the Pleb

Textmate to Tumblr

I went looking for a way to post to Tumblr via the command line the other day, and I was very interested in M. Wunsch’s post. He has created a Ruby gem which elegantly speaks to the Tumblr API and creates posts with attributes specified in a YAML front matter, a la Jekyll. This is brilliant, and wonderful. A really good idea sparks other ideas, and this one sent lightbulbs off in my head. I could use this to create a script that would automatically post to Tumblr, or even better I could use the still fabulous Textmate to make a bundle that would make my blogging just a few button presses away. Seems wonderful.

Now a few brief words on why anyone would ever want to go to this trouble. Isn’t there a nice little text box on the Tumblr post screen that would do this for me?

I could just enter my posts that way, and hey, I can even write them in Markdown! Off the top of my head, here is why I would want to do this.

• Have a copy of every post I ever made in an easily readable, renderable format
• Luxury of writing in my favorite text editor
• No suffering from closed tab syndrome (ask my wife, who posts from a Wordpress entry form)
• Able to write posts even when Tumblr is down (hey it has had more uptime than me recently)

Some of these need no explanation. I cannot emphasize enough how nice it is to have the ability to compose in my own editor, with its over abundance of tricks and hacks that I have built up. So, on to the how-to.

This is taking place on a Mac. Primarily because that is where you can use Textmate. Now the first part would be equally viable on any Linux Ruby install. Install the gem:

sudo gem install tumblr-rb

That builds it out and installs the tumblr executable. You can check the extensive documentation on how this CLI tool works on M. Wunsch’s excellent github page. The flexibility of the tool is truly excellent. Many modes are supported. However, it is fairly simple to use to setup a Textmate bundle. First create a file in your home directory to store your Tumblr credentials.

mate ~/.tumblrcreds

Enter your username and password as such

username: YOURuserNAME
password: myCRAZYAWESOMEsecurePASS

Please substitute your own combination. And email me if that really is your password cause that is epic. Do not tell me to what it is your password. Now in Textmate open up your bundle editor, available in Bundles -> Bundle Editor -> Show Bundle Editor. Create a new bundle using the plus sign at the bottom. Use these settings as a guide.

If this is done correctly, it will take the entire document and feed it into the tumblr command line utility. The command line utility, using the file we created earlier for reference, posts your document to Tumblr. If there is any feedback, it will provide it to you in a fresh document in Textmate. Now you are just a key combination away from a fast Tumblr post. It even supports queued posts with specified publish times, if you are one of those real bloggers that has several posts in the queue ready to go.

Let me know how it works for you!

Focusing on Things

I do not know if you subscribe to the Get Things Done (GTD) philosophy or not. My personal point of view is that some people make the system more important than the actual doing of the tasks, and it can lead to procrastination. It doesn’t help to have a system if you spend more time curating the system than you do getting actual work done. With that being said, I say do what works for you. I certainly have over the years, using notecards, a handy little moleskin, writing a text document. I have tried lots and lots of programs on my computer in an attempt to keep myself organized as well. TaskMate, ToDoist, Today (which is actually really cool), the Hit List, etc. So my history is long and varied with these types of things.

I have begun a new semester at school, and so my life has become very busy once again. I do full time school on top of my full time job, and the now I am a daddy at the same time! So, I am very busy, and if I don’t think about something, it can fall through the cracks so quickly, it is frankly ridiculous. I had been lackadaisically tracking a few tasks in TaskMate on my work laptop, but this wasn’t going to cut it. I needed to do some comprehensive task and project management. Since I have used a GTD system before, I knew that I needed one place, always accessible to store my tasks. I liked that. I always have my iPad with me, so I began to look into some of the task management suites available. Some, like Next Thing were to simple. Taska worked, but I could never get it to sync to Toodledo correctly: the iPhone version could never pull my tasks. It also seemed a little complex when doing a simple brain dump scenario, a common use case for me. I disliked the kitsch of ToDo, so that one was out. Finally I narrowed the list to 2 candidates, Things and OmniFocus. Now I need to figure out which one to buy.

Things is a great program. I have used it before on the iPad, and I loved the ability to dump tasks, and tag them. Contexts is also wonderful. I can also tell that they have put lots of thought into the interface. It tries to be as unobtrusive as possible, and yet still manages to provide deep functionality. This is the secret of really good, thoughtful design. It was also fast, and fully functional, the hallmarks of good coding. In short, I really like this one. The price tag is $20 for the iPad app. However, an ecosystem does exist, the companion iPhone app is $10 and a desktop client is available for $50. Of course I could simply use the iPad app as a standalone. Attractive thought, because I would not have to worry about syncing, which is the true bane of anyone seeking to keep all the lists current. The desktop client seems very attractive and thoughtful, just as the iPad app does.

The other option is OmniFocus. This requires a rather large layout on the get go; it is $40. I have not used it before, but it seems very clean and functional, with lots of added functionality like maps of contexts and special features that would be unavailable to to-do lists on other platforms. Also in favor of OmniFocus is this, a long time ago I shelled out for OmniFocus for OSX ($80), as well as OmniFocus for iPhone ($20). I already have an ecosystem in place. That is actually pretty handy. The desktop client is starting to show its age, but I hear that they are working on OmniFocus 2 soon, they stopped working on it to turn out the iPad application. Of course, that means to stay current I will have to shell out for a new desktop client in the near future. It is not problem that it feels a little stale though, because for the most part I would be managing tasks on my iPad, using my iPhone for universal capture, and then using my desktop client to keep it all synced together and current. Not bad, not bad.

So these are my two options. I could be relatively cheap now and only shell out for Things, but I then run the risk of wanting to buy into the ecosystem later for much more dinero. Alternatively, I could drop the dough on OmniFocus now, and enjoy the advanced features (which I will probably rarely use, honestly) and the existing ecosystem (which I will use all the time). Of course, I might end up spending some extra cash (ha!) down the line on that too, if the new desktop version comes out. It is something of a quandary. I am sure that I will figure something out soon, I really need something like this, the sooner the better. While I mull it over, what are your thoughts?

Note Taking Nirvana

What I want is simple. I want to be able to take notes on any of my devices, and then have them instantly accessible on any other of my devices instantly, and without me having to do anything. Impossible you say? Not so. I have just entered Note Taking Nirvana, and best of all, the price was free! Well, for the software anyway. This is my setup. 

On my Macs I use Notational Velocity. It has fantastic keyboard shortcuts, and super simple, fast searching. I can find the note I am looking for usually with a few keystrokes. This little desktop gem syncs with the Simplenote service, ensuring that my notes propagate across all my Notational Velocity enabled computers. That would be my iMac at home, my main Macbook Pro, and even my old Macbook Pro that my wife mainly uses.

Of course, what matters here is ubiquitous capture, I need to capture the note, thought, or idea wherever I am with whatever I have. For that I have the newly updated Simplenote app [iTunes link!]. It is a free Universal Binary for my iPhone and iPad. Just in time for me to start taking notes in class, they even updated these excellent little apps with the one feature that I wanted most, full screen entry. Yes! So yesterday, when I wanted to remember a license plate number, I just punched it into my phone. When I was sitting in class, I typed all my notes into my iPad comfortably in fullscreen. It is much much lighter than lugging a computer around campus. When I got home from work and sat down in front of my computer all my class notes, as well as the license plate number of the car and an idea I jotted down on the bus, were available at the tips of my fingers. No manual syncing needed. I can go about my day in full confidence that the things I write down will be available to me anywhere. My wife’s preferred order at Firehouse subs that I took down months ago? If I need it, I can just pull it up on my phone.

In short, I am in true note taking nirvana. All my note taking is now focused on the notes themselves, I don’t have to worry about availability or formatting. Do you want to know perhaps the best part about all this note taking? Not a Marker Felt typefaced word in sight. Now that is saying something.

Threaded Mail in OSX

I really like the idea of threaded mail, it makes my inbox much easier to manage. So I am ashamed to say that I only recently realized that Apple’s Mail.app has the ability to organize mail by thread. This may be because I am the only one that actually uses Mail, but I don’t think so. Go to ‘View’ and select ‘Organize by Thread’. Of course it is not the cleanest implementation that I have seen, but Mail users who have been looking for this should enjoy it.

IRC Limechat, Hello

I think that I remember downloading Limechat when I was first testing out IRC clients for the Mac, but that could just be wishful thinking on my part to try to cover up the fact that I have missed this great tool for so long. One window management, no irritating extra notification windows, a clean and simple interface, and most importantly tab completion. I have dowloaded it to all teh Macs, and am confident I will be switching permanently.