Today I Learned

A Hashrocket project

185 posts about #workflow

Clean Paste 🧼

When you copy text from the internet, a bunch of formatting and HTML gets copied, too. Copy a link’s text and paste it into Mac Notes, and there’s some of the text formatting of the website, plus the link.

I almost never want this extra stuff, so I use an alternate paste dubbed the ‘Clean Paste.’ On MacOS, instead of CMD + V, try CMD + OPTION + SHIFT + V. You’ll get just the text, minus all the extras.

Note: I learned this via the newsletter Recomendo, which I (pause for effect) recommend. It’s so helpful me and I’ve looked it up so many times, that I’m re-sharing it here.

Automate Applescript via Accessibility Description

While automating a few tasks I do frequently it became apparent that many apps do not title their UI elements. This makes it more of a trial and error process to figure out which button is where.

This leads to script that is not very descriptive:

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "zoom.us"
        click button 3 of window 0
    end tell
end tell

I’ve always wanted to reference elements by their label or utilize accessibility attributes if they are available but could never figure out how.

I finally have!

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "zoom.us"
        click (first button where its accessibility description = "Copy Invite Link") of window 0
    end tell
end tell

This is obviously a bit more verbose but infinitly more descriptive when looking back at what a script is doing.

My future self is already thanking me.

Tmux not starting after an upgrade

Recently upgraded my version of Tmux and after could no longer start a session. After banging my head on tmux’s config files it turned out that sessions that were currently in play were the problem.

So if you find yourself in this situation… make sure to stop all sessions and most likely you’ll have Tmux working again.

An easy way to kill everything would be tmux kill-server.

10x Your Playback Rate

Consuming pre-recorded conference talks, video tutorials, and podcasts at accelerated speeds is possible and addictive. Each week I send a newsletter containing at least one recent conference talk I’ve watched, and I wouldn’t be able to do this without the following hack:

Most videos players (YouTube, Vimeo, QuickTime) let you increase the playback rate, but often these controls are hard to find or have an arbitrary ceiling like 2x. If there’s a video element in the DOM, I like to bump up the rate in the DevTools console like this:

document.querySelector('video').playbackRate = 3

‘3’ equals three-times the normal speed, and that seems to be my limit for the moment.

playbackRate MDN docs

Inline MD codeblock with double backticks

A pair of single backticks signify an inline code block in Markdown. But if you need to put a backtick in that code block the backtick ends the codeblock!

Another way to signify an inline codeblock is with double backticks, two backticks in sequence on either side of the codeblock.

When using double backticks for a codeblock, a single backtick within the codeblock will be interpreted as just that, not the end of the codeblock.

Firefox Profiles for Work and Home 👤

I’m managing two Firefoxes on my laptop: one for work and one for after work. A feature that supports this well is Firefox profiles. Visit them in Firefox by typing about:profiles into the browser bar.

These work like Chrome People— separate sessions, histories, bookmarks, etc. I have styled the two browsers a little differently so I can quickly tell them apart.

I used to use Incognito/Private Windows for this setup, but those aren’t great for long-running browser sessions, because when you close or crash the browser, anything you’ve done in that browser is gone. Profiles give me the isolation I need with some persistence, too.

Perform on Zoom 🎸

Planning to use Zoom for something other than a meeting, like a reading or musical performance, that would benefit from room noise and a softer audio experience? If so, read on!

Zoom has several default audio features in place to make your business calls sound great. We don’t want those features in place in a performance setting. Jettison them by enabling ‘original sound’ under advanced audio settings:

image

All you need to do from here is turn on your best (quality and/or position) microphone option. For me, that’s my display audio.

h/t Suzanne Erin

Toggle Dark Reader 🌓

I really love the Dark Reader Browser plugin (h/t Chris Erin). It turns most websites into a dark mode that is really easy on my eyes. However, some sites just don’t look right in dark mode. Luckily, the plugin can be toggled on and off with ALT + SHIFT + D on Firefox and Chrome. I use it a couple of times a day on websites I encounter on the internet.

Bonus: Here’s an example of this plugin in action, that is very meta.

image

Dark Reader

How to fight the dragon

Tonight I learned how to fight the dragon in #Minecraft.

Preparation

Nice to have:

  • armor with protection
  • bow with power
  • sword with sharpening
  • stength/health/regen potions
  • pumpkin head
  • snowballs

Must have:

  • golden apple, speed potion,
  • pickaxe, bow, arrows, sword & shield, armor
  • stack of dirt/cobblestone, buckets of water, ladders

I proceeded to The End. I picked a fight with a dragon and its pesky posse of ender men (pumpkin head helps). I learned to:

  • dodge the purple dragon breath
  • dodge or block dragon dives with the sheild

  • destroy crystals

    • with bow or snowballs for shorter towers
    • for taller towers, dump water at tower base, climb with ladder, then break crystal and fall into water
  • with a sword strike dragon’s feet when it sits on the pillar of bedrock
  • use looted ender pearls to teleport dodge

In The End, I died.

VSCode Select All Matches

I’ve been using VSCode for a while, and really love the shortcut CMD+Shift+D: if you have something selected, it will find and select the next match.

Imgur

Today I accidentally pressed CMD+Shift+L, and serendipitously found out that it “Selects All Occurrences of Find Match.” Now I can remove those pesky quotations marks in this Ruby hash all at once! As written, the hash keys will be turned into symbols anyway, so the quote marks are noise.

Imgur

Hat tip 🎩to Licecap for straightforward recording of gifs on any platform.

Turn on coordinates in Minecraft Realm

In a Minecraft Realm the option to turn on the coordinate system is not available without turning on cheats. That is not good because then you’ll lose achievements.

Many tutorials recommend downloading the realm locally, flipping the switch for coordinates, and then uploading that copy of your world back to the realm. Turns out that some server commands will work in the Realm… coordinates being one of them!

Enter this into your chat window to enable coordinates:

/gamerule showcoordinates true

You can, of course, turn them back off via: 

/gamerule showcoordinates false

Mac Notes Default Text Size 🔎

I use Mac Notes a lot during pairing and brainstorming. It works, and it’s right there on the Mac!

One issue I’ve had is that the default text size on Mac Notes is unreadably small on a big monitor or iMac. I always end up creating a note, then bumping the text size with CMD-SHIFT ..

Of course, there’s a better way. Set the default font size in preferences.

image

Slack Hot-Keys Rock

Do you like slack? Chances are it doesn’t really matter whether you do or don’t. It’s a matter of course at this point that you will probably work with it. Because that’s the case, you should at least strive to be as aware of neat features as possible!

To that end, you should check out the built-in hot-key help using:

MacOS: Command + / Linux/Windows: Ctrl + /

I’m particularly fond of the “Navigation” and “Channels & Direct Messages”!

How to redirect standard error

2> Allows us to redirect standard error.

Taking advantage of rm’s ability to not delete files recursively can come in handy, especially when writing clean up scripts, but it can be noisy when you don’t care.

Give this file structure:

~/
  tmpfile1.txt
  tmpfile2.txt
  tmpfile3.txt
  tmpfile4.txt
  do-not-delete/
    secrets.yml

I may want to delete all the files, but not touch the directories (to keep file removal simple)

$ rm *
rm: cannot remove 'do-not-delete': Is a directory

$ ls
~/
  do-not-delete/
    secrets.yml

Because the directory error message comes over stderr, we can simply redirect it to /dev/null to ignore it:

rm * 2> /dev/null

Linking to a PayPal Transaction Page ⛓

This is a follow up to PayPal Transaction Pages aren’t Linkable. We figured out a way to build this feature!

When you process a PayPal transaction with the SDK (i.e. as a seller), you get a token that could be considered a transaction ID. It is something like a primary key on an object that is the parent to several other transactions: the seller’s transaction, any currency conversions, etc.

With this ID in hand, you can link to the seller’s dashboard and see a summary of this parent transaction. It’s not a documented feature, so the link could be broken at any time.

Thanks for sticking with me, PayPal support.

PayPal Transaction Pages aren't Linkable ⛓

I spent some time this week trying to create a link directly to a PayPal Merchant transaction show page. This is the page you’d see as a merchant when somebody has paid you via PayPal.

These pages use the transaction’s ID as a lookup, so I’d need the know that ID in order to dynamically create the link. After some Googling, reading GitHub issues, and finally the source code of my PayPal SDK of choice, I’d like to report: PayPal does not expose this ID in the normal course of business.

To quote my PayPal caseworker:

“While there are ways of retrieving the Transaction ID… you will not be able to link directly to the PayPal transaction details page, for security. The only way that your buyers can view the transaction details page is by accessing PayPal themselves, logging in with their credentials, and navigating to the Activity.”

I hope this spares another developer from the same rabbit-hole I just emerged from. Sometimes things with technology don’t work. 🤷‍♀️

Edit: we figured it out!

Capitalize Hashtags for #a11y

At RubyConf 2019, I learned that social media hashtags are more easily read by screen readers if they are capitalized. So #rubyconf is more accessible when written as #RubyConf, because the screen reader can more easily make sense of the word breaks. Keep this in mind when posting and designing marketing campaigns.

I saw #rubyfriends and #rubyconf migrate to #RubyFriends and #RubyConf at the conference in realtime as this idea spread.

more info

h/t Coraline Ada Ehmke

Tmux Attach Sessions with Working Directory

Your Tmux working directory is the root directory of the session. You can figure out what it is by opening a new window or pane in your session. The directory you start in is your working directory.

Sometimes it’s not the best directory for the type of project you’re developing. For instance, it could be set to the root directory of an umbrella app, when you’re working exclusively in one of the subdirectories.

Reset it with the -c flag:

$ tmux attach-session -t my_session -c ~/my_project

Convert .mov to .gif with ffmpeg

Sometimes putting a gif in a pull request is really helpful for reviewers. If you’ve recorded a movie on an iOS simulator with xcrun simctl or just QuickTime, it’s very simple to convert them to animated .gifs

Example:

ffmpeg -i screen_recording.mov \
       -s 415x925 \
       -pix_fmt rgb24 \
       -r 10 \
       -f gif \
       screen_recording.gif

Now it would be nice to have a function that could extract the video dimensions automatically 🤔 mdls 🤯

1 function gif-mov() {
2   movie=$1
3   height=$(mdls -name kMDItemPixelHeight ${movie} | grep -o '[0-9]\+')
4   width=$(mdls -name kMDItemPixelWidth ${movie} | grep -o '[0-9]\+')
5   dimensions="${width}x${height}"
6   ffmpeg -i ${movie} -s ${dimensions} -pix_fmt rgb24 -r 10 -f gif ${movie}.gif
7 }

Usage:

$ gif-mov ~/Desktop/cool-screen-recording.mov

Mechanical Keyboard DIP Switches

I’ve owned a WASD keyboard for a while but totally forgot about the DIP switches on the bottom. What’s a DIP switch? From Wikipedia:

A DIP switch is a manual electric switch that is packaged with others in a group in a standard dual in-line package (DIP). The term may refer to each individual switch, or to the unit as a whole. This type of switch is designed to be used on a printed circuit board along with other electronic components and is commonly used to customize the behavior of an electronic device for specific situations.

DIP switch

On a WASD V2 87-key, these switches let you enable Mac mode (switch command and option), swap caps lock with CTRL, activate function commands, and more. These can be set in the OS or via different applications, but setting them at the hardware level is very convenient.

DIP Switch

Change Mechanical Keyboard Keycaps Faster ⌨️

I change the keys on my mechanical keyboards often. Sometimes I’m upgrading from stock, or trying an experiment, or just pursuing a look. It’s a reality of being really into keyboards.

Something I’ve learned along the way: removing all your old caps at once is a bad idea. When you do this, you have to figure out where every key goes. Some keycaps have a code on the underside telling you the row it belongs to, most do not. I end up pulling up my Mac virtual keyboard, or looking at another keyboard, to sort it out.

A better techique: take the new keys and line them up in the correct order for each row. Some keycaps ship in separate rows, making this easy. If that’s the case, slide each row out of its shrinkwrap like a sleeve of Thin Mints.

Then, change one row at a time. Remove all the keycaps in one row, and then put all the new ones in place. This is fast, foolproof, and if you get interrupted in between rows, you still have a functioning keyboard.

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Proposing new time on Google Calendar invitations

Today I learned that we can respond to an invitation using google calendar proposing a new time. Check this out:

First when we open an invitation on gmail I can hit the link more options:

image

This will open the event on google calendar. Then we can expand more options with the caret down and hit Propose a new time.

image

Finally choose a time and send it back to the event owner. And that’s how they will receive our request to change the event time:

image

Pivotal Tracker Advanced Search by Owner

On a big project, Pivotal Tracker contains a wealth of data. Let’s use it!

Today I filtered all the stories assigned to my teammate with the owner keyword:

owner, owned_by
owner: “Obi Wan Kenobi”
Search using the full name, initials, the username, user id or part of the user’s name.

This filtered out hundreds of stories, leaving the four in progress that I care about.

Here’s the official advanced search guide. Try a new keyword today!

https://www.pivotaltracker.com/help/articles/advanced_search/

Research Software Alternatives

Today I discovered AlternativeTo, which provides ‘crowdsourced software recommendations’. It’s available here:

https://alternativeto.net/

With this resource you can find alternatives to websites, tools, operating systems, and more, and learn about each alternative you find.

For reference, I checked out the results for open source alternatives to Ruby. The list includes no-brainers like Python, JavaScript, and Java, but also Go, C, and Lua. If I were a CTO who didn’t know Ruby and needed to quickly understand its position in the ecosystem, this would be a pretty useful starting point.

image

Zoom Hotkeys to Toggle Audio and Video 🎛

Zoom users, two new hotkeys for you on Mac: CMD-SHIFT-A to toggle audio and CMD-SHIFT-V to toggle video. The ability to control my A/V presentation in long video calls makes these hotkeys worth the muscle memory investment.

Zoom has another handy audio feature in preferences: temporarily unmute by pressing the spacebar. This is perfect for standups, where I mostly want to be muted, but need to be able to unmute quickly for short periods of time.

Dash Docset Keywords 🗝

Dash has a customizable keyword for each Docset. Here are the defaults for a random Hashrocket collection*:

image

These keywords scope search results to one Docset; use one in the Dash search bar like so:

elixir:String.split

And from Alfred:

dash elixir:String.split

This is useful when you have many Docsets, and are sure where you want to look, which should be true almost all the time. It’s nice when using two complementary technologies like Elixir and Elm that share a function namespace (such as String.split).

* Also note: this list order can be changed, as noted in the table header. Move libraries you use often above those you use rarely.

Dash Find in Page 🔎

To build upon my earlier post, Integrate Alfred and Dash: Dash supports find-in-page search via a whitespace. To search on a docs page, add a space after the function or keyword name, and then enter your search query.

Here’s a command you could run to find JavaScript’s Array.prototype.unshift()and search on that docs page for the ‘specification’ header, where the associated ECMAScript standards for unshift are found.

unshift specification

This command from Alfred could look like:

dash unshift specification

Integrate Alfred and Dash 🤝

Today I’m testing an intergration between Alfred, the powerful alternative to Finder, and Dash, the local-documentation tool for Mac. My goal is a single command, run from anywhere on a Mac, that searches one or many sets of docs for a named function.

This tutorials showed me how to do it. TL;DR, it’s a one-click setup in Dash:

https://github.com/Kapeli/Dash-Alfred-Workflow

Once complete, I can trigger Alfred (with CMD + SPACE, or any key combo that’s not assigned elsewhere), type dash List.reverse, hit enter, and Alfred loads all the List.reverse docs I’ve downloaded in Dash.

How to expose entire Swift class to Objective-C

Use the @objcMembers annotation in your Swift class. When working on a project that is migrating from Objective-C to Swift you will most likely be sharing all Swift functions with Objective-C, but that could start to look ugly:

class MyClass: NSObject {
  @objc func fancy() -> String {
    return "fancy"
  }
  
  @objc func tooFancy() -> String {
    return "🤵"
  }
}

But if everything needs to be available to Objective-C, we simply do:

@objcMembers
class MyClass: NSObject {
  func fancy() -> String {
    return "fancy"
  }
  
  func tooFancy() -> String {
    return "🤵"
  }
}

How to remove NotificationCenter observer in Swift

Use the method deinit. In Objective-C classes I would always remove NSNotificationCenter observers in the -dealloc method, but a Swift class doesn’t have a -dealloc method. Instead, Swift has a deinit method.

Here is an example of Objective-C:

@implementation MyClass
  - (void)dealloc {
    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self];
  }
@end

And the equivilant in Swift:

class MyClass {
  deinit {
    NotificationCenter.default.removeObserver(self)
  }
}

Open iOS simulator app data directory

If you need to quickly open an app’s document directory on the iOS Simulator, you can quickly get the path from the xcrun CLI.

xcrun simctl get_app_container booted ${bundle_id} data

Here’s some ruby you can throw into a Rakefile of your iOS app 😉

# Rakefile
desc "Open the simulator document directory"
task :docs do
  bundle_id = File.read("MyAppName/MyAppName.xcodeproj/project.pbxproj")
    .scan(/PRODUCT_BUNDLE_IDENTIFIER = "(.*)"/)
    .flatten.first

  app_directory = `xcrun simctl get_app_container booted #{bundle_id} data`

  puts "Opening simulator directory: #{app_directory}"
  `open #{app_directory}`
end