Road Tripping With Teenagers
Wonder Woman and I are taking two of our high-schools aged grandsons on a road trip to Gainesville, Florida on Friday. We are going so that Connor, the 17-year-old, can participate in a charity bike ride for Friedreich's Ataxia, the degenerative nueromuscular illness he lives with. It's one of the few times a year he gets to be around other FA folks. It does him good to see people who have made it to adulthood, living successfully with disease. He was provided with a recumbent bicycle for participating in a clinical study and he is able to pedal it on the four-mile closed course with his Nana running along beside him.
Aiden, his younger brother is coming along to ride his bike in the event too. Even though he and Connor bickered literally all the time, he's always there to steady him when he walks or to help him with his wheelchair if it's one of those days. They are typical teenage boys who speak with great authority on video game culture, anime, fast food deals and the most influential people on YouTube and TikTok. I learn a lot from them.
They aren't thrilled about getting up early for the drive but it's worth it for the carte blanch Wonder Woman gives them to load up on gas station goodies and the freedom to pick out where we eat along the way. They even like hotel breakfasts.
Connor is a fiend for Mac and Cheese. He loves the way they make it at The Cheesecake Factory, so I know we will be going there on one of the nights. He's a kind and sweet kid who constantly asks me if I'm OK. I'm not sure what kind of issues he suspects I might be having, but it always seems important to him that I'm comfortable and happy.
I'm not sure how much they'll communicate with their parents while they're gone. It's not that they will have separation anxiety. The boys just love their folks. They like to keep them informed of what they're up to. Plus, they have a little sister who was a bonus baby. She's in kindergarten. Aiden is her best friend. She'll miss him a lot. Their older brother started college this year. They alternately miss him and celebrate the extra room they have in his absence.
I'm looking forward to spending time with them. They make me laugh and feel young and woefully out of touch with pop culture. I love watching Wonder Woman shine when she's with them. She's really good at being their Nana.
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Pozole Recipe
1 1/2 lbs pork shoulder
2 garlic cloves, peeled
1 tablespoon cumin powder
2 onions, chopped separated
4 garlic cloves, chopped and separated
2 tablespoons oil
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
2 tablespoons annato powder
1 tablespoon salt
1/4 teaspoon oregano
4 cups canned white hominy, drained and rinsed
3-5 cups pork broth, from cooking pork shoulder
salt
2 whole fresh jalapenos, chopped (optional)
This recipe requires a simple prep.
Prepare by the onion, peel the garlic, chop the onion, peel and chop the 2 garlic cloves,
Place the meat in a large saucepan and just cover with lightly salted water.
Add one onion, 2 cloves peeled garlic, pepper, cumin, and oregano.
Bring to a boil over medium heat, skim off any foam that rises, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 45 minutes.
Saute the second chopped onion and garlic in oil until translucent.
Add the remaining spices, stir for a minute.
Stir in the canned hominy, pork broth (if there is not enough pork broth, add chicken stock, I like to add it anyway for flavor, about 2-4 cups, eyeball the amount you like), and jalapenos
Cook at a simmer, covered, for 45 to 60 minutes until the meat and hominy are tender.
If necessary, cook for up to an additional 60 minutes until the chilies and onions are well blended into the broth
Degrease the stew, taste for salt, and serve in soup bowls.
Garnishes that are always served with are:
lots of lime/lemon wedges.
sliced radishes.
chopped cilantro.
Shredded cabbage(not red).
fresh packaged fried corn tortillas.
School Starts in August
This is my entry in the April IndieWeb Carnival hosted by Jamie Thiglestad on Renewal.
One of the things I miss about working in public schools is the comfortable rhythm of the annual cycle. Unlike teachers and junior administrators, i worked twelve months of the year, not ten months like most of them. I wasn't jealous of them, not exactly. I loved the summer months when the giant high schools were mostly empty. The county adjusted our work schedule so we could have Friday's off. Some summers were non-stop projects on big technology renewals. There were others when it was tough to find things to do.
When August rolled around, and a new school year was about to kick off, it was the beginning of the cycle of life for a gigantic educational machine. I enjoyed seeing the first year teachers, regardless of whether they were young college graduates or second career types. What I really liked was seeing the paraprofessionals who sent to school and finally became teachers themselves. My district hired many teachers from northern states where it's challenging to get a job because the vacancies are few. Down here in the dirty south, where we don't have teacher's unions, it's a struggle to find qualified people.
At the high schools, before classes even start, the athletes show up on campus for fall sports. I can still hear the chants of practicing cheerleaders echoing through the empty halls. I can see another cohort of football players trying to survive another August afternoon practice, with the humidity above 90% and the temperatures near 100 degrees. I'm just so glad that these days, coaches know enough to let the players drink water. In my day and before, we were denied water for fear that it would cause cramps. In the middle of a three-hour August practice they'd give us a small handful of ice chips. That was it. Crazy, huh?
When the first day of school rolled around, I'd always try to be at a primary school to watch the spectacle of sobbing parents dropping off little Tommy and little Susie for the beginning of kindergarten. The veteran teachers were excellent at taking the kids and getting rid of the overly dramatic parents like a border collie herding sheep. Occasionally they'd even have to get the school resource officer to ask parents to leave because they were having such severe separation anxiety.
In the upper grades, I'd pay attention to what the kids were wearing and all the new haircuts and hairstyles. Almost everyone is nervous at the beginning of the year, except those veteran teachers. A new school year always meant a lot of work for me. Problems that went unreported the previous spring would pop up as emergencies. Some things, power cords for example, would always mysteriously disappear over the summer. Laptops that worked fine in May would be non-functional in September. It would normally take until about the first of October to get everything working at peak efficiency.
I worked in a county with 26 schools. Every one of them had its culture. Some had tremendous community involvement, while others would have trouble getting parents to come to open house. I learned which lunchroom ladies took the job of making tasty food seriously, and which lunchrooms to avoid at all costs. Things would evolve, though. People would retire or move on, and their replacements could make things better or worse. I've seen faculties devastated by the transfer of a beloved principal. I've seen the opposite effect when an unpopular administrator finally moved on.
Every month was predictable. Holiday breaks and exams came and went. Different sports seasons had their peculiarities. The growing sense of excitement in the spring as summer approached always felt nice. Watching another senior class get ready to move out into the world was sobering. I saw kids go all the way through their K-12 education, leave, go to college and come back as teachers. Like I said, it's a cycle and every new year is the renewal of that cycle.
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TeraCopy for Mac

I'd stayed away from TeraCopy for Mac for a long time because it
didn't have good reviews. It was updated for Apple Silicon earlier this
year, so I decided to try it out. I have some huge folders with tens of
thousands of images and audio files that I need to copy to and from
external drives and computers. I easily set up a job on a 2019 MacBook
Pro to copy 135GB from an external mechanical hard drive to the internal
SSD over a thunderbolt port. It took about 30 minutes and I was able to
use the functionality of TeraCopy to verify the integrity of the files.
Features
- During transfers, any problematic files will be tagged and skipped without aborting the whole process. After the transfer is complete, you can retry only the skipped files.
- You can proactively handle any file naming conflicts that occur during transfer by selecting the "skip all" function. After copying you can generate a report of the transfer, generate checksum files and run scripts automatically.
- Integrates with MacOS by preselecting as source and target the folders you have open in Finder. TeraCopy can copy files to a folder opened in Finder with Cmd + Alt + V shortcut.
- TeraCopy preserves the original date and time of your files.
- The pro version can save file lists with all related information as HTML and CSV files.
- The pro version allows you to omit certain file types and folders when copying which is great if you want to copy just the photographs and not the videos from Apple's live photos.
You can get TeraCopy on the Mac App Store.
File Sharing Roundup - The Best Ways to Move Data Between Devices
There are many reasons sharing files between computers for even the most basic of home users:
- Backup
- Moving documents to a computer connected to a local printer
- Information shared between your and your partner or spouse
- Installation files for programs you want on more than one computer
- Consolidating a family photos album
- Moving downloaded movies or music to your home media server
I got an email from a friend today who explained to me that he's used a particular method to create a folder on his parent's computer into which they can drop their various tax documents as they receive them so that he can access them all when it comes time to fill out the forms. For them. I just set up a method of file sharing to copy nothing but downloaded video files from my laptop to my iPad in preparation for traveling when I need something to watch.
Here are a variety of ways to share files, both temporarily and continuously connected.
Blip - this app transfers individual files between two devices no matter where they are located using end to end encryption. Files can be as larger as 2 GB. It works on Macs, iOS and Windows devices. Free. Blip - Free Cross Platform File Transfers | AppAddict
Local Send - this works like Blip but is limited to devices that are on the same network, like your home Wi-Fi, or between you and your partner in a hotel. It works on Mac and iOS. https://appaddict.app/post/local-send-easy-to-set-up-and-easy-to-use
Native File Sharing - File sharing has been baked into Macs since the first version of OS X. Most experienced users can set it up easily enough. Set up file sharing on Mac - Apple Support
Cloud Services - If you use iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or a similar service, sharing is built in, whether the recipient has the service or not. You can generate links. In a case where you want to share between two computers that you own, you can install the client or sign into the same account in the case of iCloud on each of your computers. There are Windows and iOS clients for most services.
Nord VPN Meshnet - If you use Nord as your VPN, you can use Meshnet. Meshnet is a way to safely access other devices, no matter where in the world they are. Once set up, Meshnet functions just like a secure local area network (LAN) — it connects devices directly. This makes Meshnet a great fit for activities that require high speed, low latency, and advanced security — activities like file sharing, active work collaborations, and intense multiplayer gaming. - Meshnet explained | Meshnet docs
Syncthing - You can set this up between any two devices and automatically and securely keep an entire directory of files securely shared. Syncthing - Free and Open-Source Cross Platform File Sharing | AppAddict
Email - You can just about always use the modern equivalent of Sneaker Net, like a caveman and just email files in a pinch. it's the the fastest or the most secure or the most efficient method, but it will do in a pinch.
To tie these different methods together, a good file manager comes in handy. If you want to upgrade Finder on your Mac, my recommendation is Qspace. Qspace
For file management on an iOS device, you can't go wrong with FileBrowser Pro. - FileBrowser Pro - For File Intensive Network Connected Workflows | AppAddict
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Syncthing - Free and Open-Source Cross Platform File Sharing

I first heard about the free and open-source file syncing app, Syncthing, when I started using
Obsidian and may people were suggesting it as the back end of their DIY
vault syncing strategy. I ended up using another method for Obsidian,
but larley I have been exploring numerous ways to share files in my home
lab setup, which features Macs, iOS devices an Ubuntu Linux box and VMs
of all different sorts, including Windows.
The aptly named Syncthing Foundation is behind the app that they describe thusly
Syncthing is a continuous file synchronization program. It synchronizes files between two or more computers in real time, safely protected from prying eyes. Your data is your data alone and you deserve to choose where it is stored, whether it is shared with some third party, and how it’s transmitted over the internet.
Syncthing is private and secure.
- Private - no central server. Your data is only on your machines
- Encrypted - secured using TLS
- Authenticated - every device is identified by a strong cryptographic certificate.
Open
- Open Protocol - Adheres to a documented specification
- Open Source - All code is available in GitHub
- Open Development - When bugs happen, they are dealt with and not hidden
- Open Discourse - In the Syncthing Forum
Easy to Use
- Powerful - Sync unlimited folders with different people or just between your won devices
- Portable - Administered through a web browser
- Simple - "Syncthing doesn’t need IP addresses or advanced configuration: it just works, over LAN and over the Internet. Every machine is identified by an ID. Give your ID to your friends, share a folder and watch: UPnP will do if you don’t want to port forward or you don’t know how."
My first use case with Synthing is going to be loading downloaded videos from my Mac onto my iPad for use when traveling. I'll let you know how it goes.
I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer
The other newsletter is for this blog, one app review delivered to your mailbox every day. in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter
Oh Death
“A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” ― Joseph Stalin
During the pandemic, while half of America was arguing that COVID-19 was no worse than the flu, the city government of New York was hiring refrigerated trucks to keep bodies in because they ran out of space in their morgues. I've known may people who've been sick with COVID-19, but only one who died from the illness, a man I'd known since childhood. He was a retired judge, the father of a childhood friend and the wife of my former boss. While Wonder Woman and I were hiking the Appalachian Trail, he and his wife picked us up and took us to their Western North Carolina vacation home for a couple of meals and a shower. The next day they hiked with us almost to the Tennessee line. His fight with COVID-19 was short, One day he was joking with his family about not being able to talk and the next day he was gone. Forever.
My personal encounters with death have been just that, personal. I cam home from school one day in the ninth grade to find out that the matriarch of the farm I lived on had dies during the previous night. As a result, my entire family had to move to the home of my aunt's father. It was on the same farm, only 50 yards or so from where we lived.
During my school years, my class was lucky. We didn't lose anyone in the way that I witnessed numerous cohorts lose members during me educational career. As soon as we graduated, though, the toll started to mount. Within a year or two, car crashes claimed lives. A fiery plance crash in Gander, Newfoundland with nearly 300 members of the 101st Airborne Division aboard claimed the life of the trainer from my high school football team along with everyone else on board. Cases of cancer and sudden heart attacks took some of the star athletes we had as well.
My father talked about death often. Having spent two years in Vietnam, he'd witnessed too much of it. His generation died in that war in the tens of thousands. Additionally, since he was a pilot, he knew too many other pilots who had died in accidents at the hands of flight students or just by stupid bad luck when their helicopters hit unmarked power wires.
Even those of us who are not wrapped up in celebrity culture can still be affected by the deaths of famous people we never knew. I remember the August morning when my mother told my brother and me that Elvis Presley had died during the night. It seemed like that was a big deal for a long time, especially to the hucksters on television selling tribute albums and all the people who wrote books about The King. I remember when presidents Truman and Johnson died, pretty close together. Then it was Pope Paul VI and a month later his successor, John Paul !. I learned more about Catholicism during that period than I had ever know, mostly because there are so few Catholics in the small southern towns where I grew up.
John Lennon's senseless murder also impacted me. It seemed like so much of the 60s culture was gone before I could grow old enough to appreciate it with so many influential musicians dying young Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Keith Moon, John Bonham and more.
All of my grandparents survived until I reached adulthood. I was 40 when the last one passed away. The fact that my children got to know them is a source of great joy to me. Now that my oldest grandson is entering his 20s, I have hopes that my Dad will live to be a great-great-grandfather.
Some deaths are seemingly impossible to recover from. My youngest daughter isn't my biological child, but she is mine nonetheless. Her mother and I were married for 18 years. Four years after we separated, she died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. My daughter has struggled with it ever since. Today is the anniversary of the death of the father of my two step-daughters, who passed away only a year after his marriage to their mother ended. It was a tragedy and one that is still painful for them.
I try not to think about my own remaining years too much, or those of my parents and senior relatives. Yes, I know it is inevitable, but there is little I can do to prepare for it, and I'd rather just deal with it all when the time comes. It's a beautiful day in my corner of the world today, and I think I'll go outside and enjoy it for a while.
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Cooper River Bridge
One of the largest races in the world is the annual Bridge Run in Charleston, SC

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Probably the most influential time in my life were the years I lived on my uncle's farm, roughly 1979-1983. Although both of my parents were the children of farmers, I didn't have much exposure to agriculture before a fateful Easter vacation I spent with my uncle at an industrial pig farm he was managing. I was in the eighth grade, years away from being able to drive on the road. On the first day of vacation, he showed my brother and me how to operate his 1976 Ford Ranger pickup on the dirt roads of the farm. We also got to use a pressure watcher and assist in all kinds of chores, including a day in the breeding barn.
The following fall, I decided it would be a good idea to use my saved up lunch money to buy my very first joint. I couldn't wait until after school to smoke it, so I went out on the playground, in full view of an entire wing of classrooms, where all of my matches were blown out by the wind. Dejected, with no buzz, I went back into the school building, where I was immediately accosted by a teacher who'd seen me out her classroom window. To make a long story short, the school took a dime view of marijuana possession. The next thing I knew, I was on my way to a new life in a new town where they might let me go to school. That's how I ended up living and working on a farm.
My aunt and uncle treated me and still treat me like one of their sons. Their capacity for love seems limitless. Since I had a knack for getting into stupid amounts of trouble, my uncle decided to keep me too busy to get into mischief. If I weren't busy, I'd be too exhausted. It worked after a few spectacular missteps on my part. By the time I left that farm, everything else other people considered hard work seemed easy to me.
Now, I'm going to get to my point. The one thing I was bitter about in those days was a lack of praise. The old man just didn't believe in handing it out except in small amounts and on very rare occasions. I could spend an entire Saturday splitting multiple cords of firewood—some of the hardest work I've ever done, and he couldn't be bothered to acknowledge it. It drove me nuts. I respected (and feared) him too much to complain much, but every once in a while, I would say something. His standard answer was, "Do you want me to pat you on the back for getting out of bed?"
These days, he's very much a different man when it comes to handing out compliments. He makes it clear in no uncertain terms that he is proud of me, proud of my kids, proud of Wonder Woman. He even brags about teenage me and the things I did way back then.
As a result of my feelings of being unappreciated back in the day, I resolved early on to make it my life mission to hand out props whenever and wherever I could. In the years I worked in public schools, if I saw a teacher doing a good job, I'd tell them how awesome I thought they were. I'd tell the custodians, secretaries, nurses, and lunch ladies the same thing. My children have never doubted that their dad thinks they are superstars. I don't do it insincerely or to be flattering. I just think it is a nice thing to do for people in a world that can often seem cruel and uncaring.
I even hand out real compliments on the Internet to people who have been friendly and helpful. I know how good it feels to get that kind of feedback, even from faceless Internet strangers. That's why I am out here, just waiting for you to do something cool so I can let you know how much I liked it.
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Can You Help Me Find the Photos App I Need?

I'm going to turn the tables today. Instead of giving YOU
information on software, I'm going to ask you to give me some
recommendations. Specifically, I am looking for a photos app. Since I am
eliminating Google and Amazon from my online life, I won't have access
to their photo management tools, which, I will admit are pretty good,
considering that both companies will mine every bit of data they can
from my images in an attempt to extract money from me for their
billionaire owners.
Here are the features I'd like to have:
- Facial recognition to be able to identify people in photos and to be able to group photos of the same person together
- Object search (e.g., dogs, landscapes, babies etc)
- Being able to search by dates is a must
- Tagging
- Smart folders/albums
- The ability to use photos in my file system without the need to enter them into a proprietary system like Apple Photos Library
- The ability to at least read EXIF data and ideally to be able to (batch) edit it.
- A free trial or money back guarantee
- A companion iOS or iPadOS app would be awesome.
Potential Apps
So far, these have been suggested to me, but not buy anyone who actually has any experience with them:
If you know of or use a photo viewer or management program with all or
most of these features, please use one of the contact methods at the
bottom of the page to let me know. I appreciate it! Thanks for reading
App addict!
I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly
collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. -
✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou
Plummer
The other newsletter is for this blog, one app review delivered to your mailbox every day. in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter
My Enemy, My Friend
One of the fat ass squirrels from my backyard. I tried feeding them directly in an effort to get them to stop robbing my bird feeders but the greedy little bastards just laughed at me.

Dawn on the Blue Ridge Parkway
If you ever visit western North Carolina, it’s worth getting up early to catch views like this.

Advice for Grandparents
I'm lucky. All four of my grandparents lived into my adulthood. They were each wonderful people in their own way and each had a tremendous influence and helped me become the person I am today. I loved them all obviously and rarely does a day go by when I don't think of them in some way. My parents were teenagers when I was born, as was I when my kids came along. Mom and Dad were only 36 when they got into the grandparent game. Thankfully, my kids gave me a little more breathing room, but I've still been at it for twenty years now.
My personal advice to grandparents is to have as many adventures with your grandkids as you can. If circumstances permit it, give them the gift of your time. Take them camping, to fall carnivals and Polar Express Train Rides. Take them to see new Disney Movies. Remember their birthdays. Create some rituals. My kids know that every car trip with Wonder Woman and I involves a stop at the store for a snack and a drink. They know when they come to our house that we will have their favorite treats. We have always had a toybox in our house too.
Here are some more suggestions from around the internet.
10 Tips for How to Rock as a Brand-New Grandparent
Grandparenting Tips: How to be a Better Grandparent
How Can I Be A Fun Grandparent? 16 Tips For Grandparents – Retirement Tips and Tricks
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Don't Make Me Learn Something New!
I was directly involved in supporting education in a K-12 environment for a couple of decades and the in higher ed, at the university level, for a few more. My customers were the people who conveyed knowledge and, indirectly, to their students. I listened to plenty of enthusiastic teachers talk about teaching strategies, from the ones who were helping first-graders learn to read all the way through to physicians teaching medical students. Obviously, these instructors understood the importance of learning — for other people, but seldom for themselves, unfortunately.
Since the 90s, when technology started to become ubiquitous in the workplace and computer literacy became necessary in most professional level jobs, there have obviously been many changes. Just the way we store data has evolved from different sized floppy disks, to Zip Drives, writable CD-ROMS, larger hard drives, USB thumb drives to the cloud storage most people use today. Installing software went from typing esoteric commands into a terminal to merely clicking a single button in and app store. Yay for progress!
The problem is that the changes in the technology come too rapidly for many. It seems that there's a certain class of people who wake up one day and just decide they are done learning new things. They are just over it. It's like their brain is full and there is no room for any new information. I've been to countless meetings where I've listened to bosses agonize about how to implement something new while fooling end users into thinking nothing has changed. Bosses get to be bosses numerous times because they are people pleasers, and making people mad goes against the official boss code of conduct. When Microsoft decided to move the Start button from the lower-left side of the screen where it had happily rested since 1995, to the middle of the taskbar, there were millions of IT departments Googling "HOW TO MAKE WINDOWS 11 LOOK LIKE WINDOWS 10."
Doing something as simple as changing the naming scheme for network printers caused numerous professors, supposedly highly educated people, to lose their minds at my former job. They acted like the IT department had a meeting to see what we could do to make their jobs harder. In the early 2000s, Apple moved the power button from the right side of the original iMac to the front of the next generation of educational computers, the eMac. People freaked out about that too.
It's funny. When people go buy a fancy new car or the latest big screen television, they seem to have no problem learning the ins and outs of that tech. Some of that equipment can be pretty complicated, too. Those same people, however, are the same ones who can't seem to remember which password to use in the correct situation to effectively do the job their employer pays them for. Hell, there are more people than you probably want to know about who simply cannot create a password to save their lives following modern conventions. I've wasted hours of my life that I will never get back waiting for people to think of a usable password. Often, I would just have to step in and do it for them after they failed numerous times.
Huge numbers of people never read another book after they finish their formal education. Being entertained becomes the official purpose of life. That's why I get such a crush on anyone I see reading a classic novel or taking a night class at the community college just for the joy of learning a new skill or hobby. I have a long list of things I am interested in learning now that I have leisure time.
Thanks for reading. I'm sorry I missed a couple of days this week. Life gets busy.
I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer
The other newsletter is for my tech blog, one app review delivered to your mailbox every day, in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter
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Keyboard Centered Apps for Power Users

A global keyboard shortcut is a combination of keys you can press
while in any application on your Mac to execute an action belonging to a
background process. I typically have a half dozen or more apps running
in the background that use glocal keyboard shortcuts. Some of these
include:
Keyboard Maestro
Keyboard Maestro is an automation app that allows you to initiate or control just about any repetitive process. Don't let the name fool you though. Keyboard Maestro can execute actions based on two dozen triggers, not just keyboard combinations. Some of the actions I launch with the keyboard from Keyboard Maestro include typing in extra long passwords with a shortcut, launching apps using keyboard combinations, launching a shortcut that queries OpenAI using my API key, activating templates in Drafts, running AppleScripts and more.
My Top 10 Keyboard Maestro Macros
Raycast
Raycast is a keyboard app launcher with over 1000 available plugins, including an emoji picker, window manager, clipboard history manager, notes, passwords and many more. You can assign hotekys to any action. Some of the ones I use most frequently are searching Kagi, generating alt-text for images I post on the Internet, opening my downloads folder, searching social media sites, searching Reddit, searching YouTube, sending clipboard text to Drafts and Obsidian.
My 10 Favorite Raycast Use Cases (and all the apps it replaced) | Amerpie by Lou Plummer
Things 3
Things 3 is a task manager with clients for macOS, iOS and iPadOS. It has two built in global keyboard shortcuts: 1) The Quick Entry window lets you enter new to-dos into Things from anywhere without having to switch applications. Use the keyboard shortcut to make the window appear. 2) With Autofill, the Quick Entry window is automatically pre-filled with useful information from the application you are working in. From Mail, for example, it will create a link to the email you're reading. In a browser, it captures the URL of the page you are on.
Things 3, Maybe the Pinnacle in App Design | AppAddict
Dropover
Dropover is the king of shelf apps. Shelves are mini-platforms to hold files while you wait to move them or perform actions on them. Some of the actions you can accomplish from Dropover include sending a file to cloud storage and sharing the link, converting or resizing images, sending a file by Airdrop, in a message or email, attaching a file to a note. You can invoke Dropover when you are in any app, which is very convenient for grabbing an image from a web page or some text from any app. Dropover works well with Apple Shortcuts too, making it easy to move and manipulate files.
Supercharge
Supercharge is a an that features a variety of tweaks and shortcuts for a number of tasks. My favorites are quit all apps, hide all apps, close all notifications, open Passwords and toggle desktop widgets on and off.
Better Touch Tool
Better Touch Tool is anoter automation app that can do a couple of things that Keyboard Maestro and Raycast can't do, such as use the fn key and trigger actions from text strings. I use simple double taps of modifier keys to activate and deactivate Notification Center and Mission Control.
Better Touch Tool Favorites | AppAddict
Others
- Fantastical and BusyCal both allow you to create new appointments and tasks from anywhere on your Mac.
- Language Tool is a writing aid with spelling and grammar checking. You can invoke it anywhere you enter text.
- Default Folder X has a search tool that can bu sommoned from its menu bar interface at any time.
Making It Easier
Two free apps to get to make life as a keyboard warrior easier are Karabiner
Elements for remapping keys and creating macros and KeyClu,
which gives you a heads-up display of keyboard shortcuts in any app,
allowing you to enter your own for apps that it doesn't detect
automatically.
I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer
The other newsletter is for this blog, one app review delivered to
your mailbox every day. in case you don't have enough software in your
life - Subscribe |
AppAddict Newsletter
Georgia Mountains
The mountains in northern Georgia, taken from the patio of the lodge at Amicalola Falls State Park, home of the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail.

This Week's Bookmarks - Privacy Guides, 21-Day Cyber Cleanse, Famous Resaurants, True Crime, Wild West Food, Ad Blocker Testing, Liberation Library
Privacy Guides: Independent Privacy & Security Resources - Privacy Guides is a not-for-profit, volunteer-run project that hosts online communities and publishes news and recommendations surrounding privacy and security tools, services, and knowledge.
Cleanse - The 21-day Cyber-Cleanse: designed to remove toxic tech from your life
Most Famous Restaurant in Every State - Business Insider - From fine dining restaurants to local barbecue joints, every state has at least one legendary restaurant that everyone knows about.
True Crime - Masters treasures went missing, then the FBI showed up | GolfDigest.com -
The first item the young man stole from Augusta National was a green and white golf towel. This was just after the 2007 Masters, when he had come to understand it was customary for warehouse employees to take one or two small things
What Food was Served at Wild West Saloons? - YouTube - It starts with cowboy bacon and beans and goes from there - From A Taste of History
AdBlock Tester: test your AdBlock extensions - How good is your ad blocking setup? Just go to the page to receive a grade. If you want to get a score of 99 or 100 out of 100, shoot me an email and I'll send you my setup.
Liberating Library - Liberating Library is a book distribution program and online collection of relevant radical resources run by a Pan-African socialist.
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rclone - An Easy to Use and Powerful CLI

There are quite a few apps with GUIs available for Macs that let
you connect various cloud services to upload, download and move files.
Most of them are costly. Today I needed to move files from Google Drive
to a kDrive, a cloud storage company in Switzerland, Instead of using
one of the expensive apps, I opted for a free command utility, rclone,
and in just a few minutes initiated a complete transfer of the data on
my drive.
If you've dealt with cloud storage, including iCloud over the past few versions of macOS, you might agree with me that Apple has made a mess of it. They insist on hiding your files away in ~/Library/Cloud Storage and other non-obvious locations. By default, the files stay in the cloud, making utilities like Hazel ineffective managing them. You just never know when you click on a file if you are going to have to wait to download it or not. The official clients for Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive and Box.com us that strategy. Even when you select the option to keep a folder downloaded, you get no notice that the download is complete and, in my experience, I have found that the settins revert from time to time with no notice, forcing me to redownload files.
So, I was really happy today to take the time to set up rclone to move the files. You can get a good overview of rclone's history and capabilities from Wikipedia.. You can use rclone with a long list of cloud services.
You can download and install rclone right On a Mac from the terminal, using the command
sudo -v ; curl [rclone.org/install.s...](https://rclone.org/install.sh) | sudo bash
Documentation
You can read the documentation on rclone at the official GitHub repository.
Here are links on how to set rclone for a few common services:
Full Compatibility List
- Alibaba (Aliyun) Object Storage System (OSS)
- Amazon Drive (See note)
- Amazon S3
- Aruba COS[27]
- Backblaze B2
- Box
- C14
- Ceph
- Citrix ShareFile
- Cloudian[28]
- Dell-EMC ECS[29]
- DigitalOcean Spaces
- Dreamhost
- Dropbox
- Enterprise File Fabric[30]
- FTP
- Google Cloud Storage
- Google Drive
- Google Photos
- HDFS
- HTTP
- Hubic
- IBM COS S3
- Jottacloud
- Koofr
- Mail.ru Cloud
- Memset Memstore
- MEGA.io
- Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
- Microsoft OneDrive
- MinIO
- NetApp StorageGRID[31]
- Nextcloud
- OVH
- OpenDrive
- OpenIO[32]
- OpenStack Swift
- Oracle Cloud Storage
- ownCloud
- pCloud
- premiumize.me
- put.io
- QingStor
- Rackspace Cloud Files
- rsync.net
- Scaleway
- Scality[33]
- Seafile
- Selectel[34][35]
- SFTP
- StackPath
- SugarSync
- Tardigrade
- Tencent COS
- Wasabi
- WebDAV
- Yandex Disk
- Zoho Workdrive[30]
GUI Alternatives
File Managers/Browsers
- Odrive - $99 a year
- Multcloud - $189
- Raidrive $34 a year (limited free tier)
- Expandrive $75 lifetime
FTP/SFTP/Cloud Clients
Mounters (Network Drive Mappers)
- MountainDuck - $39
- CloudMounter - $75
- Netdrive - $50