June 20, 2020

SummerFest with DevonThink, DevonAgent and Friends

Summer is here, quite literally a few hours away, so let the summer sales begin! To kick things off, DevonTechnologies has partnered with several other software vendors to offer SummerFest2020. It’s a great way to get a 25% discount on their products as well as some companion products that integrate very nicely and improve your research workflow. This would be a great time to get both DevonThink and DevonAgent. DevonThink goes far beyond note-taking to offer a complete document management solution. It has become the central hub of information on both my home and work Macs. I have text files, spreadsheets, task lists, Jira ticket notes, test plans, PDFs, RSS feeds, web archives, code examples and more all tucked away in there. It is a fantastic tool and I think I would be completely lost without it. DevonAgent is a must have for web research. And now that I have Adguard blocking ads within the DA browser, I’m using it […]

June 19, 2020

Three months of working remotely

I've crossed over the three month mark of working from home. And despite circumstances, I'm thoroughly enjoying it. By not being stuck in traffic I have so much more time available. I've been able to exercise with more frequency and still have plenty of time in the evening to play games, watch a movie, or work on side projects like Affinity, Inkle, or doing fun research with DevonAgent. Not to mention, I've saved a ton of money by not eating out and not buying gas. No sympathy for the oil companies I'm afraid. I've also been working on getting my organization groove on. I've made dozen of changes and improvements to my notes, folder and database structure within DevonThink. I've even moved a lot of documentation into DevonThink that was lingering in different folders on the drive. Everything in one place, very tidy. I've created several new Alfred and Keyboard Maestro workflows which have been some nice little timesavers. (Clicking […]

June 18, 2020

Back to playing the dirtiest game I know

Perhaps it’s the great collection of trail running/rock crawling maps I’ve found. Perhaps it’s the stalwart Humvee, that in the words of Jimmy Broadbent, “is an absolute weapon!” Or perhaps I like living on the edge, of a cliff. Either way, I’m having a glorious time in MudRunner again. I’ve played it on and off ever since it came out, but now, something has really clicked. Despite how it sounds, delivering logs has been a great way to spend the evening. Or a few dozen in my case. Now that the standard content is complete, I’ve latched on to a slew of new maps, built specifically for rock crawling and trail running. And I’ve found a couple of great trucks to use. First is the Humvee. One of many I’m sure. But it is brutally powerful and seems to be able to travel over anything and everything. Second is “Snot Rocket”, a green counterpart to “Agent Orange”, which is an […]

June 6, 2020

Creating a new or blank folder structure from a text file

While cleaning up and organizing my drives, I ran into a situation where I wanted to replicate a folder structure, but not copy any of the files. I'm going to move the files to a new location, but want to keep working and not wait for the folders to copy. Turns out there are a couple of easy ways to accomplish this. For the first method, create the directory structure you want using a plain text editor. This would be done by creating the path to lowest level folder you may need. You don't need to list all the interim directories. If I were to list: "Game Folder/Assets/Icons" it would make all three folders. If the folder name contains spaces, enclose the entire line in quotes. This is a great way to create the same folder structure over an over again for something like a website or coding project. Next, open Terminal, switch to the new Parent folder where you […]

June 5, 2020

Using Adguard to block ads in Internet aware apps on the Mac

Even though apps like DevonAgent and DevonThink use the Safari engine for browsing, they don't use the plugins which may be installed. This means viewing search results will be riddled with ads, which is both distracting and potentially dangerous. But, there is a way to block ads for applications, not just the major browsers. Adguard (the full app vs browser plugin) claims to block ads at the macOS level. This means other Internet aware apps can get ad blocking protection. All you have to do is add the name of the application to the Applications list under the Network tab. I took up the challenge, added DevonAgent, DevonThink, Downle, and Download Shuttle to the mix just to see what would happen. I then did some "deep dive" searches with DevonAgent followed by some video and music searches with Downle. True to their claim, ads were indeed blocked. Previous banners and ads were no longer visible. Further, the blocked ad count […]

AdGuard Stats

1,055,701 Ads blocked and 269,762 Trackers blocked for 61.64 GB saved, since June 4, 2020.

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