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Microsculptures Link

These macro photos are a really incredible use of cameras, microscopes, and computers. By way of Twitter

Single Bronze Age 'King' Responsible For Half Of Western European Men Link

From RT.com: Coming out of the Stone Age, the chieftain and his descendants controlled the population and reproduction through a new hierarchical system of powerful elites which, much like his bloodline, continues to this day. The gifs in the article are particularly rediculous but it’s an interesting finding. It also has a pretty good summary at the end. The study also proved that all of us, no matter what race, nationality, or religion, are cousins from Africa, as 100 percent of the men tested descend from just one man who lived 190,000 years ago, more than a centamillennium before humanoids left Africa to explore the planet.

ChronoSync 4.7 Sneak Peek Adds Cloud Backup Link

ChronoSync is an excellent backup utility for the Mac. It’s long been a favorite of mine for selective on-premise file backup for my Mac. The next release (4.7) is being teased on YouTube with syncing to Amazon S3. I certainly hope Amazon Cloud sync as well as Google Drive and WebDAV are on the way too, but this is a nice step forward for a proven app I like. The embedded demo video is below.

Nerds on Draft 2Do and Julius Link

Episode 65 of Nerds on Draft is freshly canned and includes one of the best IPAs I’ve ever had and a bunch of discuss about task managers (again). Jeff and I check in on how it’s going with 2Do for iOS and Mac and talk about rough edges and favorite features.

Dropbox Project Infinite Announced Link

This week, Dropbox announced a new offline storage option similar to BitTorrent Syncs selective download. Specified files are synced to a connected computer while other files can be downloaded on demand right from the file system. This is the kind of stuff Dropbox should be leading with. I’d be happy to see them exit email and note-taking and focus on a better Dropbox. This is potentially a huge step forward for the service.

More on the OmniFocus URL Scheme Link

The new OmniFocus URL scheme looks to be a major improvement. It’s still in development but it’s starting to sound like OmniFocus is going to catch up to other apps in some significant ways. This means, for example, that you can now create a text file outlining an entire project, with placeholders for specific names, defer dates, due dates, and so on. You can then run a workflow that processes those placeholders and builds a new project (such as “Run a marathon on June 30”) from that project template, and these project templates and their processing workflows can be shared with others.

The Killer Hiding in the CDC Map Link

I’m not a huge fan of Slate but every once in awhile, I really enjoy one of their deep-dives. This article about the source of the spread of Cholera in Haiti is incredible. One of the several key facts this map fails to note is that three months earlier there had been zero diagnosed cases of cholera in Haiti. In fact, there had never been a diagnosed case of the disease in that country before.

Farm to Fable Link

What a terrific piece of reporting. Asked about the provenance of the unspecified “small farms” venison, Cuarta said he buys it from Jackman Ranch in Clewiston. Jackman’s Mark Hoegh said that, while he does sell the Don CeSar wagyu filet mignon, he does not sell them venison, because he does not produce venison. It’s not enough to know that there is no regulation or enforcement, we should assume purposeful deception with every new trend.

Fancy Keyboard Maestro HTML Prompts Link

Pretty neat stuff on Nik’s Crappy Blog although probably way outside of what I’m willing to do for my macros. There’s more help with this built into Keyboard Maestro and on the forum.

The New Old TextExpander Link

As of today, Smile Software has softened their stance on the new subscription version of TextExpander. If you are an existing user, they cut the price in half of the new TextExpander. I’d have nothing to say if this was all about pricing.1 TextExpander was something I used a lot and was definitely worth the price. The previous versions of TextExpander are returning to the App Store according to Smile: