Drafts: Force Open Link on Mac

03 Jun 2022

Today’s post is a quick one about something I find quite useful when working in Drafts on my Mac. It relates to hyperlinks and the feature of Drafts known as link mode that allows you to make links clickable at the expense of making the content non-editable. I found it frustrating to keep switching back and forth to access a link, but with the help of a small Keyboard Maestro macro, I was able to speed this up.

Automation Documentation: Hooking Apple Shortcuts

01 Jun 2022

Earlier this week I wrote about how I was using Hook and Obsidian to support my documentation of automations. In this post I will aim to explain how I am using this set up to help me access documentation for my Apple Shortcuts automations.

Automation Documentation: Hooking Keyboard Maestro

31 May 2022

In my post yesterday, I described how I was using Obsidian and Hook to help me support my documentation of automations. Today, I am going to share something that helps me work with documenting Keyboard Maestro macros.

Automation Documentation: Hooking Automations with Obsidian

30 May 2022

For anyone who follows me on this blog or anywhere else, you are probably familiar with the fact that I enjoy automating things. Having my devices do things for me. This has numerous benefits including saving me time and effort in the future, reducing the opportunity for human error, teaching me new skills, etc. But the fact is, when you start building up a large toolbox of automations it can be hard to keep track of the details. Some automations lend themselves to inline documentation, but what if you want to do something more?

In this post I am going to describe some of my set up around documenting automations using two tools on the Mac - Hook and Obsidian.

The Badger 2040: Custom Badges

01 May 2022

This is the third and final post in my introductory series for the Pimoroni Badger 2040. So far, I have talked a little about getting things set up so you can easily work with and find out about the Badger 2040, and about the physical additions I have made to turn my Badger 2040 into a functional eInk badge. In this post I am going to cover the programmable side of this eInk badge, and what (simple) revisions I have made in order to turn this into a badge suitable for my own purposes.

The Badger 2040: Building a Physical Badge

30 Apr 2022

I recently wrote about getting set up for working with a Pimoroni Badger 2040, a small piece of hardware that functions as a programmable eInk badge. The basic unit is the electronics, but in order to make it a functional badge for my own purposes, I found there were a few additions required. In this second post in my introductory series of posts for the Badger 2040 I am going to briefly set out what other physical elements have been added.

The Badger 2040: Set Up

29 Apr 2022

As soon as I had attended my first external work event and been issued a cheap paper badge, I began wondering why conference organisers were not using digital badges using eInk technology. I figured it was probably because people would “accidentally” leave the conference with them and they would be more expensive than the cheap paper print out in a plastic wallet on a lanyard. But, within a few years, eInk badges began to appear, and I felt things were catching up. Roll on a few years and I began attending public and private business-related events where people were not issued badges. Again I wondered why people were not issued badges, beyond the occasional sticky label that leaves a not so delightful slightly sticky patch on your business attire?

It was around this time, almost a decade ago, I began dipping in and occasionally looking around for an eInk badge option of my own. I often saw ones available from Chinese marketplaces, but they were typically vaguely specified, only available in bulk and thus expensive for an individual to experiment with.

Then several weeks ago I spied something new that looked ideal. I purchased a Pimoroni Badger 2040.

An Update to the Conductor Workflow

22 Apr 2022

Last year I released Conductor, my Alfred workflow for working with Keyboard Maestro. It allowed you to launch Keyboard Maestro macros, get information about them, open them for editing, and even the run them with a preset delay. In this new release I’ve taken things a little further and I’m going to provide a brief overview in this post.

Auto-Link and Generate Page in Obsidian

29 Mar 2022

Last year I wrote a post about automation with Templater for Obsidian. I showed some examples of using Obsidian’s Templater plugin to do some automation a little bit beyond what you might typically consider as the basics. One of the things in one of the examples bugged me for quite a while, and in this post I’m going to go through how I improved things for creating a link to a new page, and the correctly filed new page at the same time.

Creating Rich Links in Keyboard Maestro

26 Feb 2022

I write a lot of things in a plain text format known as Markdown. It provides a set of standardised ways to mark up text for processing into other formats (such as HTML), whereby formatting and other rich content elements are applied. I write all of my blog posts in this format, and also posts for other sites where I publish and contribute. One of these sites is Buy Me a Coffee (BMAC), a site where you can donate to my coffee fund if you like the stuff I do. It is also where I post each month to let everyone know what I have been up to. It regularly surprises me just how much content and support to other Internet denizens I’ve actually provided during the course of a month!

Over the course of the month I jot down notes in Drafts, and then in the following month I write these up, in Markdown ready for posting. Unfortunately, BMAC does not support Markdown, but it does support rich text.