and least distracting kit for taking notes in a meeting with non-nerds. Bringing out a computing device invariably results in some discussion about the technology. But I work in plain text files for everything before and after the meeting.
Here are some options for commingling those two worlds.
Evernote Evernote is very good at instant capture. At the end of a meeting, I snap photo notes into Evernote of the whiteboard and my paper notebook pages.
You know what? I’ve never really trusted Siri enough to complete draft, address and send an email. Perhaps learning the magic incantation outlined on OS X Daily will help me accept the future.
Another week without a sponsor so another week of Pinboard tips instead.
Before we begin, go ahead and get Brett Terpstra’s CSS for beautifying Pinboard. That’s not a tip, it’s a pre-requisite. It’s pretty.
I’ve written of other ways to beautify Pinboard, but Brett’s is the easiest and I neglected to mention it before.
Quick Edit Groups Pinboard is my archive of web content. To get the most value out of the resources I like to go in and clean up meta data.
I’ve been noticing a stubborn external disk that just refused to eject. It finally frustrated me enough to do something about it. I turned to an old, old friend named What’s Keeping Me. This is little gem of an app that does one thing.
You search for a disk by name and it tells you what application or process is holding it up. It also works with stubborn trash files that are locked by an application and preventing the trash from being emptied.
Introduction Keyboard Maestro is a jack of all trades. It’s about a dozen applications in one. In addition to being a macro execution service, right out of the box it can be an application and window switcher, app launcher and window manager with little, if any effort.
I’ve recently moved from a 27" iMac to a “smaller” 15" Retina MacBook Pro, which means window and application management is a bit more important to me.
For the uninitiated, BetterTouch Tool (BTT) is a donation-ware system enhancement application. BTT started out simply providing some additional functionality for the trackpad and mouse and has slowly grown into a serious hacker’s delight. BTT is a window manager, application launcher and much more.
Now, there is a companion iOS app, BTT Remote, that turns any iOS device into a remote control and track pad for a Mac. I took the app for a spin and it’s working very well.
A nice alternative for sending bookmarks to Pinboard. This is better than my old Keyboard Maestro method, I think.
I get it. There’s a lot of words to read. It can be overwhelming for some very smart people. I know it’s been a problem for me in the past. My Instapaper bulged, over stuffed and unattended. My starred articles overflowed like a toilet. It felt like there was no way to manage all of the information.
Until I was honest with myself about the value of RSS and what I wanted from it, there was no good way out.
More on Safari Tabs:
Here’s a lovely little AppleScript to find tabs by substring search. It works like a charm.
Here’s a Keyboard Maestro Macro that works with a slightly modified version of the script:
Here’s the modified AppleScript. I simply replaced the GUI elements with the Keyboard Maestro input action and a KM variable.
:::AppleScript tell application "Keyboard Maestro Engine" set searchpat to (process tokens "%Variable%Find%") end tell tell application "Safari" set winlist to every window set winmatchlist to {} set tabmatchlist to {} set tabnamematchlist to {} repeat with win in winlist set ok to true try set tablist to every tab of win on error errmsg --display dialog name of win as string set ok to false end try if ok then repeat with t in tablist if searchpat is in (name of t as string) then set end of winmatchlist to win set end of tabmatchlist to t set end of tabnamematchlist to (id of win as string) & ".
