My absolute favorite time to do something is "not right now." I never put gas in my fuel tank until the warning light comes on. The pharmacy used to put my medicine back on the shelf until they learned my patterns. I told Wonder Woman that I was going to buy a new pair of shoes for about a year before I actually ordered them. It's not that I am lazy; I do plenty. It's just that I need A LOT of time to think about doing things before actually doing them. I don't know why the prospect of seeing something that needs to be done and then actually doing it is repugnant to me, but it is.

I have collected quotes for years. I have a number of applications to keep them, plus a plain text repository that I maintain on GitHub. I'm super diligent about identifying quotes I want to save, copying them to a specific workspace in an app I use, and making sure I've got all the pertinent metadata: author, source, etc. And that's where the process gets bogged down. I may wait until I have 40 or 50 quotes saved up before I sit down and make myself catalog and tag them and file them in the various places where I like to keep them for reference. For a while, I tried to make doing that a part of my nightly checklist, but that habit did not stick.

There are other computer-related chores that I put off. I have all the emails from Netflix, Hulu, Max, etc. filtered into a specific mailbox so that I can go through them all at one time and add shows and movies that look promising to our playlists. I have an app, Sequel, that consolidates the playlists, so I don't even have to go to multiple websites to add them. I even have a recurring task set up in my to-do app to remind me to do this every Sunday, typically the slowest day of the week. Yeah, I am about three months behind.

We have a spare bedroom where I usually take naps on off days. The cheap bed frame I ordered from Amazon literally came apart, as in it separated into pieces. I was still napping away on the mattress and putting up with the crazy tilt and weird lumps. Wonder Woman found out about it, and BOOM, instantly fixed. She is a procrastination enabler.

Some things can't be put off, obviously. One of my jobs is preparing dinner for us. She is perpetually hungry because her ultramarathon training burns a lot of calories, and she needs to keep her energy levels up. I learned a long time ago that delaying meal times was a non-starter in our house. All I need is a hangry super heroine coming at me looking for a meal!

I'm also pretty disciplined about my blogging. I am currently riding a 204-day streak of posting every day. If I know I'm going to have a busy night, I try to knock something out in the morning before work or at lunch, although sometimes I just have to stay up late. When it comes to habits, I am always better off if I do them 100% regularly. The last time I meditated with discipline, I managed a 365-day streak, and my Apple Watch rings record is a consecutive 617 days without missing one. All this is balanced by streaks I have for putting things off, like replacing my deck, which I have now successfully stalled for two-plus years.

I don't think this makes me a terrible person. At least, I hope it doesn't. One day I might have to do something about it. .

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Kiano, a free app from the Visual Computing Group, provides a unique way to view and search your photo library. On my M3 iMac, it analyzed 22K images in about two and half minutes. It then displayed a grid of all the photos grouped together by similarity to one another. For example, all the landscape images I had showing broad expanses of sky were together, as were the man, many dual selfies of my wife and i. You can choose to have the sorting weighted towards color or towards content. Clicking on an image opens it within the program, where you can make your search even more granular by it having it find all the images that are similar to the one you have selected. From that interface, you can also:

• See creation and modification dates
• See the album (if any) the image is in
• View a history of the images you've examined
• Move to the next or previous photo in the album
• View a slideshow
• Add the photo to an existing or new album
• Delete the photo
• Share the photo via the Mac share sheet

You can download Kiano from the Mac App Store. There is also a version of the app for iOS.

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Today on App Addict - Deskpad - A Virtual Monitor for Screen Sharing - If you have a large monitor and have the need to share your screen with others, you can experience issues when they can’t match your resolution. The free app, Deskpad, creates a virtual display within an application window that you can easily share with others. Launching Deskpad is equivalent to… - apps.louplummer.lol/post/desk… #Mac Apps 📝

If you have a large monitor and have the need to share your screen with others, you can experience issues when they can't match your resolution. The free app, Deskpad, creates a virtual display within an application window that you can easily share with others. Launching Deskpad is equivalent to plugging in an additional monitor. You can use the display settings in System Settings to change the resolution and wallpaper, as well as any other monitor specific setting you have access to. Whenever you move your cursor to the virtual display, the color of the window title changes to blue, so you will know it is active.

You can download the latest version from Github or use Homebrew.

brew install deskpad.

The current version is 1.3.2, released in October 2024.

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I've been making my way through some of the recent additions at thriftmac and testing some of the most useful looking apps. Here are five that address some real world issues in a simple and understandable way. You won't have to spend a lot of time reading documentation or setting up intricate preferences. You can start using these quickly.

• TrashSweep - For anyone who churns through a bunch of files, whether you are a chronic downloader. doing video editing or just overworked, automating the size of your Trash can be accomplished with this app that lets you set a certain size limit and when you reach it, begins deleting files on a first in, first out basis. Never be shocked by the size of your trash again.

• Speediness — Sindre Sorhus - I'm making a rule that every list of good apps posted on r/MacApps has to include one from Sindre Sorhus. This app uses the macOS network-quality command line tool under the hood to give you better results than Ookla or fast.com. You can pair Speediness with other tools to have it run automatically and display the results in your menu bar. See the app's website for instructions.

• JuxtaText - If you use an AI based grammar and spell checker that doesn't tell you what it changes in your test, use this app to find out yourself. Paste your original text in one pane and the corrected text in the other one, and let JustaText show you what got changed.

• QuickRecorder for Mac This free app allows you to record your entire screen, an area of the screen you define, an application, a particular window or a mobile device connected via USB. In addition, it records system audio without the need for any extra drivers or applications.

• KeyCastr - This free and open-source app is for anyone who does presentations, make videos or shares their screen. It allows your keystrokes to be displayed and you can choose the size, color, time on screen and the fade delay. It also shows mouse clicks.

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Somehow, when I first investigated starting a blog, I managed to avoid the many websites devoted to creating a money-making machine USING THESE 10 SIMPLE TRICKS!!! The blogs I was familiar with weren't covered in ads, and I didn't have to pay to read them. There was an occasional invitation to buy the writer a coffee, but nothing high-pressure or gross.

A couple of weeks ago, Keenan, the creator of A Very Good Blog, wrote a long, heartfelt post about his lifelong relationship with his much-loved cousin and how the American political divide affected their relationship. It's the kind of work that deserves to be included in an anthology and everyone's Best of 2024 collections. It wasn't surrounded by banner advertisements or cut off in the middle with a place for paying customers to log in. No, it was offered to the world as the work of art it most certainly is. Many people have now read it, shared it, cried over it, and been inspired by it. The ability to write like that is a gift Keenan shares with the world. The people who recognize the richness of the Indy Web, the small web, and the blogs that comprise it are the grateful beneficiaries of Keenan's largesse. They, I mean, we, are a community who share pieces of ourselves, of our lives with one another because we feel called to do it.

I like to write, and of course, I want what I publish to be seen by as many people who might care to read it, but I don't want to approach what I have to share with a marketer's eye. My blogging style is mostly autobiographical and very personal. I write about my life, warts and all. I feel good when I finish a post. I'd never want to worry that I needed to appeal to this or that demographic or use certain keywords to make Google like me. I just want to tell stories, make people think, and be a part of the small group that rejects corporate algorithms in favor of honest engagement with an audience that isn't manipulated into viewing Living Out Loud, Linkage, or AppAddict.

Since 1994 I've made a living by helping people with technology problems in one way or another. Luckily, my interest in computers hasn't been ruined by doing it for a living. But that's just it. I already have a profession I love. I have no more desire to pad my bank account by blogging than I do in finding a way to monetize my bicycle or my hiking boots. It's shameful that there's a movement in this country to have people monetize their hobbies when what we need is a movement to make sure working people earn enough from their jobs so that they can have meaningful lives away from work.

I make no claims at artistry. I'm just a guy with a laptop and some spare time. I'm grateful to anyone who uses part of their precious minutes on this earth to read what I post. I'm not planning on stopping, and I don't think I'll ever be interested in taking money out of your pocket.

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I recently discovered Gladys, a free app that allows you to stash a variety of data types an a shelf on your computer display to retrieve later or to access from another computer or iOS device. I quickly tested:

• A dragged image from a web page
• Pasted text copied from the web
• A URL dragged from my browser
• An image file from Finder
• A text document from Finder

All of these quickly synced via iCloud and were available immediately on my iPhone.

Some of the functionality is similar to Yoink, a paid app that also features a clipboard manager and a notes function.

Gladys is a native Mac app that supports standard keyboard shortcuts for cut/copy/paste, handoff, Quicklook, Spotlight, Handoff, service integrations and a share extension for apps that don't support drag & drop. You can use notes and labels for each item you add if desired. The app has built in search for any element. You can share items from Gladys with other users of the app, helpful on a workplace team or in a family environment. Glady collections can be exported and imported via .zip files.

Gladys has a strict privacy policy and employs no analytics. You can download it on the Mac App Store.

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