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Everything else

  • Shelley

    August 27, 2020 5 min read

    <p>I've written previously about using Hazel on macOS to react to a new file appearing in a synced iCloud Drive folder and running commands. But I wanted a faster solution that I could trigger from almost anywhere - including an iOS Shortcut. A way to send a command directly from my phone (or maybe any other device?) to my Mac.</p> <p>What I came up with is a tiny, macOS menu bar app I call Shelley - because as a friend told me, it's a Frankenstein of a hack.</p>

  • Merging and Deduplicating a Whole Lot of Google Photos

    August 22, 2020 6 min read

    <p>The point of this blog post is to say that I'm preparing for an eventual move to another photo cloud service. I'm also trying to keep my local backups neatly organized. So, I wrote a small command-line tool to specifically deal with the Google Photos backup format that you'll receive if you request a dump of your data.</p> <p>It takes Google's directory structure and all their duplicated files, merges, sorts, and deduplicates your photos and videos into a sane folder structure - the one I've been using for over a decade.</p>

  • An Epic Blog Post

    August 16, 2020 2 min read

    <p>Oliver Reichenstein, founder of iA Writer, writes about Apple and modern software monopolies. The entire post is well worth reading. And whether you side with him and the $17.86 billion corporation or the $1.97 trillion corporation, you gotta admit it takes guts to lay out that argument on your company blog when the future of your business depends on the kind of day your next anonymous App Store reviewer is having.</p>

  • Download Jigsaw for macOS

    August 5, 2020 3 min read

    <p>Jigsaw is one of those ridiculously fun (dumb?) ideas that come along and smack you upside the head one day and you can't help but take an afternoon to build.</p> <p>Apple already lets you sync the contents of your Desktop using iCloud. But, if you're a visual person like me who often arranges their Desktop icons in meaningful ways, not having the positions of your files on screen also stay in sync is frustrating as I move between my laptop and desktop throughout the day.</p> <p>Jigsaw solves that by syncing the positions of your Desktop icons over iCloud. Move a folder on your iMac, and a few seconds later it mirrors itself on your laptop.</p> <p>Jigsaw is free to download.</p>

  • Visually Syncing Your Mac’s Desktop

    August 2, 2020 4 min read

    <p>For me, my Mac's Desktop is my staging ground, my active workspace, the digital representation of my mental RAM. I'll typically have all of the files related to the task I'm currently working on stored on my Desktop. Once it's complete, I'll either file them away or delete them and move on to the next thing.</p> <p>Having the Desktop on my iMac at home stay in-sync with my work laptop eases the transition and context switching as I move between locations. Dropbox has been doing this for years, but actually getting <em>into</em> the correct folder in Dropbox always has <em>just enough</em> friction to keep me from using it with active files the way I do my Desktop. When Apple added the option to sync your Documents and Desktop folders into iCloud Drive a number of years ago, it was a perfect fit for me...</p> <p>...almost.</p>

  • DIY Video Hosting

    July 20, 2020 8 min read

    <p>I've been a paying customer of Vimeo since 2014 - specifically, their Pro plan. But when my renewal email arrived in April, myself and other small developers were seeing sales slow down as the pandemic worsened. Another $240/year was a tough sell for the small amount of video content I was hosting with them, and I wondered if there might be a cheaper alternative - either another service or by hosting videos myself.</p> <p>So this is how I moved off Vimeo and started hosting my own video content.</p> <p>On average, my bandwidth bill has dropped to $11/month - and that includes videos, static assets, and ALSO binary downloads for all of my Mac apps. Previously, I was paying $20/month <em>just</em> for video hosting on top of the rest of my bandwidth.</p> <p>It's definitely a geekier solution that requires more work up front to setup, and I'm not sure I would recommend it for a "real" business, but for my needs it was a fun project and I'm happy to save $200 a year.</p>

  • Process

    July 15, 2020 8 min read

    <p>To keep myself sane while dealing with my work deadlines, I've found myself tinkering around with an idea I've wanted to try building for years now. Oddly enough, it's not yet-another-app, but a website (web service, maybe?). And it's actually something that's designed to be self-hosted. I haven't yet decided if it will (eventually) be open source, or if I might solicit feedback from friends (real and online) just in case it's more useful than I think.</p> <p>Sometimes the idea for something new comes in a flash of inspiration. And other times (as in the current case) it meanders around in the back of my head for years - just waiting for the right moment or combination of external factors.</p> <p>For this project, it's the result of the rebirth of the indie web movement, my long time interest in self-hosting and owning the tools and data I run my business with, and Apple's WWDC announcements about Safari and their OS's upcoming privacy improvements.</p>

  • BespokeApp

    June 29, 2020 3 min read

    <p>I really don't know if anyone has a need for this other than me. But I've built this app a few times for myself in the past, so last night I finally took the initiative to make it generic and reusable - both for my future self and anyone else who might find it useful.</p> <p>It's called <a href="https://github.com/tylerhall/BespokeApp">BespokeApp</a>. It's a simple iOS app that gives you a tabbed web browser with the pre-defined websites of your choosing.</p>

  • A Pirate Looks (Nearly) at Forty

    June 21, 2020 10 min read

    <p>One night last June we managed to get the kids to bed early and decided to rent a movie from iTunes. About forty-five minutes in, our youngest throws up, the oldest starts screaming because of the smell, and all hell breaks loose. Movie night over.</p> <p>For us, that's when the spell broke. For seven years we played by the rules. So I walked from the couch to my office iMac, visited an old favorite website of ill repute, and ten minutes later streamed the move in 4K to our TV.</p> <p>That one evening re-opened the piracy floodgates for us, and we haven't bought or rented another TV show or movie since.</p>

  • Very Simple

    June 16, 2020 1 min read

    <p>I'll keep this post short because there's really nothing more of substance I can add to this argument that many developers and pundits way smarter than myself haven't already said.</p> <p>But I suppose it's flaring up again in the community because of the <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/06/16/hey-iap-app-store-dispute">hey.com</a> controversy, the recent <a href="https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/1271185023744397312">developer survey</a> Apple sent out (<a href="https://new.tyler.io/apple-asked-for-feedback/">my less polite response from last year</a>), and <a href="https://twitter.com/DaveWoodX/status/1272594491833298952">WWDC</a> looming next week.</p> <p>From my point of view this is all very simple:</p> <p>The App Store opened eleven years, eleven months, and seven days ago. It is not a game. It is literally the livelihood of millions of people.</p> <p>The 30% shakedown has never been justified other than "we can".</p> <p>The capricious and inconsistent review process has never been explained other than "no comment".</p> <p>With all the awfulness and urgency in the world right now; and with all the <a href="https://www.apple.com/environment/">good</a> Apple <a href="https://www.apple.com/speaking-up-on-racism/">truly</a> is <a href="https://twitter.com/tim_cook/status/1271113929754685441">doing</a>, it feels like a waste of precious attention and resources to complain about the App Store. But, <a href="https://hey.com/">hey</a>, that's business.</p> <p>Antitrust.</p> <p>Now.</p>