Apps | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

Jan 20, 2025 ∞

Slash Page Highlights

Slash from Guns-n-Roses

Last year, when Robb Knight created the Slash Page website, I spent an afternoon creating a few of my own. Since then, I've periodically updated them as life has continued around me. Robb defines Slash pages as "common pages you can add to your website, usually with a standard, root-level slug like /now, /about, or /uses. They tend to describe the individual behind the site and are distinguishing characteristics of the IndieWeb."

Although some grumpy types rebel at the thought of having the same pages on their blog as others have, as is their God-given right, I happen to enjoy seeing how original different people can be as they riff on the same ideas, If you've created your own Slash pages, feel free to drop a link in the comments so others can check them out.

My Slash Page Home

Check out the links to the individual pages of you want to see the whole thing. These are a few highlights

/Interests

Apple technology
📷 Photography - I love street photography the most
🇮🇪 🇬🇧Northen Ireland, its history and politics
🏃‍♀️Ultrarunning (as a spectator and crew member)
📺 British police procedurals, like Endeavour or Broadchurch

/Nope

No, Mr. Paywall, I do not have to pay to read. I haz skillz.
Pay TV with commercials is an oxymoron
I don’t want to upsize, super-size or biggie size. Bruh, have you seen my waist?
Person at my door, I don’t want to buy magazines, home security or anything else
I want gas, not a carwash for my rusted out 2005 Camry

/Someday

Eat dinner in New Orleans
See assault rifles banned again
Palestine
Go to my Mom’s 100th birthday party
See a woman elected US president

/Blogroll

/Save

/Feeds

/Subscriptions

Blogs
Joan Westerberg	$4.17
Jason Kotke	$2.50
Hey Dingus	$1.00
Matt Langford	$1.00
Flohgro	$1.00
Keenan	$1.00
Manuel Moreale	$1.00
Numeric Citizen	$1.00

| | $12.67 |

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Jan 20, 2025 ∞

Strategies for Preserving Digital Memories

Digital Memories Graphic

I have copies of blog posts I wrote in the 1990s for my first blog posts on GeoCities. I've lost count of how many computers I've accessed them on. I have copies of digital photos I took using a Sony Mavica camera, which used a 3.5 inch floppy to save the images. All of those songs I downloaded using Napster during its brief moment in the sun, I have all of them too. In fact, I have multiple copies of all of those memories. It's not hard to do and if you don't have a system, you should create one.

Tips for Saving Documents

The two best formats for saving text based documents are as plain text/Markdown or as PDFs. Microsoft Word might be ubiquitous, but the format changes and you are never guaranteed to be able to open old Word documents in new versions of the application and across platforms. Luckily, the ability to convert a Word document into a PDF is bulit right into macOS and Windows.

How I do convert a Microsoft Word document to PDF format? - Ask A Librarian

Use Plain Text to Future-Proof Your Writing | Writing Pursuits

Tips for Saving Photos

I have copies of my photos on an external hard drive and on three different cloud services. It's easy to set up a modern computer or phone to automatically save photos to multiple cloud services. If your photos are valuable to you, and I consider mine to be priceless, make an investment in having multiple copies.

Set up and use iCloud Photos - Apple Support

Google Photos: Edit, Organize, Search, and Backup Your Photos

Transfer Photos and Videos to Amazon Photos - Amazon Customer Service

Tips for Saving Music

If you have music your purchased from an artist at a coffee shop or after a bar concert, chances are, it's not going to be on Spotify or Apple Music. If you have bootlegs collected over the years, you want find that on commercial streaming services either. To make sure you keep a copy of those important tunes regardless of what happens to your computer, put a copy of them on an external drive and a cloud drive, like Dropbox, Google Drive or One Drive. If you use Apple Music, you can upload them using a special Apple service and listen to them in the cloud.

Subscribe to iTunes Match - Apple Support

Tips for Saving Memories

If you are a Mac user, I highly recommend the journaling app, Day One. When you pair Day One with the automation service IFTTT, you can use it as a record for your whole life. I save my location history, media consumption, social media entries, blog posts and my own hand written memories in Day One. You can use it to create paper version of your journal and PDF versions.

Connect Your Mac Apps with IFTTT | AppAddict

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Jan 20, 2025 ∞

Apps for Trakt

The extensible tracking service, Trakt, for keeping up with your TV and movie watching habits has been around a while. You can use Trakt in a browser, but It has an API that allows app developers to incorporate the Trakt database into their products. Recently, Trakt got a significant new feature with the introduction of scrobbling, the automatic addition of shows watched to your personal database from five of the largest streaming services:

Netflix
Max
Hulu
Amazon Prime
AppleTV+

It also added scrobbling from several popular media centers and players, like Plex, Kodi and VLC

The features in the Trakt API and companion apps allow you to track what you're watching, add to lists, discover, find where to watch (via a partnership with Just Watch), see what's up next and get recommendations. Trakt has a free tier and a pro tier. I've had a pro membership for a decade. It provides a lot of value, and I've recommended it to everyone in my family. If you would like a free one-month pro trial, use this link.

Mac Apps

My current choice of apps for Trakt integration is Sequel Entertainment Database, an app that also provides lists and tracking for print and audiobooks as well as games. It is in iOS/iPadOS app that runs on Macs with Apple Silicon. There are several other well regarded apps that run natively on the Mac.

iOS Apps

I've used various iOS apps with Trakt over the years, and my favorites are:

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Jan 19, 2025 ∞

Using Obsidian and Drafts Together

When using a Mac for writing, I'm all in on the notes app Obsidian, a plain text/Markdown editor. With it, I use various plugins to create a personalized workspace that provides me with all the tools I want. I use

The editing toolbar
Better word count
Reading lever indicator
Language Tool, a freemium grammar checker
Paste URL into selection

On iOS, however, I prefer to write using Drafts, also a plain text tool, but one designed as a temporary holding spot until the text is moved to its final home. Drafts has an online directory where you can find extensions that add to its capabilities, making it useful with various apps, not just Obsidian. I use it with Things 3, Google, Dropbox, Google Drive, Day One, Gmail and ChatGPT. There are also extensions to format Markdown and for other text manipulation actions.

My problem with Obsidian on iOS is that although the program now opens much quicker than it used to, it is slower than I'd like to sync, even though I am a paid Obsidian sync user. It's also prone to crashing and restarting if I try to do certain things while it's syncing. Sometimes, if I've started my daily note on my Mac and I if try to open it on my phone before the sync finishes, my existing content gets overwritten or a duplicate file is created. To avoid creating content on the phone with Obsidian. I just use it as reference tool.

Both Obsidian and Drafts are universal apps. Anything you create on one hardware platform eventually becomes available on all platforms, Mac and iOS. Here are my different use cases for Drafts with Obsidian.

Send to Obsidian (link)

This action creates a new note in the inbox of my vault with the contents of the Draft. I only use one vault, but if I used more than one, I could use different versions of this Drafts extension to send notes to different vaults.

Append to Daily Note (link)

If I have information in a Draft that I want to add to my daily note, this extension appends the information to the bottom of the note verbatim. It's best not to run the extension until after opening Obsidian for iOS and letting it sync.

Append to Daily Note With Time and Place (link)

This action adds a time stamp and the GPS coordinates to the text appended to the bottom of my Daily Note. I use this a lot when traveling.

Notes Created from Vivaldi with an Apple Shortcut (link)

The Obsidian web clipper works with Safari but not other browsers. I use a shortcut available through the sharesheet to send web pages as Markdown files to Drafts. Then I can send them on to Obsidian, from my phone if I need to, or I can just wait until I am back at my Mac.

See More Obsidian Posts

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Jan 18, 2025 ∞

SnapMotion - High Quality Image Captures from Video, Made Easy

Trying to capture high-quality images from a video can be a frustrating and time-consuming ordeal, requiring the use of multiple apps , the limitations of your screenshot utility, inexact dimensions and extra post-production work. Or you could just use SnapMotion from developer Needed Apps.. SnapMotion can load and play any video format compatible with Apple's QuickTime Player: MPEG-4, HEVC and MPEG-2, MPEG-4, HEVC, H.264, H.263, H.261, Apple Pro Res, DV, Motion JPEG. It can easily handle 4K and 8K videos without bogging down.

To use the app, you can load a video from one of three sources:

A file on your drive
A video in your photos library
A video from a URL, if the site allows it. The promotional material claims that SnapMotion works with YouTube URLs, but in testing, that turned out not to be accurate. Still, You can use an app like Downie to easily download about any video you can access online.

You can scrub through the video until you find the scene you want to capture as a still image, Then you can advance in increments as small as one frame at the time until you find the exact image you want. If our prefer, you can use the batch capture feature to generate thousands of images, which you can then evaluate individually.

SnapMotion captures images in four formats: PNG, JPEG, TIFF and HEIF. You can adjust the DPI up or down from the default of 72. If your source video contains metadata, you can elect to import that along with your images.

You can download a free trial of SnapMotion on the developer's website. It is also available for purchase on the Mac App Store for $8.99. Purchasing it from the App Store also provides you with access to the iPad and iPhone version. If you have a Setapp subscription, it is included.

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Jan 17, 2025 ∞

Quick Tips for App Installation Using Hazel

In this post, I show you how to automate the installation of Mac apps in the two post popular formats ZIP and DMG, so that all you have to do is download a file from a developer's website and with no further action from you, the app will end up in your Applications folder just like if you'd downloaded it from the App Store.

Typically, when you download a Mac app from a developer's website, it will come in one of three formats

ZIP Archive
DMG Disk Image
PKG - Package Installer (requires manual installation)

You can automate the installation of ZIP archives and DMG dish images with Hazel and a ninety-nine cent app from the Mac App Store.

DMGs

The app that works best for me is RapiDMG. When you make RapiDMG your default app for opening disk images, double-clicking on the file mounts the disk image files, extracts the application contained in it to the Applications folder, deletes the DMG (if that is your preference) and then highlights your new installed app in the finder. To automate it, create the following rule in Hazel for your downloads folder.

ZIP Archives

You don't need any additional software to extract and move applications. Everything is built into Hazel. You'll need to add two rules for your downloads folder. The first will extract the app from the archive. The second rule will move it to the Applications folder.

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Jan 17, 2025 ∞

Facescreen - Useful Add-on for Screencasting and Presentations

I often have to create screen recordings on my job to distribute to the people I support for tutorials. Occasionally I do screen sharing through Microsoft Teams when conducting training. Facescreen, a utility from developer Ram Patra, provides a useful complement to these use cases. It adds a feed from my webcam with a small configurable view of my face to personalize the video. In addition to the image, Facescreen also lets me add text, such as my email or a website related to the subject of the tutorial or training. It's a nice professional touch.

Facescreen, like other apps from this developer, lets you customize almost every element of what is displayed.

Image Adjustments

Shape
Aspect
Orientation
Size
Zoom
Color
Mirror option

Text Adjustments

Font
Size
Color
Background color
Radius
Padding

You have the option to run Facescreen as a login item and to customize keyboard shortcuts to show and hide the webcam image, toggle the text and adjust the size of the image.

More information on Facescreen is available at its website. Facescreen costs $4.99. It's a one-time purchase which includes all updates. It will soon be available on Setapp. Although there is not a free trial, the developer has a no questions asked money-back guarantee. For more presentation help from the developer, check out Presentify.

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Jan 16, 2025 ∞

Disk Drill Revisited - Recovering 87K Files from a Drive That Finder Could Not Read

I first wrote about Disk Drill several months ago. The review is below. I recently had a chance to put the paid version of the data recovery tools to work in a real-world situation. I was presented with a 2TB NTFS formatted drive that would mount on my Mac, but displayed the message "Drive not available" and showed no files structure in the Finder. The drive belonged to a relative who lost access to her cloud account when switching jobs and ended up with only one copy of her files from a 20-year career - on a bad drive.

Disk Drill scanned the drive, and it was able to see files on it. It wanted me to make a byte for byte copy, but I didn't have another 2TB drive on hand. I had two 1TB hard drives and a dual drive bay, though. I used the Mac disk utility to combine the two physical drives into one logical drive and tried to initiate the copy again, but still got a message that the drive was too small. Since I knew that there was less than 100 GB of actual data on the drive, I was able to adjust the size of the number of bytes to be copied and the backup started. Although data seemed to be moving quickly, the progress indicator said the backup would take 28 hours. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Rather than doing a byte for byte copy, which also includes unused space, I elected to Disk Drill's recovery option instead. I initiated it and began to copy files, sometimes quickly and at other times seeming to stop. I got messages about the disk having physical damage, but the program never quit. After about 90 minutes, I had 86K files recovered.

I did not have to pay the full retail price to use the recovery tools because the app is available as part of Setapp, a $10 a month subscription that gives you unlimited access to hundreds of software titles.

Original Review

Disk Drill 5 by Cleverfiles is marketed as data recovery software to retrieve lost files from internal and external drive media as well as iPhone, iPad and Android storage. Its website goes into considerable detail on its ease of use, its power and its ability to recover files. The free product allows you to preview what data is recoverable, but it takes the $89 paid product to actually recover your data using its full suite of tools. There are some free recovery options too, but they require you to implement some (included) tools before use.

Free Tools

Even if you aren't in need of data recovery, however, Disk Drill is a worthy download because of the bundle of free tools it includes:

Disk Health
Free S.M.A.R.T. Disk Monitoring Stays Alert for Any Potential Disk Issues. It works on both internal and external drives.

Mac Cleanup
Analyze Disk Space, Locate Unused Files and Space Hogs, Free Up Your Storage Effortlessly.

Duplicate Finder
Easily Find and Remove Duplicate File Locations on Your Drive.

Recovery Drive
Create Your own Bootable USB Drive for Free Mac OS X Data Recovery.

Data Protection
Protect Your Data with Recovery Vault or Guaranteed Recovery. Recover it for Free.

Data Backup
Create Byte-to-byte Disk & Partition Backups for Future Mac OS X Recovery. In my testing of this feature on the internal hard drive of an M3 iMac, Disk Drill said "This drive is encrypted with the Apple M1/2 Security Chip. You can still back it up into a byte-to-byte disk image, but it probably won't be recoverable." This leads me to believe that a product like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! is better suited for the task. Disk Drill did fine, however, making a copy of a 500GB external disk.

You can download all of these tools for free from Cleverfiles.

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Jan 15, 2025 ∞

What I'm Using on Reddit in 2025

Reddit This repost from my Obsidian blog got a lot of play on Reddit

You can absolutely waste some of your wild and precious life if you start doomscrolling in the wrong places on Reddit. Used wisely, however, Reddit can provide you with information on just about anything you are interested in. If you use it wisely and in accordance with the peculiar culture of the site, you can also make people curious enough about what you are up to in your other web endeavors, if you write about topics that Redditors are interested in.

I tend to frequent subreddits that mostly pertain to technology and the federated social media these days. Here are my current favorites.

r/MacApps

This is where I spend the most time. The mods of this sub were cool enough to add a link to AppAddict in the sidebar after I made an effort to cross post my reviews in their entirety every day for a few months. I only link back to my blog in posts I make if I am answering questions about an app or making recommendations.

r/ObsidianMD

Aside from all the meaningless pictures of people's graphs, this sub is an excellent place to find out about new plugins, new workflows and new use cases for what I think is the best app since the invention of the browser

r/macOS

This sub is huge with over 400K members. I am a mod here, but don't post much. It's not the friendliest community. There is a lot of one-upping going on and you can see the neck-beards doing their neck-beard things, but if you overlook all that, you can learn a lot.

r/BlueskySocial

One of the coolest things about Bluesky, is the public APIs it has lend themselves to a lot of neat websites and small software tools being developed. This is the place where you can find out about them. It's also a place where you can get your fill of Twitter hatred whenever you need to re-up, because the folks who post here never tire of putting down the bird site.

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Jan 15, 2025 ∞

Using Google Photos on iOS Makes Leaving Meta Easier

If you've had enough of corporate owned social media, specifically Facebook and Instagram, and are investigating how to preserve your photographic memories, the quickest and easiest way, if you have space available, is to transfer them to Google Photos. You can do it from your iPhone.

Click the plus button at the top of the screen
Then click "Import from other places"
Select Facebook and when you authenticate, you will be offered the opportunity to import from your Instagram account(s) as well.

Other Reasons to use Google Photos for iOS

Cross-platform support - if you use both iOS and Android devices, perhaps two different phones or a phone and tablet, Google photos is much easier to access on an iPhone than trying to access iCloud Photos from a browser on Android.
Automatic Backups - Google photos can upload your iPhone photographs automatically and delete the originals to free up space
More Free Storage - Apple only provides 5GB of free storage with iCloud, while Google provides 15GB
Google Lens is baked in - In my experience, Google machine learning does a better job of searching through my photo collection than Apple's tools
Create Movies and Collages - Google photos also has decent editing tools in the stock app. You get even more if you have a Google One subscription.
Manage Everything in iOS - With Google Photos, you can do complete management of your library right from your phone: share photos, create albums, editing etc.

There's nothing stopping you from using Google Photos and iCloud for a redundancy. Just remember, both of these services are syncing services. That's different from a backup. If you delete photos from either app, using the wrong procedure, they will stay in your trash for a period of time, but then they will be gone forever.

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Jan 14, 2025 ∞

Recent Additions at MacMenuBar

One of the websites that stay open in my browser at all times is MacMenubar.com. It's a deep resource for new Mac apps in multiple categories. It currently features links and short descriptions to over 1,000 applications. Here's a list of the latest additions and links to all the different types of apps on the site.

Kleanly - Clean your Mac's keyboard, trackpad and display - With just a tap, Kleanly lets you completely disable your keyboard and trackpad, allowing you to clean them without turning your Mac off.
Trace - This menu bar app tracks the active apps and websites you visit without requiring any extra plugins or extensions (works with Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, Arc, Brave, Chromium, and more).
Onliner on the Mac App Store - Onliner keeps you “online” effortlessly by simulating undetectable mouse activity in the background. Ideal for remote workers and professionals, Onliner ensures uninterrupted focus and avoids idle status notifications. Simple, efficient, and smarter than any mouse jiggler.
fayazarahawa A simple white noise app which sits in the menubar - Hawa means air/breeze in Hindi. This menubar plays ambient sounds to help you focus on your work or relax. You can choose from a variety of sounds, adjust the volume of each sound individually, or create your own mix.
Deskeen - Capture your insight! - This menu bar app is designed to efficiently capture your screen. Every feature is accessible through quick keyboard shortcuts. Deskeen can read everything, from symbols to languages.
RSS Ticker News Feed on the Mac App Store - This menu bar app is an RSS reader designed to mimic the ticker display seen on forex stock exchange boards. News feeds update automatically when their respective RSS feeds are refreshed. The free version is limited to a single RSS feed.
Sudoku Anyway on the Mac App Store - This menubar app features unlimited puzzles, five difficulty levels, customizable board colors, and helpful hints.
Learn Flags - Menu Edition on the Mac App Store - Learn world flags and boost your memory with this quick-access menubar game.
Captain for Mac - Manage Docker containers instantly from your menu bar. See which containers are running and which have stopped.
RightMenu Master 1.11.0 - This menu bar app is a Finder extension that adds powerful functionality to the right-click menu and toolbar in Finder.
Overkill-for-mac Stop iTunes from opening when you connect your iPhone - This menu bar app makes sure iTunes never interrupts your work. If you have other apps you don’t want to launch automatically (e.g. Photos app), you can add those apps to the Overkill list as well.
Let It Snow - A touch of winter with snowflakes that gracefully drift across your screen.
MenuBarGrid on the Mac App Store - Turn Google Sheets into powerful menu bar apps. Customize layouts, automate updates, and manage projects effortlessly.
Ping MenuBar - This menu bar app displays ongoing ping (ICMP) results as a compact visualization. The design is similar to Pingr.
NeverNap in the Mac App Store - NeverNap keeps your Mac awake, preventing sleep or screensaver activation for 5 minutes or indefinitely. It ensures smooth operation without manual system adjustments.

Categories at MacMenuBar

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Jan 13, 2025 ∞

FSNotes - A Free and Open-Source Successor to NValt

FSNotes is a plain text note editor with a two-pane interface of Brett Terpstra's classic Nvalt, which ceased development in 2017. FSNotes has an extensive feature set for run-of-the-mill notes and for developers. If you have an existing folder of plain text or Markdown notes, you can access them from FSNotes by moving or copying the files to the default folder or by changing the path to the folder you are already using.

There are built-in keyboard shortcuts for searching your notes database, creating a new note from the clipboard contents and for creating new notes. You can choose a default external editor if you want to use something like Bbedit or Cot. The two pane layout can be used side by side or over/under. You can change the appearance and color of the app, as well as light/dark themes and the fonts used for notes and code. Line spacing and margins are also adjustable. Aside from encryption, you can also lock the app with a master password.

Features Included

Markdown-first. Also supports any plaintext files.
Fast and lightweight. Works smoothly with 10k+ files.
Access anywhere. Sync with iCloud Drive or Dropbox. (iCloud required for iOS syncing)
Multi-folder storage.
Keyboard-centric. nvalt-inspired controls and shortcuts.
Syntax highlighting within code blocks. Supports over 170 programming languages.
In-line image support.
Organize with tags.
Cross-note links using [[double brackets]].
Elastic two-pane view. Choose a vertical or horizontal layout.
External editor support (changes seamless live sync with UI).
Pin important notes.
Quickly copy notes to the clipboard.
Dark mode.
AES-256 encryption.
Mermaid and MathJax support.
Optional Git versioning and backups.

You can examine the code and download the current version for free on GitHub. If you wish to support development and receive automatic updates, you can get FSNotes on the Mac App Store for $8.99. There is also an iOS version which can sync with iCloud.

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Jan 12, 2025 ∞

Automations Make Macs Fun - Try These

Magic Hat

I use all kinds of apps and services on my Mac and iPhone to make things happen in the background to make my life easier. I like to reserve my headspace for things I enjoy contemplating, like where I'm going to get my next order of tacos. I don't like having to remember to do things, mostly because I'm not that good at it. Here are a few of my favorite "set it and forget it" workflows.

Journaling with Day One

My first Day One entry was in January 2014. Since then, I have over 20,000 separate posts that are backed up online and synced to my iPhone, iPad and Mac. Here are the entry types that get automatically created:

Liked YouTube videos
Posts from all three of my blogs
Articles I save to Pocket
Mastodon posts
Every TV show and movie I watch
Daily weather reports
Books I add to Goodreads

All of these automations are done with IFTTT, may of them with RSS feeds. - Day One Integrations - Connect Your Apps with IFTTT

Time of Day and other Triggers with Keyboard Maestro

Keyboard Maestrohas a long list of triggering events that cause automations to run in the background. Here are a few of my favorites.

Time of Day Trigger - an hour before I get up, Keyboard Maestro ejects my backup drive from my laptop so all I have to do is unplug it when I start the day - no more error messages because I was bleary-eyed and forgot to go through the procedure.
Time of Day Trigger - at 2AM,Keyboard Maestro launches a file synchronization appthat backs up my Obsidian vault to Google Drive and then quits.
Login Trigger - At work, whenever I log into my computer, all of my open apps are hidden so that if people are standing around my desk, they don't get to see what web pages I had opened when I left to go get a cup of coffee. It's none of their business.

File Magic With Hazel

Hazel is a Mac app that watches specified folders on your computer for certain conditions. When those conditions are met, it performs any of a long list of actions on the files.

When I left Evernote, I missed being able to send emails to my my new notes app,Obsidian, so I created a workflow that gives me that non-native capability.
Add images I download from the Internet to the Mac photos app - without even opening Photos
With the help off a 99-cent app from the app store, Hazel automatically mounts downloaded DMG archives, extracts the program contained within, moves it to my Applications folder and dismounts the archive.

Obsidian Tricks

At it's core, Obsidian is just a plain text markdown editor. The power comes from it's massive 2000-plus and counting available plug-ins. Here are a few automations they allow me to set up.

Download the full text of all the articles I send to my read-it-later service, Pocket.
Download the highlights I make on any of the 1300 bookmarks I have saved in Raindrop
Keep a centralized recordof my daily schedule and tasks completed using the data from my calendar and task manager.

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Jan 12, 2025 ∞

Unsplash Wallpaper App - Free Unlimited Wallpapers at Your Fingertips

Unsplash is one of the largest providers of royalty-free images in the world. Without an account, you can search for, download and use any one of the millions of photographs on the site. For photography fans or anyone who enjoys aesthetically pleasing wallpapers, Unsplash provides a free app to cycle the wallpaper on your displays at regular intervals: hourly, daily, weekly. You can also manually cycle in a new image. When using the manual settings, the app has a built-in viewer so you can see a reasonably sized thumbnail preview of the available images. The selected image is downloaded to your computer, helping you to create a permanent collection if you want one. It provides wallpapers for all attached displays and virtual desktops.

You can select one or more categories of images, from which the app will select new wallpapers. The default categories included with the app include:

Black and White
Nature
Beach
Animals
Space
Textures
Abstract
Editorial

You can also browse the thousands of collections on the Unsplash website and choose collections to add to the wallpaper app. One drawback is that you can only add one wallpaper collection at a time. To add a new collection, you have to remove your previous custom selection.

The app is available in the App store for free. It does not collect any information connected to your identity.

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Jan 11, 2025 ∞

How to Internet - 2025 Edition

Even after it became obvious that Facebook was an invasive cancer on not just the Internet, but all society, I kept my account. There were too many ways it was ingrained into my life. It was the way my cycling club announced rides and planned events. Friends who moved away years ago kept in touch with me through Facebook. So many people on the job where I worked for 20 years had accounts and I could up with them. I had 16 years of photos from family birthday parties, Christmas get-togethers and I could see my grandchildren's first days of school and their graduations. That's what kept me there. It wasn't for the opportunity to look at and post memes or to preach to the choir or lecture people on how to feel about this or that, although I did do some of all of that too. I'd use it occasionally when I got bored to see clips of the Beatles, old boxing matches and baseball games from my youth. It was good for that.

I had a Twitter account too, but it was never that important to me. I didn't have many real relationships there. I mainly followed hard new journalists and tech people. I liked to follow it during presidential debates, which make my stomach hurt if i try to watch them. I'd much rather read the astonished takes from journos about whatever put-downs the politicians were using on each other. When I started blogging, I used Twitter as just another place to put links to my app reviews and Obsidian how-to articles. I talked to a few people, but all my real interacting was happening on Mastodon. Finally, I decided I just couldn't be someone who hung out at that particular Nazi bar just to get a few more eyeballs on my little personal, n on-monetized blog. I closed my account and didn't have a single emotion as a result. It was just checking something off a to-do list.

When Mark Zuckerberg while wearing a $900,000 watch, announced last week that Meta was going to stop fact checking, I knew the end was near. Then that asshole went on Joe Rogan and lied. He claimed he was bullied by the meanies in the Biden administration who yelled at him for letting Republicans tell people not to wear masks or get vaccinated during the deadliest pandemic in a century. That was followed by an announcement that Meta was going to end its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. As if that weren't enough, Facebook deleted content it had bragged about creating for trans and non-binary people. I couldn't take it.

I sat down and marked my Threads and Instagram accounts for deletion. I requested an archive of the thousands of pictures and posts I had on Facebook, dating all the way back to the George W. Bush administration. When that comes through, Facebook is gone. Down here in the south we still have plenty of all white organizations ranging from private swimming pools, to country clubs to churches and ceremonial military units. Those are just the organized all white organizations. Lots of ad hoc groups are intensely exclusionary, too. I made a point a long, long time ago to avoid all of that and never, ever willingly participate or endorse all white spaces. I'm not going to participate in fact free or gay free or trans free spaces either. I'm not going to be responsible for a single set of eyes looking at a damn thing Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk profit from. I am embarrassed that it took me so long.

It's been a decade since Facebook ran an experiment on the accounts of a whopping 600,000 people to see if it could make them sad by what it exposed them to. Yeah, they really did that and it worked. People found about it. It made the news. Nothing ever came of it because in America, billionaires are like Ricky Bobby's sons. They get to do whatever they want.

You do you. I'm not here to tell you that using Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Threads makes you a bad person. If you stay, I'll assume that you have a good reason. I just can't think of one that would let me use something that will be a prime means if spreading disinformation to millions of people, disinformation that will hurt and possibly even kill them. Too dramatic? I think not. That's what it comes down to. The people running that company and the politicians they are now supporting don't give a shit if you live or die. They just want to extract as much wealth from you as they can.

Get a Mastodon account. Get a Bluesky account. Just stay away from billionaire owned manipulation machines.

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Jan 11, 2025 ∞

Background Music - Per App Volume Control and More

When I am at work, I like to leave my system volume setting in the midrange. I want to be able to hear incoming mail alerts and calls on Microsoft Teams. What I expressly do not want is have anything from YouTube, or any other website suddenly playing through my iMac speakers. At home, I like to have music playing and I appreciate the convenience of having it stop and restart automatically if I decide to watch a video. The free app, Background Music can handle both of these tasks. You can set the volume for any app to a custom level (including muted).

The auto-pause feature currently supports the following music players:

You can also record system audio with Background Music. With Background Music running, launch QuickTime Player and select File > New Audio Recording (or New Screen Recording, New Movie Recording). Then click the dropdown menu (⌄) next to the record button and select Background Music as the input device.

You can download Background Music on GitHub.

Homebrew users can install it by running this command in Terminal

brew install --cask background-music

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Jan 10, 2025 ∞

Cheatsheet - Mac, iOS, WatchOS

I have hundreds of contacts and I know almost no phone numbers. My job requires me to gain entrance to numerous rooms secured with keypad combinations. Remembering hotel room numbers is always a challenge. Don't put a gun to my head and ask me the license plated of my wife's car. My solution for quickly referencing these little pieces of information regardless of whether my phone or computer is in reach or not is Cheatsheet, a synchronized notes app I that allows me to enter information on my computer or phone that I can easily get to from any device, including my watch, which is a huge help.

With Cheatsheet, I can format notes with rich text if I want and assign one of 200 icons to them for easy visual recognition. I can search my notes within the app or in Spotlight. I can even create new notes with Siri, including type to Siri. Cheatsheet notes can be organized into folders. For security, the app can be protected by a passcode. Both the Mac and the iOS apps can be accessed via the share sheet or in widgets. The Mac also has menu bar access. There is shortcut support for creating, appending to moving and finding cheats. The iOS app featured a custom keyboard for inserting up to 50 different cheats into other applications.

Cheatsheet has been around for over a decade but is frequently updates. The Mac version costs $7.99 in the AppStore. The iOS version comes in a free and a pro version, which is $5.99 a year but it is what provides the ability to:

• Remove limits on the widget, keyboard, and Watch app.
• Protect your cheats with Passcode Lock.
• Organize your cheats with folders.
• Sync your cheats between your devices with iCloud.

If you love the app but hate subscriptions, you can purchase a lifetime license, albeit for the steep price of $69.99

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Jan 9, 2025 ∞

Datacever - Simple Data Control When You Have to Tether Your Mac

I don't know about you, but whenever I have to tether my laptop to my iPhone, I get nervous about the possibility of some unknown process running in the background and chewing up my data. Even though my mobile provider calls my plan unlimited, I know that there are always gotchas. I tried TripMode a while back, but it was overly complex for my needs, with more settings and options than I wanted to mess with.

I recently found a much simpler menu bar app that I prefer for its simplicity and ease of use. Datacever by developer sameh sayed is an inexpensive app available from the App Store for $6.99. You can allow or deny any app access to the Internet. For the apps you permit access to, you can set data caps. If you don't want to set a cap, you can still monitor your traffic on a per-app basis. It does exactly what I need and nothing more. The privacy policy states that no data of any type is collected. Your browsing remains private.

If you have ever looked at the DNS logs of your Mac with the browser not running, you know that there are still plenty of apps trying to call home constantly. Control all of that with Datacever and don't let your data be wasted by needless telemetry,

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Jan 9, 2025 ∞

I'm Sorry Ava - Blog Questions

BearBlog

I didn't find out until yesterday that Ava challenged me to answer these questions in her initial post. I'd been kind of sad that no one had invited me to participate, so yeah, I'm a dunce. My apologies to Ava for taking so long.

Why Did You Make the Blog in the First Place?

I retired in 2020 and I spent most of 2021 and 2022 off the Internet and used very little technology. I went months without opening my computer and my phone usage was mostly doom-scrolling Reddit and never posting. To get out of that lethargy, I decided to go back to work at a low stress job at the university where my wife works. I spent my whole carer in IT, so I ended back in front of a computer and it eventually rekindled my interest in the tech I'd always loved. I started reading blogs again for the first time in five or six years. Through my reading, I discovered that Robb Knight had created a page where hundreds of people listed the apps they used in all areas of their lives. I really wanted to participate, but I didn't have a way to post anywhere. I did some looking around and decided to buy a domain for $1 and open an account at Micro.blog, just so I could make that single post and get featured on Robb's page.

Why Did You Choose Bearblog?

Choosing Bear Blog was 100% due to FOMO. I'd become Internet friends with several bloggers who moved to Bear and were singing its praises. I'd expanded my own blogging after a few months from just Micro.Blog to include Scribbles which hosted Living Out Loud and AppAddict. To make use of BearBlog, I transferred Living Out Loud in a marathon session of exporting and importing posts, so that I could join Robert and Jedda. It's funny that we are the very three people that Ava tagged in her original post

Have You Blogged on other Platforms Before?

Aside from Micro.blog and Scribbles, I also blogged at the late great Geo Cities back in the early days of the Internet. I used my own domain, wonderfulmonds.com, named after a minor league baseball player. In 2013, I blogged every one of the 156 days it took to thruhike the Appalachian Trail. That blog is still online at the Trail Journals website. Lefty and Hush's 2013 Appalachian Trail Journal : Part of Trail Journals' Backpacking and Hiking Journals

Do You Write Your Posts Directly in the Editor or in Another Software?

I never write directly in the editor at BearBlog or anywhere else. Almost all of my writing is done in Obsidian or in Drafts on my phone when I am traveling. I use a template in the editor to feature web mentions and for the header to write a meta_description and include a meta_image. I've tried hard over the years to preserve what I've written. I have documents I created in the late 90s on my computer along with the 800 or so posts I've written in the past year.

When Do You Feel Most Inspired to Write?

I usually want to write when I'm supposed to be doing something else. The whole ritual of sitting down at the computer, opening a new document and typing the title gives me a rush. I can write with the world going crazy around me. I like a good quiet early morning when it is still dark outside but I do my best writing later in the day when I have had time to chew on a few ideas. I write three posts a day, so writing is usually on my mind.

Do You Publish Immediately after Writing or Do You Let it Simmer a Bit as a Draft?

LOL - sometimes I don't even have the patience to proofread what I write. I don't use a system of drafts. What people read is what came out of head and onto my computer screen pretty much verbatim. Any rewriting is the "oh shit" variety when I spot typos in what I have already published or when some kind soul writes me and informs me of some egregious mistake.

Your Favorite post on Your Blog?

I wrote a piece in for September's IndieWeb Carnival on the last bottle of bourbon I drank. That was in 2008. I've been sober ever since after a long, long fight with addiction. When I published it, my oldest daughter who was obviously affected by all of that while growing up, sent me a simple "I love you" and it was meaningful in a deep and powerful way.

Any Future Plans for Your Blog? Maybe a Redesign, Changing the Tag System, Etc.?

Blog design is such a rabbit hole. I'm pretty happy with the way things look now, even though it's kind of bland and cookie cutter. I don't know CSS beyond what nice people give to me after I ask them a question. I tend to make small changes, usually leaning towards ease of use stuff for myself over time. I appreciate well-designed personal sites, but I'm more into writing than I am into colors, fonts and graphics.

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Jan 8, 2025 ∞

The Difference Between Journaling and Blogging

Hand_written_diary

When I look back at my blog, it reveals more about my feelings than any journal I've ever kept. I can tell when I was feeling light-hearted or when politics have had me riled up. When I write about my (grown) kids it is usually a reflection of when I'm missing them. My dear sweet Mom reads every post and I put little messages to her in here and try not to cuss. I'm honest about my mental health. Sometimes I vent my frustrations from work, or you know, people.

Every time I have ever tried to keep a journal, it's quickly devolved into nothing more than just a daily narrative - when I got up, what I did at work, what I did in the evening. I always start off thinking I'll inject some emotion into it, something that future me will read with admiration. It just never happens. I've used the great journaling app, Day One, since 2014, but it is more of a digital scrapbook into which I funnel photographs, social media posts, books, movies and TV shows watched and news stories. It's fun to maintain and look through, but I don't get much of a clue about how past me felt on all those days unless one of the photos conjures up a memory.

Before I started this blog, I'd had two stints of writing for other people behind me. One was back in the 90s before we had social media. I used to write essays and include them in our family email chain. I've republished a couple of them here and here. The email chain petered out and most of the writing I did for the next decade was technical in nature.

In 2013, my wife and I hiked the Appalachian Trail on a five-month honeymoon. I used an iPhone 5 to write a blog entry every night in our tent or whatever hostel we happened to be in with pictures and details from the day's journey. I thought about continuing it when we got home, but going back to work and a lack of spectacular views and adventure extinguished that flame.

These days. I average about 1,000 words a day. I write about anything I feel like for most of that, although I dedicate some time to my hobby of writing app reviews. I went through my first hundred days and created a list of blogging prompts, which several people have amazingly taken and completed 50 or more of their own posts from.

Last week, I celebrated the one-year anniversary of my first blog post in my re-entry into the world of personal bloggers. I didn't start the crazy post something every day thing until March. I've written for my blog during a hurricane. I kept it going through a camping trip with five of my grandchildren. More than a few posts have been pecked out on my phone during road trips and airplane flights. I am much more dedicated to talking to y'all than I ever was writing for myself. Thankfully, I have an open-book personality. I'm not guarded about much. My life has been messy and imperfect, but I've done some fun stuffand some hard stuff and ended up pretty happy for the most part. For me it would be harder not to write about my life than it would be to conceal every wart.

Thanks for reading.

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