Here’s a bit of a BBEdit hack for a very specific problem. There are a number of words I either confuse or overuse when I write hastily. I’m not talking about misspelling of words, but rather using one word in the place of another.[1] For example, using “peak” when I meant “pique” or “your” when I meant “you’re”. I wanted a custom grammar checker to let me know when I might have a problem with a document.
The Escapers (makers of Flux, Stuf and more) have an interesting new task management service called Instruktion. Or maybe it's called "New York Minute", it's not clear to me. It is cross platform and the apps are free. It requires a $20/year membership which sounds like a good price.
It looks very nice on all of the application platforms and works offline too. I'm an OmniFocus user but I'll keep an eye on how this evolves.
This post at NPR is interesting on so many different levels. It’s about Leonardo da Vinci’s todo list. It has left me a sense of being normal. Here’s a few thoughts I had during and after reading this.
<li>Many Todo's are to learn something new from an expert</li> <li>Text <em>and</em> doodles are always better than just one alone</li> <li>He didn't segregate subjects. He just kept a list of how he wanted to get better or things to make</li> <li>Amazingly, he was successful without strict adherence to GTD<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" rel="footnote">1</a></sup></li> <li>Given enough time and research money a standardized test can be created to measure creativity<sup id="fnref:2"><a href="#fn:2" rel="footnote">2</a></sup></li> By way of Kottke
I just noticed that ResophNotes, the Simplenote client for Windows, has been updated recently. I had thought it was abandoned-ware after a long delay in patches and feature enhancements. I was wrong. ResophNotes now supports pinned notes and syncs much faster. This is the definitive Simplenote client for those of us suffering on Windows.
Even if it is not inspirational to me, it is just a well told and funny story.
Why I write ideas everyday
It is now obvious that Siri has elevated the iOS Reminders app to the winners circle of productivity applications. It has become the quintessential ubiquitous capture device for me. One unexpected side effect is that I am now using the Tasks functionality in Outlook on Windows much more.
Exchange Tasks Through my day-job I am forced to use Microsoft Exchange and Outlook on Windows. I loath Outlook but I have come to accept it as my lot in life.
Keyboard Maestro macros can be executed several different ways. There’s the common hot-key trigger and text snippet trigger. These are great but sometimes I need to run a macro when I’m not sitting in front of my computer. That’s where the KM Webserver trigger and Keyboard Maestro iOS apps come in handy. Webserver This a somewhat understated feature of Keyboard Maestro. I can configure the application to expose a webserver running on a specific port.
A significant number of links were just added to the Keyboard Maestro (aka Peter N. Lewis) blog. Good stuff. Although I woke up to a KM flood in Reeder.
Brett Terpstra had a post a few days ago about how he uses Evernote even though he is predominately a plain text guy. Brett makes perfect sense. Damn him!
I used Evernote like crazy for a long time. I paid for premium service for a long time. But it worried me that it was a hole I was digging that I might not be able to get my carefully curated notes out of.
As I have mentioned, my dear wife is now a full time OmniOutliner user. She started on the iPad and eventually migrated to the Mac. One major advantage of using OmniOutliner on the Mac is that you can design templates that automatically handle formatting based on context. The Omni Group provides some tutorials and some specific demos of styles but I decided to whip up a little tutorial for my wife and I am presenting it below.
