One For the Techies - SwiftDefaultApps
The problem of the day for me was finding an extension for Safari
to automate opening paywalled websites at the Internet Archive.
Unfortunately, the only extension in the App Store that does that is not
available in the US. So, I turned to my go-to site for Apple Shortcuts,
Routine Hub, to look for a solution
there. I wasn't surprised to find one immediately.
I downloaded it and set it up to work with Carlo Zottman's new app, Barcuts, which replaces the default menu bar for Shortcuts with one that is application-specific.
I ran the shortcut on a paywalled article from the New York Times...and nothing happened. So, I went to the Shortcuts app to watch it run step by step to see where it was failing. It turns out that the URL scheme it was using was somehow not associated with Safari on my machine. I had no idea how to fix that, so I went to ChatGPT for help. It suggested an obscure free app from GitHub called SwiftDefaultApps. I was mildly skeptical because it hasn't been updated since 2019, but I tried to anyway. It has 1500 stars. Just a note - it installs in System Settings rather than into the /Applications folder.
There was no URL scheme listed for the one that was failing in the shortcut, but the app let me create it and associate it with Safari, figuring out how to do that was simple and intuitive. I tested the Shortcut again on the same article and it worked the very first time.
SwiftDefaultApps also lets you see every file association on your Mac and change them. You can also change your default apps for:
- Web browsing
- FTP
- RSS
- Instant messaging
You can also change the apps associated with Uniform Type Identifiers.
Based on its effectiveness in solving my particular problem and the variety of features it offers, I'm going to leave it installed. If you are one of those folks who gets the vapors over software that wasn't updated last week, it probably isn't for you.
Whitetop Mountain
I’ve climbed this mountain. Whitetop, many times. The first was on my through hike where a band of old hippies gave me and Wonder Woman giant plates of food and laughed at us as we inhaled it while moaning in delight. Washington County, Virginia in the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area. Trump is going to let loggers cut the trees down.
Belief Makes it Real, or Does It?
During my working life, my boss in the school IT system, bless his heart, had to counsel me numerous times because I just didn't grasp the concept that different people have different realities. I was a pretty rigid thinker about most things. I'm a big guy with a deep voice, and in those days, I tended to appear pretty serious about most things. First year kindergarten teachers, who, let's face it, have a lot more important things to worry about than how to connect a vintage white iBook to a first generation Smart Board, found me intimidating. They wanted someone to show them, again, how to hook up their laptops, but they were afraid to ask me.
I was pretty offended by this. I took pride in being professional and thorough. I didn't mind going the extra mile to help out my customers. When I told the boss, he assured me that he knew my heart was in the right place, but that (here it comes), "People's perception is their reality." He probably told me that once or twice a week for a decade. It doesn't matter if you're Mother Teresa. If people think you're Margaret Thatcher, they aren't going to want you in their space.
Eventually, I adopted an attitude where my primary concern was making people feel comfortable first, and then solving their tech issues. Any technically competent person can figure out why your machine won't connect to the Internet. Evidently, it takes experiences to turn off airplane mode for you without making you feel stupid. I've probably closed 100 tickets in my life where a person's issue was caused by their computer being unplugged. I never put that in the ticket, though. I always just put "electrical problems." That way they don't feel dumb and no one but me and them know they had to get help for the most basic of issues.
I had to adopt that attitude at work to be successful. I don't have to adopt it in the real world, nor should I. Nor should you. Racists live in a world where their reality is founded in the belief that other racial groups are inferior. That most certainly doesn't make it real. Right-wing Christians think that Jesus loves them although they don't help the poor and immigrants, don't turn the other cheek and most importantly don't treat other people like they want to be treated. I don't have to respect their faith or give them credit for tithing to their all white church that lobbies to take away a woman's right to choose. Finally, I don't have to respect a person's belief that their sexuality gives them more rights than my LGBT friends. I have the right to my own reality, in which people with that attitude are hateful bigots.
I know I am not the arbiter of anyone's reality but my own. I have some odd beliefs, mostly about inconsequential stuff. Although I've consumed copious amounts of coffee, tea, liquor and beer, I don't believe that any of it tastes good without being sweetened. Me and every other person who is a fan of those beverages enjoys them for the drugs they contain, caffeine and ethyl alcohol. If you drink decaf coffee without cream and sugar, you have a mental illness verging on masochism. Hey, like I said, that's my reality. It doesn't have to be yours.
Even our own memories challenge what is real and what is not. When my siblings and I sit down with our Mom to tell stories from the good old days, we frequently have completely unique recollections of when and how things went down in the early 70s. Occasionally the differences are pretty big. We remember things happening in entirely different towns or with different people. Obviously, we aren't living in parallel universes. There is one "real" version of events. It's just that none of us is sure after five decades what the real version is.
Overall, it doesn't matter, I suppose. We have to be true to our ideals. The willingness to be a better person should never leave us, but failing to hold people accountable for bullshit is not an attribute. Remember what St. Augustine said. "Love and do as you will."
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Delimited - Quick and Easy Way to Work with CSV Files
In trying to stay away from proprietary formats, like spreadsheets
from Excel or even Numbers, I opt for using comma separated value (CSV)
files as often as possible. These files are simply plain text that can
be edited and viewed with anything capable of reading plain text. They
will never be obsolete as long as computers are in use. Text editors
aren't the best tool for working with data in table formats, however.
It's difficult to copy, cut and paste columns and rows of data.
Delimited, a CSV editor that adheres to the RFC 4180 standard, by developer Willem Kempers, is a bargain for $3.99 in the Mac App Store. In adherence to the standard, it can also word tab separated values (TSV) as well. You can treat the first row as data or a header. You can add columns and rows and move data by cutting and copying at will. The developer states that it can handle datasets as large as two million rows without choking. The app is written in 100% Swift and follows typical Mac standards. You can customize the toolbar. On all of my Macs, it is the default handler of CSV files.
Delimited is also capable of creating files from scratch, not just editing existing ones. You can get more information at the developer's website.
I Have So Many Questions
OK, what is going on here? Isn’t everyone aging all the time? Are the services getting older or am I? Ans, what’s up with the decrepit building? #Confused
NYC Street Scene
The rear end of The Charging Bull statue in the financial district in New York City. It’s theonly bull the market is going to see for a long time now that the fascists have killed the economy.
Interstate 95
If you do much traveling along the East Coast of the United States, it is hard to escape doing some driving on Interstate 95. It runs from the Canadian border with Maine to Miami, a distance of 1924 miles, passing through 15 states and the District of Columbia, more than any other Interstate. The final leg of I-95 wasn't connected until 2018 in New Jersey. 110 million people live in proximity to the highway and it facilitates 40% of the US gross domestic product.
I live about five miles from the closest exit. I'm most familiar with the stretch between central Florida and Washington, DC, although I have traveled as far north as New Jersey on it on a single trip in the 80s. I've also been on short stretches in Maine and the Miami metro area.
If you plan to make your way down it at any point, I suggest getting the excellent iOS app, iExit, which tracks your location and gives you information on all the amenities you need while traveling.
For planning purposes, there is an entire website dedicated to traveling the highway.
I-95 Exit Guide | #1 Road Trip & Planning Guide - This comprehensive website offers information on:
- Real time traffic conditions
- Tolls
- Alternate routes
- Gas prices
- Hotel booking
- Restaurant recommendations
- Construction
- Weather
- Shopping (outlet mallls)
As always, you can take a deep dive on Wikipedia.
A New World of Automation Possibilities
One of the most frustrating situations for me when traveling is being locked out of remote access into my home computer. If my remote access software has some sort of glitch or my whole workstation needs to be restarted, short of calling someone to go to my house and sit at my desk, I have been out of luck. Thanks to a post I saw on Reddit yesterday, those days are behind me now. Using some tools I already have, it is now possible to do any number of remote actions to my remote computer from my phone, traveling laptop or a borrowed computer.
In my use case, the tools I am employing are:
Step One - Dropbox
Create an empty folder in Dropbox. I called mine "Actions".
Step Two - Hazel
On your home computer, create rules in Hazel that are triggered by a) full name b) matches c) FileName.txt
Then set an action telling Hazel to rename the file so that it doesn't go into a loop.
Finally, set an action that runs an AppleScript or an Apple Shortcut to complete the task you want. ChatGPT can write the AppleScript for you if you just describe what you want to do.
Step 3 - Shortcuts (optional)
You can make shortcuts that will automatically create the files you want in your Actions folder and run them from your iPhone if you want to fully automate the process.
When you are away and you want to perform one of the actions you have
set up, all you have to do is create an empty text file in your Actions
folder with the name that corresponds to the action. For example, if I
create a file called restart.txt, it triggers Hazel to run an
AppleScript to reboot my machine.
Ideas
A few of the things you can do remotely are
- Restart your computer
- Log out the current user
- Start any app
- Move or copy files from a non-synced location to a cloud drive
Riding the New River Trail
Wonder Woman enjoying a ride beside the New River in a linear state park in SW Virginia.
Hop to Desk, a Free and Open-Source Encrypted Remote Access Solution
I have been using Chrome Remote Desktop when I need to remote into
computers in my home when I am away. It's free, requires practically no
setup beyond installation, adding a computer names and setting up a
password. It works through corporate firewalls and local VPNs with no
trouble. The only problem is the compnay who makes it. I am opting out
of Google products for email, cloud storage, search, photos, browsing
and maps. There is no reasons to use their remote solution when others
are available.
The solution I found is the free and open-source Hop To Desk product. It has all the benefits og Chrome Remote Desktop and more.
Features
- Chat
- File transfer
- Works on macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android and ChromeOS
- Can be run from a thumb drive as a portable app
- End to end encryption
- Share screen with remote user or exercise remote control
- Direct IP access, IP whitelisting and SOCKS5 proxy connections are supported
- Does not require network configuration like port forwarding or firewall adjustments
- Connect to unlimited remote computers (Commercial use is OK)
- You may setup your own private HopToDesk network on your servers or existing infrastructure. Self-hosting can also be accomplished with AWS or Cloudflare Workers.
- Use optional web-based dashboard to manage connections and generate share links
I was able to set up my home network of Mac, iOS and Linux devices in about 15 minutes. The macOS version requires screen recording and accessibility permissions.
Remembering Poor Me
Getting a state job in 1986 ended a few of the common problems I'd experienced as a member of the Working Poor™️. The biggest one was finally having health insurance. Except for military doctors, I hadn't gotten health care since I was a teenager. My birth of my two children, like roughly half the kids in the US, was paid for by Medicaid. After that ran out, we were on our own. I also became eligible for paid sick and vacation leave, an absolute luxury. Few hourly jobs in my region offered such benefits, at least among those who worked in the trades. If rain or snow canceled a day's work, a day's pay was also canceled.
One thing working for the state didn't alleviate was low wages. In 1986 as a married man with two children, I barely made $15K. There's a long list of issues that come with not making much money. Not being able to save meant that any unexpected expense had the potential to become a catastrophe. For years, I owned a succession of high-mileage, low-end, thousand-dollar cars. Any attempt at taking a long trip was always a gamble. I owned cars where the windows wouldn't work and a car that burned two quarts of oil every day. I was well into my thirties before I ever bought four new tires at one time. I bought a great many used ones for $25 apiece, though.
These days, I like to look back on my decision not to have cable television during my kid's formative years as a moral choice to keep their minds from becoming polluted, but the reality is, I just could not afford it. I was more fortunate than many, since my mom had herself graduated from Working Poor™️ status into the professional ranks. An extreme generous soul, she bought lots of school clothes and shoes for my kids through the years.
Even after a miracle happened, and we were able to get a mortgage on a home, I quickly learned about the challenges that posed when my water heater died. There was no landlord to call to get it fixed. I was lucky enough to pick up a couple of timely computer-side jobs to pay for a replacement, or else we'd have all been taking cold showers for a while. I'm not too proud to admit that I even had to borrow money from my high school-aged son, who worked a fast food job until the next payday when our refrigerator died unexpectedly.
I finally escaped that cycle through longevity and promotions at work. Of course, marrying Wonder Woman who makes pretty good dough, was also a big factor. She's a CPA, and ever since we got married I've just turned my paycheck over to her, and like magic, the bills get paid, my debit card never gets rejected and the holidays aren't a ball of financial stress. It's magic, I tell you.
My personal experience informs my feelings for the people who are still members of the Working Poortm™️. I saw the teacher's assistants, custodians, and cafeteria workers from my public school paying the same amount for their family health insurance as the highest compensated administrators. I've been to plenty of restaurants in the summer where my waitress was a schoolteacher working a second job. I've had the same experience at the grocery store, watching a high school business teacher ring up my groceries. I've seen the legislature go years without raising teacher pay, cutting benefits, and taking away paid incentives for graduate degrees. All this happens because we have a state law forbidding collective bargaining for public employees.
You'll notice that I haven't even touched on the criminal refusal of the ruling class to raise the wages of our lowest paid workers at the same time they created the economic system that foisted Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg on us.
No warfare but class warfare. Workers of the world, unite.
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Exploring Journaling Techniques
I've been keeping a journal of some sort consistently for many years. My motivations aren't that complex. I like journaling because it gives me something to do. To me, the act of organizing and recording my thoughts is just an enjoyable activity in its own right. I also enjoy looking back at past entries quite a bit. It's fun to see what I did on trips with Wonder Woman in years past or to see photos from family get togethers. Since I started blogging, much of what I once wrote just for myself now gets shared with the Internet.
Here are a few tips based on my experience and some links from others to help you get started:
- You can keep a digital and a handwritten journal at the same time. There are proven benefits from writing things out by hand to reinforce them in your brain. Get a box of nice pens and a stack of composition books and put them somewhere easy to find. Make some goals and write about them each morning while you have your coffee. I did this daily during the most productive year I ever had
- Use Day One - a journaling app available on many platforms. It is one of the most well designed and useful apps I have ever encountered. Since January 2014, I've used it lmost every day. Day One Is Popular for a Reason | AppAddict
- Use Obsidian - Obsidian is an extensible app with over 2000 available plugins. If you are a data junkie like me, You can automate all kinds of data into it's daily note feature. My Daily Note in Obsidian - Byte Sized Chunks for Customizing Every Element, Plugin Recommendations and Links
- Discover 8 Journaling Techniques for Better Mental Health | Psychology Today - Ever wondered how you should journal? Learn eight ways that you can use journaling to reduce stress, increase self-reflection, and create a better sense of wellbeing.
- 10 Types of Journaling for Peace of Mind | Skillshare Blog - Journaling can be a powerful tool for self-care, but it also can be tough to sit down and write about your thoughts. The good news? There are so many ways you can put pen to paper. So, if you’ve ever thought that it just isn’t your thing, read on to learn about the different types of journaling to see if one speaks to you. (Or, if you’re already an avid journaler, see if there’s a new tool you can add to your practice!)
- How to Journal: 5 Pro Tips and 40 Prompts to Get You Started - Remember, journaling is supposed to benefit you. Don’t stick with a method because others you know enjoy that approach or because you feel like you “should.”
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5 Small Gems I Found This Week
Here are a few small apps I found this week from my usual sources and tips from Internet friends:
Sentinel - from indy dev, Alin Lupascu, the guy behind the popular uninstall utility, Pearcleaner, Sentinel has a couple of Gatekeeper related functions:
- Removes app from quarantine
- Self-signs apps
iCloud for Linux- If you occasionally use Linux, perhaps to get some life from an older Mac or just as a learning experience, and you want to access your iCloud data - well there in an app for that.
Substage - This app uses AI to generate command line commands to do things like convert documents, images and videos, get word counts in your current document, move and compress files, perform commits and pushes on GitHub, do calculations and more. It has a two week free trial, then subscription or lifetime purchase options using various commercial or local LLMs.
The SeaMonkey Project - If you are an old who remembers the days when Firefox came as an all in one application suite, with a browser, email, chat and web creation tools, you may be pleasently surprised that the concept lives on in this project. I created my first websites back in the 90s using this kind of suite.
Macs Fan Control - I have a 2019 Intel MacBook Pro used as a server in my living room and it occasionally drives me nuts with fan noise issues caused by my decision to replace the HDD. This app lets me create presets and control the fans as I like. There is a free and a pro version costing $14.95.
This Weeks's Bookmarks - Monetized Spirituality, Victims of AI, No Brave Browser, iPhone Settings, Bad Accessories, Trump Tariff Formula, Goodbye to Democracy in NC
Celebrities are monetizing spirituality with the most popular app on the iPhone - Hallow - The thing about meditation is that it's totally pointless unless you can somehow monetize it. /s
As AI Takes His Readers, A Leading History Publisher Wonders What’s Next - His World History Encyclopedia — the world's second most visited history website — showed up in Google's AI Overviews, synthesized and presented alongside other history sites. Then, its traffic cratered, dropping 25% in November.
Why I recommend against Brave - Haha, did you think the Brave browser's only problem was the bad politics of the CEO? Think again. There's a long, historical list of sins and missteps.
20 Key iPhone Settings to Change | WIRED - Apple's software design strives to be intuitive, but each iteration of iOS contains so many additions and tweaks that it's easy to miss some useful iPhone settings
These iPhone Accessories Are a Total Waste of Money - Your iPhone is a premium device, but not every accessory marketed for it is worth the price. Some, as you'll soon see, are pure gimmicks that prey on fears and misinformation.
Posts online correctly cracked the formula for Trump's tariffs | Snopes.com MAGAts lie about almost everything, including easily disproven economics fallacies
Allison Riggs: This Is a Fight for the Very Soul of Democracy - Democracy Docket - In my home state of NC, a Republican who lost by 65,000 votes in November 2024 is coming close to succeeding in reversing his defeat by appealing to Republican dominated courts full of his donors and supporters.
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AppAddict's One-Year Anniversary
One year ago I posted my first app review on AppAddict. I'd recently subscribed to a new blogging service and I was trying to figure out what to write. I figured that my love of downloading and testing new software was something worth sharing. Besides, I was trying to figure out DNS for websites and using different domains and subdomains with different providers. The first review was about Rond Life Mapper, an iOS app for recording your GPS coordinates as you go through your day. Since then, I've posted 370 times. App Addict has been quoted in Lifehacker, The Verge and in newsletters like The Hiro Report and Labnotes. The moderators of r/MacApps on Reddit helped me out a bit by adding a link in the sidebar to the blog.
Halfway through the year, I purchased a new domain and moved all the content to it. I started a news letter a couple of months ago and I continue to hear from folks who subscribe via RSS. The blog is still not monetized. I've never run a single ad nor have I ever charged for content. I don't have any plans to change that. I love hearing from developers with new apps they want me to try. I also feel flattered that the people behind some of my favorite Apps like Popclip and Default Folder X have contacted me to express gratitude after I gushed about them in a blog posts.
I've worked out a system for finding news apps. I have a long list of
prospective candidates bookmarked and a collection of web pages I check
regularly for newly announced titles or updates. I am thankful for the
great Mac community, free speech and the IndieWeb scene. I'm glad a
subscribed to SetApp so I could
discover a long list of great titles to adapt into my workflow. Thanks
for reading. I hope to be here for another anniversary next year.
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
On a clear day, you aan see forever
Lake Mattamuskeet, Dare County, NC, one of the world’s premier spots for spotting waterfowl.
Early Evening, April 4
Early evening, April four
Shot rings out in the Memphis sky
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride
Pride, In the Name of Love - U2
Shortly after 6:00 PM on this date in 1968, the bullets of an assassin took the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the only American born in the 20th century honored with a national holiday. At the time of his death, King was one of the most unpopular men in the United States. He's probably received more death threats than anyone involved in the Civil Rights movement. Many people believe that he foresaw his own death.
King was in Memphis that day in support of striking sanitation workers. He was stridently anti-capitalist, dedicated to a world where wealth wasn't relegated to a tiny minority while working people lived in poverty. In his speech the night before his murder, King's prophetic words are chilling:
Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.
And I don't mind.
Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!
I was only three years old when Dr. King died, so I have no memory of him. I do remember the struggle to get his birthday made into a holiday. Some Southern states insist on co-honoring Robert. E Lee on the same day because, well, some southern states are run by racist assholes, kind of like out whole country is now.
Later on the evening of April 4th, Robert Kennedy, Sr., gave a speech in Indianapolis that he led off by annoucing King's murder, eliciting screams of rage and pain from those in the audience. He spoke for the first time in public about the murder of his brother in Dallas five years prior. Then he uttered the words that were to be engraved on his memorial, for he too was to die by an assassins bullets just a couple of months later.
"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice towards those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black."
Every honest person in the US knows that we still haven't gotten to the promised land. We still have the same division that Kennedy spoke about. Despite the fascist victory last November, the dream isn't dead, though. We still have the time and the means to make it come true. It's going to take hard work and courage. Will you help?
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Convert CSV Files to Markdown
There are plenty of apps and websites that allow you to download
vast quantities of information as single comma separated value (CSV)
files. You can get
- Your entire Netflix viewing history
- All your Letterboxd reviews
- Books you entered in Goodreads
- Purchase histories from various vendors
- Your passwords and more.
The problem with big flat files like that is that they are not designed for reading. Most people view them in spreadsheet programs like Excel or Numbers.
There is a free repository on GitHub with everything you need to convert CSV files into individual Markdown notes to use in apps like:
The easiest way to keep this up to date is by downloading GitHub Desktop for Mac.. This app lets you easily create and upload your own repositories and download ones that other have posted. Using Github is a free way to share files for other users to download, even if you are not a developer. I have a repository where I share my quotes collection as Markdown files and another one where I share my settings for Mac automation apps like Keyboard Maestro, Better Touch Tool and Hazel.
Once you download the repository, using it is simple. Make sure you have installed Python. The latest version is 3.12. Move your CSV file into the folder with the scripts in it and run the command from the terminal of your choice. I've been using Ghostty lately. The script will begin to run a wizard that asks you which field to use to name your Markdown notes. Then it asks you if you want the information in the YAML front matter or in the body of the not, or both, After that it asks you how you want each column of the CSV file to be formatted (e.g, as is, as text, as formatted text, as links etc.) After you complete the wizard, it instantly creates a data folder within the folder you've been working in with all the Markdown notes. It will create 500 or more notes in just a second or two. It's amazing.
Obviously, you'll want to remove any columns you don't want from your CSV files before using the script. If, after creating the notes, you want to make batch edits via search and replace or be deleting elements, an app like BBEdit or VSCode can do that for you across all the files in your folder.