04 Nov 2016
As part of my day job I work with lots of files and one of the common activities I need to carry out is to compare the contents of those files to find omissions and inconsistencies. Fortunately most of the files I need to compare are pure text based files (e.g. XML, XSL, LOG, TXT, INI) and there are plenty of tools available to help work with those files. To work with files in general on Windows I make use of the XYplorer file manager and fortunately for me it is pretty easy to integrate my comparison tool of choice into it.
Read More28 Oct 2016
A month or two ago I had a bit of a problem with Windows Explorer and Google Drive that was rather painful. I lost a day of work to putting right an issue that simply shouldn’t have occurred and to be honest I’m quite glad it happened to me and not one of my colleagues as I imagine that for many of them things would have ended a lot worse. It was at this point that I began looking at alternatives to Windows Explorer.
Read More01 Sep 2016
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post I have quite a few Workflow app workflows on my iOS devices. Like many other long time Workflow users I’m looking forward to having a better way to keep track of and structure my collection of Workflows. However unlike everyone else I don’t want folders…
Read More31 Aug 2016
I spend quite a bit of time experimenting with the Workflow App by the folks over at DeskConnect. It’s an iOS application that brings Mac automator-style automation into the palm of your hand. As a result of my experimentations I’ve built up quite a library of workflows and whilst I wait for some sort of structure for the workflows I’ve come up with a few little tricks, notations and workflows to help me keep things organised. I’m going to share one of those with you today.
Read More06 Jul 2016
Like many who blog I keep a list of topic ideas which I plan to blog about at some point. When I get some time to write I pick a topic that I like the look of and get some words thrashed out. I was surprised when I saw something in last week’s MacStories members’ newsletter that directly related to something rather niche I had on my list.
As I expect you’ve already guessed, this post is about that particular topic. It’s about getting text to and from the iOS app Drafts from Dropbox.
Read More30 Jun 2016
I love finding little shortcuts to help me get things done. Sometimes it’s through automation of processes I do occasionally and sometimes its through speeding up something smaller that I need to do frequently. In this post I want to share something that definitely falls into the latter category. Duplicating files in Windows Explorer.
Read More30 May 2016
The majority of configuration in Visualization Solutions by Nakisa (VSN) applications is achieved via the changing of settings in the AdminConsole, Nakisa’s standard administration interface. For a typical configuration this is all that you would require. Unfortunately all too often, typical is not what a client wants and so we have to look beyond the current capabilities of AdminConsole. There are other occasions too where perhaps it is a laborious or inefficient task to do a particular piece of configuration in AdminConsole compared to another method. In those situations I turn to configuring the underlying configuration files directly.
Read More22 May 2016
I was reading through issue 33 of the MacStories newsletter (to which I’m a paid subscriber) and I spotted an interesting request from one of the readers to do with efficiently creating presentations to have multiple outputs for a small variety of uses. The reader was hoping to find a way to maintain multiple versions automatically when updating source material. The MacStories team called out to other readers for suggestions on addressing this. In this post I’m going to outline my approach to the issue.
Read More23 Apr 2016
TextExpander has long used Dropbox to synchronise snippets, but with the advent of the latest version (v6 on Mac), the snippets are now synchronised by a proprietary synchronisation service. Thoughts about the move to a software as a service (SaaS) model aside this then poses the question how can you access your snippets for the purposes of independent backup or sharing with users on earlier TextExpander versions?
Read More05 Apr 2016
I haven’t posted about Workflow for a little while, but it remains one of my favourite applications on iOS and I’m still actively creating and revising workflows. In fact I’m currently clocking in at 176 workflows on my devices. Today I thought I’d clear up the dry spell on Workflow related posts and put something together around one of my text manipulation workflows. This particular one manipulates the character case of text on the device clipboard.
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