Alfred Workflow - Bypass for Shortcuts

12 Nov 2021

I recently updated my Macbook Pro to macOS Monterey, and with it I got access to running Shortcuts on the Mac. Being a long time power user of Shortcuts, all the way back to the first release of Workflow, it was quite exciting to get my hands on the app. I’ve been enjoying experimenting with it, but I decided I needed to improve the accessibility. Enter one of my favourite Mac apps, Alfred.

Mermaid Publishing Tip

23 Oct 2021

Mermaid is a popular web-based diagramming tool that allows you to generate a variety of visualisations based on sets of text instructions that tell Mermaid how to generate the diagram. I’ve been using it for a little while to generate relatively simple flow diagrams that I need to build out iteratively or require regular updates. This is because once I have the structure in place it is often much quicker for me to add an instruction to change such a diagram than it is for me to rework a diagram in a visual editor.

I recently used some Mermaid generated diagrams in a post on this site, and I’m going to share a tip for a challenge I encountered.

Automating Your Obsidian Workspace

12 Sep 2021

Obsidian is a popular tool for managing notes in Markdown format. It is cross-platform, uses files direct from a file system location, and has some rather useful features, including a range of plugins created by the developers and the wider community. In this post I am going to walk you through how I have used some of the community plugins to give me better control over a feature known as workspaces.

Using Keyboard Maestro to Bridge URL Calls to Alfred Workflows

31 Aug 2021

Recently I was working on an update to an Alfred workflow, and at triggering the workflow from another application. Alfred supports AppleScript, but I was curious to note that it didn’t seem to support triggering workflows with its URL scheme (alfred://); or at least I couldn’t find any documentation to say that a workflow could be triggered this way. Not everything can work with AppleScript directly, but hyperlinks are far more commonplace. To that end, I came up with the idea of using Keyboard Maestro to bridge the gap.

The Basics of Templater for Obisidian

24 Jul 2021

The personal knowledge management application Obsidian has a built in templating system that allows you to insert boiler plate text into an Obsidian note. While it is entirely functional, the Obsidian community is full of talented developers, and through its plugin architecture, a templating plugin surfaced that provided considerably more functionality than the core plugin. I recently posted about one of the more advanced uses for this plugin, and was contacted by one of my readers to note that I had not actually explained how to use templating. In this post, I’m going to attempt to address that omission.

Adapting to Post-Pandemic Learning Practices

12 Jul 2021

During 2020/2021, the world has seen significant changes in how we have lived our lives. Most of us have spent a lot more time indoors. Many of us have also spent a lot more time away from friends, family, and colleagues. On the whole, we have been leading a more isolated existence.

Organisations have been supporting employees in these situations through remote working practices and collaborative technologies. There has been a pronounced increase in video calls, replacing face-to-face meetings and even many telephone calls. Chats over messenger solutions have replaced water cooler and cross-desk conversations. Thrust into a new world of remote work, somehow, everyone just about managed to keep up.

Automation with Templater for Obsidian

10 Jul 2021

Obsidian is my current personal knowledge management tool of choice. The primary reason for this is undoubtedly because it utilises plain text Markdown files, which gives me flexibility for the future, and access to easily process notes using any other text processing tool of choice. A second factor is the range of plugins available for the application. One of my absolute favourites is Templater, a plugin for templating within Obsidian, and I’m going to explain in this post one of the ways I use it to automate my use of Obsidian.

I Do Not Use Zettelkasten

03 Jul 2021

Zettelkasten has quite a buzz about it these days. It is a process popularised, and arguably pioneered by German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. It is a powerful system, that in Luhmann’s view acted as a companion for him for in terms of being able to structure and manage the knowledge and insights he accumulated. With the rise of personal knowledge management systems (PKM) in the 2000’s, the methodology has taken on an almost mythical status. A panacea for all your knowledge needs. Why am I not making use of it then?

This is the question I’ve found myself pondering quite a lot over the last year or two. It is a proven approach for yielding some amazing results. It’s structured way of working is right up my street. Its makes sense that I would be all in on Zettelkasten. But I am not.

Safari Tab Groups

27 Jun 2021

One of the new features in the new Apple beta OS releases that people seemed to have had some confusion about are Tab Groups. This is a way that users will be able to store sets of tabs for later loading. I have a brief theory I’d like to share about the use of this feature.

The consensus I have seen seems to be that this is just another way of bookmarking. Many people have noted that they don’t see a particular use for it as on the desktop Safari handles tabs and windows well enough that you can just have multiple windows open with different sets of work.

Keyboard Maestro: Titling Revisited

26 Jun 2021

Last year I published a post about how I was using Keyboard Maestro along with a Python script that accesses titlecaseconverter.com to convert titles into a specified style. Unfortunately, I think there was a change at the site level that started causing issues for me either last year, or earlier this year. As a result I ended up taking the existing Python code, simplifying it for my own specific needs and tweaking it for the issue I was experiencing. In today’s post I’m going to quickly share the update.