AppAddict Free App List #3
This is the third collection of free apps reviewed on AppAddict. Links to the first two collections are posted below. I've downloaded and installed each of these on my own laptop. In many cases, I've added them to various workflows for my day job and blogging pursuits. I'm sorry for the recent double post to your RSS feeds. This post may also go out twice, but after that I hope the problem is solved.
A Curated Collection of Free Apps
Another Curated Collection of Free Software
Shareful - A Free App I Use Every Day
Two Free Apps for Mac OS Installation Ease
Free Apps \#3
Recents App for Mac - A Free Intelligent File Launcher
MarkEdit - A Pure Markdown Editor for Free
Royal TSX for Remote Management
Simplenote - Free, Rock Solid and Dependable for Over a Decade
SingleFile - For Safari and Other Mac Browsers
Ente Auth - The Free Authy Replacement for Your Mac and iPhone
Sloth - Activity Monitor on Steroids
Cronica - A Free, Privacy Focused
Media Tracker for Mac and iOS
MacTracker - Can You Call Yourself a Fanboy If You Don't Have This Installed?
Orange Card - Get Info Easily for Free
Glympse Location Sharing - Free and Secure
Zero Duplicates Free Duplicate File Finder
OpenVibe - Free Social Thread Aggregator
Resilio Sync - Secure, Private Peer-to-Peer File Sharing
Lossless Cut - Save Time When Editing Videos
Background Music - Per App Volume Control and More
Unsplash Wallpaper App - Free Unlimited Wallpapers at Your Fingertips
FSNotes - A Free and Open-Source Successor to NValt
Using Google Photos on iOS Makes Leaving Meta Easier
Picocrypt - Free and Open-Source File Encryption with Simple but Powerful Features
Session - Free and Open-Source E2E Decentralized Cross Platform Messaging
DEVONagent Lite - Free Tool to Increase Search Productivity
Raycast Quicklinks - Power Searching from the Keyboard
AppAddict Free App List #3
This is the third collection of free apps reviewed on AppAddict. Links to the first two collections are posted below. I've downloaded and installed each of these on my own laptop. In many cases, I've added them to various workflows for my day job and blogging pursuits. I'm sorry for the recent double post to your RSS feeds. This post may also go out twice, but after that I hope the problem is solved.
A Curated Collection of Free Apps
Another Curated Collection of Free Software
Shareful - A Free App I Use Every Day
Two Free Apps for Mac OS Installation Ease
Free Apps \#3
Recents App for Mac - A Free Intelligent File Launcher
MarkEdit - A Pure Markdown Editor for Free
Royal TSX for Remote Management
Simplenote - Free, Rock Solid and Dependable for Over a Decade
SingleFile - For Safari and Other Mac Browsers
Ente Auth - The Free Authy Replacement for Your Mac and iPhone
Sloth - Activity Monitor on Steroids
Cronica - A Free, Privacy Focused
Media Tracker for Mac and iOS
MacTracker - Can You Call Yourself a Fanboy If You Don't Have This Installed?
Orange Card - Get Info Easily for Free
Glympse Location Sharing - Free and Secure
Zero Duplicates Free Duplicate File Finder
OpenVibe - Free Social Thread Aggregator
Resilio Sync - Secure, Private Peer-to-Peer File Sharing
Lossless Cut - Save Time When Editing Videos
Background Music - Per App Volume Control and More
Unsplash Wallpaper App - Free Unlimited Wallpapers at Your Fingertips
FSNotes - A Free and Open-Source Successor to NValt
Using Google Photos on iOS Makes Leaving Meta Easier
Picocrypt - Free and Open-Source File Encryption with Simple but Powerful Features
Session - Free and Open-Source E2E Decentralized Cross Platform Messaging
DEVONagent Lite - Free Tool to Increase Search Productivity
Raycast Quicklinks - Power Searching from the Keyboard
Watching the sun set into the Atlantic Ocean - in North Carolina. Eat your heart out California.
From the Cรดte dโAzur, itโs #WindowFriday
Looking for Inspiration? Look to the People!
The Stonewall Uprising
Almost all the rights and privileges we enjoy in our daily lives happened because common people fought for them. I'm a veteran, and I am not being disrespectful when I say that the real fight for freedom happened at home between the people and the reluctant ruling class. The fight for freedom isn't something that only happens on the battlefield. Take some time and read about a few struggles. Get inspired. The time is coming when more of us will be called on to stand up against the fascists and corporations seeking to remake America into some throwback model of ugliness.
Child Labor
What Ended Child Labor in the US - Labor Rights History
Child labor in the United States - Wikipedia
Womens' Right to Vote
40-Hour Work Week, Workers' Compensation, Right to Organize
The history & evolution of the 40-hour work week | Culture Amp
A Brief History of Workers' Compensation - PMC
Labor Movement โ America, Reform & Timeline | HISTORY
Anti-Worker Violence
Bogalusa Labor Massacre, Attack on Interracial Solidarity
Civil Rights
Leaders in the Struggle for Civil Rights | JFK Library
The Black Panther Party: Challenging Police and Promoting Social Change
Stonewall and Beyond
How the Stonewall uprising ignited the pride movement
The First Pride Was a Riot: The Origins of Pride Month
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Mountains I Have Loved
Silent Valley Reservoir, County Down, Northern Ireland
I was sitting in a hostel in Maine with multiple other hikers. I asked this good old boy from Tennessee if he'd taken the side trail the day before to see the spectacular overlook from Spaulding Mountain. He looked at me confused and said, "I wouldn't take a side trail to watch a dragon fight a unicorn." He had one thing on his mind, obviously. He was ready to reach Mt. Katahdin and finish the Appalachian Trail.
Although there are a seeming countless number of beautiful views along what is, after all, called a national scenic trail, most of the journey is spent in what hikers call the green tunnel. You see nothing but trees, rocks and a never-ending footpath. In many places, towering rhododendrons form a literal tunnel, blocking out the sky and any view up or down the mountain you're hiking on.
I'm from the south and I love the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains, but we can't hold a candle to the beauty one experiences in northern New England. Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine are breathtaking over and over. Going above the tree line in the White Mountains is unforgettable. The hundreds of lakes scattered through the dense woods of southern Maine allow you to snap photos every couple of miles worthy of being made into post cards.
I'm partial to mountains when it comes to looking for landscapes to appreciate. One of the most beautiful days of my life was spent driving the high road to Taos, New Mexico from Santa Fe. There is little to no humidity, unlike what we have in the eastern mountains. So there is no haze. The sky is crystal clear and a clear blue that abruptly changes to many shades of green as your eye moves down to the peaks of the mountains. The mountains are taller than what I'm used to. After all, it is ski country. You can return to Santa Fe along the low road which skirts the Rio Grande in high walled canyons.
Fans of America's mountains should visit Colorado Springs. From anywhere in town, you can see Pikes Peak. A train ride to the top is only a few doors and is something to put on your bucket list. Also in there are, the Garden of the Gods provides ample opportunities to capture photographs of the landscape and of the big horned sheep who live there.
For a different kind of beauty, the Mourne Mountains, located in County Down in Northern Ireland are a mostly treeless expanse of grasslands divided by stone fences and few man-made structures. There are a couple high mountain reservoirs that catch the water they need down in Belfast. The few people who do live there are friendly. If you're lucky, you can find a tea shop where you can get a cuppa with a couple of biscuits to sip while you sit beside a peat fire and just take in the wonderful Irishness of it all.
My bucket list includes seeing the Alps in France, Italy, and Switzerland. Recently, as Internet friend told me that there is a trans-alpine railroad journey from east to west on the South Island of New Zealand that provides some of the best views to be seen on planet Earth, and now I want to go there too. I have no great desire to see Kilimanjaro or the Himalayas, even though the beauty of those places in undeniable. I think the altitudes would do me in.
What about you? What mountains have you loved?
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White Top Mountain in southwest Virginia was the site of a huge traditional music festival for a few years towards the end of the Great Depression. Located in the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area, it remains undeveloped. It’s bisected by the Appalachian Trail and a good spot to see black bears.
RsyncUI - a GUI for the powerful CLI Utility
RsyncUI is the successor to Rsync OS X. It is a graphical user interface for the powerful command line utility, rsync, a file synchronization utility that has its roots in the Linux world. RsyncUI is an Apple native app, 100% written in Swift. All of the actual work is still done by rsync, buy you can skip much of the learning curve involved in using the CLI.
Pure rysnc can sync files between remote and local servers. Rsync has many options that can help you define the connections you make, and allow you to specify files that should be excluded in a transfer. Rsync is great for complex file syncs and for transferring a large number of files. When used with cron, rsync can also make automatic backups.
Features
- Sync to local attached storage
- Sync to computers on the LAN or the Internet
- Passwordless login by SSH key
- Snapshot creation
- Profiles to organize tasks
- Quick tasks for repetitive file operations
- Data restoration from remote servers
How to get RsyncUI
RsyncUI can be installed via Homebrew or download from GitHub:
brew install --cask rsyncui
RsyncUI - a GUI for the powerful CLI Utility
RsyncUI is the successor to Rsync OS X. It is a graphical user interface for the powerful command line utility, rsync, a file synchronization utility that has its roots in the Linux world. RsyncUI is an Apple native app, 100% written in Swift. All of the actual work is still done by rsync, buy you can skip much of the learning curve involved in using the CLI.
Pure rysnc can sync files between remote and local servers. Rsync has many options that can help you define the connections you make, and allow you to specify files that should be excluded in a transfer. Rsync is great for complex file syncs and for transferring a large number of files. When used with cron, rsync can also make automatic backups.
Features
- Sync to local attached storage
- Sync to computers on the LAN or the Internet
- Passwordless login by SSH key
- Snapshot creation
- Profiles to organize tasks
- Quick tasks for repetitive file operations
- Data restoration from remote servers
How to get RsyncUI
RsyncUI can be installed via Homebrew or download from GitHub:
brew install --cask rsyncui
A cold morning on the Uwharrie Trail. We were hiking along and heard the unmistakable sound of bagpipes echoing through the woods. Cresting a hill, we saw the piper, a considerable distance off the trail, standing on a small rise just playing away. So odd and memorable.
Thoughts on the Quantified Self
I enjoy collecting information about the things I do and looking back over it, just as a form of journaling. Since tech is my jam, I try to automate collecting as much information as I can. There isn't a real point to it. I'm not trying to discover anything or achieve some kind of life hack. Currently, I'm not tracking any sort of health data, even though I've got an Apple Watch. It can collect information on heart rate and sleep quality/quantity, both of which I've been interested in before. I even have a digital scale and a blood pressure monitor, both with Wi-Fi to feed information into Apple's health app.
The type of information I'm interested in these days has more to do with culture and creativity. I use web services that track my television and music consumption automatically. I record the books I read into Goodreads because that information can be exported into other formats. I use a location tracking app that doesn't send the information anywhere other than to my encrypted iCloud account. I also use an app to bookmark notable places I've been, like restaurants, parks, coffee shops and hotels. That app stored its data in a cloud account that only I have access to.
When I was training for long-distance cycling, data collection had a different flavor because I had numerical goals: trying to hit 10,000 miles and get 30 or more rides of 100 miles completed in a calendar year. My Garmin bike computer recorded all of that, along with speed data plus my heart rate and pedaling cadence. Some people even have power meters on their bikes to determine the wattage they generate on rides. I didn't use Strava, but I did use the Garmin website to store my information.
- To record TV shows watched - Trakt
- Track App Purchases - AppRaven
- To track music - Last.fm
- To record books read - Goodreads
- Private Location Tracking - Geofency
- Location Bookmarking - Rego
- Step Counting - Pedometer++
- Heart Rate Data - HeartWatch
- Sleep Data - Autosleep
- Walking/Running - Runmeter
- To connect different apps - IFTTT
- Journal app - Day One
- Notes App - Obsidian
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Sushi for two from one of our favorite date night locations
Little Luxuries
I remember vividly when I was finally able to go grocery shopping without having to constantly calculate the cumulative cost of the items in my basket. On more than one occasion I had to reluctantly tell the cashier that I'd decided not to get an item or two when my math was bad, and I ended up short while standing at the register. I remember, too, the inability to afford a full tank of gas in the beaters I drove in my early adulthood. I rarely had more than $10 at a time when to buy fuel. When the day came that I could fill up the tank whenever I needed to, I felt like I'd reached a new level in the game of life.
One of the best mental health practices anyone can adopt is what 12-steppers call an attitude of gratitude. I've been makinga three-bullet list in my journal for well over a decade. Many days I record nothing but the little luxuries life offers. I'd rather have a whole basket of the little things than a big, fancy car.
I lived in a 100-year-old farm house in high school. For air conditioning, we had a couple of window units in the house, but none of them reached my bedroom. Our heat was a wood stove. My first adult jobs were mostly of the outdoor type. When I finally scored employment with the state, it was at a prison constructed decades ago. There was no AC, just giant floor fans to blow the hot air around. Subsequently, I moved to a giant Westinghouse factory with a massive machine shop, high ceilings and shipping bay doors open to the summer weather. I'd already turned 30 before I finally made my way into the white-collar world where I could work at a desk, sitting down in air conditioning.
We didn't eat out much when I was a kid. I'd use my money from whatever little hustles I had going on to occasionally treat myself to some fast food. We lived for a while in Jacksonville, NC and there was a place on the outskirts of town selling three hot dogs for a dollar. I loved that place! To this day, I get more excited than I probably should by the prospect of restaurant food, I don't care how mundane. I'm super happy if I get to go to a taco trailer, and on top of the world if we go to a real sit-down Mexican place with chips and salsa. We could conceivable afford to eat out for every meal, and it's only Wonder Woman's sensibilities that keep from indulging in that.
I've only slept a new mattress a couple of times in my life. One of those times was just a few years ago when we got one of those foam jobs that comes in a box and expands when you take it out. After relying on cheap hand-me-downs, actually having a quality place to sleep was a luxury I didn't know I needed. It's a rare night when I don't feel incredibly lucky climbing beneath the sheets. My super-power is being able to sleep anywhere at any time under just about any conditions. I can now save that skill for when I really require it.
There are plenty of other things that make me feel a little like a Rockefeller:
- Never, ever going on a road trip without a stop by the Circle K for soda and a snack
- That first trip to a bathroom with porcelain after spending days upon days on a hiking trip
- Owning and using fleece lined slippers
- Being able to get the fastest Internet you can get to a residential building
- Car repairs that don't go on a credit card
- Rarely saying no to our favorite charities
- Every pair of Levis blue jeans I've ever owned
I'm not a perfect gratitude machine by any means. I despise flying. I am almost always glad to be traveling somewhere, but the miraculous act of hurtling across the country miles up in the sky leaves me singularly unimpressed and grouchy. I also thought email was cool for a while until I realized it was a way other people could add items to my to-do list. Then I didn't like it as much. Still, though, there is enough of that poor kid left in me that any time I buy something and I don't feel forced into getting the cheapest model of whatever it is, I'm amazed on the inside. I feel like I've arrived.
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Raycast Quicklinks - Power Searching from the Keyboard
There are various Internet search tools available for Macs, but if you are a Raycast user, you can search just about any website without having to install an extension if you take the time to set up Quicklinks. Raycast is a Mac automation tool that extends the power of Spotlight and can replace other utilities, like clipboard managers, emoji pickers and window managers. (See use cases) Raycast offers a few preconfigured site searches in its own library, but you can add your own by adapting the search URL and using a dynamic placeholder.
To configure Quicklinks, open Raycast with your usual shortcut and then press โ+, to bring up the Raycast preferences window. Click Extensions > Quicklinks, and you'll be presented with the interface you need. There is also a Raycast command Create Quicklink. You can get detailed instructions here.
Here are the Quicklinks I use
Google w/out AI - [www.google.com/search](https://www.google.com/search?q=){Query}&udm=14 All Music - [www.allmusic.com/search/al...](http://www.allmusic.com/search/all/*){Query} Amazon - [www.amazon.com/s](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=){SEARCH}&sprefix= Bluesky - [bsky.app/search](https://bsky.app/search?q=){Query} DDG - [duckduckgo.com](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=){Query} Gmail - [mail.google.com/mail/](https://mail.google.com/mail/)\#search/{query} Macupdater - [macupdater.net/app_updat...](https://macupdater.net/app_updates/search.html?q=){Query} HBO/Max - [play.max.com/search/re...](https://play.max.com/search/result?q=l){Query} Reddit - reddit.com/search?q={Query} Wayback Machine - [web.archive.org/web/*/](https://web.archive.org/web/*/){query} [en.wikipedia.org/w/index.p...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=){argument name="Article"} YouTube - [www.youtube.com/results](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=){Query}
Raycast Quicklinks - Power Searching from the Keyboard
There are various Internet search tools available for Macs, but if you are a Raycast user, you can search just about any website without having to install an extension if you take the time to set up Quicklinks. Raycast is a Mac automation tool that extends the power of Spotlight and can replace other utilities, like clipboard managers, emoji pickers and window managers. (See use cases) Raycast offers a few preconfigured site searches in its own library, but you can add your own by adapting the search URL and using a dynamic placeholder.
To configure Quicklinks, open Raycast with your usual shortcut and then press โ+, to bring up the Raycast preferences window. Click Extensions > Quicklinks, and you'll be presented with the interface you need. There is also a Raycast command Create Quicklink. You can get detailed instructions here.
Here are the Quicklinks I use
Google w/out AI - [www.google.com/search](https://www.google.com/search?q=){Query}&udm=14 All Music - [www.allmusic.com/search/al...](http://www.allmusic.com/search/all/*){Query} Amazon - [www.amazon.com/s](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=){SEARCH}&sprefix= Bluesky - [bsky.app/search](https://bsky.app/search?q=){Query} DDG - [duckduckgo.com](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=){Query} Gmail - [mail.google.com/mail/](https://mail.google.com/mail/)\#search/{query} Macupdater - [macupdater.net/app_updat...](https://macupdater.net/app_updates/search.html?q=){Query} HBO/Max - [play.max.com/search/re...](https://play.max.com/search/result?q=l){Query} Reddit - reddit.com/search?q={Query} Wayback Machine - [web.archive.org/web/*/](https://web.archive.org/web/*/){query} [en.wikipedia.org/w/index.p...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=){argument name="Article"} YouTube - [www.youtube.com/results](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=){Query}
I love the backyard bird show we get year round.
If You Read This Tiny Apple Rant - I'll Give You Some Good Automation Tips
Apple is both proving to be something other than the romanticized ideal corporation many tech people once thought it to be. It is a ruthless profit machine committed to taking advantage of every legal and close to legal loophole it can to "return value to shareholders." That means extracting capital from the working class to put it into the hands of the investor class. I'm an Apple guy, but I am fully aware that the company decided last year to take 30% of Patreon contributions away from podcasters and bloggers and other creators who downloaded the app from the App Store. There was a god-damned thing anybody could do about it, either.
So, when I mention my love for Apple tech, it is in the context of what the ecosystem allows me to do, which is get work done with tools I enjoy using. I don't feel a kinship with the ghost of Steve Jobs,a miserable bastard if there ever was one. The current CEO just gave $1 million to Donald Trump, so screw him too.
If you use a Mac to GSD - here are a few links with useful information on automating your workflow,
Easily find Raycast Extensions!๐
Coding Bull Junky โ Automation and Personal Productivity for macOS
My Triumvirate of Mac Automation Technology โ Mike Burke
Sync Mac/PC and iOS using Syncthing + Mรถbius Sync
How to Use Karabiner Elements to Get More Out of Your Mac Keyboard - TechPP
How To Use Hazel To Automate Your Repetitive Tasks - Asian Efficiency
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My granddaughter is an earnest snow angel if there ever was one - that look of concentration - LOL.
Cooking With Men
My mother believes in participatory humanity. Whatever she's doing, she welcomes you to join right in. Some parents discourage their kids from using household appliances or cooking because I guess they are scared the kids might break something or get hurt. My Mom does not have that fear. I don't remember not knowing how to start a load of clothes in the washing machine, turn on the dryer (after cleaning the lint filter because you don't want the house burning down) and I certainly don't remember feeling helpless or lost in the kitchen.
I remember being tasked with cooking bacon for breakfast. Mom had these distinct tongs used for just that purpose. A few years ago, when I mentioned how I'd never been able to find a set like that for myself, she gave me hers, the same ones I used 50 years ago as a kid. I know for a fact that some food prep tasks she handed off to me were things she hated doing herself. Grating cabbage for coleslaw is a prime example. I'm willing to bet she only has it when I'm visiting her, and she can rope me into doing it. I didn't mind helping, actually. Back in the day, we didn't worry about raw eggs in cake batter and getting to lick the batter from the mixing bowl or the beaters from her handheld mixer was a rite of passage.
I left home as a teenager and got married. My wife could cook and enjoyed making fancy dishes, but I took on the day in and day out food prep duties. She was a military brat and didn't know much about Southern cooking, My grandmother advised her to season vegetables with a little grease, as we do down here. Mema was referring to pork grease, rendered from fatback or bacon, but the young lady I was married to didn't catch that part and soon poured hamburger drippings all over a pot of green beans and didn't understand why they weren't as tasty as she expected.
My kids all managed to make it into adulthood without dying of malnutrition. Their food memories tend to center on things they didn't like rather than all the delicious meals I prepared for them. My son, was the kind of kid who ordered chicken fingers and french fries at Mexican restaurants, has excellent taste as an adult and an adventurous palate, but he swears that the only way he survived his teenage years was by begging me to let him make extra sandwiches to eat in his room. My girls favorite food group was cereal. The happiest days of their lives were the times when I'd buy something apart from raisin bran.
After the kids left home, and I was heavily involved in endurance sports, I learned a lot about nutrition and training. Some of my favorite activities burned massive amounts of calories. I was dedicated to clean eating and went through chicken breasts, sweet potatoes, bags of spinach and cage free eggs like mad. When Wonder Woman and I got married, she was just as dedicated to that diet as I was. She still is, although not quite as rigidly as before. She still prefers brown rice over white rice. I've never known her to eat canned vegetables. For years, she prepared a week's worth of the most colorful salads imaginable every Sunday, and we ate them for lunch during the week,
Since I decided I didn't like being retired and went back to work, we've opted for meals that are quick and easy to prepare so we can have more leisure time at night. I've promised to go back to more cooking from scratch when I finally retire for good. I have a quite nice grill and smoker combo that hasn't gotten a lot of use lately. It does great pork shoulders, beef brisket, whole chickens and turkey breasts. I need to fire that back up soon.
I get the same complaints other male cooks get, primarily centered around being messy, which is true. I am messy. It took me a while to learn how to judge the right portion sizes for my diminutive wife, who, while indeed small, also has to stay fueled up for ultramarathon training. I have also learned that by some miracle of modern medical science, I am to blame for any numbers on the reports she gets after her physical that she doesn't like. Either I'm not serving enough foods rich in vitamin D, or I'm screwing up her HDL and LDL readings.
She still loves me though and readily accepts her plate each night when I deliver hot chow to her after she's waited for me to prepare dinner for us. Few things make me happier than to see her dig into whatever I've made.
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Watching the sunrise through my bedroom window. Our house borders on a small expanse of wetlands I hope never gets developed.