Macinations

October 2, 2022

⌘ Harnessing the power of RegEx across multiple apps

RegEx is a powerful tool for finding and processing text. While it’s a full programming language, there are some basics that go a long way. Mastering just a few commands will save hours of time. Almost every text editor on the Mac supports RegEx. My main use is with TextSoap, Keyboard Maestro, and the shell. To start, I use TextSoap with RegEx to delete lines of text that match my criteria. In output files, I remove lines with INFO and Debug. In other files, I highlight Error or Warning. The Keyboard Maestro search/replace modules support RegEx, so you can parse clipboard text or variables. As a simple example, I copy Jira ticket titles, remove line breaks and replace them with ‘ – ‘. You don’t have to be an expert in RegEx to save yourself time and believe me, I’m no expert. However, there are plenty of tools and resources to help. Stackoverflow is alive with RegEx questions and answers. […]

September 25, 2022

🌎 Update on the Subject Specific Browser

Since I made comment about Subject Specific Browsers, I’ve made half a dozen I use daily. I have a browser for: Amazon and Woot Multiple Wiki sites YouTube QA and automation sites (Katalon, Stackoverflow, Tutorialspoint) Blogging Godville Online Wiki’s for games Streaming And the more I make them, the more I find uses for them. I recently added the Blogging and Wiki browsers to the toolkit. When the WordPress app flaked out on me, using a dedicated browser was a simple solution. Wikipedia is a daily visit, so to try out it’s features, I set it up using Webcatalog. This creates a more app-like feel. I have multiple “accounts” in the browser, then added that to a Space. I’m not entirely sold on the concept yet, but I like the way it’s working. If I find a couple more uses, I’ll add it to the toolbox. Webcatalog is a more application feel, versus full browser experience. By default the address […]

September 18, 2022

🔐 Storing private information locally

Cloud storage is great, but sometimes local storage is better. I’ve discussed my use of encrypted and password protected DMG files to store application documents. However, what’s an easy way to securely store other private info that’s not used for a web form? It’s possible to use a Scrivener document, a password protected DevonThink Office Pro database or a spreadsheet. A better choice is a dedicated tool like Concealer. It’s built to store simple, but confidential information. Cloud storage is fine, right up to where it doesn’t work. There’s plenty of stories about compromised data. Not to mention, if you don’t have Internet access, you don’t have your data. Locally stored data is always accessible. So, what would you store in Concealer and not in a password manager? Contact information for an account rep Company bank account details Emergency credit card details Software contract information Health care details SSN for family members Storage facility/locker combinations Low level BIOS or disk […]

September 11, 2022

🚫 MarsEdit, a not so powerful, or useful, WordPress client for Mac

WordPress clients might be only area where the Mac is lacking options. There are several iPad choices, and the actual WordPress client. It worked well until it stopped working for me. To get back on track, I looked for alternatives with as the most common choice. After using it for a couple of days I can’t understand why. It’s lackluster and feature deficient. To start, the price is outrageous at $50. By comparison, Scrivener, the greatest word processor ever written, is $45. Further, WordPress is free, why charge so much? With that, the MarsEdit editor is a step below rudimentary. Writing a long article is a painful and cumbersome experience. MarsEdit has no idea what Markdown is. MarsEdit is prone to crashes. It has issues on a large blog with dozens of categories, hundreds of tags, and thousands of posts. It times out and throws errors. For $50, MarsEdit doesn’t support the latest features of WordPress. It uses the Classic […]

September 4, 2022

⌘ Powerful Uses for TextSoap

TextSoap is a tool that once you begin working with it, you find more ways to use it. That may seem a little odd, TextSoap is just a text editor isn’t it? No, TextSoap is far more than a text editor. It’s an automated way to clean, fix, format, search and replace, and parse text. Yes, it is a very capable text editor that supports large plain text and RTF documents, but it’s main goal is to reformat blocks of text using “Cleaners.” By default there are dozens of cleaners built-in, such as: Remove duplicates <– This is awesome. Multiple Returns to 1 Return – <– Also awesome. Remove Extra Spaces Convert to Upper, Lower, Title Case Add suffix or prefix to each line Sort lines These are all very handy and efficient, but the real power of TextSoap lies in it’s Search and Replace, and Custom Cleaners functionality. The Search/Replace is RegEx aware so you can remove Tabs and […]

⌘ Harnessing the power of RegEx across multiple apps

🌎 Update on the Subject Specific Browser

🔐 Storing private information locally

🚫 MarsEdit, a not so powerful, or useful, WordPress client for Mac

⌘ Powerful Uses for TextSoap

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