2025
- Make Reddit links open in Old Reddit
- Open Twitter links in Xcancel to avoid adding any traffic to the official site
- Open Wikipedia links in Wikiwand for a more pleasant reading experience
- Open Google Map links in Apple Maps if you're trying to de-Google as much as possible
- Since Safari doesn't offer Kagi as a default search engines, you can use this extension to redirect all your searches to Kagi, skipping a trip to Google completely. There are other ways to do this, so if you have something that is already working, stick with it.
- You can also redirect any searched from Google to Brave Search or Startpage
- There are other rules to improve the user experience for Figma, Notion, Facebook, Google Search and multiple tweaks for YouTube
- The number of tattoos or piercings they have
- The kind of car they drive (unless it is a new, off the lot Tesla)
- The clothes they wear
- The color of their skin
- The use of profane language
- Their sexual preference
- Their gender identity
- Their nationality
- Their job
- What kind of computer operating system they prefer
- The items in their grocery cart
- Whether they know what to do when they forget their password
- Whether they will use a search engine to find out the answer to a question
- Politics
- Religion (if they belong to one that uses one of the categories above to judge people)
- If they start whispering when they describe another person's race
- How much they tip
- Nextcloud - a personal alternative to Dropbox, Google Drive, One Drive etc.
- Self-hosted Calibre ebook server
- Paperlessngx - a document management system
- Build a Big Collection: Add or edit up to 999 command snippets (each can be up to 4K in size)
- Save Time: Automatically insert the selected command or query directly into your Terminal. Command Keeper works with your choice of the macOS Terminal or iTerm, Warp, and Ghostty (if installed)
- Always Ready: Runs in the background, so its always available and you can even pin your favorite snippets to always appear first
- Powerful Filtering and Search: Filter your snippets by category and search your snippets by command, description, and even notes contents
- Keyboard Friendly: Use keyboard shortcuts to create snippets and browse through snippets efficiently
- Preserve Your Data: Export your snippets to a CSV or JSON file and backup your snippet database
- Fast and Lightweight: Its simple and minimalist design ensures it’s light on resources
- Wide Compatibility: Works on macOS Ventura, Sonoma, and Sequoia; optimized for Intel and Apple Silicon CPUs
- Archive, mark as favorite, add labels to your content so you can find it later.
- Search anything in your growing content and create dynamic collections. Highlight What Matters
- Highlight the key parts of any text content and come back to it later.
- Browse and find the highlights from all your content. Save Video Transcripts
- Save a video link and Readeck will retrieve the transcript when available.
- Read, export, highlight and search the save transcript as if it were an article. Export to E-Books
- Take an article with you on the ride home or a full collection for a weekend.
- Readeck lets you export articles and collections as a single ebook. It provides a standard catalog on supported e-readers. Adjust to Your Needs
- Read your way; set a different font, text size and line height.
- Readeck lets you do all that and remembers your preferred settings for your next read. Browser Extension
- Save while browsing with the browser extension.
- This includes the content on websites you can access but Readeck can't.
- Duplicates - Finds duplicates based on file name, size or hash
- Empty Folders - Finds empty folders with the help of an advanced algorithm
- Big Files - Finds the provided number of the biggest files in given location
- Empty Files - Looks for empty files across the drive
- Temporary Files - Finds temporary files
- Similar Images - Finds images which are not exactly the same (different resolution, watermarks)
- Similar Videos - Looks for visually similar videos
- Same Music - Searches for similar music by tags or by reading content and comparing it
- Invalid Symbolic Links - Shows symbolic links which point to non-existent files/directories
- Broken Files - Finds files that are invalid or corrupted
- Bad Extensions - Lists files whose content not match with their extension
- Uses a new lightweight electron framework
- Built-in game detection tools
- Very hackable for you developer types
- Made for privacy - Legcord automatically blocks all of Discord's trackers; even without any client mods, you can feel safe and secure! They also don't collect any data from you.
- Designed for Mac - Legcord is optimized for macOS, with a native screen sharing and a more Mac-like experience. It's optimized for both Apple Silicon and Intel macs! No more spinning fan when opening Discord.
- The script finds all .app directories in /Applications and ~/Applications.
- It extracts the application name.
- It performs basic sanitization of the name to make it more suitable for a Homebrew search.
- It uses brew search and brew search --cask to look for matches in both Homebrew formulae (command-line tools and libraries) and casks (GUI applications).
- The grep -i "^$search_term$" part tries to find exact matches (case-insensitive).
- Save the script to a file (e.g., check_brew_availability.sh).
- Make it executable: chmod +x check_brew_availability.sh.
- Run it from your terminal: ./check_brew_availability.sh.
- Naming variations: Homebrew package names might be significantly different from the application bundle names.
- False positives/negatives: The simple name sanitization might lead to incorrect matches or miss potential ones.
- Manual review needed: You'll likely need to manually inspect the output to confirm if the Homebrew package is indeed the same application you have installed.
Tiny Little Acts of Resistance
As a certified, card carrying, paid up member of the resistance, my days are spent with an eye towards doing something, anything to retain my sanity in a world seemingly going mad. I am always on the lookout for whatever I can do to bolster my faith in humanity and to connect with those who feel much the same way about the world as I do.
Here are a few of the things I've done recently.
Reaching Out
In 2010, on my 45th birthday, I went on a long bike ride with a group from my cycling club with a selection of much younger military guys and one civilian woman who was an elite road bike racer. I met my friend AJ that day. A couple of years later, when they got out of the Air Force, they left straight away for Springer Mountain, Georgia to hike the Appalachian Trail. AJ was the first person I'd ever known to start that journey. Years later, when I set out to do the same thing, they provided me advice and even met Wonder Woman and I in Maryland, bought us lunch, took us to the grocery store and offered up a variety of gear to us in case we needed it. Later on , AJ came out as non-binary. I've followed their life for a long time now and seen them complete an education, write and direct plays, complete unbelievable bike rides (like the Tour Divide), get married, parent two boys and joyously become an English professor.
I sent them a letter recently to let them know that I'm still a fan. We used to keep up with one another on Facebook, but since I left, connecting on Bluesky has not been as easy. Unfortunately, AJ's return letter bore the news that their boss at the college was trying to get them fired. The college is in an area that voted MAGA by a 3 to 1 margin, so you can guess why they want o part ways with my friend. It just goes to show that staying connected with the vulnerable people in our lives is something we have to do in times like this. We all need one another.
Speaking Out
If there has ever been a time to be loud and proud, 2025 is that time. I try not to let an opportunity to advocate for resistance pass me by. Just tonight on my App Review blog, I suggested a tool that lets people access information without putting money in the pockets of billionaires and fascists. If you need to see something from the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post or The New York Times, I've got you covered. And, if for some reason, you need to look at something from Twitter, I can show you how to do that without going to the Nazi bar. If I see someone with a Kamal bumper sticker or an anti-MAGA one, I go out of my way to praise them for their sanity.
Staying Informed
I refuse to doom scroll the news on my phone or computer. I haven't watched TV news since before Obama and the only thing I listen to these days is old music and the occasional audiobook. Still, I spend about 30 minutes every morning going through the headlines from the sources I trust. Here's a list. I don't have to wallow in self-pity and frothing anger. I just need to know what kind of damage the Fascists are doing. I take the time to celebrate victories, like the recent decision to stop the GOP from stealing an election here in NC that they lost by 70K votes. I'm also happy to see that the Catholic Church has a Pope who can help stifle the reactionary conservatism of the Americans. Go Leo!
Being Honest
I know that I speak to the current situation from a position of privilege. I'm a cisgender, heterosexual middle class white guy who gets to play the game of life on easy mode. I know this. I keep that in mind. I celebrate the others of my kind who are keeping things as radical as they can, like Adam from OMG.LOL who makes accountability his brand. Another OMG.LOL member @bbq just put up $10K of his dough to match donations to progressive causes and people have stepped up to support The Trevor Project , Prison Literacy, support for the neurodivergent, medical research and more. These role models give me hope for the future.
Resist!
Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇
Redirect Web for Safari
I've recently been using Safari much more regularly than I have in years. I found quite a few helpful extensions that improve the experience. One that I didn't find on my own, but that I am grateful to have discovered through a tip from a reader, is Redirect Web for Safari, which allows you to define how your computer handles links from certain sources. You can use predefined rules or build your own.
Predefined Rules
I have long supported ethical journalism sources financially. For years, the New York Times was the most expensive of my subscriptions, including TV, software. I was also a Washington Post subscriber for more than a decade. Last year, after the owners of the publications introduced changes to their editorial policies, I elected to quit supporting them financially. On the occasion that I want to read a story from either of them, I created simple rules that take their URLs and redirects them to the Internet Archive. The same rule works for other paywalled sites owned by billionaires, such as The Wall Street Journal and Bloomburg. You can do the same thing manually and with various other extensions, but this method has less friction than any that I've found. For that reason, it is the one I recommend using.
The extension costs $3.99 for a lifetime use or $1.99 for one year with a seven-day free trial. It has no ads and no tracking. It just makes the Internet better.
Crucial Track for May 8, 2025
"She Thinks I Still Care" by George Jones
What’s your favorite love song, and why? She Thinks I Still Care by George Jones - anyone who has ever gone through a reluctant breakup or two can relate to most of the lines in this classic tune by George Jones. It has also been recorded by Elvis, James Taylor, Merle Haggard and many others. I love to sing along with this one because It's one of the few songs that fits my voice's ability to harmonize.
Is it really called Chinese Chess?
I’m pretty sure it’s the amount of money riding on this game that attracts the crowd. Taken in a park on the edge of Chinatown in NYC.
BarCuts Brings Order to Your Shortcuts Menu
I make extensive use of shortcuts all day long on my Mac. I use
them to import data into Obsidian, generate alt-text for images I post
on my blog or social media, query Open.AI, dismiss notifications, quit
all apps, launch multiple apps at once, perform backups and so much
more. In the past, I've made extensive use of the option to add
shortcuts to a native menu running from the Mac menu bar, but over time
the list grew long and more difficult to mage.
Just in the nick of time, one of the friendliest and most helpful developers on the planet, Germany's own Carlo Zottman, released a small app called BarCuts. It also runs from the menu bar, but only shows shortcuts that work in the currently active app, plus ones that you decided you always want to have available.
This means that when I am in Obsidian, I see shortcuts to import a weather report and copy the day's appointments into my daily note. When I use any other app, I don't see those shortcuts. When I am in Safari, I see the shortcut I use to open paywalled site at the Internet Archive.
I always see the shortcuts for emptying my trash and dismissing all the notifications from the Notification Center. All you have to do to configure your options is to add a single Shortcuts action at the end of your existing shortcuts.
Because Carlo is good at what he does, "the menu can also be opened by a global keyboard shortcut, you can put your workflows in sub menus, and there's a separate section for all those important always-available workflows.
Naturally, BarCuts comes with scripting support, and you can also hook it up to Alfred or plug it into Raycast."
BarCuts has a two-week fully functional free trial. Licenses are €12 personal/€24 business and include updates for one year. You retain ownership and use of the app as long as it is compatible with macOS. There is no subscription.
For more shortcuts add-ons, see this review. Enhance Apple Shortcuts with These Apps | AppAddict
Graduation Gifts
My grandchildren started graduating from high school a couple of years ago and now every spring we face the dilemma of what to get them to help in their journey to the rest of their education. Although I don't see anything wrong with cash or gift cards, sometimes it feels good to actually buy a thing, something they might hesitate to get for themselves. Our oldest grandson opted to go the non-traditional route. He's taking classes and then tests to become a certified mechanic. An exceptionably bright lad, he feels the same way his father and I felt about sitting in classes at the age of 19. It's just not going to happen. His sister, on the other hand, is not only going to college (Mary Washington University in Fredericksburg, VA), she's going with a couple of hefty scholarships she worked her butt off to get.
Here are a few ideas for any graduates in your life.
College Must Haves: 30 Things You Need For Surviving - Getting set to pack up and head to college is super exciting. If you’re gearing up to do this, we’ve put together a list of miscellaneous things that’ll make your first year of college much easier: college must haves. Consider getting these items to survive your first years at college!
50 best high school graduation gifts for teens in 2025 - Graduation day is a momentous occasion for students and families, but especially when you’re in high school. The anticipation and work leading up to the commencement ceremony is stressful enough, but celebrating their accomplishments with a practical graduation gift (and perhaps a party!) will be well worth the hassle.
15 Practical High School Graduation Gifts for Your College Bound Kids - Your high school grad started off (and likely ended) their senior year behind a screen, socially distanced and deprived of the excitement of being the top dogs on campus. And with graduation behind them, many are being pushed right into college this fall back at the bottom of the totem pole.
Off the coast of County Cork, Ireland
The landscape near the shore is mostly sheep pastures. The waters are teeming with seals.
Crucial Track for May 7, 2025
"Welfare Music" by Hard Working Americans
What’s a hidden gem or underrated song you love? I don't think I've ever heard any of the Top 10 Most Played songs in my music collection ever played on the radio. My all time #1 most played is Welfare Music, a song I learned to love by listening to The Bottle Rockets but one that has been recorded by several other artists, notably John Hiatt and The Hardworking Americans. The tune has a nice guitar lick and some biting social commentary at the expense of the loathsome Jesse Helms and Rush Limbaugh.
Just Call Me Judgey McJudgeFace
Has anyone ever accused you of being judgmental? Did you ever wonder how they arrived at that conclusion without judging you? Tonight, I shall rant about a senseless admonition that no one actually follows. Usually when you get chided for being judgmental, you haven't done anything wrong, apart from stepping on someone's toes.
Typically, when people tell you not to be judgmental, what they mean is be aware that you may not have all the evidence to arrive at an informed opinion on a person's behavior. The most famous example of this is Chekov's story, The Mourner about a woman who fails to control an unruly child on a train trip. Her fellow passengers make the determination that she is a not proper mother until they find out the purpose of her trip is to accompany her husband's casket back home. I am fine with that kind of advice. Get the data you need to make informed decisions.
Making judgments is a survival skill. When we tell our kids not to hang out with hoodlums, we're instructing them to make judgments on other people's character, as we should. One of the most important jobs we have as parents is installing values in our offspring. They will inevitably reach their own conclusions on those values, but at least we get them pointed in the right direction. I'm pleased to say that my son and daughter are firmly anti-racist, and always have been. Both of them have traits I admire and seek to emulate as well. They are good parents. They've made good financial decisions. Not only that, but they work hard.
There are a great many things I will not judge people on:
Things I will judge people on:
The good news is that quite often, the result of me being judgmental is that I find that I admire something about a person. My judgments are usually more positive than negative. It's only in the case of modern MAGA behavior that I will unleash the thunderbolt of eternal damnation on your ass. Anyone who starts making excuses for the Fascists gets assigned to the bad list for all eternity. I'm old. I don't have the time or energy to put questionable people on a rehab program. If you back the fash, you're dead to me. Next, please.
Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇
County Cork
The rugged Irish coastline in County Cork makes the placid sandy beaches I’m used to, look kind of bland in comparison.
Crucial Track for May 6, 2025
"Convoy" by C.W. McCall
What's a gulity pleasure song? - Convoy by C.W. McCall - If you were a kid in the 70s, you probably thought this song was cool too. It's a tune about CD radios, a brief national craze during the decade. They were even options on high-end automobiles like Lincoln Continentals and Cadillac El Dorados. There is a certain beat poetry vibe to the lyrics, characterized by the unforgettable line "eleven long-haired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus." I recently heard this played on the Muzak system of a barbecue joint in Salem, VA and my respect for the owners grew in that moment.
Guilty or Not Guilty? How Do You Plead?
One of my bad habits was imagining myself to be a super-villain. It took me a long time to realize that I am not a unique and special snowflake. I am a man among men, just your average, garden variety dude, no better (and this is crucial) and no worse than the next guy. it's actually a skill of maturity to be able to realize that it's OK, in a general sense, to tell yourself that everybody fucks up from time to time. Good mental health does not include perfectionism, a certain impediment to actually making progress in this world.
I'm not a trained psychologist, nor am I well versed in therapy talk, but I know a few things about you. You have undoubtably done my some things in your life that you wish you hadn't. That does not define you. Once you honestly acknowledge to yourself the part you played in whatever it was and made an honest attempt to make amends for it, you can move on. In fact, if you don't move on, you're not being fair to yourself or the other people in your life.
One of the most dreaded parts of the 12-Step Recovery process, although ultimately, one of the most freeing, is the process of writing down what the program refers to as a searching and fearless moral inventory. What it really boils down to is actually making a list, with pen and paper, of all the stuff you feel guilty about along with your resentments towards, well, everything and anybody.
Guilt and its brother in arms, shame, are two of the worst impediments to leading a happy and useful life. They are intensely self-centered emotions. Like most things that are self-centered, they are cunning, baffling, and powerful and will lead you right back into self-defeating bad behavior. I don't know about you, but I can't live for long while wallowing in guilt and shame before I start looking for some relief. As an alcoholic, if there is one thing I know to be an unhealthy but sure fire way to squash some feelings out of existence, it's by drowning them in cheap bourbon. Of course, they will still be there to greet me when I sober up, but such is the illogical reality of the disease.
Since drinking stopped being an option for me in 2008, I had to find a healthy way to do two seemingly contradictory things: admit my part in the many, many mistakes I made over the years and let go of the guilt and shame attached to those things. I am a retrospective person by nature. If you've read this blog, you know that a lot of what I write is deeply autobiographical. My memory is weirdly specific. I may not be the best a figuring things out, thus my lack of math skills, but I can remember the hell out of a set of facts. What this means, practically, is that I deeply internalized seemingly every single time someone ever told me that I disappointed them, that I failed to live up to my potential or that I was just an asshole.
Step One was figuring out that not all of that was actually true. Even the people we love have agendas and issues. No one gets to define us to ourselves, but ourselves. I feel no guilt and no shame for my early and steadfast decision not to seek a formal university education. True, this decision may have caused me to earn less than the maximum amount of possible dollars, but so what? I had a great career in a field that I loved, with plenty of time to pursue things more important to me than work.
It is indeed a fact that I have been married four times, but anyone who knows me also knows that I am in a committed and happy relationship with a person I deeply love. Today is our 12th wedding anniversary.
We are the only people who really and truly know if we are committed to self-improvement. I'm a guy who had lots and plenty of opportunities to do better. Alcoholism is an ugly illness that is characterized by self-centered and dishonest behavior. It stops emotional growth and kills the maturity process. It prioritizes one thing above everything else in the world. Putting down the bottle down gave me the chance to do things that drinking robbed me of. I had the chance to be honest, first with myself and then with me family and the world. Lo and behold, did you know that being honest is the key to good mental health? Who knew?
Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇
A Mac Guy Gets Into Self-Hosting
Before 2025, my self-hosting experience had been limited to
running the media server software, Plex, on a 2009 iMac. When I retired
that machine, I didn't resurrect Plex on my new Mac, although I did hang
on to all the media files. I retired myself this year and resolved to
start self-hosting some services as a learning experience. My home
network consists of three Mac laptops, a Lenovo ThinkPad, that 2009 iMac
I mentioned, plus five iOS devices and an Amazon Kindle Fire (Android).
I elected to use the ThinkPad as a server, although the platform I chose, Unraid, will also run on a Mac. Many of the services it hosts are fully accessible on Mac and iOS devices. I picked Unraid because I have contacts who use it. It is not FOSS. A license that allows you to connect six hard drives in a RAID array is $49.
Unraid Benefits
• 1 year of free OS updates
• All Unraid OS features
•
Perpetual Starter license
• Access to Community Apps
• VM
and Docker Management
• Integrated Tailscale + VPN Support
•
Network-Attached Storage Dual Parity Protected Array, ZFS, BTRFS, XFS
Pools
In the two weeks I've been using it, I have installed a media server (Plex), a photo management server (Digikam), file sharing (Syncthing), and the Mac compatible VPN, Tailscale that allows geographically distant devices to interact as if they were on a LAN.
Other services I plan to investigate are:
In seeking advice from experienced self-hosting folks, I
received this detailed answer from a friend on Mastodon, @phillip@omg.lol
Unraid
"Unraid is probably the easiest turnkey solution if you have the cash to
throw at it. Easy App Store, Docker, VMs, NAS, etc. It stays easy while
leaving you tons of headroom to grow. There’s also a huge community with
tons of resources and docs behind it. The main con here imo is money.
Some have complained about performance issues, but afaik that’s only in
larger NAS setups."
yunohost
yunohost.org is pretty slick and even has its own App Store to make
downloading new apps dead simple. However, it doesn’t use Docker
containers (harder to switch to another platform later like Unraid) and
seems to prefer opening ports publicly. That not may be a con if you
were already planning on doing that anyways.
Yacht
For free + docker, I’d recommend a dashboard app like Yacht (or Dockge for even simpler). You’ll need to manually configure your apps, but it’s generally pretty straightforward and a “set it and forget it” kind of thing.
South End of Central Park Facing Columbus Circle.
The land occupied by Central Park is probably worth about a trillion dollars, and it is a testament to good judgment that it continues to exist. It’s truly a national treasure.
Live in Concert
Typically, I just can't bring myself to part with the exorbitant amount of cash it takes to go to concerts these days. The thought of shelling out several hundred dollars to see a billionaire make music just doesn't sit well with me, no matter how much I love Paul McCartney or Bruce Springsteen. Then there's the whole "being around other people" thing that can sometimes be problematic if those other people are drunk or rude or both. Moreover, I may be a grumpy old man, so there is that.
Concerts weren't always crazy expensive and my tolerance for other people wasn't always as low as it is now. I don't have a long list of shows to reference. I knew someone who lived in Germany in the late 70s, and she had double fistfuls of tickets to huge festivals and concerts she'd made it to. The list of acts was long and storied Clapton, The Who, Yes, Muddy Waters, Todd Rundgren, Genesis, The Stones. Zeppelin, Iggy Pop.
I never went to any shows while I was in high school, too poor. The first time I saw popular live music was July 4th, 1983 at Ft. Jackson, SC when our drill sergeants marched us dutifully to see The Guess Who performing for the troops. I knew the same two Guess Who songs everyone knows, American Woman and No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature.
The next year, someone gave me tickets to see Heart and Eddie Money at the local auditorium. It's main claim to fame is that it's where Elvis's next concert was to be held before he died. I don't remember much about the show. I was there by myself and while I liked both acts, neither of them were among my favorites.
The best show I saw in my 20s was complements of my mother, who gifted my siblings and i tickets to see Paul Simon when he was touring for the album, Rhythm of the Saints, the one that came after Graceland, which is one of my all-time favorites. Paul sand all the old hits, lots of stuff from Graceland and engaged with the audience all night long. He even gave a shout-out to the section where we were sitting in appreciation of our non-stop dancing for the entirety of the show. Somehow we even managed to sway to Bridge Over Troubled Water.
During the following years, I saw two of my favorite acts twice. The first was James Taylor, performing just a few miles down the road from his childhood home in Chapel Hill. It gives me cold chills to hear that man sing "In My Mind, I'm Gone to Carolina" under a crisp, springtime Carolina moon. The other repeat performance was by a man I considered to be a living legend, Doc Watson, master of bluegrass, country, folks, blues and gospel music. Doc was blind from the age of two. Seeing him walk onto the stage, holding on to the arm of his accompanist, Jack Lawrence, was breathtaking. I was so familiar with his voice that when he started to speak to introduce his songs, I felt like I was sitting in my living room listening to an old friend.
A few years after they hit it big, Hootie and the Blowfish put on a free show in the center of the town where I live. We went down extra early to get good seats and ended up less than 50 feet from the stage. People were in a good mood, proud of having such a talented group playing their heart out for the locals. At the end of the show, Darius Rucker said, "We're from the south and when we play in the south, we like to do this song because people appreciate it." Then they launched into the David Allen Coe version of "You Never Even Called Me By My Name." It was glorious.
Some of my other favorite shows include Gillian Welch with David Rawlings at the NC Museum of Art. Before they went there separate ways, I also saw The Carolina Chocolate Drops with Rihiannon Giddens play a free show in Black Mountain, NC.
For the first time in ages, I'm actually going to a concert next weekend in Winston Salem. Wonder Woman bought us tickets to see Old Crow Medicine Show. These fellows might have gotten started way up in Ithaca, New York, but they wrote what is now considered to be the unofficial North Carolina state song., Wagon Wheel, which declares, "If I die in Raleigh, at least I will die free."
Headed down south to the land of the pines
I'm thumbin' my way to North Caroline
Starin' up the road
And pray to God I see headlights
I made it down the coast in seventeen hours
Pickin' me a bouquet of dogwood flowers
And I'm a-hopin' for Raleigh
I can see my baby tonight
Five New to Me Apps for a New Week
iDrive Cloud Backup
From Assaf at Labnotes - IDrive Cloud Backup I started looking into Backblaze alternatives, and so far iDrive is a strong contender. I chose the mini plan, 500GB of backup for $9.95 a year (it’s somewhere in the UI, look it up). It does have continuous backup, but so far I’m happy just running on a schedule. Can’t figure out how to get it to ignore repeat directories like every node_modules, or limit by file type/size (eg don’t backup large videos). And the UI is not pleasant, but neither is Backblaze (their restore is overly complicated), so just trading one deficiency for another. Oh, but they do give you 100GB of space to sync files between your devices.
Command Keeper
Command Keeper by Ari Feldman - Use Command Keeper (Free) to easily organize and access your command line snippets, shell scripts, and even SQL queries. It's ideal for app developers, web developers, or just anyone who needs to spend time working with command line interfaces.
Readeck
Readeck - (Free)a
web app that runs as PWA on a Mac with self hosting available this year.
It's an open source read it later application
Curate
Your World
Czkawka
Czkawka
- (Free) - An open source app with multiple tools to
cut down on accumulated cruft on your Mac.
Multiple
tools to use:
Legcord
Legcord - is here to help you hate
Discord less. It's a lightweight, free and open-source Discord
client.
Highlights
Sunrise from the Carolina Coast
Great big beautiful morning to y’all. The Atlantic Ocean (Wrightville Beach) is just a couple of miles beyond that treeline. I might just have to go take a walk there after breakfast.
How to Check All Your Apps for Homebrew Availability
I don't think there is any question on how useful the free Mac
package manager, Homebrew, can be. You
can download and install an app with just one simple terminal command,
something like:
brew install bbedit
After it's installed, there is no ZIP archive or DMG file to clean up or manage. To update you apps installed with Homebrew, you don't need a special app or a subscription to anything. You just open a terminal windows and run:
brew upgrade
Your apps will be upgraded in place with nothing for you to clean up. To back up your configuration, you just run
brew bundle dump
and a custom brewfile will be created at the root of your home directory. If you get a new Mac od do a fresh install on your current machine, you can use that brewfile to download all your apps and packages with one command.
If you are late to the party and already have an /Applications folder full of your favorite apps, don't worry, you can use a simple shell script to compare what you have installed with what is available for the Homebrew catalog. It won't take long to replace your manually installed apps with their Homebrew counterparts.
How To Check Your Applications Folder
Here is the script. It isn't 100% foolproof, so read the explanation and don't empty your trash until you've verified that the app you got from Homebrew is the same as the app you replaced.
\# List all applications in /Applications and ~/Applications find /Applications -maxdepth 1 -type d -name "*.app" -print0 | while IFS= read -r -d $'\0' app_path; do app_name=$(basename "$app_path" .app) echo "Checking: $app_name" \# Sanitize the app name for Homebrew search (replace spaces with hyphens, etc.) search_term=$(echo "$app_name" | sed -e 's/ /-/g' -e 's/\./-/g' -e 's/@.*//') \# Basic sanitization, might need more \# Search Homebrew formulae brew search "$search_term" | grep -i "^$search_term$" && echo " Found in Homebrew formulae" \# Search Homebrew casks brew search --cask "$search_term" | grep -i "^$search_term$" && echo " Found in Homebrew casks" done
Explanation:
How to use:
Limitations of this script:
In case you are wondering, this script and the instructions were written with the help of an LLM coding GPT. I've tested it on several different Intel and Apple Silicon Macs with solid results.
This Week's Bookmarks - Classic Marketing, LBJ, Goodbye Google, No WoW for 1yr, Best Books, Holocaust Survivors on Freedom, Photographers in Vietnam
The raccoons who made computer magazine ads great - In the 1980s and 1990s, PC Connection built its brand on a campaign starring folksy small-town critters. They'll still charm your socks off.
LBJ & the Great Society - Ken Burns - LBJ "voted against every civil rights bill during his tenure as congressman, then spearheaded the greatest civil rights measures since Reconstruction".
Why I abandoned Google search after 27 years — and what I’m using instead - Google = a once dependable search engine that has lately become nearly unrecognizable to anyone who remembers the days of 10 blue links and the motto "don't be evil."
Netigen A Year Without Azeroth - This feels entirely too dramatic, but yesterday marked the one year anniversary of my quitting World of Warcraft—an event that feels both overwrought and consequential.
Best Books of the 21st Century (So Far) | Kirkus Reviews - Warning! If you are a compulsive book buyer, like me, this might get expensive.
Our Freedom is Fragile: Lessons From the Jewish Children Who Fled Nazi Germany ‹ Literary Hub - "America is no longer a country of refuge but one that is preying upon its most vulnerable inhabitants, including children, who stand to suffer the most…"
How Photography From the Vietnam War Changed America - The New York Times This week marked the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. The images in this article are some of the most influential works of photojournalism ever taken.
Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇