Long time, no post! Hi diehard readers. I hope this is a little reward for not cleaning up your RSS feeds. I really enjoy using Logitech mice, which is good because almost no one else makes multi-function mice for macOS anymore. The MX Master 3 for macOS is a well designed, comfortable mouse with a lot of buttons and scroll wheels. Unfortunately the Logitech control center software is extremely bad. Over the past year I’ve been noticing mouse lag so extreme that I decided to give up on Logitech.

Portable Desktops This is a short comparison of two excellent Thunderbolt docks for the Macbook Pro. The OWC Thunderbolt 3 dock is currently $360 on Amazon. ^spacegrey The CalDigit TS4 Thunderbolt 4 dock is currently backordered for $380 at B&H Photo. ^spacegrey: Strangely the Space Grey version of the dock is almost $100 more. Thanks, Apple. My top requirement for any dock is that a single cable connects it to the Macbook.

My guilty pleasure is watching YouTube videos about obscure math. Holy cow

I’m still a big fan of ChronoSync for Mac and the new version 10 looks really great. The application is now M1 native and provides more convenient connections to iCloud and support for bootable backups on Big Sur and Monterey. I like Time Machine for convenience of file recovery but I’m always a little wary of it’s longevity. ChronoSync just makes a copy of files on my NAS and external disks.

Modern web tools provide some amazing solutions. Stories like this remind me why the first step in solving most problems is to try to build it myself. Nelson Minar: For anyone wondering how Goodreads could have simply lost all my data, I’m wondering too! It bespeaks contempt for users. And terrible system design, services should not be able to lose data irrecoverably. The specific bug is related to my removing Twitter API access to Goodreads last week (they stopped supporting Twitter login months before).

A couple of weeks ago I sat down with my friend David Sparks to talk about nerdy stuff. I always love talking with Dave because he’s exactly as nice as he sounds. We talked about Keyboard Maestro, Shortcuts, and plenty of Star Wars. If you haven’t tried MacSparky Labs, I can tell you it’s pretty great. It comes with member-only posts as well as insightful webinars.

What a great start to a new year. David Sparks is going all-in on MacSparky. He makes such great stuff and his new MacSparky Labs is an awesome idea. I’m constantly impressed by the quality of David’s work. Not to mention, he’s actually an incredibly nice person that just loves all of this nerdy stuff. Go subscribe to MacSparky Labs. It’ll be a joyful part of 2022.

My latest obsession is with improving my personal UX. Now that I spend most of my time on a Mac instead of bouncing between Windows and Linux, I’ve noticed a huge improvement in the pace of my work. When I do run into something inefficient, I jot it down and try to fix it. Lately I’m frustrated with Safari. I typically have several Safari windows open, each with a different group of related tabs.

I have a confession: I can’t remember all of my hotkey combinations and I waste a lot of time repeating mundane tasks. Between macOS, Keyboard Maestro, Moom, Alfred, and every little app shortcut, I simply can’t keep them top of mind. Here’s what I can remember at this moment: CMD-Opt-T opens the Todoist quick entry panel. Ctrl-Opt-M opens Moom in grid layout mode to move a window. CMD-Opt-Arrow moves a window around a 2x3 grid on my screen (via Keyboard Maestro).

Someone needs to check in on CBS Boston. Here are two recent titles from their office: Horse And Its Owner Stopped Inside Doors Of Plymouth Walmart 92-Year-Old Injured In ‘Unprovoked’ Attack At Quincy Center MBTA Station Each one of these titles make me wonder what world the CBS writers live in. Perhaps they live in a world of violent nonagenarians and unruly gangs of horses.