Brett’s Favorite Apps of 2022!

[00:00:00] Intro: Tired. So tired, Overtired.

[00:00:04] Jeff: Hello? Uh,

[00:00:06] Brett: People. Hello people.

[00:00:10] Jeff: I didn’t have a bit in my back pocket. I was looking for like, hello, Metro area, uh, commuters.

[00:00:15] Brett: Hello Metrosexuals.

[00:00:17] Jeff: Uh, yeah. Hello, all you people, the commuters and the sexuals. Um, this is the Overtired podcast. I am. One of your hosts, Jeff Severances Gunzel, and I’m here with Brett Terpstra and Christina Warren has Covid and is not with us this week.

[00:00:35] So pour one out. Uh, fauci was right. Uh, . What else do we wanna say? Hashtag something. Um, anyway,

[00:00:46] Brett: Elon was wrong.

[00:00:47] Jeff: Elon. Elon is wrong.

[00:00:49] Brett: DeSantis was wrong.

[00:00:51] Jeff: Man. What? Why are we letting all these people’s names onto our podcast They take up a lot of space once you, once you let 'em in.

[00:00:59] Brett: yeah.

[00:01:00] Jeff: all right. Everyone’s banished, but you and me and the, and the spirit of Christina.

[00:01:04] Hi, Brett.

[00:01:05] Brett: Hi, Jeff.

[00:01:06] Jeff: How’s it going?

[00:01:07] Brett: It’s uh, it’s good. I am, I am waiting on my, So it’s been snowing a lot. I don’t know how much you guys have up in the cities, but we’ve gotten about a foot now and uh, I have an electric snow blower that is not great for clearing wet snow. And, uh, so we’re at the mercy of our neighbor with like, uh, his four wheeler with a plow on it, and he comes and digs us out, but on his schedule, not ours.

[00:01:37] Jeff: Right, right.

[00:01:37] Brett: Um, and Elle’s car is a Sonata, and I don’t know if you’ve ever driven a sonata in

[00:01:44] Jeff: Yeah, that’s a, is it a four wheel drive? Sonata?

[00:01:46] Brett: yeah. Right. It’s a front wheel drive, four cylinder sonata that does not handle snow at all. Like the slightest, the slightest layer of slick on the road, and it serves fishtailing. So when it snows, she drives my Audi.

[00:02:03] All Audis are all wheel drive with anti-lock brakes and they’re amazing winter vehicles. Um, like you can drive my Audi in a foot of snow and not even realize it’s slippery. Like it just handles it. Just handles it. Uh, so on days like this, she takes my car to. And I stay home without transportation. So she is currently responsible for picking up my vivance today, and I am not taken my vivance yet.

[00:02:35] I am, I am at her mercy, uh, when she is able to pick up my vivance and drop it off. So I’m a little, I’m a little dead pan right now. Um, I’m, I’m lacking the, I’m lacking my usual, my usual Terpstra.

[00:02:51] Jeff: I don’t know. You got a little pep in your step, little dip in your hip.

[00:02:54] Brett: I got new glasses.

[00:02:56] Jeff: new glasses. Congratulations. Where did you get those?

[00:02:59] Brett: Oh, from Zenni Optical.

[00:03:01] Jeff: That’s like a mail order thing that I don’t know about.

[00:03:03] Brett: Yeah, like I got my pupillary distance measured last time I had an eye appointment.

[00:03:09] Jeff: is none of my business

[00:03:14] Brett: And, uh, and got glasses fitted and they fit perfectly and they got the, they got the blue light blocking, and I gotta say, I, I, I love them. And it was like a hundred bucks total for like the whole package with clip on sunglasses and everything.

[00:03:30] Jeff: Ooh, clip

[00:03:30] Brett: Yeah. Fancy, right?

[00:03:32] Jeff: do you keep those fucking things when you’re

[00:03:33] Brett: I don’t know yet. They’re, right now they’re in my bathroom cabinet, but

[00:03:38] Jeff: That’s not where you need

[00:03:39] Brett: I’ll probably keep them in my car.

[00:03:41] Jeff: Yeah, maybe somewhere, at least on the way outside.

[00:03:44] Brett: Like, I seriously considered the transition lenses, but you have to make a choice. Either you get lenses that go completely clear when you’re inside, which is a must for me. Like I can’t stand talking to people that look like they’re, their glasses look like they’re on their way out.

[00:04:03] Jeff: Yeah. Right, right, right. It’s not polite. It’s not polite to send those kind of signals. It’s not presence.

[00:04:08] Brett: I saw a meme that just said transition lenses that get darker the longer somebody talks to you, But so the those though do not activate when you’re inside your car, behind your leg. UV protection, um, windshield. So I need, like, the only time I need my glasses to turn into sunglasses is when I’m driving.

[00:04:33] And so I ne and it was in either or, and neither of them, if they ever can combine glasses that will activate behind a UV windshield and go completely clear when you’re indoors, then I will buy transition

[00:04:49] Jeff: about like a button on the side that’s like you’re in control, you know?

[00:04:54] Brett: and, and it turns on like one way mirrors like mirror shade.

[00:04:57] Jeff: Sure. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I, um, I just had my, uh, I just had my eyes examined. Uh, my annual, I examine, I am getting progressive lenses. That’s right. Goddam it. And I’m turning 48 in about a month. So it all works. It all works. We got a bag of chips.

[00:05:16] Brett: Get, no, I got a bag of meds.

[00:05:19] Jeff: Ooh. A bag of mess. Did El just come in,

[00:05:21] Brett: Al just came in

[00:05:22] Jeff: Al, come.

[00:05:24] Brett: at, Hey, wait, Al come back. She’s coming back.

[00:05:27] Jeff: Okay.

[00:05:28] Brett: You get to watch me take my, my vivance live on air. Hi.

[00:05:33] Jeff: Hey, Al. Say, say hello to me and to the Overtired listeners. Your name is, your name is mentioned. Uh, your name is mentioned on this podcast regularly, but we never heard your voice,

[00:05:42] Brett: Oh, I’m on the podcast. I was just saying

[00:05:46] Jeff: sucker.

[00:05:48] Brett: All right. Hello to Jeff and Brett and Christina’s listeners. All right.

[00:05:55] Jeff: Good to see ya. All right. Now we get to, we get to see Brett’s Vivance kick in, uh, over the course of the podcast. We’ll

[00:06:02] Brett: It takes like an hour though. That’s why I used to be prescribed, uh, Vivance and then Focalin, because the focalin, I would take the short acting like it would gimme the immediate, like it kicks in so

[00:06:17] Jeff: I see. Yeah. Right, right,

[00:06:18] Brett: like 15 minutes and, and you’re good to, you’re good to roll. And then I could take it in the evenings as needed.

[00:06:25] Um, if I had to work long days or whatever, and the vivance just kind of was the like, steady, slow, and steady, but turns out , that’s a really bad idea.

[00:06:39] Jeff: Yeah. Anything that just jacks you right away is kind of a

[00:06:43] Brett: Well, I mean, I love folk and I really do, but as we’ve discussed before, I love it too much.

[00:06:49] Jeff: As I recall it is for you as a, as a past cocaine user. It is a little too close to cocaine.

[00:06:55] Brett: It is.

Mental Health Corner

[00:06:56] Jeff: Mm-hmm. , that’s, yeah, that’s no good. You don’t want that. Um, would you like to meet me over here, uh, in the, hold on, let me do a vocal effect. I’m just gonna walk over here to the mental health corner. Um, do you wanna join me over here?

[00:07:09] Brett: Hmm. Outta my way. I’ll be right there.

[00:07:12] Jeff: Oh, hey, you look great.

[00:07:14] Brett: she brought me water to drink my Vince with, but,

[00:07:18] Jeff: is

[00:07:19] Brett: But it’s, uh, seltzer water.

[00:07:21] Jeff: Hmm. Yep,

[00:07:22] Brett: now I’ve got the burps,

[00:07:24] Jeff: yep, yep. I always take my meds with seltzer water.

[00:07:27] Brett: I can’t drink regular water anymore, ever since we got the soda stream.

[00:07:31] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:07:32] Brett: Like regular water is just too boring for me. I, I seltz eyes, everything.

[00:07:37] Jeff: I was in the country somewhere. Don’t remember which one, where, um, the, the waiter came up and said, would you like water with gas I was like, yes, please. The same, the same menu had, um, emaciated chicken, uh, on it, just.

[00:07:53] Brett: does that mean?

[00:07:54] Jeff: This is the bad translation of, I don’t know what

[00:07:56] Brett: Um, of Lean, lean Chicken?

[00:08:00] Jeff: You don’t usually see lean chicken on the, on the, on the menu anyway.

[00:08:03] Brett: is lean.

[00:08:04] Jeff: How you doing?

[00:08:05] Brett: I, um, So I am on like week seven of no manic episodes, and I am definitely jonesing for one.

[00:08:17] Jeff: Is that a record?

[00:08:18] Brett: um, no, a few months back, like I guess a year ago I had a stint about this long. I actually went on for like three months. You can see it in my, my GitHub activity.

[00:08:32] There’s like this three month stretch of just like two commits a. And, um, I’m doing a little better now than I was then. Like, um, I’ve, I’ve found a better stable than that, but, but yeah, it has been, it’s been a year, like I was having basically once or twice a month, um, was having like three to five day episodes, you know, rapid cycling.

[00:08:57] But um, yeah, this has been a long, long stable for me and. I, uh, I’m doing okay. I, uh, I got, I got the end of the year deadlines to meet, which I’m definitely taking my sweet time with. Um, I’m counting on that A D H D, last minute pressure to get things done.

[00:09:25] Jeff: Yeah, it’s a prison

[00:09:26] Brett: Yeah. But, uh, but I got my vibes now. Um, I think, I think it’s gonna be a good day. We’ll see.

[00:09:37] Jeff: Nice. Well, anything else you wanna report?

[00:09:42] Brett: Nope, I think that’s, I think that’s my whole check-in.

[00:09:46] Jeff: Um, yeah, I don’t, I, I have a sort of, I’ve had a medication situation in that there was, as we’ve talked about, there was a Adderall slash Vivance shortage. Maybe there still is, but it’s not the case in Minneapolis right now. Um, so I went, I at a kind of period of time when I didn’t have any Vince, and then I was able to obtain some, we’re not gonna talk about that.

[00:10:08] I got it through that guy from ftx. He, he traded, he said, if you’ll comb my hair, I will give you Vivance. And I was like, absolutely, let’s do that. Um, so I combed his hair and then they arrested him. So anyway, um, but that, that has run out and there’s just been some kind of insurance issue that my, um, medication manager has struggled to figure out.

[00:10:33] And it’s been super frustrating. And I had just a hard couple days of coming off of Vince when I didn’t intend to or mean to. Um, but I’m through that now. Uh, and I mean, I think we’ve talked about this on this show before, but you know, I’m still relatively new. Medications. Like I, I started on sertraline at the beginning of the pandemic, coincidentally for anxiety.

[00:10:59] Um, then I was taking like Trazodone for sleep, but that, that just wasn’t right for me. Um, and then with a bipolar diagnosis, I started taking, you know, a pretty heavy cocktail of meds and I’ve definitely learned more than. Ought to need to learn that even slight adjustments in the medication, um, can really throw you off.

[00:11:21] And if you’re not really aware or truly present to the fact that you have changed something, um, I have, I have run, you know, I run the risk of like not knowing why I’m in such a terrible mood or why am I like bones ache or like whatever. And then just thinking kind of catastrophizing a little bit about that and then realizing, oh Jesus, okay, that’s right.

[00:11:43] I just switched the dosage or just switched whatever. And so I get it now. But, um, I feel like for anybody out there taking medication or if you will one day, like I don’t think you can, Repeat that back to yourself too often. You know, like if there’s a change, let your partner know if you got, you know,

[00:12:03] Brett: Do you, do you find in general that you have trouble making connections cause, cause and reaction connections in your life? Um, like for me, like I absolutely, uh, just constantly l will have to point out, well, obviously you’re having stomach problems. You ate this thing yesterday. Or of course you’re in a down mood, you know, you, you just came off a manic episode and your meds changed.

[00:12:33] And like she sees these connections for me, that should be obvious. Like they’re pretty, like the next day kind of things happen. Uh, but I don’t, I don’t, I, I have a hard time making those connections and remembering what’s going.

[00:12:48] Jeff: I would say that I am just now at the point where I am making those connections. And one thing that was great about that when when I went off five bands was like the second day, I was just super. Agitated and like, I just hated everyone, man. I also tried to go to Costco, which was a mistake, but like I was just really intensely agitated.

[00:13:11] I was able to contain it. Um, Which I’m really grateful for, and I was able, the way I kind of describe it is I was able to like, just like hold a tarp over my head, as the rain came down, you know, and just like, walk through that storm and just be like, this isn’t, I mean, it’s real, but it isn’t real. Don’t, don’t turn this into something.

[00:13:29] It’s not. This is literally, you know, chemical imbalance in your brain. Um, and it’s only gonna last another day and you’re gonna be okay. This was the first time I was able to really ride it through like that and contain it and not be a grouch around the house or like whatever, you know? Um, so, so yeah. I think I make the connection better now.

[00:13:50] It’s more like, like when I took that last Vivance on Saturday, I was very aware. I was like, okay. Here we go. Right? This is the last one, which means tomorrow, this time I might just feel really down or I might just feel really tired and the next day I might just feel super agitated, but it’s, and my bones might ache or something, which seems to happen to me.

[00:14:11] Uh, so anyway, that’s it. But it’s, you, you raise an important point is like finding a way to be, how can you be present to the connection? Cause like for me, I don’t know if you’re like this, but if I’m like, if I’m not super. Sort of resourced or like balanced. I really lose track of time. I can forget a few times a day what, what day it is even.

[00:14:35] Brett: That’s a common ADHD

[00:14:37] Jeff: Yeah. And so when I’m in that state, it, it definitely becomes that much harder to make connections cuz time is all messed up. And so that’s something I’ve been trying to also keep in mind. So.

[00:14:49] Brett: I, I never, I never lose track of what time it is, but I definitely lose track of where I’m supposed to be at any given time.

[00:14:57] Jeff: I lose that too.

[00:14:59] Brett: I, uh, like I can take a nap and I wake up and I know what time it is without looking at my watch. Like

[00:15:04] Jeff: yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right, right, right.

[00:15:06] Brett: time it is. I just forget that, you know, at 10 o’clock I was supposed to be in a meeting and now it’s 10 30 and I’m just now realizing

[00:15:15] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:15:15] Brett: that I missed, that.

[00:15:17] I missed an important meeting

[00:15:19] Jeff: Yeah, I have a, I have that, I mean, to the point of where I’m just embarrassed, where it’s like, I, I have to look at the calendar so many times in a day cuz I, I don’t know if it’s, I don’t know if it’s so much that I forget which I do, or that I don’t trust myself to remember. Right. And so I’m constantly looking at it and, and more than any one normal human should need to look at their calendar when they only have three fucking things on it.

[00:15:39] Right? Like for the day , you know? But I don’t know. So it goes,

[00:15:45] Brett: I always forget the third thing.

[00:15:48] Jeff: What’s

[00:15:48] Brett: I was, uh, no, the, like, the third thing on the calendar. I’ll get

[00:15:51] Jeff: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:15:52] Brett: and my brain will tell me, oh boo, you made it. You’re done. And I forget the third thing.

[00:15:57] Jeff: Shit . And when you and I work together, that’s when either you or I write to the other and say, Hey, can we, uh, move this or move it to tomorrow? And then the other goes, yes. I always love having meetings moved.

[00:16:10] Brett: Yes,

[00:16:11] Jeff: Every

[00:16:11] Brett: yes. Flaking is my favorite

[00:16:13] Jeff: Yeah. It’s like a, it’s a love language.

[00:16:16] Brett: so mental health corner always, always, uh, segues well into our first sponsor. Um, So I’m gonna take a moment. Christina usually does this read and she does a fantastic job of it because she is a longtime user of the Zocdoc service. Um, so we always trust her to have the right thing to say.

Sponsor: ZocDoc

[00:16:36] Brett: But I’m gonna take it this week and I’m going to reference the fact that Christina loves this sponsor. If you’re a fan of it, sushi is incredible, but gas station sushi not so much. Finding the right sushi makes all the difference. The same goes for finding the right doctor. With zoc, you can find the right doctor for you in your network and in your neighborhood.

[00:16:59] One that makes you feel like you’re in good hands, you’re supported, and you’re heard, even if you’re just telling them about your favorite sushi. Zoc is a free app that shows you doctors who are patient, reviewed. Take your insurance and are available when you need them. On Zocdoc, you can find every specialist under the sun.

[00:17:17] Whether you’re trying to straighten those teeth, fix a, a back, get that mole checked out or anything else. Zoc has you covered. Z Doc’s mobile app is as easy as ordering a ride to a restaurant or getting delivery to your house. Search, find and book doctors with a few tap. Find and review local doctors and read patient or read verified patient reviews from all the people who made real appointments.

[00:17:42] Now, when you walk into that doctor’s office, you’re all set to see someone in your network who gets you. Go to Z do.com. Find the doctor that is right for you and book an appointment in person or remotely that works for your schedule. Every month millions of people use Z Doc. Christina’s one of them sh.

[00:18:01] It’s her. Go-to whenever she needs to find and book a quality doctor. She will say it. She’s been doing it for a decade. Go to zuck do.com/ Overtired and download the Zoc app for. Then start your search for a top-rated doctor today. Many are available within 24 hours. That’s zocdoc.com/ Overtired zoc.com/ Overtired.

[00:18:31] Jeff: Boom.

[00:18:32] Brett: Do you wanna make it a sponsor block? And go ahead and do the next one.

Sponsor: Simplisafe

[00:18:35] Jeff: Oh yes. Rock block. Um, simply safe, we’re gonna talk about Simply Safe. Did you know that property crimes like burglaries and package thefts spike over the winter? Certainly true in my neighborhood, especially Kias. People like to take the Kias lately in my neighborhood. That’s why now is the best time to secure your home with award-winning home security.

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[00:21:08] Okay. Um, Brett, do you wanna explain what a bookmarklet.

Bookmarklets! PopClip!

[00:21:13] Brett: A bookmarklet is a bookmark in your browser that instead of going to a webpage, it executes JavaScript in. Line and it can be used for all kinds of things. Um, such as using a bookmarking service, taking the current page and sending it to, uh, an API to create a bookmark, uh, like you would do with Pinboard or back in the day.

[00:21:36] Delicious. Um, I make a bunch of bookmarklets that do things like, uh, zap all video ads on a page with a click, uh, open a product hunt link without going through. An intermediary, uh, like to turn, but Product Hunt used to make it a pain in the ass to visit the actual website that the product was for. So I made a bookmarklet that basically bypassed their interstitial page and like little things like that.

[00:22:09] And you can, you can use 'em to hack all kinds of annoyances on the web and to add all kinds of features to the.

[00:22:16] Jeff: So in my experience of Bookmarklets, the ones that I have loved tend to no longer be effective. So Pinboard is a great example. Insta Paper, same thing because why

[00:22:27] Brett: because of, uh, what’s it called? It’s security.

[00:22:31] Jeff: content security

[00:22:33] Brett: Yeah, that’s it. C s P, um, they’ve basically the, they’ve limited the ability of JavaScript to access external. Webpages and therefore defeated most bookmarklets. You can still hold on adjusting a cat.

[00:22:51] Jeff: There’s a cat coming in.

[00:22:52] Brett: you can still do a lot of stuff and I still use, like, I have a style Steeler bookmarklet

[00:22:59] Jeff: Yes.

[00:23:00] Brett: that rips the formatting from any blog or webpage and turns it into like a mark two style.

[00:23:09] And it still works. Um, sometimes you have to do a little security bypassing to get local scripts to run, uh, but by hosting them on https s servers and loading them, if they, if they load remote code and you do it over https, you can, t p s you can sometimes work around, but then it’s also, it’s not always browser specific.

[00:23:34] Some. Won’t allow cross-site execution of JavaScript so they can’t, the page you’re on won’t allow you to load an external JavaScript. So these days, like I used to host all the bookmarklets I shared, I used to host on a cloud front, uh, SSL based server, and the bookmarklet that I had people install would just be a conduit.

[00:24:02] To load the code from the web and that way I could update everyone’s bookmarklets just by updating the code on the web. And the next time they ran it, they would be running the most recent version that works almost nowhere anymore. Uh, these days, if you want a complex bookmarklet to run, you have to actually embed the entire code in the bookmarklet.

[00:24:22] Jeff: Okay. That’s what I was gonna ask. So I was confused about that cuz I only actually, I didn’t, I hadn’t thought about it that way. I only thought of Bookmarklets as all of the code is embedded in the bookmark.

[00:24:32] Brett: Yeah, no, I used to, I used to use, basically, you, you just inject a script tag into the current document and, and add a source to it, and then trigger it so that it loads the source as if it’s loading into the page that you’re currently on.

[00:24:49] Jeff: Yeah. Got it. And so is the, is the limitation now without kind of finding ways to go around it? It’s a limitation. You can act on the page that’s open in your browser, but that’s it.

[00:24:59] Brett: I, you can act on the page. It’s opening your browser without importing any external code or sending code to As, like I used to have Bookmarklets that worked with Marky, the Markdown, afi,

[00:25:12] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:25:12] Brett: it could send the content of the current page to an API that would turn it into markdown for you. Stuff like that has hit all kinds of, like GitHub for example, where most of the stuff I marked down ified was from like Stack Overflow or GitHub.

[00:25:28] And both of those sites have cross domain, uh, scripting protection that doesn’t make that accessible anymore.

[00:25:36] Jeff: And so essentially it’s, it’s, it’s the world of, of web content and web creation going, Hey, these things aren’t safe. Um, we gotta

[00:25:45] Brett: there are valid, there are valid security concerns there, but like in the case of like Marky, what I ended up doing, uh, I don’t know if you know this, but shortcuts on Mac, um, have a URL handler

[00:25:59] Jeff: Yes,

[00:25:59] Brett: and you can pass, you can trigger them and pass data to them using a url. So I just created Bookmarklets that just pass the content of the current.

[00:26:11] Do a little cleanup and pass it to a shortcut that runs, gather the, uh, markdown notifying utility I made. Um, so it does it all locally and without sending to any other sites, uh, which, which you still, you can’t still pull off.

[00:26:27] Jeff: right. If you , if you’ve got the time and the, and the mind for to, to knit something with 16 different sizes of yarn. Okay, so I wanted to talk about Bookmarklets for just a minute, and you already started bringing us into what I was interested in talking about next, which is like how you get bookmarklet like behaviors without being able to do bookmarklets as they have been done.

[00:26:53] You’ve told us the shortcut example I wanted to bring in pop clip. As an example, which does work on highlighted text in a webpage basically. So there are some not so recent changes to pop clip that I am only now aware of that I’m excited about. E explain. So pop clip, a couple of things. What are some bookmarklet like things you do with pop clip?

[00:27:13] Brett: Okay, let’s, let’s describe pop clip at, at its most basic, if you’re familiar with iOS, when you select text, it pops up a little thing with copy paste, et cetera. Look up in dictionary, uh, that little. That little bubble that pops up on iOS is what? Pop clip recreates on the Mac. So whenever you select text in any situation, pop clip pops up.

[00:27:38] Its little bubble, uh, it’s, it’s not unobtrusive, but you can just type it away. You can just keep typing and, and, and it’ll go away. Um, but, uh, you can assign any. Any kind of functionality you want into that pop-up toolbar to do things like Camel Case or SN case, your text or look it up on duck dot Go. Or like for me, I have one where I can just highlight any text containing a URL and I can preview that URL in a pop-up window without having to switch from my browser.

[00:28:15] Um, it can do insane number of things and I have a whole, I have a whole pop clip extensions. Download on my blog with I think, probably 20 different extensions in it. I actually have a, a gather pop clip extension that does pretty much the same thing as like my bullseye bookmarklet do, uh, pop clip is really good at it can grab raw HTML from a webpage and it can also do its own internal markdown conversion.

[00:28:48] My Mark Mountain conversion is, Um, I put, I put a lot more time and effort into accurate markdown conversion of things like tables and definition lists and whatnot than, than Pop Clip has any interest in doing so. Um, so I take the raw H T M L and then feed it into Gather, but I think like my primary use.

[00:29:17] Pop clip is surround, like I actually made a whole a pop clip maker, an app that generated pop clip extensions that would surround text with different things. Um, and, and I use it for like critic markup, for example. Like I have a whole extension that just lets you add and remove and modify text, uh, using pop clip to insert critic mark.

[00:29:46] Markup. And um, and the thing that they added a while back, but apparently just, or just now touting, is the, the ability to create these like surround and search type, um, pop clip extensions using yammel files, which is fabulous. That’s fantastic.

[00:30:09] Jeff: Yeah. Ha. And like shout out to Jay Miller who did a nice little video on that.

[00:30:14] Brett: Yeah. Drop Jay’s, drop Jay’s, uh, video in the show notes if you have it.

[00:30:18] Jeff: I will. And also we need to have Jay on the show.

[00:30:20] Brett: Oh, we totally do.

[00:30:21] Jeff: was one of my favorite of the last final season of, oh my God, you’re Systematic was the, the episode with Jay Miller.

[00:30:28] Brett: Yeah. Jay, Jay is a great guy. Um, yeah, but I, uh, I even have a better touch tool gesture if I hold down. My index and ring finger and then tap with my middle finger. It will pop up using, uh, AppleScript. It’ll pop up the, uh, pop clip toolbar, even if there’s not a

[00:30:53] Jeff: Ooh,

[00:30:54] Brett: Um, but a lot of times I make my selections using my keyboard instead of my mouse.

[00:31:02] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:31:02] Brett: Uh, and pop clip only recognizes when you select text with a mouse. So if I like option right arrow shift to, to select something and then I do wanna run, pop upon it. I can just hold down two fingers, tap with my middle finger and get my, uh, get my pop clip toolbar, which currently has, let’s see, I have Web md, which is one of my extensions that Mark Downies using.

[00:31:32] Uh, Aaron, Aaron Schwartz’s, he multi.

[00:31:35] Jeff: Rest in peace.

[00:31:36] Brett: I have Copy Plus, which, uh, is a copy tool that appends, uh, whatever you copy to the current clipboard selection, which is a built-in function of pop clip, but mine adds new lines the way I want it to. Uh, duck dot go one four commenting text in, uh, html or, uh, or with, with, uh, hashes, uh, word count.

[00:32:04] Uh, I have a,

[00:32:05] Jeff: yeah. Word count.

[00:32:06] Brett: I have an extension for making bulleted and numbered lists, uh, in markdown formatting. So if I select multiple lines, I can just turn 'em into lists. Uh, one for markdown emphasis, one for, uh, collapsing par. Uh, so a lot of times when we put together our, um, our sponsor reads, I copied them out of PDFs that, that really mess with the line breaks.

[00:32:33] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:32:34] Brett: So I can just select a paragraph and hit my unwrap pop clip extension and it will remove all of the line breaks in the paragraph. Um, and then I, as as mentioned, camel case and Snake case and uppercase and lowercase

[00:32:51] Jeff: And random case. You could do random case if you’re, if that’s the,

[00:32:55] Brett: speak.

[00:32:55] Jeff: if you’re into that kind of shit.

[00:32:57] Brett: And then, and then I have one called Slug Gify that will take selected text and lowercase it and hyphenate it and remove invalid characters.

[00:33:07] So you can make like a a, a Jekyll blog style slug out of it.

[00:33:13] Jeff: That’s awesome. And you know, one, one thing I recommend it for is, so I have colleagues who like aren’t necessarily comfortable in text editors, um, but I would love for them to have the power a text editor gives you to manipulate text. And this is like such an easy way to give them that power. This is great.

[00:33:31] People love it. I mean, they have like the featured, I think the featured extension right now is like if you have a list with commas, you highlight it, click, click the extension, and it turns it into just a regular list ordered list, you know? So if you do shit like that and I do like to party with the text I do like it.

[00:33:47] Brett: Like a, a lot of, so I have a accommodation of, I run a lot of services. You’ve seen my markdown service tools. You’ve seen all of the services that I create. Um, and some of those have been converting to shortcuts and some of them get converted to mark, uh, pop clip extensions. But basically I’m always using a combination of services and, and pop clip while I’m editing.

[00:34:14] And any app that I use that doesn’t play well with services or pop. Uh, I, I give up on very quickly vs. Code, for example, vs. Code does not do a great job of handling input from services like a service processes text, and then replaces your current text with the output of the service vs. Code tends to chunk that up in various ways and, and that has been a major blocking point for.

[00:34:48] And using VS code because it doesn’t work with all of the tools that I’m just used to having.

[00:34:55] Jeff: Yeah. Right, right.

[00:34:57] Brett: Uh, obsidian two Obsidian also uses like an electron based

[00:35:01] Jeff: It’s, explain to me why, what it is about being electron based that causes that

[00:35:07] Brett: because most of the text editing is done in, uh, a, it’s a web browser. It’s

[00:35:13] Jeff: Uh, got it.

[00:35:15] Brett: and, and you are. Your, your text isn’t technically being handled directly through a cocoa text field. It’s it’s sub subject to whatever kind of text editor they built in a web kit field, um, which is unpredictable.

[00:35:36] Jeff: Yeah. Um, okay. I wanna, I have somewhere I want to go from here, but I’ll have to ask you a question. I have only just noticed that on some of the actions I have loaded, um, there is a little gear. And if I open up the gear, I get some options like show as icon only, which I did not realize was a thing.

[00:35:55] And the other one is like obviously with the search you can open it up and put, you know, where do you wanna search or whatever. So it’s also just kind of a nice little second layer to these elegant little things.

[00:36:05] Brett: yeah. And.

[00:36:06] Jeff: are elegant.

[00:36:06] Brett: I don’t know if you can add options with the,

[00:36:09] Jeff: That was what I was gonna ask you next.

[00:36:12] Brett: with the yammel I haven’t, because I’m adept at making my own pop clip extensions manually. And like a, a regular pop clip extension uses xml. It uses a p list file, uh, to define all of its characteristics and its options and, and where it works. And, and like you can define.

[00:36:36] This extension only shows up if these conditions are met and, and things like that, that I’m used to defining in the P list. And I, I have never explored like exactly how much of that translates to the, the YAML extension format.

[00:36:55] Jeff: gonna ask you about that too. The idea of this only shows up if certain conditions are met. Um, I don’t, I’ve never seen a place where I have control over that in an extension unless I was writing it. Is that

[00:37:06] Brett: No. Right, exactly. Um, it, it’s defined by the extension author and in, in the same document where the, uh, yammel extensions are explained, you can find all of the various keys that you can use to determine where, sorry, we an extension shows. Um, and, and what its result is

[00:37:31] Jeff: It seems like this year you’ve embraced shortcuts a little.

[00:37:35] Brett: I’m trying, like when I found out that you can shortcuts, if you drag a system service onto shortcuts onto the app, it will do its best to convert your system service to a shortcut.

[00:37:50] Jeff: Hmm.

[00:37:50] Brett: And Apple is clearly more invested in continuing development of shortcuts than they are in continuing the development of Automator.

[00:38:01] Um, like automator, if you, if you add a Shell script option to automator, it still offers you, uh, a, a series of processors. You can have that shell script run in Ruby, Pearl, Python, et cetera, but Apple is no longer embedding those process. In Mac Os and it’s pretty clear to me that shortcuts is the future.

[00:38:28] So I am making an effort to, to parlay my knowledge in, in system services, in automator to shortcuts and to make use of, and honestly, shortcuts are more. Like just if then and for loops, like you can’t do that in automator. You don’t have that option. And shortcuts make that very easy. So like I see the benefit of shortcuts and I am kind of working to, to keep up with the kids in this, in this case,

[00:39:05] Jeff: The shortcuts kids, the ones that take all the extracurriculars.

Just Call Mann, Orchard & Sparks

[00:39:10] Brett: Rosemary, gotta keep up with the Rosemary

[00:39:13] Jeff: man, that’s not possible. Uh, but it’s a great Rosemary’s, a great North Star

[00:39:18] Brett: for sure. I, uh, for anyone who missed it, I filled in for Rosemary on, uh, the, uh, episode of Automators. I think it was the last one that came out. Um, but, uh, but it was just me and David Sparks talking about mostly the stuff I’ve made, but. I, I did my best to fill in for Rosemary on Automators

[00:39:41] Jeff: That’s awesome, man. I, I, I owe that Sparks character a lot. I mean, there was a period of time for me, I remember I got laid off. From a public radio job, it was kind of laid out. There was a grant funded project and the grant money ran out. And I didn’t know what I wanted to do and, and what skills I wanted to build.

[00:39:58] And at the same time, um, it was really like the, it was really like the David Sparks first wave. You know, he is like putting the books out and he’s, you know, like you two did a book together. Uh, I learned about you through that. Um, and you know, like that was such an. Time in my, in my development as a power user.

[00:40:16] Um, it was great

[00:40:18] Brett: Yeah, like, so I owe a lot of my, my success in the Mac community to like David, uh, to Merlin Mann and John Gruber and their like interactions and mentions of me early on. But most people I talked to, They heard about me from my guest spots on like Mac Power users and Automators, and Sparks. Sparks has played a major role in, in, in who I am on the On the Mac Internet these days.

[00:40:50] Jeff: Well, he, he, I mean, to this day, you know, he speaks your name about, you know, once or twice an episode, but as much as I mentioned Danny, Uh, you know, That’s awesome. Um, okay, the last, so we’ve been talking about these, like this, this whole thing for me is like these elegant little tools. The last one for me is actually just gonna be my gratitude real quick. And then Brett, I wanna do a lightning round with you because you’ve started releasing your favorites.

[00:41:18] End of your favorites, okay. You.

[00:41:20] Brett: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

A Grapptitude Spectacular!

[00:41:21] Jeff: so my, my gratitude will just kind of follow this idea of these elegant little tools, um, into this great curated directory of like 750 plus Mac menu bar apps. Um, it’s, uh, somebody I wouldn’t know who is this, that they should say who this is cuz that’s a lot of work they put into it.

[00:41:39] Um, did a lot of work, uh, organizing all these things into an a website with a really nice interface. Um, and his name is maybe. Uh, L U U K. Um, anyway, it’s in the, it’s in the show notes. So I recommend this as much as a way to see what is bit possible in a menu bar app as what exists. Because I found as I started going through this and clicking the things that were interesting to me, they were almost all no longer developed.

[00:42:09] Um, but I don’t think that’s the reason. Uh, to ignore them. I mean, it’s, it’s actually wonderful to have an index of, of no longer active apps because it gives you a sense of what came before.

[00:42:21] Brett: Ooh, but there’s a chat G p t menu bar app

[00:42:24] Jeff: oh man.

[00:42:25] Brett: at the top.

[00:42:26] Jeff: I, I have a, I have a dear friend who’s doing some dark magic with, uh, chat G p t right now. So stuff is insane.

[00:42:34] Where is it? Where’s the g p?

[00:42:36] Brett: It, it’s like number three on page one of the.

[00:42:42] Jeff: I see it.

[00:42:43] Brett: Recently added

[00:42:45] Jeff: Wow, that’s a whole nother episode. I mean, that’s a whole nother episode once a month for the next, you know, three years until something else comes. This seems, this seems, head it. This seems like something that came out of the Pentagon. Chat, G P T Total DARPA DARPA Project.

[00:43:02] Brett: Well, and we talked about menu bar X. Uh, that was a, that was a pick a while back. Uh, where you can put like all kinds of little web browser apps into your menu bar

[00:43:14] Jeff: Is, is the barrier to creating a menu bar app any lower than for any other kind of app that has to pass

[00:43:21] Brett: any lower. No, it might, might actually be a little higher. Um, it takes a little more effort to make a menu bar only app than to make a simple Mac app, um, to, to make a good app of any kind. there, you know, there’s, there’s a barrier.

[00:43:41] Jeff: Right.

[00:43:42] Brett: if, if you’re, if you’re, if you’re good enough to make a Good Mac app, you’re good enough to make a menu bar app, that’s, it’s about equal.

[00:43:50] But, uh, it does take a little more effort to put it menu bar only.

[00:43:56] Jeff: Awesome. Well, I’m gonna move us past that cause we’re running. I wanna do the lightning round. Here’s, here’s the rules, Brett. Okay. You get to say, I name the app and you get to say one sentence.

[00:44:08] Brett: Okay.

[00:44:08] Jeff: Okay. And it doesn’t matter. The sentence can be, uh, how it makes you feel. Or the sentence can be what it does doesn’t matter.

[00:44:15] Okay. And we’re gonna start with your list of, um, favorites, uh, your Mac apps favorites. Okay? But then we’re gonna do a super lightning round where you only get two words for your own apps. Okay? you did your favorites, your own projects. All right. You ready? Are you ready? You wanna stretch? You wanna, you know, hit your cough button and make a guttural

[00:44:36] Brett: I wish I had more coffee, but I drank all my coffee. We’re just going to, we’re gonna do it. Let’s.

[00:44:42] Jeff: we go. This is, these are Brett’s favorite apps of 2022. Uh, one sentence per, here we go. Affinity photo two.

[00:44:49] Brett: Finally, uh, it, it’s finally a true competitor to Adobe. Everything is coming into place,

[00:44:58] Jeff: Everything is coming to play. Okay, that’s one sentence. Um, or semicolon. Hmm. I think that was a sentence. All right. Uh, kaleidoscope.

[00:45:05] Brett: Um, it’s been through many hands. Uh, over, over its lifetime. As far as a Mac Diff app, it is the best you can find.

[00:45:19] Jeff: So that was like an M dash and not a period. Are you looking at your fucking blog post? That’s cheating.

[00:45:23] Brett: What, okay.

[00:45:24] Jeff: it in your glasses. curio, curio. You do whatever you want.

[00:45:29] Brett: Curio is, uh, such an amazing app full of surprises and delight. And as far as project management goes, It is project management and brainstorming are curious, strong points and I absolutely love it.

[00:45:46] Jeff: Awesome Redx Rx.

[00:45:48] Brett: There’s so many regular expression testers and and creators out there, but Redx rx, which looks like weirdly like a Java app is, has all the features I’ve ever wanted, and I’ve never found anything that is as.

[00:46:06] Jeff: I’m worried that you’re gonna complete, uh, I’m worried that you’re gonna continue this pattern of using parentheticals as a loophole to keeping it to one sentence. All right. Clean shot x

[00:46:16] Brett: The most elegant app on Mac right now. It is. If you need to shoot screenshots or screen video, it does everything exactly the way you want it to. So intuitive, so amazing. So it’s so good.

[00:46:35] Jeff: You gotta get these sentences shorter bike

[00:46:38] Brett: Bike. Uh, if, if you love task paper, you’re gonna love bike. The best outliner that came out in the last year warp is like, I’m still an I term two guy. I still love I term, but warp adds artificial intelligence command completion. Amazing. Uh, command Line Auto Complete to your terminal.

[00:47:07] Jeff: Clean my macx

[00:47:08] Brett: Just so Mac Keeper gave a bad name to all of the, uh, Mac cleaning apps, but Mac, uh, clean my Macx is just a down.

[00:47:24] Responsible application that will clean and optimize your Mac in a way that is not shady at all.

[00:47:33] Jeff: You, you made that one sentence by cheaply using the word, but, um, da Vinci, resolve

[00:47:39] Brett: we skipped Mac

[00:47:40] Jeff: Oh shit. Mac Updater. Sorry, everybody.

[00:47:43] Brett: Man, I love Mac Updater because I don’t have to wait until I launch an app to find out there’s an. I know exactly what apps on my Mac need update at any given time. As soon as an update is available, I know about it and Mac Updater just keeps it all together.

[00:48:03] Jeff: Da Vinci.

[00:48:04] Brett: Da Vinci resolve. I have ne I I do not do enough video editing to feel comfortable dropping $200 on final cut.

[00:48:13] Pro X Da Vinci Resolve has professional level. Video editing capabilities for free.

[00:48:23] Jeff: Who to spot? Woo woo

[00:48:25] Brett: If you love spotlight, just wait till, wait till you

[00:48:29] Jeff: in the world,

[00:48:32] Brett: It’s it’s spotlight on steroids. It’s amazing.

[00:48:36] Jeff: Choosy

[00:48:38] Brett: There are so many apps that will let you use multiple browsers, but Choosy is the oldest and still, in my opinion, the best app for choosing what, what links open in what browser.

[00:48:53] Jeff: better touch.

[00:48:55] Brett: I don’t think I could possibly summarize better Hutch tool in two sentences, but, but, If you want to automate your machine, your from your track pad to your stream deck to your keyboard, if you wanna make shit happen, better touch tool is is your go-to.

[00:49:19] Jeff: Yeah, I mean, in fact, that wasn’t even Brett’s voice. It was AI generated by a, a better touch tool action where you put two fingers on the track pad, you lick the mic and you, and you blink twice and then hit enter on the keyboard. It’s incredible. It’s incredible. All right. Five five left hook mark.

[00:49:37] Brett: Uh, hook, hook mark is so hard to describe, but basically if you wanna link together any two things, any, any multiple things on your computer, you’re like a to-do item, a video, A P D F A file. A webpage, if you wanna make it so that you can find related, uh, uh, objects from any of those things, you can use hook bark to hook them together and create networks basically of information.

[00:50:10] No matter where they’re located on your driver in the world, uh, you can just hook them together. And it is, it’s a hard to describe application that once you get into. Is just infinitely useful.

[00:50:25] Jeff: Okay, listen, you got three left here, but for God’s sake, don’t go longer than the actual text on the website. Uh, MailMate.

[00:50:34] Brett: I’m gonna, I’m gonna just quote my website. I’m not sure anything will ever pull me away from MailMate. It’s my email tool of choice power without compromise.

[00:50:42] Jeff: thought sex.

[00:50:43] Brett: Uh, I use a lot of mind maps and I use a lot of mind mapping apps, and I thought X is still my favorite mind mapping software on the Mac

[00:50:56] Jeff: All right, and, and finally dash.

[00:50:58] Brett: dash. I use Dash constantly because it offers me instant search of any a p.

[00:51:07] Any programming, language, anything I need a cheat sheet for, I can just hit a shortcut and I can type in an abbreviation and find exactly the documentation I’m looking for.

[00:51:21] Jeff: All right. We did it. That was great. Now listen, this is the hard one. Okay. And I’m gonna change it cuz we’re, I don’t want you going long like that. Ready? It’s, you get, you get one, one word.

[00:51:30] Brett: one word.

[00:51:31] Jeff: Yeah. This is just for fun. One word to describe each of your tools from your, um, favorite tools of 2022 that you created.

[00:51:39] Okay.

[00:51:39] Brett: All right.

[00:51:40] Jeff: everyone’s gonna go there, you know, it’s all right. People. We’re just getting people over it. You just give them, give them a word. Okay? Uh, bunch.

[00:51:50] Brett: Can I use a hyphenate

[00:51:52] Jeff: It’s a terrible, that’s a terrible, we’re gonna give you two words, sponge.

[00:51:55] Brett: plain tax automation

[00:51:57] Jeff: Hmm. All right. Doing.

[00:52:00] Brett: time track?

[00:52:01] Jeff: Hmm. Gather.

[00:52:03] Brett: Mark donation.

[00:52:05] Jeff: You’re doing great. How’s it?

[00:52:09] Brett: Build notes.

[00:52:11] Jeff: Repeatability?

[00:52:12] Brett: There you go.

[00:52:13] Jeff: Hmm. Na. Narcotics Anonymous Community. Community,

[00:52:18] Brett: 12 steps. Um, no. Uh, command line. One word. Task paper. Two words. Interaction. Three words.

[00:52:30] Jeff: All right. All right. Command line task. Good. Search link.

[00:52:34] Brett: Instant search,

[00:52:36] Jeff: Oh, Hmm. Where do I sign up? Uh, marked two.

[00:52:42] Brett: markdown, preview,

[00:52:45] Jeff: Uh, envy Ultra on my epitaph.

[00:52:53] Brett: markdown, note taking.

[00:52:56] Jeff: Boom. Brett, thank you for all that you do and for putting up with my stupid lightning round thing. Um, I know that far before I knew you, I looked forward to these end of year posts. I also, I also checked your site every day to see if there was a new web excursions post. Cause those were always super fun.

[00:53:14] So thank you for all that you do and for being, uh, a podcast friend.

[00:53:18] Brett: Yeah. Thank you Jeff.

[00:53:20] Jeff: Hey, my pleasure,

[00:53:22] Brett: Life, life is better for knowing you.

[00:53:25] Jeff: Ah shucks. I feel the same. Thank you. It was very kind

[00:53:28] Brett: I had a, I, I drove to the cities, the Twin Cities, uh, to have lunch with Rabbi Eric Linder, previous guest. Um, but Jeff’s, Jeff’s household was going through some illnesses that I didn’t want to be exposed to. So I did not get to see Jeff on this last. It was great to see Eric, but uh, but definitely missing you.

[00:53:55] Jeff: Influenza A coming through the house. No thank you. Well, I hope you get some sleep, at least

[00:54:02] Brett: Yeah. Get some sleep,

[00:54:04] Outro: The.