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April 9, 2018

My Micro.blog Setup With WordPress

I’ve tweaked how I’ve used this site with micro.blog a few times. During the last change, I inadvertently broke my ability to create most types of new posts on micro.blog.

The short explanation is that I installed a plugin that detected when I added the “microblog” category to a post, and kept those posts on their own section of the site. This kept microblog-categorized posts off the front page and out of the 40Tech RSS feed. The problem was that the RSS feed is how micro.blog gets content from WordPress sites, so all posts tagged with microblog didn’t make it through to the micro.blog service. I had the micro.blog apps configured to add that category to any new posts, so those posts were falling into a black hole.

I’ve now fixed the problem. This involved making a few changes:

  1. I added some code to my functions.php file (located in a child theme) to keep any posts that are in my microblog category out of my main feed. That category still shows up in all other feeds, such as category-specific feeds. I found this code snippet in a blog post by Simon Wheatley.
  2. I added more code to my functions.php file to keep any posts in my microblog category off my home page. The web is replete with blog posts on how to exclude categories from your home page.
  3. I plugged only a category-specific feed into my settings at micro.blog. In my case it was this feed: https://www.40tech.com/category/microblog/. This means that only posts I categorize as “microblog” will show up for other users at micro.blog. When I post with the micro.blog apps, the posts are automatically assigned this category. This won’t send new articles to micro.blog, but that’s OK. I usually want to type a few comments about an article, and the main feed would only send a tittle and link to micro.blog. Now I can control how my content appears at micro.blog.

There are other ways I’ve configured the site for micro.blog, such as using a plugin for webmentions, but that’s a story for another day.


April 6, 2018

Your Favorite Twitter App Is About to Break

After June 19, 2018, Twitter is removing streaming services from third-party apps such as Tweetbot and Twitterific. This means that you won’t receive push notifications from those apps, and your timeline won’t refresh automatically.

Twitter is doing this to focus “on data features and access, more than on delivering client app product features.”1 Despite having third-party apps to thank for much of whatever success it currently has, Twitter wants you to use the Twitter website, or its own apps. That’s where the money is. Unfortunately (for me, at least), my head hurts whenever I use Twitter’s native offerings.

If Twitter doesn’t change course before June 19, I could see myself spending even more time on micro.blog than I am now. There could be many other users of third-party apps who use Twitter much less, too.

  1. The Twitter Developers forum, March 1, 2018.↩


April 6, 2018

Hyper-Scheduling Light With Things

I’m a big fan of the work of David Sparks of MacSparky and the Mac Power Users Podcast. He’s recently written a few posts on what he has called “hyper-scheduling.” The CliffsNotes version of hyper-scheduling is that David blocks off time in his calendar for performing certain tasks. Jeff Perry of the Tablet Habit does this too, calling it Time Blocking.

As I’ve read David and Jeff’s insights, I realized I’m doing “hyper-scheduling light” (perhaps ultralight) with Things. This is one of the reasons Things has clicked for me.

hyper-scheduling Light

My job isn’t suited for the scheduling of specific times during the day for performing certain tasks. I’m faced with too many unavoidable interruptions and too many tasks that arise suddenly and need to be handled on short notice. As much as I’d love to go into “do not disturb” mode to churn through work, there are too many downsides of this for me on most days in my line of work.

Despite these roadblocks, I do have a general idea how much time I’ll have each day for churning through my task list. I just don’t know exactly when during the day that time will fall. Enter Things.

With its “Today” and “Upcoming” views, Things makes it easy to schedule my tasks for certain dates. I set an item’s start date, and it appears in the view for that day. 1 During my weekly review, which usually occurs on Friday, I plan out my next week. I go through my actions and tasks and decide what I want to get done on each day of the upcoming week. When a particular day arrives, my task list for the day is waiting for me.

This isn’t for everyone. Some people work better diving into their projects each day, and picking from their tasks or next actions. That became too overwhelming for me, which is one of the reasons I switched to Things. I wanted a tool that would not only help me organize my tasks, but would help me do them as well by bringing them to me on certain days. Things does that for me by allowing me to schedule them.

  1. OmniFocus supports start dates as well, and you can view a schedule in Forecast view, but items that aren’t completed on their start date fall off of the Forecast. It remains to be seen whether the new version of OmniFocus will change this. ↩


March 30, 2018

iOS 11.3 packs charge management for iPads plugged in for long periods of time →

Christian Zibreg, writing for iDownloadBlog:

When the maximum charge level is reduced to protect the battery, the power indicator in the iOS status bar will display the charge based on the adjusted maximum battery level.

The maximum charge level will revert back to the previous level when iPad is no longer connected to power for prolonged periods and “as conditions and battery health allow.”

The main battery news of the 11.3 update was the addition of the iPhone battery health feature. I haven’t seen the iPad charge management feature discussed much. With more people using their iPads as their only computers, the lesson here is not to keep your iPad plugged in all the time like you would with a desktop computer.


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March 29, 2018

Search DEVONthink Databases using HoudahSpot →

 From the Houdah Blog:

Now that you have all your documents stored and organized in DEVONthink, you can rely on both DEVONthink and HoudahSpot to always find the piece of information you need.

I don’t use HoudahSpot often, but when I do it does a fantastic job of finding exactly what I need. HoudahSpot is a tool that performs searches on your Mac using almost any parameter available. When your search is done, you can sort the results multiple ways.

The blog post explains how to set up DEVONthink so it works with HoudahSpot, and also includes a DEVONthink search template.

(From the Houdah Blog, via Devonian Times)


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