Migrating Domains

With the refresh of my weblog recently, I also wanted to take the chance to update the domain as well. I have long used burk.io for everything, which was mostly fine, but I found that having everything linked to it was perhaps not the best idea. I wanted to make things a little more personal, so I opted to go from last name to first name. I am still using burk.io for my email because it's awesome for that!

So the change was to be made, burk.io to where you are now, grepjason.sh!

Before I go on, why grepjason.sh? Well, I thought it was a fun way to say, “hi, you found me”!

Domain Breakdown
grep as in searching text
jason as in, well, me
.sh as in a shell script

Paste them all together, and you are running a script to find me on the Internet! A stretch, certainly. Close enough for fun’s sake? Yeah!

Okay, back to the matter at hand. How do I get all my links spread across the internet that point to https://*.burk.io/* to go here now?

After some research, it seemed like running a script on the old server to redirect was an option. The issue with this was that I didn’t want more overheard or a server I would inevitably forget about 12-18 months from now and be unable to figure out why something broke. Also, ideally, I want to put the old setup to bed for good. I then began looking for solutions at the domain level and came across the eventual solution that I went with.

I use Porkbun for all my domains (and I love them). Looking at my domain settings, there is a forwarding section. And within this, you can set up both 302 and 301 redirects. Not only that, you can wildcard it! Oh, and include subdomains since I wanted to cover anything related to the domain. Woohoo!

You can see the setup in the screenshot below:

The only caveat to this solution was ensuring static pages had the same URL structure and that my post path format was the same. Luckily in my case, I already had that set how I wanted it, so those all translated perfectly.

Examples:
https://burk.io/about >> https://grepjason.sh/about 👍
https://burk.io/2022/use-what-you-like >> https://grepjason.sh/2022/use-what-you-like 👍

So now I think I should not have any dead links living out there on the internet. 🎉

But wait, where does your weblog live now? Glad you asked, only on the most fun platform to exist, Omg.lol!
*Warning: The weblog stuff is still VERY early days so I would not say move there now, but it's already super rad, so I did. 😉

Use What You Like!

This was originally written in September 2022 for the Hemispheric Newsletter as part of One Prime Plus for the Hemispheric Views podcast.

All too often, we get into these deep philosophically adjacent discussions about one app vs. another or that service vs. this one. The reality is that nothing in our daily life is one size fits all, and software/apps/services are no different. I have a like/dislike relationship with sharing “my setup” or “my workflow” online. I like the idea that my sharing will somehow lead someone to a better setup for their needs. The dislike comes from how unstable most of my setups are from month to month. Like many people, I genuinely enjoy trying different things and experimenting, but I will not stick with something simply because that is what I already set up. If alternate workflows form in my daily doings, I am ready to throw everything away and start over with different tools.

Two real-world examples

Example 1: Drafts

Here is an excellent example of what I am getting at. I wrote this blog post in May about Drafts workspaces and how I was capturing stuff on my Mac. Well, it’s September now, and very little of that is still how I operate. I have not been using Drafts for a couple of months, with Tot in its place. I spent more time on the curation and process than what was going into it. I have a nice flow with Tot and am very happy with how it has served my needs. So, is that blog post now worthless? I don’t think so; I believe it still provides value for that right person who comes along at the right time in their Drafts use. Fishing people will cast a bunch of nets in hopes of catching more; I do the same with software in a weird way, I guess.

Example 2: Things

I have used every task manager that has ever come out (and a lot that never actually launched). The one that I always came back to was Things. It seems like the best possible option for how I want to accomplish stuff. Guess what? Life changes over time, and so must the task list.

Task list shakeups generally occur for me when starting a new position or a completely different job entirely. The most recent change came with a new job in a new industry. The use of Things began to show holes very early. It was nice for me, but when it came to getting things in and out or collaborating, it was a bit on the siloed side. I then split my tasks between ‘personal’ and ‘work.’ Personal in Things and work in an Asana board. This setup worked ok, but I prefer everything in one place. I still maintain there is no “work-life balance” only “balance.”

I then began checking out all the apps again and landed on Todoist. It has both lists and Kaban-style boards, so I can tune things the way I want them. I also took this opportunity to simplify my task list organizational structure drastically. It was way too complicated to be maximally effective.

Parting thoughts

Let people like what they want! If we all used the same stuff, it would be very dull. Do I poke fun at Andrew for using every outliner under the sun simultaneously? Absolutely. Do I jab at Martin for using only stock first-party apps? Of course! That’s just friendly ribbing, and that is fully encouraged!

My Happy Browser Setup

My Happy Task Setup

Warning: Apps are subject to change without notice!

TextExpander Expansion with Stream Deck

If you have been wanting to run TextExpander snippets via your Stream Deck on your Mac but it hasn't quite worked using the built-in text plugin, I have good news, it is possible with a few easy tweaks!

First, a couple of prerequisites to get this all working

1. A Stream Deck
2. Stream Deck Software
3. "OSA Script" Stream Deck plugin
4. TextExpander app

Next, let's pick a TextExpander snippet we want to use. For this example, I will use xte which expands to TextExpander.

Now, the setup.

In the Stream Deck software, go ahead and set up a new button using the OSA Script plugin. To set up the button, select AppleScript and then use the following AppleScript

tell application "System Events"
    keystroke "xte"
end tell

Be sure to temporarily disable TextExpander when adding the abbreviation to the AppleScript section to avoid expansion within your script.

One last thing to check on, make sure to add the Stream Deck app to the Accessibility allow list and then close and reopen the Stream Deck app.

You are now set to trigger TextExpander snippets via your Stream Deck buttons! 🎉

A Few Little Mail Features

There are a bunch of different third-party mail clients[^1] on macOS. I have tried just about all of them. They all have pros and cons. As much fun as it is to try them all, using them all helped me to understand that there really are only a few little features that I want and need and I can do them all with the clean and simple Apple Mail client. So here goes:

What features do I actually use?

1. Multiple Account Support (with color-coding inbox for easy identification)
   The first part is very basic and just about every client supports this, Apple Mail is no different. The second part is generally handled automatically by third-party clients. Apple Mail on the other hand required some modification. I accomplished this via rules. See screenshots below.

2. Occasional "Snoozing"
   Some people like this feature, and some do not. It's another feature that a lot of third-party clients have. I use it from time to time and in order to get this kind of functionality with Apple Mail, I use SaneBox. Rather than being able to pick any arbitrary date, I have defined some constraints by creating 3 folders for snoozing. 1 Day, 3 Days, and Next Week. The function is pretty simple, move mail from Inbox to the folder and then it comes back to the inbox in that amount of time.

3. Blocking Junk
   The junk mail filtering on my email accounts is really good but sometimes you need a nuclear option for incoming mail. For this I find the Blackhole feature of SaneBox to be second to none! Put something in there and you will never hear from them again. Done.

4. Automatic Sorting of "General Mail"
   Automatic sorting by rules is great but it's kind of manual. Another great thing you can do with Sanebox is train mail. The vast majority of mail we generally get is not something you need to see RIGHT NOW so I have the majority of my mail route automatically to "The Feed". This basically means that when something hits my inbox, I know it's actually important for me right now. I can then check on "The Feed" whenever is convenient.

5. Flagging
   I use flags in Mail as a way to keep track of things that are in a holding pattern for some reason. This is different than snoozing in that I am not sure what the timeframe will be and this keeps me from constantly dragging the same thing into a snooze folder over and over again. I like that there are different colored flags in Apple Mail vs just a binary flag or not flagged state in other apps. I use colors for different things. The flag colors I use most often are Red (related to a company), Blue (related to actual people), and Yellow (related to purchases). Using consistent colors helps me to quickly narrow in on what I might be looking for. These colors sync to iOS as well so that's a nice bonus.
   
   Another great tip from Miraz is to rename your flags from generic color names to make it even more customized.

Overall, this setup has yielded a pretty nice and manageable result! My only issue is the inability to sync the color rules to iOS. Bummer, but in reality, most of my "mailing" happens on the Mac, so 🤷‍♂️.

[^1]:Mail Clients: Spark, Airmail, Canary, Outlook, Edison, Newton, Big Mail

Drafts Workspaces

First, a little background.

I am not going to talk about the infinite ways that Drafts Actions can do stuff. Also, the following might not be groundbreaking info for hardcore Drafts users. This is more about the structure of the info being added to Drafts.

It's best if the friction to capturing is kept to a minimum, so I have the following three keyboard shortcuts set up to handle just about everything I could need in terms of adding information or finding information. I keep them all next to each other so it's very easy to remember and trigger.

Quick capture keyboard shortcuts

command+space = Alfed Quick Search / Launch
option+space = Things to-do capture
control+space = Drafts Quick Capture

Before Drafts Workspaces

• I had a single all Workspace
• I wasn't tagging
• The inbox held everything
• I had no idea what the status of anything was.

After Drafts Workspaces

I now have six Workspaces!

1. All (see all Drafts in one place!)
2. Untagged (quick way to see any Draft not tagged)
3. Personal (stuff for me and stuff for home)
4. Hemispheric Views (podcast related items)
5. TextExpander (work stuff)
6. Blog (blogging and writing)

My Personal Best Practices

1. Try and tag every draft before adding content. If I don't, I have the untagged workspace as a catch so I can review and sort appropriately.
2. Use a tag structure. First tag (me hemisphericviews textexpander blog) to assign to workspace, and then add more tags as metadata. The first part is more important than the second.
3. Don't be afraid to archive to avoid your workspace inboxes getting too large.
4. Use flags! Flag stuff so that you are going to be coming back to work on. Within the workspace, you can optionally have it sort flags to the top (that's what I do).

If you have been using Drafts in a mostly basic fashion (as most of us do) hopefully these few little "tips" will help you get even more out of Drafts!

iPad Bonus Screen

This was originally written in April 2022 for the Hemispheric Newsletter as part of One Prime Plus for the Hemispheric Views podcast.

I have been using a 24” iMac (M1) for a bit now and I think many people are somewhat surprised that I find a single 24” screen to be “enough space” for day-to-day computing. Having used much larger monitors historically, I suppose I am a bit in the surprised camp as well. Since my move to the iMac, there has only been one activity that left me wanting a more optimal setup for app windows. This is all related to video communications and working remotely 100% of the time.

When you work remotely, you have two general options for communication.

1. Text-based. Slack, Teams, etc.
2. Video-based. Zoom, WebEx, etc.

The video-based portion is where I felt things were lacking. When I have a Zoom window open with all the participant squares showing, I like it to be at the top of the screen as close to center as possible. This makes it so I am generally always looking at the person I am speaking with since that is the location of the camera on the iMac. Given you can only shrink Zoom so much in the vertical direction you are left with only around 2/3 of your screen left for content that you may need to reference while talking to people.

Enter, iPad bonus screen!

I have a 2018 13” iPad Pro that is not being used so why not put it to use!? We have already established that I want the camera to be as close to the participants as possible so placing a monitor to the right or left side is not optimal. Below the iMac is too far from the camera, so what is left? Bingo! On top!

Now you ask, how the heck do you put an iPad on top of your iMac? Balance it, magic, hopes and dreams? Those are all options, but I went with a slightly different approach; hardware!

Here is the shopping list to get this all going:

• iPad Pro
  • Elgato Multi Mount System
    • Master Mount (Large)
    • Flex Arm (Small)
  • Lululook Magnetic iPad Stand (with some modifications. see below.)
  • 180° USB-C Cable (there are a million brands, just get one that looks as low profile as possible)

The Elgato mount is super sturdy and holds the iPad with no problem. There is no wobble at all. If the iPad is wobbling, the whole desk is wobbling, including the iMac, so no issues there. I definitely wanted this setup to look as sleek as possible, so the 180° USB-C cable is a great option so you don’t have a cable sticking way out the side.

I will say right now, using the stand I used is not the easiest way to go. You can get screen mounts with clamps that wrap around the device and then attach to the standard tripod mount (1/4-20) of the Elgato mount, but I really wanted the visual of it floating above the iMac. For this, I removed the foot of the iPad stand. Then I drilled and tapped a 1/4-20 thread into the upper portion of the magnetic mount, and attached that to the Elgato mount. It’s not super difficult, but definitely not tools that most people would just happen to have around. So really the mount part has some wiggle room based on what you are ok with from a construction standpoint.

Finally, the last, and easiest step, connecting it to your Mac via Sidecar. This is so easy now with the latest version of macOS. You can do it all from the menu bar. I am using the following settings to maximize screen availability.

Plain Text is Portable! Or is it?

This was originally written in March 2022 for the Hemispheric Newsletter as part of One Prime Plus for the Hemispheric Views podcast.

It seems to depend on what portable means to you. I have been a long-time backup person. Back up something, then backup that backup, and then go ahead and copy it again to somewhere else. No such thing as too many copies as they say... (Wait, who says that? I don't know, but let's just pretend they said it.) Having a plan B is fantastic, but a backup plan is a two-stage approach.

1. Backup the data.
2. Verify the integrity of the data so it can be repurposed.

A number of years back the term Data Portability started to be thrown around the internet. The idea is that your data should not be trapped in a silo of some company, but rather, you should be able to freely export that data so you can use it elsewhere. Well, that's kind of true...

I think we tend to confuse portable with convenient when talking about our digital assets. The idea of getting your data "out" of a silo is only part of the story. The format that data is stored in plays a huge role in what can be done with it after the fact. I have not been bitten by this too badly in recent memory, but I am having some mildly concerning thoughts as of late.

Example One: my blog.

I host my blog on Blot and love the service. All my posts are a series of Markdown (.md) files. Plain text. What could be more portable than that? Nothing, really. Unless I want to move those blog posts to another platform with any bit of efficiency. To be convenient I would really only be able to move to another service that works almost identically to Blot. I don’t have any reason to want to move away from them, but it does make me rethink this whole data portability thing.

Example Two: my notes.

I use Craft. I love Craft. I talk about Craft (a lot). They have a great export system that I went over in a previous newsletter about “How I Craft.” Similar issue here, however. I can export my data in a bunch of ways, which is fantastic, but then the pesky second half stands up in your way again when trying to import it into another service. Depending on the content of the notes this may be more or less effective.

So what are you supposed to do? Well, you can hope you pick the perfect service for you on the first try and then never leave. That would be nice, but probably not realistic. The next best thing is to look at what kind of data export options exist and see how “standard” they are across the industry. It’s obviously not strictly in a service’s best interest to make leaving easy, but I see that as a strength of a product or service to do exactly that. Make it so good and useful that leaving isn’t something I want. Should I outgrow the service or it simply doesn’t perform the actions I require, the platform should either adapt or acknowledge the fact and let me go in the easiest way possible.

It may seem counterintuitive, but the next time you are going to sign up for a new service, look at these two things first:

a. How easy is it to export your data and in what formats? (simply exporting to their proprietary format does not count)

b. How easy is it to truly delete your account and remove your data from their servers?

Read Like No One Is Watching

This was originally written in February 2022 for the Hemispheric Newsletter as part of One Prime Plus for the Hemispheric Views podcast.

With the internet being so ubiquitous throughout the things we use every day, it’s increasingly easy to fall into a trap of needing to track everything we do. Sometimes this even means the time and effort that goes into this tracking outweighs the actual activity being performed. Whether these activities are active like writing, photography, and artwork, or passive like reading, there are endless ways to track and manage all these activities. When it comes to something like reading, I have fallen into this trap many times in the past. Attempting to find the perfect solution for tracking what books I want to read, which I am currently reading, and of course what have I completed. My good friend Andrew even talked about this exact issue on the show.

There is no solution that fits everyone, of course, but for me I have come to the realization that when it comes to reading, none of this stuff actually matters when it comes to the actual act of reading a book. I have attempted to use all the usual suspects such as GoodReads, Literal, Micro.blog bookshelves, and although somewhat different, more than a fair share of highlighting services. In the end I came to the same handful of conclusions for myself:

1. I don't read more than one book at a time.
   The idea of having two or three books going at once gives me anxiety just thinking about it. My book queue is a single binary slot. There is either a book in the slot, or there isn’t. It is also important to note that there is no requirement for when the slot must be refilled after finishing a book.

2. What is the goal? Reading the book or logging the fact that I am reading the book?
   I do not have a reading goal to hit a certain number of books, or pages per day. It’s simply a passive disconnect. I read a few pages or a few chapters each night in bed before I go to sleep and that’s it. There is no plan set up in advance; just get in bed, read something, and be done.

3. Book recommendations are hard.
   I have a queue for music, tv shows, movies, video games, and probably a few others I am not thinking of right now. Point is, books require a different level of dedication and focus. This makes it very difficult to simply add a book to the list and “give it a try”. Having this many areas of disparate focus is a whole other issue, but given this is the way of things currently, I am ultra selective about what goes into a book selection. I find books to be much more deeply personal than something like a tv show or movie so the likelihood of someone having a recommendation that is going to fit perfectly for me is very low. And I would say that the opposite is true for me telling others.

The whole time I am writing this I realize I am not providing any great insight or words of wisdom, but I do think this topic is something that a lot of people have some level of worry but try to ignore, especially given external forces and pressures to track and join in. (Believe me, I am not immune to this!) I would just suggest giving it a second (or 9th) thought as far as why you are reading, writing, watching, playing, etc. Who is it for?

Creating My Own Dynamic DNS Using Porkbun API

Most people don't have a static IP with their home internet service. Some ISPs do offer you one for an added fee each month, but for some reason my ISP thinks that is somehow worth a $75 setup fee and then an addition $15 a month. Considering the monthly bill is $65, that seems a like a bit much. I don't strictly need a static IP, but it would be nice to have a memorable address to remotely access my home network. Think something like remote.mydomain.com rather than 97.234.76.276. I started looking at the various services out there that provide Dynamic DNS services with small apps that will automatically update upon your IP changing. These services are pretty nice, but are also a monthly fee, so at the end of the day why not just go the static IP route? They also generally have weird urls that I am not really a fan of, something like yourname.ninjadnscoffeeaddict.net. I would prefer to just use my own domain.

I never really thought about doing this myself until I realized that my awesome domain provider, Porkbun, has an API that allows you to programmatically update aspects of DNS records! That's pretty sweet, huh? I got to work with some web searches and used Paw, which is part of Setapp to start messing with some calls to see if I could get something figured out. After a bit of fiddling, trial and error, and some more searching, I ended up getting a script working that would do the following:

1. Check to see what my current WAN IP is
2. Make a call out to Porkbun with my credentials and update sub.domain.com with the WAN IP from step one above.

This is what that script looks like. Bare with me, I know it's probably not the best scripting out there.

#!/bin/bash

#grab wan ip from canhazip and set variable to output
output=$(curl http://canhazip.com)

#display wan ip for troubleshooting
echo "$output";

#wait 2 seconds
sleep 2s

#update dns ip of sub.domain.com via porkbun api
curl \
--header "Content-type: application/json" \
--request POST \
--data '{"secretapikey":"sectret_key","apikey":"my_key","content":"'$output'"}' \
https://porkbun.com/api/json/v3/dns/editByNameType/domain.com/A/sub

I then made this script run on a semi-frequent basis via a launch daemon. Since the IP from my ISP only changes every few weeks (or after a reboot of my gateway), I have it set to update once every 12 hours. This is not a mission critical feature so If I have to wait a bit for it to get sorted, it's fine. I assume it's obvious this is not mission critical given the way I am going about this. 😬

What would make this better? Well, a couple things.

1. I really should be checking to see if the IP has even changed, and if it hasn't, don't push an update.
2. The call I am using to get the WAN IP is hacky and should probably be done by pulling from inside vs outside.

Not usre if this is actually useful for anyone, but I wanted to make it public in case it triggers some other ideas for people. 😀👍

Stop Driving Wedges.

This was originally written in December 2021 for the Hemispheric Newsletter as part of One Prime Plus for the Hemispheric Views podcast.

Not everything needs a deadline. For that matter, not everything needs to be finished. Whether you look at January 1 as a new year, a fresh start, a major life reset, or a continuation of the last month, a deadline is still a deadline.

deadline
dĕd′līn″

noun

A date on or before which something must be completed.

We all have projects going all the time. They may be professional, personal, or somewhere in between. Hell, you may not even realize or call it a project, but it is. For the vast majority of projects in a professional capacity, there are at least fairly clear boundaries around start and end. Those are not the projects I want to focus on here. Here I want to talk about the projects that are for you, or at least mostly for you. Organizing that comic book collection, sewing some new curtains for the bedroom, writing your first book, landscaping the backyard, getting your bookshelf in order, anything will fit, pick your project. More than likely you have at least once tried to impose a deadline on that project, and it was most likely an arbitrary one. You then felt bad for not meeting that timeline, and this put a wedge between you and the reason you wanted to work on that project to begin with. Soon, enough wedges have been put in place that you lose all sight of what the project meant to you to begin with.

I suppose it’s natural for us humans to set these boundaries and a lot of it comes from cultural conditioning as well. (Don’t get me started on the idiotic notion of hustle culture 🤮). I don't have any affinity for "the new year" meaning anything special for me, but time off around the holidays did get me back to thinking about some unfinished projects and going down the immediate guilt route of reasons they are not finished.

I will pick two examples for this narrative.

Example One: Board games and projects that are in a partially completed state. I was thinking about the second board game that I started creating and how it was feeling a lot like the first in terms of progression. I got a lot done, then it sat for over a year, and then I got back to it and got it released. This second game is a lot like that. A large percentage of the game is completed and needs to be pushed over the finish line. I have set several end goal dates and they have all passed, putting more of those pesky wedges in place. After some more thinking about this situation, I had a realization. That first game was left in a state that was perfect to pick back up when I needed a project like that in my life. Because I had that project in a state that could be picked up at any time, it was there for me when I needed it. I was making the game for myself, I was not beholden to a publisher, just myself, so the arbitrary due dates were serving no purpose other than driving those wedges.

Example Two: Photography projects that are not yet started and simply exist as ideas jotted down. Unlike the 1000 Words project that I managed to convince myself from the start would be over when it’s over, this other project was not so lucky. This other project immediately was assigned a due date, for no reason at all, and has been passed by. I want to take this opportunity (writing this letter) to realize that a wedge has been created and instead use this project as a type of therapy. I will leave this project open-ended, and work on it and add to it as I need to, not because there is a deadline. Not all things need to be done by a certain time and/or date. Heck, not everything needs to be done at all.

For whatever we are calling this January 1 and beyond, I want to explore the use of personal projects as therapy, not additional unneeded stress on top of the real-world stress you are already buried underneath. It’s hard to believe when we look around, but, life isn’t about the volume of output. When the uncontrollable outside forces are crashing down, I want to climb under an umbrella of a personal passion project and enjoy it. I am no longer going to hang my existence or emotional worth on whether it gets done, but rather on the interactions along the way. Remember, it’s for you, not someone else.

Internet Bucket of Consumption

This was originally written in December 2021 for the Hemispheric Newsletter as part of One Prime Plus for the Hemispheric Views podcast.

Generally I tend to prefer applications that focus on a single task and just do that single task well. However, lately, I am liking the idea of having a single place to read things that originate from the web.

Over the years my collection of things from the web has changed more times than I can count. One thing that was always a trend however was the use of multiple apps. Instapaper, Pocket, Raindrop, GoodLinks, Abyss, ReadKit, Pinboard, Feedly, News Explorer, NetNewsWire, insert 1000 more app names.

After some exploration and experimentation I have landed on a new setup for getting stuff into and out of my internet bucket of consumption™.

TL;DR The "Bucket" is Reeder 5 on macOS, iOS, and iPadOS and the net that scoops everything up is Feedbin. This is also the sync system.

The Longer Version

The "Consumption Sources"

1. Newsletters

   These are subscribed through Feedbin using a special email address (xxxxxxxx@newsletters.feedbin.com) provided by Feedbin. When they hit Feedbin I use a couple features built into automate where to end up. They are tagged Newsletter automatically and then ::starred.:: Reeder then recognizes this starred state so they are easy to get to when I am ready to dive into some newsletters. This also means they won't be accidentally skipped (marked as read) in my main reeder feed. One quick tap to the starred section in Reeder and all my available Newsletters are waiting to be read. 👍

2. RSS Feeds

   Nothing too special here. All RSS links are added to Feedbin. Done. One special reason to use Feedbin is that you can setup actions based on keywords within the feeds you subscribe to. I use this to filter out content that I don't care to see in my river of news.

1. Read It Later

   Reeder 5 has a Read It Later feature now that syncs through iCloud. I use this to store articles that comes from RSS, my email, or just randomly on the web. There are extensions that are baked into the system that stem from Reeder as you would expect.

   Sharing

   Reeder does a nice job of letting me share items out as well, from a simple copy of the source link, to more advanced send-to locations, it covers all my needs for sharing neat things I find on my travels through the web.

   This system has been working very smoothly for me and has made my travels across the web a little easier and more more enjoyable. ::One thing of note: the only thing that made me go away from Reeder a while back was due to the animations making me feel nauseous. Weird? yeah I know. But, never fear, they can be disabled and all is well now.::

A Spark of Creativity

This was originally written in November 2021 for the Hemispheric Newsletter as part of One Prime Plus for the Hemispheric Views podcast.

I have been in a photographic slump over the last couple years. I imagine this is the case for many people given what the last few years have included.. There have been a few shimmers of creativity that have come and gone in that time, but it’s been mostly dark. I recently felt a resurgence and it caught me by surprise so I thought I would attempt to explain it in the hopes that it might be helpful for others. Creativity often strikes when you least expect it and that was the case this time.

I have loved photography for quite a long time, and when the cameras in our pocket computers started really getting good, things changed forever in terms of what it meant to be a photographer and even what the word ‘photography’ meant in general. The greatest benefit of a pocket computer camera is not the photo quality, the lens selection, or even the dynamic range. Those are all getting better by the day, but the real power is just how fast you can go from zero to captured.

Pocket computer camera capture steps.

1. Grab Device
2. Swipe the screen to the left.
3. Capture.

That’s it. I know, right!? Now contrast that with using my standalone camera.

1. Make sure you actually have it with you. And if you actually do, get it out of your backpack.
2. Flick power switch and wait for it to start up.
3. Make sure all the settings are correct so you can actually capture something useful.

Same number of steps. but, A LOT more time.

I sound like I am saying my pocket computer is better than my standalone camera in every way, so why have the standalone camera? I can see how it sounds like that but that’s not the conclusion I am attempting to steer you toward. I really just want to say that for some, myself included, the barrier to getting going again comes down to the input effort required. The above steps using my pocket computer means I am getting back into the swing of things quickly without even thinking about it. And just like that, this initial push has got me thinking about and starting a new photography project using my standalone camera because it’s better suited for that project than my phone is.

I touched on the capturing portion of the process above, but what about the post capture process, how did that play into the reigniting of my creativity? Well, it would be hard to find anyone that feels it’s easier to edit, export, and share photos from a standalone camera vs your pocket computer. (Although I am sure someone out there thinks this?) Anyway, for me, the power of trying different edits, duplicating the image to try different crops, and having this all instantly available for saving and backing up is wonderful for a creative endeavor. Sometimes waiting is best for a creative idea to build, but other times you have an idea right there in the moment and this pocket computer camera makes this all possible. Right now.

So, in my journey back from the brink of darkness thanks to my pocket computer, there were a couple great apps that most have probably heard of but I wanted to mention just in case.

• Halide Mark II
• Darkroom
• Camera+ 2
• TouchRetouch
• RAW Power

Getting going again is hard. Trust me, I know.

Take this 590 words and see if you can use it to help you build something creative for yourself.

How I Craft.

This was originally written in October 2021 for the Hemispheric Newsletter as part of One Prime Plus for the Hemispheric Views podcast.

Let’s not pretend like this is the first time you have heard me go on about Craft. I am not here to sell you on it, convert you to the ways of Craft, or even tell you why it’s better than whatever you are already using. I am just going to give a look inside how I organize stuff within it so that it may be of some service to someone who has used Craft, is thinking about using it, or wants some more input on how to perhaps better organize things within the system they are already using.

Getting Stuff Into Craft 📥

Getting stuff into Craft seems like a good place to start. Like a lot of apps that capture information, there are multiple ways to get info into the system and Craft is no different. I generally pull / push information into Craft in one of three ways.

1. Original authoring within the application. This can be text or other content like images.
2. Sending to Craft from Drafts.
3. System Share Sheet within other applications.

Organizing It All 🗂

Craft has an organizational feature called Spaces. These spaces all live within the Craft interface and are a way to silo information into separate buckets. Think of this as a way to logically sort various parts of your life while still having access to everything within one environment. You can do something similar with folders all within a single Space, but that will depend on each person and what they prefer. I manage all my info across several Spaces.

Spaces

• Jason Burk
  • My personal notes and stuff I am working on.
• Archive
  • Once a note has lived its life and is no longer useful I move it to an archive space. This gets it out of my general working on stuff area, but leaves it available on the off chance I need to reference it. I could just export these and let them live in cold storage, but this is a nice compromise that adds some convenience.
• Burk Home
  • This is a shared space with my wife where we keep all stuff related to home life. Our ‘home wiki’ lives in here.
• Coffee Pot Games
  • Anything to do with the board games I am working on goes in this space.
• Hemispheric Views
  • A shared space between Andrew, Martin, and myself. All show related stuff goes in here. Show notes start out here, a running topic pool, and any other info related to the Hemispheric Views Empire.
• “Work”
  • This is all notes related to my work at NAME REDACTED. Being able to keep all my research, daily interactions, meeting stuff, and whatever else in a nice clean and searchable space is wonderful. I use the Secret Link feature (more on this below) at work a good bit as well so I can create dashboards for others to easily view and get info from. It beats the hell out of SharePoint.

Getting Stuff Out of Craft 📤

Craft has a number of ways to export content for use in different ways.

1. Share
   • Secret Link
     • This allows you to create a shareable link of your note so others with the link can view the contents of your note but not edit it. The content will update for them as you make changes. You can revoke the link as well at any time to remove it from being publicly viewable.
   • Send as Email
     • Allows you to send a copy of the note content via your local email client or Gmail.
2. Export
   • PDF
   • Image
   • Markdown (I use this one all the time)
   • Textbundle (I use this for exporting all notes as backup, see below)
   • MS Word .docx
   • Copy Deeplink (This is great for adding a link to another note or a specific place within a note)
   • Print
3. Send To (These will be active or disabled based on what you have installed on your system)
   • Drafts
   • Things (This is great if you add some tasks to a note while talking with someone. Simply select them, send to Things, and those tasks are now created in Things!)
   • DevonThink
   • OmniFocus
   • iA Writer
   • Ulysses
   • Bear
   • Day One
   • NotePlan

Backup, Backup, Backup 📦

Backup is critical when it comes to storing your information. I like that Craft has multiple options for exporting documents. Here is what I do for exports.

Repeat for each space 🔁

1. Export all documents as Textbundle. This feels like the most universal output for long term storage.
2. Collect all exported folders into a dated folder.
3. I store the most recent 3 backup folders in iCloud Drive, and roll the oldest ones off into ‘cold storage’.

Now that I have typed this all out, it feels way more complex, but it really isn’t! Again, whether you use Craft or not, maybe something in here will trigger a part of your brain that will help you with another system you are using perhaps. Craft keeps growing and refining what it is and I am very happy with the direction this ship is sailing. ⛵️

A few other public “Secret Links” as examples of what it can be used for

Game Status

Hemispheric Views // Media Corner Picks

Sync. (EVERYTHING!!!)

This was originally written in September 2021 for the Hemispheric Newsletter as part of One Prime Plus for the Hemispheric Views podcast.

It’s probably more common given this last year, but I personally work in two different offices during any given week. This presents some challenges when it comes to technology setups. I don’t imagine I am that unique in thinking that the more equal these two environments are, the more productive I can potentially be, so I have gone to some pretty great lengths to ensure my setups are very close to equal from a hardware and software perspective, given a few constraints.

Hardware

This is the area with the most constraints because for my home office I do not require a laptop for any reason, where as with the work office, I do. Both locations utilize Mac hardware. This is, and has been a requirement for employment for some time, and yes I absolutely understand the massive privilege that this is. On to the hardware..

Home Office 🏡

• 24” iMac M1 (2021)
• Razer Viper Ultimate Mouse (Mercury)
• Apple Magic Keyboard with Touch ID
• Apple Magic Trackpad
• 13” iPad Pro (2018) w/Pencil
• AirPods Max + Shure Microphone (Same stuff I use for the podcast)
• iPhone 12 mini

Work Office 🏢

• 13" MacBook Pro M1 (2020)
• 32” LG UltraFine 4K (32UN880)
• Razer Viper Ultimate Mouse (Black)
• Apple Magic Keyboard with Touch ID
• Apple Magic Trackpad
• 13” iPad Pro (2018) w/Pencil [Same iPad as above]
• AirPods Pro
• iPhone 12 mini [Same iPhone as above]

This gives me basically the same hardware setup for muscle memory.

macOS + Big 4K+ Monitor + Keyboard and Mouse

*I am not a dual monitor person

Software

Email 📧

When it comes to email applications, I have used them all. When it comes to managing work and personal email, I have landed on Apple Mail as a means of managing both. For personal mail I use the wonderful Fastmail and my work mail all runs through Office 365. Both of which sync perfectly between all devices. I was using Airmail for a long time, but the differences between the iOS and macOS versions drove me a bit mad.

Calendar 📅

This is an easy one, the only calendar app I use and regularly recommend is Fantastical and it works flawlessly with both Fastmail CalDav calendars as well as Office 365.

Notes 📝

This is going to shock you.. I keep all my personal notes in my main space in Craft and all my work notes in a separate space.. IN CRAFT! Can you believe it!?

Tasks ✅

Like email, I have also tried every task manager that exists. They all have their trade offs. The one that most closely fits my needs and way of thinking is Things. It could be argued that I should keep all my work related stuff in Office 365 tasks app, but I am still pretty resistant to managing multiple task apps.

File storage 📁

This one is a little convoluted, but it’s by necessity, not choice. My personal files are 100% in iCloud Drive. It works great for me. All my work related stuff is in Microsoft OneDrive because of the integration with all other work related services. I also have Dropbox for collaboration with external engineering teams. It’s a bit annoying having work stuff spread across both OneDrive as well as Dropbox, but it’s easier for me to manage that versus managing other people on how to use stuff outside their normal workflow.

Messaging 💬

This one is pretty straight forward. Personal stuff mainly runs through iMessage and Discord. All work messaging goes through Microsoft Teams. Is it my favorite? Definitely not. Does it work on all my devices and get the job done? Yep.

I think the biggest point of this whole article is not really what I am using for each task or area of life / work, but rather the power of using a single platform of architectures and software. Using a single platform that I am comfortable and very familiar means my work is not impacted by the tools. This is not a template for how to be productive, or how to be a power user. Think of it as a bookmark to look at how you work in multiple locations and see if there are some small ways you can make things easier on yourself. 😀 👍

Going Overboard. For Fun!

This was originally written in August 2021 for the Hemispheric Newsletter as part of One Prime Plus for the Hemispheric Views podcast.

Raise your hand if you like dealing with your home network.

✋ This is me raising my hand!

I assume most people probably don’t. And of those most, most of those probably don’t even give it much thought past what their ISP gave them or installed when they signed up. I am on the other end of that spectrum it seems. I love optimizing, tweaking, and upgrading our home network. So much so that after one year in our new house, we are now officially on to Home Network 2.0!

Yep, because we didn’t know all the ins and outs of the new house in terms of what network installation would look like, I took the easy route and went all wireless (with the slight exception of the two units using ethernet for backhaul. That’s a fancy way of saying that the two units talk to each other over the cable instead of through the air.). We started in this house with two AMPLIFI ALIEN units. They are fast, WiFi 6, and mesh capable with ethernet backhaul. For the most part they are good units, but they were too hands off (which, yes, is what most people want. So this is actually a great feature for most). I like to dig in and see what’s going on though for the sake of learning new things, and just plain curiosity. I pretty much love any equipment that can be rack mounted, so when it came time for ::Home Network 2.0::, you better believe there is going to be a rack involved!

For most home setups the two ALIEN units would be overboard, but what if we want to go WAY OVERBOARD, how would one do that? Have a seat, I will tell you just that!

First, you need to get a list of all the stuff you want to get for the new network. Here is mine.

• 1x Network Controller (Cloud Key Gen 2+)
• 1x 24 Port Managed Switch (USW-24-G2)
• 3x 8 Port Managed Switch (USW-Lite-8-PoE)
• 3x WiFi 6 Access Points (U6-Lite)
• 1x 1000 ft of CAT6a Cable (trueCABLE CAT6a)
• 1x Bag of Push Through CAT6 Cable Connectors (trueCABLE Cat6A Pass Through Connectors)
• 6x CAT6 Keystones and Wall Plates
• Various tools for making holes and running cables through the walls
  • Some tools that the majority of people won’t have but are very handy for this kind of work
    • Fish Tape (Steel or Polymer depending on where you are working)
    • Ethernet Cable Crimpers
    • Good pair of small diagonal cutting pliers (The CHP-170's are inexpensive and great)

Simple, right? It sounds like a lot of work to run cables through the walls, crimping the connectors, and mounting access points to wall, and you would be kind of correct, but it’s all doable as long as you plan things out and take your time. Once you rush, you will be sorry.

You cut holes in your walls!? Yep! One thing I can’t handle is cables dangling, so all cables get routed so they cannot be seen. This is technically optional, but when you see the results, you will be glad you did the extra steps.

Sometimes you need to go overboard even if it’s just because it brings you happiness! I know all this is not the case for you reading this right now, but even if you scale this all the way back to running a single extra ethernet cable to a part of your house where you get terrible or no WiFi, it’s all worth it! Also if you do go all in on the crazy, you get cool real-time topology maps of your network and clients, and who doesn’t want that!?

Oh, one other side benefit of Home Network 2.0 is that I can add on cameras as well that will integrate with this infrastructure and allow me to record all video directly to the local Cloud Key Gen 2+ on its internal 1TB drive without the need for cloud recording, and given the PoE connection to the cameras they are instant view rather than waiting for a wireless connection to handshake before you can view. 👍

I hope this was helpful in any way to each of you, whether you want to upgrade your home network, or simply get your wall mounted tv cables tucked away out of sight. Go forth and go overboard on some area of your life that will bring you happiness!

Blogging Setup. Mac & iPad Parity.

This was originally written in July 2021 for the Hemispheric Newsletter as part of One Prime Plus for the Hemispheric Views podcast.

I have had https://burk.io running on blot for several years now (since ~2018) and it continues to be great. The setup is easy, clean, and fast. If you haven’t seen blot in action, at a high level, it’s a folder structure that you maintain and blot uses that structure to create the site. There are a million of these kinds of static blogging engines that have come and gone, but this is the one I like and feels like it will be around for the long haul. Anyway, enough of my sales pitch! Blot has two options for how your files are stored and accessed; Dropbox or git. Dropbox is arguably the easier option since it's drag and drop, in fact, this is what I was using for quite a while because of that simplicity. I don't use Dropbox for anything else so it seemed kind of silly to keep it around just for my website when git is available as well. I also found that updating the site through git was faster than waiting for Dropbox to do whatever it needed to do to sync files. I also recently switched to using a 13" iPad Pro instead of a MacBook Pro for my secondary computer (::a story for another day::) and using Dropbox on iPad for this kind of setup wasn't good at all.

I should probably step back and describe a bit how I have things set up on the Mac. I use Nova for all my web-related editing. It’s a great text editor that I like very much and also has git integration which makes it a one-stop-shop for all things web code. My blog posts originate in Craft and then eventually move over to Nova to publish. This setup removes any friction to publishing so this means the only thing that gets in my way of writing posts is me not writing them. No one to blame by myself. Perfect.

The ideal solution for the iPad would be Nova on iPadOS but I won’t hold my breath on that... So, now we get to how I complete this process on my iPad and attempt to keep the flow at parity with my Mac flow. I use two apps on the iPad. One for the git portion and one for the editing. For managing git and files there doesn’t seem to be any better way to go than Working Copy. This is a great visual git client that is quite intuitive with a nice layout for managing your git repositories. It also acts as a file provider within iPadOS so this means other apps have access to these files much like iCloud Drive. The second app is Textastic for the actual text editing. Because of the file provider ability you can view your git directory structure all within Textastic so there is minimal back and forth between the two apps. It’s as easy as making your edits in Textastic, switch to Working Copy, and push your changes to the server. Done.

For those familiar with git, you already know this, but for everyone else, the premise of git is that it stores and controls information, usually source code. When you make changes to your code you create small notes or “commit messages” with each update (unless you are a monster in which case you probably don’t comment your code either). A side benefit that I like about this for blogging is that you now have a record of what changes you have made in the past and can reference them if something breaks in the future or if you simply need to know what you changed and when. It’s 100% up to you to make sure these commit messages are useful, but if done well they can be a very nice addition that you get for free simply by using git as your backend.

So there you have it! My complete blogging setup from Mac to iPad. It was the one worry I had when moving from the MacBook Pro to the iPad 13”, but that worry is long gone now with these great tools. I imagine apps will change around from time to time as new text editors land on the iPad but that is fine given the awesome foundation infrastructure that this setup is built on!

And yes, it is possible to add the Dracula theme to Textastic! 🧛‍♂️

Creating macOS Finder Links To Craft Notes

If you use Craft and have ever wanted to put an icon in the macOS Finder to get back to a note quickly, this is how I do it.

1. Find the note you want the shortcut to within Craft.
2. Grab the deeplink to that note.
3. Paste that link into safari URL bar. (Don't hit return)
4. Grab the little globe icon in the URL bar and drag it to your desktop (This creates a .inetloc file)
5. Rename that file to whatever you want.
6. *Optionally you can modify the icon image if you would like.

Now you simply double click that file and it will open to your craft note directly! 🎉

If you keep your projects in Finder organized by folder like I do, this is a nice way to have a link back to your Craft notes related to that project all within the main Finder project folder. 👍

Video of the process

Creating The Golden Set

This was originally written in June 2021 for the Hemispheric Newsletter as part of One Prime Plus for the Hemispheric Views podcast.

I have been a fan of The Twilight Zone for a very long time. I watch them quite regularly and have seen each episode countless times. Generally I watch them on various streaming services depending on which one had access to the content at a given point in time. The problem with streaming services is that you never know what content they will have, when they will have it, or even what versions they will have.

Given my affinity for The Twilight Zone, I wanted to have a “golden set” that we knew would always be available. This lead me to searching around online for the best possible quality I could find to use as source material. This turned out to be a complete collection of all 5 seasons on Blu-ray. I picked up a previously owned copy on eBay and it showed up about a week later. For most, this is where the story would end now that they had their own set in their collection. For me though, discs are a no go. I want the entire library in our Plex library so I can watch it on any device and with no DRM. This meant it was time to start ripping and encoding. Here is the process I went through to create my golden set..

Side Note: I did this all on a Mac, but both the hardware and software exist on Windows as well if that is your platform of choice.

Prerequisites

The Hardware:

• I used an M1 iMac but any Mac is fine
• A USB 3.0 Pioneer BDR-XS06 Blu-ray External Burner

The Software:

• MakeMKV (The latest beta key can be found here.)
• Permute
• MetaZ

I broke the process into 4 steps

1. Clone discs to internal drive
2. Extract individual episodes as .mkv
3. Convert .mkv to .mp4
4. Apply metadata to episodes

Step 1: Clone Discs to Internal Drive

This is technically optional, but I did it for two reasons. One, I wanted backups of the discs in case something happens to them. And two, I wanted to work on everything from a local drive instead of messing with discs and waiting for the drive to spin up. I use MakeMKV for this. Simply pop in the disc, and select Backup Disc in MakeMKV, and wait!

Step 2: Extract Individual Episodes

I used MakeMKV for this also. Open the media backup file that was created in step 1. MakeMKV will scan the file and display the episode files within the file. Export these to your drive so you have each episode as a separate .mkv file.

Step 3: Convert .mkv to .mp4

.mkv files are playable by a lot of systems, but I wanted them to be more universal so I went with conversion to .mp4 files. This also makes applying metadata easier in the next step. I used Permute to convert from .mkv files to .mp4 files. This software is not on Windows, but Windows has a ton of options for this.

Step 4: Apply Metadata

Although the video files are fully playable, it’s nice to have all the episode titles, descriptions, cover art and so forth for when you view the files in a media player like Plex. MetaZ is a fantastic piece of software to do this. You drag in your .mp4 files, update the metadata and click write. Done. The program will churn for a bit and then poof, you have your new file in all its metadata glory.

Siri Shortcuts - Episode 12

Shortcut Name: Location for Micro.blog
Revision: 1.0
Add to Shortcuts!

What does it do?
This is a shortcut to allow for quickly sharing locations to Micro.blog.

{{more}}

How does it work?

1. Get's your current location.
2. Asks for text input to search for locations near by (Example: Apple Store).
3. Allows you to select from a list of locations found and grabs the map link.
4. Let's you select a TagMoji to prepend the text.
5. Formats a post as TagMoji [Location Name, City](Maps URL to location).
6. Copies this markdown link to your clipboard.
7. Gives you an option to open a Micro.blog app (Official App or Gluon).

I chose to copy it to clipboard and open an app rather than doing it all in the shortcut for a couple reasons. One, it keeps the shortcut more simple for others to be able to modify. Two, this allows you to add more text to your post and add photos if wanted.

Kind of a proof of concept of a feature I can see being integrated directly into Micro.blog at some point.

"Source Code"

Check out other shortcuts

Less Paper Office

This was originally written in May 2021 for the Hemispheric Newsletter as part of One Prime Plus for the Hemispheric Views podcast.

The Paperless Office™ has been long promised and never delivered. As with just about everything in life, absolutes are rare. Rather than trying to pursue this idea of The Paperless Office, I strive for what I call "The Less Paper Office." Some stuff needs to be physical, and that's fine, the vast majority, however, does not. Enter a relatively simple system I have put in place to accomplish a few key things:

1. Reduce the number of paper documents we have to store in our house.
2. Increase the likelihood that we can find a document when it is needed.
3. Reduce the risk of document damage or loss.
4. Improve the security of our documents.

So how do I do it? Here we go!

Here is a flowchart that shows the steps that each piece of paper goes through when it enters the house.

The nice thing about this system is that the apps are, for the most part, interchangeable to fit whatever devices you use. In this example, I am using Scanner Pro, but not too long ago I had been using SwiftScan (RIP Scanbot). The important thing is capturing the documents, not the apps you use to do it. My only caveat would be to ensure the app you are using is capturing good quality, high-resolution scans, and is performing OCR to aid in searching later. I didn't mention traditional flatbed scanners, or fancier feeding scanners simply because I don't use them and the speed and reliability of using my phone makes this whole process almost no effort so I know it will get done.

I hope this has given you somewhere to start if you were looking to reduce paper in your life. Do you do some of this, or all of it already? If you had tried something in the past and given up due to complexity, give this a go and see if it sticks!