The cooler rains have started coming down in the UK as we drift from the end of summer into Autumn. The new academic school year has just begun, and it is time for me to look back on August. This past month I have definitely been a little quieter for reasons I’ll touch on below, but mainly because I took a couple of weeks annual leave (the most I have taken in over a decade), and prior to that I spent some very long days at the day job getting everything to a point where I could leave it alone for a couple of weeks, only to come back to a large backlog that I then needed to spend extra hours shifting. But I did get a few things done.
ThoughtAsylum
Last month I mentioned that I had been working on some text to speech on my Mac, and this past month I wrote up quite a lengthy blog post on how to set up text to speech on macOS using Piper. It walks through what I think is the simplest way to set up and configure it, avoiding the dead ends I ended up going down.
The post also includes a script that I created that I think makes operation of Piper more convenient - it does for me at least. This was quite an interesting little foray as it is the first script I have written that you can install via Homebrew, and my first script which comes with its own man file.
I did not get chance to finish writing the details up, but there are details in the works that will explain why I wanted to do this in the first place and what I am actively using it for.
Forums
There was a definite uptick on my usual forum haunts this past month and with any luck I was able to lend a useful bit of advice here and there.
Drafts
If you want to use multiple Ghost blogs with Drafts, then the update on the standing Ghost blogging thread is worth a read as it covers a specific limitation around initialisation.
The sync slower and less reliable than before post from last year was reopened, but as usual the logs would be what is required to get insight into what any underlying issue is.
There was a question about how to bi-directionally synchronise Drafts and Notion.
The Whisper model remains popular and a thread on using WhisperAI in drafts had some redirection to ask about using SuperWhisper with Drafts.
Lastly there was a query about Markdown link display in Drafts.
Automators
There was a Shortcuts query about how can you add a 5-minute pause in Shortcuts while screen is locked? There is some discussion of the old Facebook cheat of playing background noise (which stops other playback - so would not be something I would use), but this was good for the poster. My suggestion was something that needs a bit of hand off….
Once agains Scriptable scripts are missing on a device. While I didn’t get an answer to my suggestion, it has always been the case when this question has come up before.
There was a question about how to create an alarm on iOS when a notification arrives from another app, and I think in the discussion it becomes evident that something I was told back when I first started in a developer role holds true - don’t specify the solution for what you don’t know how to do, specify the requirements you know you have.
A question about renaming a PDF with variable names in Hazel came up, and even with no practical source file provided, I think I managed to set out a workable solution - unfortunately, the lack of response means we cannot know for sure.
Once again the question on extracting attachments from all emails in an Outlook folder in the macOS section (and tagged with AppleScript for good measure) from 2021 received yet another random posting about some Windows software, and again not even with a link. I think it is also limited to the older versions of Outlook.
Other
There actually wasn’t all that much extra going on in August, but I was focused on a new personal project of a different kind.
Studying Abroad
For my annual leave I spent most of my time at Duinrell in the Netherlands, and while I had plenty of time to tinker, the environment wasn’t wholly conducive to this, and due to background caching by YouTube that I had not spotted, I quickly burned through my data allocation - such is one of the downsides I have observed from Brexit. As a result, I didn’t spend a lot of time working on the semi, or fully online activities I had expected to.
However, what I did also bring was a lot of study material and I spent a large proportion of my time doing just that. I will cover some details about my studying, and my subsequent examination (this past weekend), in my update next month as some of it may relate to an upcoming blog post and I don’t want to share any spoilers.
Links
Last month I asked for feedback on if people would like me to share interesting tools and websites I had come across in the past month, and the feedback I received all indicated people would like to see that, and so here are a few new things I made use of this past month.
AnkiWeb
Anki is a well respected flashcard application that allows you to download or create your own card decks which you can then use to learn and revise a variety of topics. I had not used Anki before, but with my studying, I had a real need to create my own custom deck of study content and then use spaced repetition to help me embed the key points from what I was learning.
The Mac app was free and was where I did most of my compilation and studying, but on occasion I wanted to complete part of my daily test when I was away from my Mac. While there is an iOS app, it is 25 GBP, and while I may well get it in the future to support the project, it was a little steep for my immediate, limited use case.
Instead I found that AnkiWeb was entirely functional on my iPhone and could meet my needs very easily. A nice clean interface, an option to edit cards where I had a typo, and it all syncs back to my Mac.
If you need to study, and if you are not ready to invest in the iPhone app just yet, I would definitely recommend giving the web app version a try on your phone.
Ezypack
I travel only occasionally these days, and so my OmniOutliner version, where I managed all my travel lists has long since sunk into version obsolescence. While the app is incredibly powerful, it is overpowered for tracking my current packing list needs.
I looked around for an iPhone app that was inexpensive, and not subscription based, that I could use to help me pack for my trip to the Netherlands. In the end I found Ezypack, a free packing list and to-do list app.
It was ideal. It not only let me categorise and add my items (as well as offering reusability), but it also let me track tasks I needed to do before leaving we left.
If you have need of a packing app, I’d recommend giving this one a look.
Grapse
As I noted above, I created my first man file this past month, and I found an online Man page editor, Grapse. Once I’d changed its mode from ‘DOC’ to ‘AN’ it started behaving much better, but I have to admit, it was not perfect.
If you are in a pinch and want to work on a Man file, this would seem to be a good choice, but I would also recommend that you do give the final version a proper check locally.
E.g.
man ./some_man_page.1
Upcoming
I have a busy month ahead with a lot of day job work, including a global user group presentation and a one-day conference sort of event - I had though they were over for the year, but I have two new ones to attend. In addition, I need to get back into the swing of things on all my usual stuff. Many of the things I had planned to work on while I was on leave never came to fruition, so I need to focus my efforts back on those.
Thank you once again to everyone who has bought me a coffee. I do really appreciate it, and I’ll be back next month with a new update.