June was a busy month personally for me. Work as ever consumes a lot of my time, but along with the start of the usual end of academic year school activities for my children, I have also been spending time preparing to move house (due to happen in July), and as you may recall from earlier posts I have been travelling a lot more frequently due to visit a family member. That family member’s circumstances changed (positively) recently, so there was a last minute flurry of activity around that, that impacted my availability to work on other things. As a result I think my online output is down, and will be in July too, but this is something I have expected, and my personal time to work on my personal projects is always the first thing to give at times like this - which is as it should be.
However, it isn’t as though there was no output at all. Even with significant restrictions on my time, there are still things to highlight.
ThoughtAsylum
I only managed to get a single post up on ThoughtAsylum last month, but that was all I had planned to do given the time I had available to me to sit down on work on things. The post was about an integration between Drafts and Tot I created primarily through Drafts' actions; specifically a new action group called Tot-ality. I use Drafts as my scratch pad, but Tot fills a niche spot for me where it gives me more of a temporary sticky note option. As such, I found I would sometimes copy an entry in Tot into Draft for further processing. I set up an automation to do this, and then built that out into a relatively inclusive set of Drafts actions - over one hundred of them!
The solution was primarily developed for the Mac, but I extended it for iPhone/iPad use too. The Mac solution utilises AppleScript for some of the functionality, which is not available on the other platforms, so in those cases, it will seek to use an Apple Shortcuts shortcut. However, I also built into the calling of the shortcut a check to see if it is available, and if not, it offers to take the user to the download page for it.
Unfortunately a fundamental issue relating to some Drafts functionality and sharing actions/action groups was identified after a few days (I guess no one actually tried it for the first few days after release), so I had to spend a few hours rebuilding most of the actions to account for this; but that was something I did at the start of July.
Forums
As usual, I’ve been pitching in here and there on my usual forum haunts when I can spare a few minutes.
Drafts
I helped one Drafts user create a Drafts action for creating a parent and subtasks in Todoist from a draft.
I provided a bit of forum and JavaScript coding suggestions for a user who was creating an action to add text to multiple selected drafts.
I helped debug a Notion Action Step not working for someone.
I made some documentation suggestions for a user looking to use the Azure OpenAI API in Drafts.
I suggested using an action to combine (/rename) tags, but then learnt that the app now includes rename options natively.
One user asked about folding and collapsible text - but that’s still a feature request.
ChatGPT remains a stalwart for people wanting to use it with Drafts, but I guess they could do with using ChatGPT to help them highlight the need to read the Drafts and ChatGPT troubleshooting and make doubly sure they have ChatGPT API access they “think” they have.
One user resurrected a years old thread on exporting drafts to Obsidian where, once again, reading the topic they were posting on would have given them most of the answers to the questions they were asking. But it did give me a chance to link to one of my blog posts on walking through the two primary methods - URL-based requests and direct file writing.
Another user resurrected a thread on a Bear and Todoist action to ask if they could use Apple Reminders instead of Todoist, and could they include Drafts tags for Bear. I pointed them to Drafts' Reminders documentation (it is possible to swap Reminders in), and the relevant sections of TADpoLe that covers including tags in adding new notes to Bear from Drafts.
I created some actions to allow a user to copy Markdown as rich text with some additional conversion options.
A user had an issue with managing Drafts for an e-mailing service that I provided some advice on, though it definitely started out as something defined very differently!
I provided some support on a user having a problem with the Mail Action, but the underlying cause of the issue was rather interesting.
A user had a query about their draft library summary - an action from the directory. I made a suggestion for the cause, that turned out to be correct, and also directed them to my own summary action that provides a lot more detail about your drafts.
A user asked about applying templates to existing notes, But when questioned on what they wanted to do, the answer was a little surprising….
Knowing how and when to escape content is arguably a bit of a black art, but when you need it, knowing how to escape content can save the day.
I posted a link back to a previous solution I had posted about that uses existing standard draft meta data to set drafts for a future date; but it appears it went overlooked, and the focus was placed on putting the data in the draft content as a solution instead 🤷🏻
Finally, it continues to amaze me that people post rather than search.
Automators
Reddit is a platform I only ever came to as a search engine result or a linked reference. It never gelled for me as I found the discussions regularly diverged into vacuous responses, uneducated guesses, and that just wasn’t an experience I could invest in. However, with the subreddit black out steps in June there was a significant jump in Shortcuts subreddit refugees posting content and queries on the Automators podcast forum. It was nice to see a bump in popularity, but I have noted a subsequent dip in other areas. While I hope it could settle to a higher level of engagement in time, I suspect things will simply shift back to Reddit with the Shortcuts subreddit having gone back to public access and posting resuming. I guess we’ll just wait and see how much Shortcuts content appears in July.
Can you to create a shortcut for quick messaging through apps - generally, the answer is yes, but not all apps are equal in this regard.
One user asked about an app or shortcut for scanning. There were a few answers that included developer betas and OCR; but there may just be a suggestion that was actually based on scanning 😉
I gave some help to one user on creating an “Open App” Shortcut with App Icons using vCard shortcut.
There was a bit of discussion around triggering dictation into Drafts on the Apple Watch using Shortcuts.
I did a bit of reading between the lines to create a Shortcuts-based related image search using ascii2d.net for a new forum user.
I also created a shortcut for a forum user for quick messaging via third party apps.
I created an example shortcut for a user for adding sub tasks to a new task in Reminders via Shortcuts.
There was some discussion about creating a shortcut to open an app on another device, and as is so often the case no one knows if any of the answers given help as the original poster never followed up 😕
Someone wanted to run a shortcut at most once daily? and so there were some example shortcuts created and some data storage discussion to support it.
There was a query from another new forum user about templated e-mail sending from Shortcuts for which I outlined an approach.
There was a query about additional calendar notifications using Shortcuts, but I suspect the underlying issue needs to be addressed in a different way.
There were some discussions on a location based intercom solution based on HomeKit.
I made some suggestions for automating image background removal.
I pitched in on some post-app install automation on macOS.
There was an Automator query on returning control from Apple Mail I made some suggestions for.
Finally, the thread on Scriptable randomly deleting script contents continued, but to my understanding of the testing, it seems entirely unrelated to Scriptable, and related to their iCloud Drive, which I remain somewhat suspicious of having actually been fully reset for resync.
Upcoming
My background project continues here and there, though it has received little attention in June. Hopefully once my house move has been completed I’ll get some time to refocus on it and get back to making some good progress. It is a big piece of work and the output will still take me a good few months of solid work just to get to a release stage - and it won’t be “finished” at that point, but will just form an initial release that I’ll then be able to continue building on.
My Alfred workflow for Obsidian is definitely taking a backseat to the project above, but remains a work in progress and I do dip in a review bits when the muse takes me - just not this past month.
I expect July to be another low output month for content as I declutter, donate, dispose, pack, move and unpack. I’m not moving far, but we are downsizing and moving to non-rented accommodation for the very first time, so it is both challenging and exciting in equal measure. With a home that is truly my own, rather than on loan, I strongly suspect I’ll be reaching into the realms of home automation beyond the plugs, bulbs and speakers I currently have - so expect some of that to surface in my 2024 posts.
To all who have dropped a bit of currency and bought me a coffee, I thank you. I am hoping with the reduction in travel and several big things coming to a head in the second half of the summer that I’ll be able to get back into a routine where I can pop out to a coffee shop and have some more creative time with a beverage provided by you. Take care, and I’ll catch you all next month to review my July efforts.