Hey everyone! Happy Thursday!

As I mentioned somewhat recently, I’ve been angling to make this space a wee bit more diverse topic-wise: creating a more complete reflection of myself and my interests. This post is a quick, bit-sized step towards that goal. It’s not tech-related. So if you are here for that, feel free to move on. No hard feelings.

Every once and a while during my internet travels, I come across a video that takes a simple everyday action, and presents it in such a way that it permanently changes the way I do the same action moving forward. It’s kind of amazing when that happens, and it always makes me smile when to receive those literal “life-changing” moments.

Here are two such examples. One for the apple eaters out there, and one for anyone who uses paper towels:

youtu.be/vdCGnuccR…

And…

youtu.be/2FMBSblpc…

Just like that! After decades of doing the opposite, I consume apples and paper towels far more efficiently!

Do you have any videos you’ve come across that changed the way you’ve always done things? Leave some examples in the comments below! I’d love to see them!

When you sit in front of a computer like I do for the better part of a typical 8 hour day, you need an activity to clear your head at the end of all of it.

Some people go to the gym, some play video games, some journal about their day - whatever it is that helps you hit that reset button - you do it. It gets the cobwebs out, making you feel refreshed and ready for another day.

What do I do? I have a walking practice. Part physical activity, part meditation, communing with the open air has become such a critical part of my physical and mental health. So much so, that I wanted to start tracking it.

Luckily, iOS offers a TON options. I started off by using the Nike+ Run Club app. It was free, it offered maps of the routes I took, and it kept track of my “runs” (even though I was walking). But it was also overkill, with too many taps for me to get to information I merely wanted to glance at.

I just needed an app I could open, glance quickly, and see how far I’d walked in a day.

Enter Pedometer++

When I started researching pedometer apps for iOS, Pedometer++ immediately bubbled to the top as it’s really well thought of in the app dev community. I was fortunate for that too. Researching apps can be a lot of fun, but it can often turn into a rabbit hole scenario and I didn’t particularly want that kind of situation whilst looking at step tracking apps. So, having seen it, I downloaded it and took it for a spin.

Perfect choice for me.

After a week of use, I knew I had a winner. When I open Pedometer++ it immediately presents each day's steps as a bar in a graph. If the bar is red, you haven't walked much at all. If it's orange you've done ok, but you haven't reached your daily goal (which you can set in Pedometer++'s settings). When it hits green? You get treated to a celebratory burst of green confetti!! It may seem silly, but I have to confess to smiling each time I see that confetti fly. That light gamification is a fun touch.

It’s those little flourishes that make Pedometer++ an app I use daily. I appreciate the attention to detail that went into this app’s admittedly spartan layout. Everything pops and is easy to read at a glance. Colors are crisp, type faces stand out yet stay out of the way, and the spacing of everything is just all-around pleasant to look at and interact with.

As far as accuracy is concerned, Pedometer++ syncs with iOS’s baked-in Health app, surfacing the data from your phone (and/or Apple Watch, if you have one, I don’t) within the app. I found it to always be accurate on the distance I walk while, albeit rarely, off on the number of steps I’ve taken. Otherwise, it seems  entirely in lock-step with my stride and gait. It also displays elevation gain, which it offers as “floors” of stairs you’ve hiked up.

An outstanding iOS widget.

One last thing that I’d be remiss to not point out is Pedometer++’s Today Widget.

It offers the perfect amount of UI from the app itself, right on your lock screen. It loads quickly and works like a charm when I take my phone out mid-stride and tap the lock button to wake my iPhone.

A++ for my needs.

I wouldn't write about Pedometer++ if I wasn't smitten with it. It truly is that perfect blend of clear and concise data delivery that doesn't look boring or bland. I truly look at it several times a day and it's a perfect companion for my daily walking practice.

I think you’d like too!

Links:

• Official website for Pedometer++.
• App Store link (free to use with Ads. iAP can get rid of those.)

This poor site. My work and personal life in 2016 really sucked the oxygen out of this space, leaving it quite neglected. I at one time even considered letting the site go and simply keeping the domain name. After all, what’s the point in keeping/paying for a site if you can’t commit any time to it?

Then the year ended, and an old feeling came back. That feeling I used to get when I was writing and creating things. It was so nice to feel that again!

So this year will be different, or, at least I aim for it to be.

The site won’t be as tech-related as it has been in the recent past (though there will be a fair amount of that) and I aim to contribute more short, bite-sized portions of other things that inspire me. Links of interest, movies I am excited about, thoughts on writing, the usual app/hardware reviews, as well as any tips that I feel are worth sharing. More variety, more frequently.

In short, I’ll be breathing some life back into this space. If you’ve spent some time here in the last year or two - thank you. I know the content has been sparse. I aim to change that moving into 2017 and I hope you’ll join me in that endeavor.

Happy New Year! Let’s make it a good one!

~ Tad

Like many out there, I’ve been enjoying the heck out of Scrivener for iOS. The portability, the familiarity with the desktop client, the functionality therein… we all know it was taking its sweet time getting here, but I think we can all agree that the finished product surpassed our expectations.

One thing I was curious about though, was how I could port my original blogging methodology in Scrivener for the desktop, to Scrivener on iOS. I was even more curious as to whether there were even better ways to blog with it on the go, since iOS hardware is so damn portable.

Luckily there is, and I wanted to share it with the folks that may not know.

A little help from the iOS app ecosystem…

Out of the box, Scrivener doesn’t export text to blogs and it shouldn’t. That’s not its core purpose. For me at least, this omission of functionality wasn’t a let down. The good news though, is that there are plenty of apps out there that can pick up the slack in this regard and the one that did this best for me was an app called Workflow.

Now Workflow could merit its own post worth thousands of words alone. I’ll save you the geeked-out deep-dive though and simply say that, as its name suggests, Workflow is a universal iOS app that provides automated workflows for you on your iOS devices. It can accomplish a shocking amount tasks without a jailbreak and one of those tasks is exporting text from any iOS app to your WordPress blog via an action extension.

Keeping it simple so you can get back to blogging…

Instead of walking you through the process of how to create this workflow within the app, the kind developers of Workflow allow you to share your workflows via URL schemes. So all you should have to do is buy the app (on sale right now at a steal for $2.99 USD) and click this link here to install the workflow I created for you all, automagically! After the workflow shows up in the Workflow app, all you have to do hook up your blog to the workflow (by providing your login credentials) and tweak the settings within the workflow to taste.

I personally have mine setup to output to draft mode, allowing me to manually add a title and categories/tags before publishing live on my site. You can set it to however you like though.

Also, for all of you markdown lovers, I have set this workflow up to create markdown from rich text! So get on up and get your MD on!

"Sounds great! Got it all installed. How do I use it though?”

Once you have everything setup the way you like, all you have to do in Scrivener is simply write your post. Once that’s complete do the following:

1. Highlight all of your text and copy it. Then tap the “Share” option.
2. On the share sheet that pops up, look at the action extensions (bottom row) and look for the option to “Run Workflow”. This will then bring up the Workflow automations you currently have, one of which will be the Workflow you got from this post. Protip: If "Run Workflow" isn't showing up, scroll all the way to the right of that row. Tap more. And add that option from the list that shows up of available actions.
3. Just tap that, fill out any field prompts, and let Workflow do its thing!
4. Once the workflow finishes, log into your site and verify everything is published as expected.
5. Enjoy more blogging from your favorite writing app on the go!

That’s it! If you have the official iOS app for WordPress you can actually blog completely desktop free from any iOS device at your disposal! Pretty awesome right?!

So, from the top, here's what you need to make this all work:

• A phone or tablet the runs iOS.
• Scrivener for iOS (though, this Workflow can work with ANY text editor on iOS).
• Workflow (it's universal so you just buy it once and it works on iPad or iPhone. Workflows will sync between the two devices as well.)
• WordPress for iOS (if you want to not think about blogging on a desktop again.)

At the beginning of this year I made a decision that I was going to make more of an effort to stand while I worked.

Being in the web development field since college, I’ve spent countless jags of time sitting, often with horrible posture, churning out code. I’d try to get up and walk periodically, but that act wasn’t happening nearly enough to resemble a practice that could remotely be considered healthy.

Maybe it was because my lower back was aching more than normal or, more than likely, it’s because I turned 40 this year. Either way, I realized I could be taking better care of myself by doing some pretty basic things.

So, obviously if I was going to stand more whilst working, I’d need a standing desk. But it took less than a minute-long Google search to see how cost prohibitive decent standing desks were. There was simply no way I could justify the cost. I could stack phonebooks (remember those?) up for my monitor and keyboard, but stability becomes a major issue with that setup. I’m reasonably handy with tools, so I even thought about using discarded scrap wood from my local hardware store to build something from scratch. It would be a cheap option, but it’d also look pretty shabby and if I needed to move it, quite cumbersome.

The whole situation - simply trying to do right by myself - was becoming quite irritating, almost to the point of complete abandonment. But then a friend at my co-working space mentioned Oristand. I’d never heard of it, but it sounded brilliant.

A Magic Box

To hear it described, Oristand sounds like a cardboard box and, well, it is!

And yet it isn’t.

It’s actually more like large-scale cardboard origami, than something you’d put your belongings in. Describing it is hard, so I’ll let Oristand’s promo video do that heavy lifting, then I’ll describe my time with it.

vimeo.com/151861494

Pretty cool right? And at $25 (USD) I had to at least try it.

Earning a living on top of a cardboard box.

 

Once it arrived I brought it to my co-working space here in Durham, NC and placed it on my desk. Assembly couldn’t have been easier. It unfolds quickly and in less then 10 seconds, you will have it on your desk waiting for your laptop or monitor on the upper shelf and your keyboard and mouse/trackpad on the lower shelf.

One thing I noticed right away is that it is not adjustable in any way. I am 6 foot 3 inches tall and, ergonomically, it just wasn’t going work. I often combat RSI issues so, for me anyways, I needed to either raise my desk or put the Oristand on something higher. Luckily, I found some cheap plastic furniture risers (“footies” you put under each table leg) at a local store that lifted the desk to a perfect height. Solved!

Currently Oristand only makes one size of its stand. So if it doesn’t match your body type, you may have to tap into some additional creativity. Don’t give up!

Once the ergonomic issues were resolved, my Oristand worked completely as advertised! It’s easy to fold back up and carry to another location, it’s super light weight, and it’s takes up very little space if you need to hide it away for a bit.

It’s also WAY sturdier than I anticipated!

[gallery type=“rectangular” ids=“9581,9580”]

Many folks online were asking the manufacturers if it was sturdy enough for an external monitor and while they don’t officially endorse such behavior. I certainly can speak to the safety of doing so. I’ve got an early 2000’s Samsung LCD monitor that is many times heavier than my 13in MacBook Pro and I’ve had it up there non-stop for a couple of months now. So far the Oristand handles that weight without buckling or bending.

So though the Oristand folks don’t endorse putting an external monitor on their stand. I haven’t seen a single problem with doing so on my end.

Some additional nice touches.

Aside from the portability and surprising rigidity of Oristand, I was also pleased to find cutouts for cables for your monitor or non-Bluetooth peripherals.

Also being able to get an Oristand in different colors was a pleasant surprise.

Lastly, there isn’t a single standing desk out there that is 100% recyclable. Being made of only industrial strength cardboard, it feels good knowing that once my Oristand does start to break down, all I have to do is put it in my recycling bin and buy another one for $25.00.

Standing up for a healthier “me”…

As I mentioned briefly above, I’ve now been standing whilst working for a couple of months now. It’s uncomfortable at first and you should definitely take breaks (sit or go for brief walk), but I noticed my body feeling better overall after standing for just a few weeks. Really. It won’t take long to feel the benefits.

I definitely recommend raising your desk (versus raising the Oristand) to get your keyboard at the proper height for stability reasons. Other than that, I can’t think of single thing about this product that would keep you from not giving it a go.

Hands down. The construction of the Oristand and the convenience it provides for the price, make it a total no-brainer if you are looking to give your standing game a fighting chance.

Highly recommended! Go get one.

Read more about Oristand here.

Regardless of where you fall on the ensuing encryption wars, it’s good sense to have a robust passcode on your phone these days. And with the advent of Touch ID, it makes having a complicated passcode in iOS much, much less of a tribulation.

“Sounds great! How do you set one up?” Here’s how:

1. Go into Settings.
2. Then head into “Touch ID & Passcode”.
3. Type in your existing passcode. Tap the “Done” link in the upper right corner.
4. On the next screen, scroll down a bit and tap “Change Passcode”.
5. Type in your existing passcode. Tap the “Next” link in the upper right corner.
6. On the next screen, before you start typing in a new digit-based passcode, tap the “Passcode Options” link instead.
7. Then tap the “Custom Alphanumeric Code” option.
8. Type in the new alphanumeric passcode that you want, followed by the “Next” link in the upper right corner to continue.
9. Retype your new passcode in and click “Done” in the upper righthand corner.

Boom! That’s it! Not sure why this valuable option is so buried in the settings but, at least it exists.

Extra Credit/Security:

For additional security on your device, you can set your phone to erase itself entirely after 10 botched attempts at logging in. It’s a lot easier to set that up too! Here’s how:

1. Go into Settings.
2. Then head into “Touch ID & Passcode”.
3. Type in your existing passcode. Tap the “Done” link in the upper right corner.
4. Scroll ALLLLL the way down to the bottom of the next screen and toggle the switch to the right of “Erase Data”.
5. Bask in the confidence you now have, knowing that pretty much no one on the planet can break into your phone and look at your private data!

Now, get on out there and enjoy your way more secure iOS device!

Is RSS dead? Many folks “in the know” claim that it is and yet, it’s still hanging around, for better or worse. Me? I use it sparingly. It’s still second to none when you want to follow a site and get links to every piece of content they produce.

Until recently, I looked at RSS as mostly one way communication. You either produce the content and it gets syndicated. Or  you receive/consume the content and do with it what you will. That’s how RSS works. We all need to make our peace with it. Or do we?

What if you could create a dynamic RSS feed where you had complete and specific control over what showed up in it? What if you could share hand-picked content from anywhere on the web simply by tagging a link? That’d be pretty cool right!?

The Initial Problem

I had a good friend with similar interests and hobbies as me. As friends do, I often sent him links to stuff I thought he’d like in emails, texts, chat clients, you name it. As you can imagine, over time these links were scattered everywhere. Eventually it got to the point where if I asked if he got a chance to watch that trailer I sent him, he’d say “No, could you send it again?” and even I would have problems remembering how I sent it to him originally.

In short, it was a mess.

So I started looking in to something that could function as a master list of everything I sent him moving forward. No texts, no emails. He’d just have to remember that I created this list and check in on it whenever he thought about it. Traditional RSS is sort of what I was going for, but I didn’t want to spin up a site somewhere just for posting links for my friend. That felt like using a sledgehammer on a thumbtack.

What would’ve been perfect is if I found something on the web worth sharing, I could send it to a service, tag it specifically for my friend, and have that link added to his curated list for when he had the time to look at it later. It’d work two-fold. On the one hand, it’d always be added to, and on other, it’d be a library of cool stuff to reference down the road that would exist for as long as the service did.

Making RSS more surgical

It seemed like a tall order, but I found precisely what I was looking for with Pinboard. Boiled down, Pinboard is a bookmarking service/online repository with read later options (similar to Instapaper) and a deep, yet simple tagging system that helps keep things organized.

Quick aside up front. Pinboard is a paid service that costs $11 USD a year. If you can swing it though, you get a lot for your money and you support an indy developer that is taking online bookmark repositories to the next level.

Ok, back on task. I had been using Pinboard for over a year when I noticed one day that it dynamically creates an RSS feed for each individual tag you create [footnote]It’s not like I hadn’t noticed Pinboard supported RSS before. I just originally thought its capabilities were limited to a master list of any links you had set as publicly viewable.[/footnote]. So, I created a tag for my friend, sent him the RSS link, and that was that! He put the feed URL into his feed reader of choice and immediately started getting the links I was tagging in Pinboard for him!

Finding the tag-specific RSS link isn’t hard but, due to Pinboard’s intentionally spartan layout/design, it may not be obvious. If you haven’t already, create a tag then click the new tag in the tag-cloud to the right. This will bring you to a page displaying a list of links under this tag. Now look for the small orange “RSS” link in the upper right, it will be next to the search field. Right click it, choose copy, then paste it into whatever way you are sharing the RSS feed.

Moving forward.

To keep those links lining up for my friend, I use the bookmarklet Pinboard has created in Safari (Mac user here) and a universal iOS app called Pinner, that’s also on Android as well. Whether I’m in front of my computer, or on the go [footnote]Pinner’s got a particularly wonderful extension in the iOS share sheet by the way.[/footnote], both allow me to save and tag links quickly with very little effort.

That’s it! I know there are probably other services that serve up RSS in a similar fashion, but I hadn’t found one that handles it quite as well as Pinboard. Since setting up this custom RSS feed for my friend, I’ve also started using it for freelance client work. It’s an easy sell and it seems like magic to them when you show it in action.

So if you are a Pinboard user, you should definitely check out their RSS feed integration if you haven’t already. If you are looking for a better way to serve up your own custom RSS feed, give Pinboard a try! It’ll definitely have you looking at RSS in a completely different way!

One of the things I’ve always chided myself about over the years is the fact that I don’t drink enough water. Worse still, when I do drink anything, it’s typically coffee and the occasional cocktail - both of which dehydrate you further. I’ve tried several different methods to drink more water - carrying around water bottles, setting repeatable timers, using counter apps to count the glasses I’ve drunk in a day - but none of these strategies stuck.

I always figured there was an app out there that could remind me periodically to drink a glass, all the while keeping track of just how much I’ve drunk during the day. To date though, I’ve never found one that I felt was worth my money or, more importantly, ongoing attention.

That all changed though when I stumbled upon 1 Gallon a Day, a clever iOS app by Mathias Nilles. 1 Gallon a Day does one thing and one thing only: it prompts you to drink periodically throughout your day, whilst keeping track of the volume of water you’ve ingested. In short, it was everything I needed!

[gallery columns=“2” size=“large” ids=“9441,9440”]

But the remarkable thing is, and it’s the reason I am writing this review, is that Nilles has created an app that makes the monotonous task of drinking glass after glass fun. With a colorful UI that is card based, you go into the app after being notified, swipe up on a card that fits the volume of water you just drank - small glass (8oz), large glass (16oz), or one bottle (32oz) - and tap the check mark. You are instantly greeted with a puff of colorful confetti and a progress ring that adds a bit more to the circle as you get closer to drinking your daily gallon of water.

It’s this delightful gamification that keeps you coming back too. You feel compelled to see that confetti fall and getting that ring to 100%! I’ve been using it for a week now and I feel great! The pace of the notifications won’t have you running to the bathroom all of the time and the tap targets in the UI are perfectly large enough that you can easily use the app one-handed while holding a glass or bottle of water with the other.

I’ve really enjoyed using it and it’s got me living a healthier lifestyle. Hopefully it’ll get you doing the same.

Here’s the link to it: 1 Gallon a Day

The free version will get you started in the right direction while an in app purchase gives you the following extra goodies:

Hey everyone, sorry this blog has gone a little dormant in the last two months. Truth is, I’ve been busy with work [footnote]not complaining one bit though, it’s a great problem to have[/footnote]. For the first time in a while though, I had a down day and felt like writing, so I thought I’d whip up quick review on an app you may find useful! Just a heads up though, the app is Mac-only. Good? Good.

Being a freelance web developer that wears a lot of different hats when it comes to client work, I’ve found over the years that I’ve come to rely quite a bit on file converters. Whether it’s changing a .wmv file to an .mp4 or .jpg’s into .png’s, I am always amazed at how much time I spend converting files that clients hand to me into something more web-friendly - or just more useful to the rest of the world.

If you search for file conversion apps on the web, you’ll find there are hundreds out there and they all predominantly do the same thing: change your existing files into a different file format. I’ve tried more converters than I care to remember [footnote]or admit[/footnote] but the one I’ve settled on is Fuel Collective’s app, Permute.

Permute does two things extremely well - media file conversion, and getting out of your way.

Media File Conversion

Any good file converter should be able to handle a variety of file formats and Permute handles most, if not all. From AAC to XVID, Permute will handle 99.9% of anything you need to throw at it. Conversion processes occur lightening fast and, yes, it does batch conversion as well, handling multiple simultaneous conversion processes with the utmost ease. Have a folder of images that you need to change along with a couple of video files? Just drag them into Permute, set your file format, and hit the "Start" button.

That’s it!

Getting Out of Your Way.

A lot of the file conversion apps I’ve tried in the past had convoluted workflows, making me click a variety of buttons and toggles before I can even start the conversion process. Those wasteful tasks are gone with Permute.

When you fire up Permute, you are presented with a very spartan grey box instructing you to drag and drop your files into it. Once you do that, you only have to choose the file format that you want to convert to and then click start. It’s so simple and straightforward that it got me wondering why this UI/UX hadn’t been adopted by other more popular conversion utilities years ago.

It also has builtin support for OS X’s notification center, so that when it’s done with each file conversion, it will let you know with a modal window floating in from the top right of your screen.

What It Doesn't Do (that you may need).

What Permute doesn’t do, and this by design, is allow you to tweak its existing presets on a micro level. Yes, you can change a few standard settings that you’ll find in any "Save As" process, but if you are looking for access to a HUGE toolset of changes before the conversion process begins, than Permute is not for you. It is meant for the "set it and forget it" crowd - those folks who prefer streamlined ease over sweating the details of filters, audio track separation/modification, color changes, or other high-end production editing.

It also only focuses on media files. Images, audio files, and videos. At the time, that’s all it will convert.

But if that’s all you need than I can’t recommend Permute enough. It’s lightening fast, incredibly easy to use, and I’ve yet to have a botched file conversion.

Rock solid and absolutely worth your hard-earned cash if you are in the market for a new media converter.

Links:

• Official Site: http://fuelcollective.com/permute
• Only available in the Mac App Store: $9.99 click here to get it.

PLEASE NOTE: All images were created by the fine peeps at fuelcollective.com. I did not create these.

Hey everyone! Just a quick and easy tip for all of you folks who use Marked as your Markdown previewer when writing in Scrivener.

One of the microscopic issues I have with using Marked in conjunction with Scrivener is the lag between when you write your Markdown (or any text) in Scrivener, it autosaves, and a few seconds later it shows up in Marked. This isn’t a bug in either programs - Marked shows what your document looks like after it is saved, and Scrivener autosaves after a preset amount of time after you stop typing (usually a matter of seconds).

I know, I know, not a big deal. But did you know that you can change the amount of time it takes for Scrivener to autosave? You can! It’s in the preference pane. Open up Scrivener, head to into the preferences menu and click the general tab, you’ll find in there.

You can go as low as 1 second (I tried 0.5 seconds, no dice) in this field. Set it to that and close out of preferences. You should see a bit of an improvement to when Marked displays your Markdown now. It doesn’t get rid of the lag completely, but it does make it much less noticeable, creating a more seamless experience between apps.

So if it’s been distracting you or worse, keeping you from pairing these two juggernaut apps, try tweaking this auto-save time increment lower and see if that makes the experience any better for you. I know it did for me.

If you are a web developer/designer you know that there is no shortage of color pickers out there. I’ve toyed with dozens of them over the years and I recently ran into on the I found to be exceptional. That color picker is “Sip” by the Ola Brothers.

I am pretty picky when it comes to selecting development tools and color pickers are no exception. When I need to capture a color value, I don’t want to click my way through a series of menu systems to grab what I need. I just want to enable the tool, hone in on the color I need, click it and have the color value automatically copied to the clipboard for me to paste into my CSS.

Sip does all of this (and a good bit more) exceptionally well. Whenever I need it, I use Alfred to open it (or you can have it open on start up), I click the Sip icon in the menu bar, and I then click the target in the upper-left corner of the drop-down menu. After that, a loupe appears and I hover over the color I want (which can literally be any where on your screen) and click it. The preset color definition is then copied to my clipboard and I proceed to paste the value anywhere I need it.

You can also choose a color manually buy clicking the Sip icon in the menu bar and choosing the color wheel in the upper right corner of the drop down.

So many flavors to choose from!

Almost all color pickers out there give the option of RGBA or Hex, but Sip gives you WAY more options than that. So if you need anything other than the standards, Sip’s got you more than covered. To access the presets just click the Sip icon in the menu bar again and then click the side-loading menu directly below the bullseye and color wheel up top. From there you’ll find the selections afforded you and I’d be shocked if what you needed wasn’t included.

We've got history.

Sip also keeps a history of colors that you’ve chosen in the past. Which is awful handy when you need to revisit older colors and don’t want to repeat the color picking process or remember what value it was. There is even the option of sharing colors or deleting them from the history if you no longer need them. The default history is initially limited to 5 colors but you can up that value (or reduce it) in the settings which you’ll find under the gear icon in the Sip dropdown menu.

In the preferences you can also tweak code and color formats as well enable and see the keyboard shortcuts given to you in Sip. Keyboard shortcuts are pretty key to my development workflow, so having them integrated even in something as simple as a color picker is a prerequisite for me.

Taking It to the Next Level: Leveraging Sip on the Go.

Sip also has an immensely handy iOS app that leverages your iPhone's camera to dynamically capture full color palettes from whatever is in the view finder. You can even do the same from pictures you've already taken! It's quite a sight to behold honestly, and it's a great way to grab color palettes from clients photos or anything that is aesthetically pleasing to look at in your day-to-day life. From the app, you can save and label the palette for future reference or you can also share palettes by swiping left to right on the palette, tapping the share icon that appears. The colors in the palette then show up individually pre-formatted in an email that you can send anywhere.

Going Pro!

With an in app purchase of $9.99, you can upgrade your Sip installation to a Pro version which affords you even more powerful ways to wrangle colors on your Mac. It brings the color palettes to Mac version of Sip and it also allows you to sync palettes via a cloud service from your phone to the Mac so that you don’t have email them manually to yourself any more.

The Pro upgrade also allows you to pick more than one color at a time. Which helps streamline the process a bit more. Particularly if you already see a palette developing in a scene in front of you on your screen. Without the Pro version, you’d have keep enabling the loupe after you click each individual color.

It also allows you to edit and fine tune the colors you’ve chosen, allowing you to tweak existing Sip color formats or even create your own custom formats!

Going Pro??

While the Pro account is very appealing to someone in my profession, I don’t necessarily see it as a “must-buy” for everyone else. You get so much from Sip’s basic offerings that I could absolutely see many people getting everything they need and more from the what Sip offer’s out of the box.

Which is great, because Sip out of the box can be had for the ultra-cheap price of free.

Since incorporating it into my workflow, I can’t imagine designing and developing for the web without it. And with a non-existent barrier to entry, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t at least want to try it for yourself.

Download:

• Sip for iOS. Download - Free
• Sip for Mac. Download - Free
• Sip Pro - More info. - IAP - $9.99

Back in 2013, I wrote a post about digitizing your life and getting rid of the dead-tree paper taking up space in your day-to-day. I’m happy to say that I am still using that exact same paperless system to awesome effect. But I’ve also since left my corporate job moving to freelance full-time and, if you’ve gone that route, you know that the one thing you amass in a short amount of time is the small stuff: business cards and receipts.

Rapid Reduction.

As a small business owner, you need to document your business expenses. No exceptions. After meeting clients for lunch, dinner, evening drinks, coffee, or purchasing supplies and buying hardware… it’s pretty crazy how quickly receipts can pile up. When I finally noticed it was genuine problem it was almost too late. A physical file system of tiny sheets of paper was clearly not sustainable. I was already misplacing receipts in my wallet, back-pockets, folders, my back-pack - to either be worn down and unreadable or worse, to go through the wash and become a small blob.

Without a doubt. I needed a quick way to archive this stuff.

There are a lot of scanner apps out there and I’ve used the bulk of them. Basically what they do is allow you to take picture of a document with your device and convert that picture into a .pdf file that you can store locally on your device, or in cloud storage. This isn’t going to be a review of those apps, this is a detailing of what I’ve specifically integrated into my workflow. Luckily I’ve only needed two apps to accomplish this. They are beautifully developed, fast as hell, and they are a genuine joy to use.

For Receipts? I use Scanbot.

vimeo.com/89477586

Scanbot is an app for iOS and Android that does what a lot of other scanning apps do, but it does so with flare and style. UI and UX aside, it also is thoroughly exceptional at the following:

• It has excellent corner/edge recognition to limit the cropping you'd have to do after snapping a pic of the receipt.
• OCR. Any app that you choose should have the ability to OCR [footnote]Optical Character Recognition[/footnote] the receipt/document so that its contents are searchable as a PDF document. Scanbot does this accurately and, most importantly, very quickly.
• Contrast. Your receipt scans don't need to be full high res. color pictures. Color adds unnecessary size to your files which can take longer to upload and open. Scanbot offers four options: no filter (full resolution), a color filter (image compressed/optimized), grey scale, and a straight up, high contrast, black and white filter. I use the black and white filter. Scanned receipts and documents are crisp and readable and this particular filter reduces the size of your scanned pdf's to smallest size possible.
• Cloud storage options. Once your scan is complete and OCR'ed, you should be able to quickly upload to your file system of choice in the cloud. Scanbot support nearly all of them. I have my current file system on Dropbox. A very appreciated bonus: Scanbot also offers one-tap shortcuts to upload files to a specific location in cloud storage. So if you have a "receipts" folder that you always upload to on your cloud solution of choice, you can link that up specifically so that after you scan your doc, you just tap that shortcut and it gets uploaded automatically to that folder. Fast, simple and convenient. You can also upload your pdf's manually of course, but the shortcuts are a really nice addition.
• Prepended Titles. Scanbot allows you to prepend your titles with a naming convention of your choice. So if you like to add the date of a receipt to the front of the title of your scans, you can do so automatically. This saves you time and gives you confidence that the repeatable stuff you always do to organize your documents by title is automated.
• Security. On the app level, Scanbot offers password protection and (if your device supports it) Touch ID if you want to restrict access to the documents stored locally on your device. Open the app? It asks for a password.
• Document options. Scanbot adds a lot of convenient features that allow you to augment your files after they've been scanned. Stuff like high-lighting text, password protecting your files on the file level, leaving comments to share, adding additional pages after the fact, and the ability to add a digital signature, are wonderful options that can take your pdf editing capabilities to the next level. All on a portable device too, it's kind of crazy!

In short, Scanbot gets my full endorsement. I’ve used it for almost a year now, often daily, and it has eliminated so much friction in my business organization workflow that I honestly can’t stress it enough. I use it on receipts, hardware manuals, insurance policy documentation, monthly invoices… anything I need to file away and search for later.

The barrier to entry is low too. You can download the app for free, but with limited features. To unlock much of what I detailed above you need to buy the “Pro” module which you can get in-app after you download it. It’s only $4.99, and what it adds is invaluable in my opinion. Definitely worth the five-spot.

• For more info, check out Scanbot's site here.
• To insta-buy it, sight unseen, click here of iOS and here for Android.

For Business Cards? I use Evernote's Scannable.

www.youtube.com/watch

Relatively new to the scene, Scannable is Evernote’s answer to Scanbot. It’s sole purpose is to create digital documents and then share them. My only issue with Scannable is that it’s a little too stripped down for my use-cases. It does create digital documents to share quickly, but it doesn’t:

• OCR them (unless you export to Evernote). It also scans them to .jpg files and I prefer the pdf format. UPDATE 01/26/15: As of a few hours ago, the fine folks at Evernote updated Scannable to export to either .jpg or .pdf formats! W00T!
• Doesn't offer color filter options. You just get color. Though it is optimized and compressed when saved.
• Baked in sharing options are limited [footnote]but it does give you access to the iOS share sheet which, in theory, is limitless.[/footnote]. It does, however, allow you to auto-export to Evernote. Which is nice if you use it.
• There is no in-app editing tools. None.
• There are no prepended title options.

But, what it does do exceptionally well, is scan business cards.

It seems funny to have an app dedicated to doing such a small task, but Scannable scans business cards so well, it’s hard to pass it up. There is a caveat though. Scannable’s full potential hinges heavily on your use of Evernote. Which I do [footnote]and do so gladly[/footnote]. I use Evernote as my space to put things that I need to permanently archive at a glance. Business cards fall into this category for me. But they might not for you.

Caveat aside, using Scannable couldn’t be easier. Put a business card on the table in front of you, fire up Scannable, it rapidly finds the edges of the card [footnote]Unbelievably, I’ve never needed crop an image in Scannable or Scanbot. Not once.[/footnote], snaps and loads it optimized in under two seconds, making it ready for you to share or export. If you do export to Evernote, it will OCR it on the fly so that it’s searchable within Evernote’s interface.

One added bonus! If you are a LinkedIn user it will also scan its vast user-base, find the business card owner and add any additional information from their profile to your scan! Complete with their profile snap, clickable email addresses, web site urls, and phone numbers. All beautifully formatted, looking wonderful in Evernote. You can even add them to your address book if you want. But if they are not on LinkedIn, you don’t get this additional feature, which is kind of a shame. It’d be awesome if it added the same exact fields that are on the card itself. Not to mention, LinkedIn isn’t always up to date.

But it’s hard to criticize an app that is free, that gives you this much. When it works, Scannable is kinda magical! And even when it doesn’t, it’s still incredibly useful.

• For more info, check out Scannable's site here.
• You can also snag Scannable here: currently iOS only.

Soooo... Should I Get One? Or Both?

Well, obviously I chose both. But everyone’s needs are different. If you can swing the investment, I’d definitely snag Scanbot. If not, and you are a staunch Evernote user, Scannable will take great care of you.

If two apps are too many options for this particular task, Scanbot does take excellent scans of business cards and it even auto uploads to Evernote too. It just doesn’t have the LinkedIn profile info injection, which I really like.

It’s also important to note that’s still very early days for Scannable. Evernote is a really reputable development house with a wonderful history of implementing user requests. So I am sure Scannable’s feature set will only grow with time.

I am happy to introduce version 4.0 of thaddeushunt.com!

I don’t know if doing a theme redux is an annual thing for me honestly. This year though, it felt right.

I typically don’t get into much personal stuff anymore on this site and that isn’t going to change this year. Suffice it to say though, between quitting my corporate job to work for myself full-time and all of the upheaval therein, 2014 was quite a year for me (don’t worry, 98% of it was all good things).

So in tribute to that change, I thought I’d redo the theme on my personal site too. Truth be told, I was already 75% of the way through a 100% original theme of my own making when WordPress' “Twenty Fifteen” theme dropped. I wasn’t keen on it at first, but then I got to play with it and saw the potential. This site has always been about its content, so when I saw how this theme put your words front and center, I started entertaining a child theme. Fast forward a month later and you have what you see here. The changes I made from the parent theme were subtle. Mostly font-based, with a tightening up of some spacing/layout issues that bugged me.

My aesthetic leanings are often toward flat, uber-clean design. With easy to read fonts and nothing garish. As you can see, I ditched the header images and horizontal nav/search of the last theme for a more vertical layout, giving more room for my words and cleaner edge-to-edge featured images in my posts: something that I hardly every did in the last theme because it made everything too busy. I also really love the responsive design that is baked into this theme. It retains the look and feel of the big screen version well and offers a much superior mobile menu to themes I’ve used in the past.

Anyways, I think it’s about 95% there, with only a few things left that are bugging me still. Not enough to hold off implementing it live into the wild. I hope you all like it and that it makes reading a here that much more of a joy.

Please feel free to kick the tires. If you find anything broken or “off”, please leave me a note in the comments below. I’ll look into it as soon as I am able.

Happy New Year everyone!

~Tad

Anyone who has been to my site a few times knows my affinity for Markdown and the many editors that support it. This last week the folks at Realmac Software dropped their most recent entry into the Markdown editor arena and I thought I’d do a quick review on it for you all.

A New Spin On An Old Idea? Not really.

When Realmac first announced the beta of Typed (one that I was not included in, for what it’s worth) I was intrigued by their pitch, but was not exactly champing at the bit to try it out. Spartan Markdown editors have been done before and adding what they call a “Zen Mode” into the mix isn’t exactly a new idea. Omm Writer launched its editor specifically on the auspice of its fullscreen, non-existent UI, low friction, zero-distraction edit mode years ago, and they implemented it exceptionally well. People really loved/love what they did with that idea (myself included) and since then, droves of other developers have implemented their own take on full-screen, distraction-free writing.

So my first thought was, are these guys REAL late to the party?

After using Typed for a few days now my answer is: not exactly. In fact they might be just on time.

Delight Is In The Details.

What Realmac did exceptionally well was create a new version of an old idea with an attention to detail that other Markdown editors lack.

In short, though there is nothing new here, you can’t take away the fact that Typed is simply a joy to use. Everything it does is intuitive, simple, and very polished. The lack of options/preferences is certainly reminiscent of iA Writer’s UI. Except in Typed, you can find everything you need (if you even need it) by mousing over to the left where a preferences pop-up menu fades into view. There you’ll find a beautiful variety of font pairings to choose from as well as two other separate theme views (one of which is “night mode” for those tired eyes during late night writing sessions), you’ll also find the requisite HTML preview mode, as well as the baked-in share sheet extension that comes with most apps in OS X Yosemite. It’s all implemented thoughtfully, appearing when you need it and literally disappearing when you don’t.

To complement Typed’s “Zen Mode” (which is basically the full screen mode we’ve all come to know), there are 8 separate looping music tracks you can use if you really need the background noise. They are all pleasant enough and certainly calming (particularly with headphones), but they are also somewhat buried and hard to find unless you know where to look, which I found a bit counter to everything else Typed does so well. That’s a small, non-essential quibble though.

Lastly, there are a few other options up in the top menu bar of Typed. Specifically export options and keyboard shortcuts for commonly used Markdown syntax. And for those who like to keep track, a word/character counter can also be found in the top right.

Aside from that, what you see is what you get.

And what you get, frankly, is delightful to use.

Since it dropped last week, I’ve already fired it up several times for a variety of jobs. I did so simply because Typed felt like the right tool for my writing needs at the time. Your text is laid out beautifully and the layout flows perfectly whenever I have to resize my window or pop out of full screen mode to grab something. The translucent background picks up everything behind it subtly (it can be turned off by the way) and everything responds immediately, with zero lag.

It’s hard to put into words, but Typed, despite all of its similarities to other apps, captures a solid writing interface that you can trust, all the while giving you distraction free writing that is purely just that.

So far I’ve loved using it when I just need to get something down. Those singular moments when you write a letter, draft out a blog post… anything that simply needs to be, well, typed. I wouldn’t write a novel or anything long-form in it (that’s for Scrivener). I also wouldn’t write anything that needs a proper editorial workflow in it either (that’d be a job for Writer Pro).

Do the Markdown editors I mentioned above have more to offer features-wise? Absolutely. But none of those offer the polished experience quite like I’ve found with Typed. Not to mention this editor doesn’t seem to even want to be that feature rich and I personally think that’s what makes it so appealing.  All of that attention to detail that Realmac puts in to this editor pays dividends to you, the writer. By creating a clean writing experience with tools that are not far out of reach, Typed becomes an experience to look forward to. It’s a starting point. A clean sheet of paper waiting patiently for you to begin.

Realmac is currently offering a trial period to use the full version of Typed for free. I whole heartedly recommend checking it out if you are looking for something new to add to your text editor tool kit.

**All pics found in this post were taken directly from Typed's own press kit.**

By now you’ve all read the countless reviews of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Hell, you have probably even read reviews from people “one month in” to using their 6 Pluses. I know I have. I was lucky enough to snag a 6 Plus online on launch day and eagerly awaited everything about it. Yes, I was one of “those folks” that cut out the template of the form factor of the 6 Plus, taping it to a stack of index cards, carrying it in my front pocket for a week just to steel the confidence behind my purchase.

But there was no denying that, when it showed up at my front door, I laughed nervously thinking “Holy crap! This thing is HUGE!”. Not just bigger, or slightly over-sized - it was simply larger than I imagined - and that genuinely surprised me.

Like anything though, I thought I’d get used to it.

It fit in to all of my pants and jeans pockets relatively easily. Yes, it jabbed my hip when I sat down, but not in a remotely uncomfortable way and aside from that seemingly small quibble, there was a lot to like! I thoroughly enjoyed the larger screen! Reading/consuming on the 6 Plus was (and still is) one of the best iOS experiences I’ve had to date. In fact, the size got me using my iPad so infrequently (writing on the Plus was a joy by the way) that I almost considered it a more than capable replacement. I also really dug the creative use of the extra screen real estate in some apps when the 6 Plus was in landscape mode. Add in the battery life and the speed, and I actually can’t stress enough just how much of a joy it was to use this beautiful hardware.

Still, even with all of that, there was always something nagging at me.

Something about my new phone didn’t feel quite right. In hindsight, it was painfully obvious, but at the time I just plugged along and made do. Eventually though, the reason snuck up on me when I held a close friend’s iPhone 6 at a party: the 4.7 inch 6 just felt good in my hand. Not huge, not too small - not anything - it just felt right. Once he let me slip it into my pocket, that sealed the deal. It was official: I had bought the wrong phone for me.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was when I went hiking in Virginia with my wife. It was a beautiful Autumn day and I wanted to capture as much of it as I could. As I hiked along snapping pictures and the occasional slow-mo video of leaves falling to the ground, it finally hit me as to why I disliked my phone.

I was constantly aware of it.

All of the phones I’ve owned in the past slipped into my pocket, going completely unnoticed, until I either needed it for something or I had a call/text come in. Never before had I owned a phone that, through its sheer physical size, made me constantly aware that it was on my person. It was why I took it out in the car and put it in a cup holder while driving. Or why I would leave it on the dinner table when I was out to eat or sharing a meal with someone. Or why I’d leave it on the desk while I worked. Simply taking it out of my pocket wasn’t a solution either, because once on the table it is constantly within eye-shot; consciously or sub-consciously begging for your attention.

Therein lied the problem.

Sometimes I like, no… I need technology to disappear. The 6 Plus, for me anyways, couldn’t do that. For all of its virtues and its undeniable strengths, the Plus is just too big for me to incorporate into my day-to-day life.

Eventually I made it into the Apple store here in Durham where they took pity on me, allowing me to exchange my phone for the 4.7 inch iPhone 6 well outside of the 14 day return policy window. I slid it into my pocket and I’ve never looked back.

Where I really liked many aspects of the 6 Plus vert much, I love just about everything on this iPhone 6. Sure I miss the unique landscape layouts of some apps, the undeniable all-day battery life, and typing on the 6 is noticeably more cramped than on the plus… but everything else? It’s easily just as beautiful and more of a joy to use.

And, because it disappears into my pocket. I am back in love with having my iPhone with me.

www.youtube.com/watch

Twin Peaks was by far the most formative TV show I have ever watched. So damn much of my young imagination was nurtured and grown in that beautifully dark and bizarre world. For me it was a gift, and now another mini series? Written by Frost and Lynch with all episodes directed by Lynch himself?

I honestly can’t wait for June, 2016. Can’t. Wait.

Non-techie post, I know, but I was so tickled to see this news today.