roobasoft blog » 3rd Party Apps

Screencast: rooSwitch + Final Cut Pro

BrianC — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 23:32:34 +0000

There are plenty of uses for rooSwitch that I will never think of. That’s why I love finding blog posts from users explaining how they’re using rooSwitch. What’s better than a blog post? A screencast!

Earlier this week, I found a user generated screencast showing off rooSwitch managing multiple profiles for Final Cut Pro. I got in touch with the author and chatted a bit about rooSwitch and asked if I could post his screencast. Not only did he let me post it, but he redid it to explain a little more of how he’s doing what he’s doing. The six minute QuickTime movie can be seen below:

rooSwitch and Final Cut Pro.mov

Since I’m not a Final Cut Pro user I would never have known this problem existed nor that it could be helped by rooSwitch.

Many thanks to Steve at Double Wide Post in NYC for the great screencast.

More Browser Independence

BrianC — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 04:36:51 +0000

I’ve used TextExpander off and on a few times now. At first I just used it for a signature (snore). A few weeks ago I realized TextExpander could detach what may have been the last dependence I had on browsers: Bookmark Keywords.

I love that I can use bookmark keywords to tell Camino (and OmniWeb and Safari (with an InputManager)) that ‘bugz’ is a shortcut to go to the bug database. So I just type ‘bugz’ in the URL field and it figures it out. It was annoying to have to go and recreate these shortcuts when I switched browsers. It was also annoying that Safari couldn’t do this without an InputManager. Then I realized this was a perfect candidate for TextExpander! Now I have TextExpander handle all my keywords. Since TextExpander runs in almost all apps, I prefix all the keywords with a ‘w’. ‘bugz’ is now ‘wbugz’. Works a treat and has really enabled me to create a ton more keywords and not worry about switching browsers.

Browser Independence

BrianC — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 08:00:52 +0000

Your favorite browser sucks! Mine does too. I rotate through Camino, Safari and OmniWeb. They all have strengths and weaknesses. After about two weeks, my default browser seems to have more weaknesses than strengths. So I switch!

“But what about my bookmarks!? and my saved form data!?” you say.

With that, I point you at WebnoteHappy[1] and 1Passwd respectively. These two apps let me bounce around from browser to browser without ever flinching. Hurray for independent software.

note: FireFox is not in my default browser rotation, but I do use it here and there to make use of firebug.

[1] – in the spirit of full disclosure: I’m friends with Luis of WebnoteHappy. But he doesn’t pay me to like his app.

MacSanta

BrianC — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 13:23:35 +0000

I’m late to this party, but here goes:

MacSanta is:

Thanks to MacSanta, you can save 20% off applications from all 77 companies below! Just use coupon code MACSANTA to save through December 25th.

The number 77 is probably higher by the time you read this. Apps are being added daily.

Since I didn’t have a way to accept coupons, I wasn’t going to participate (read: I’m lazy). Fortunately I got an appropriate nudge from a friend and I took care of that: Save 20% on rooSwitch

Don’t forget to give the full list a look. Enjoy!

Credit and thanks go to the Rogue Amoeba guys for setting this up.

Scripting FileStorm

BrianC — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 05:43:27 +0000

rooSwitch Lite shipped with a disk image that was created using FileStorm. Previously I was using DropDMG, which is great, but I wanted something that let me use a background and position 128×128 icons on it. FileStorm was pretty easy to navigate with the UI, but I wanted to have this scripted. I had a hard time with some of it, so I’m posting my script here in hopes that it helps someone:

on run argv

    set appFile to item 1 of argv

    set applicationsAlias to item 2 of argv

    set backgroundImage to item 3 of argv

    set diskImageIcon to item 4 of argv

    set licenseAgreement to item 5 of argv

    set appName to “rooSwitch Lite”

    tell application “FileStorm”

        activate

        make new document at before first document with properties {name:appName, background image path:backgroundImage, height:387, width:512, volume name:appName, icon path:diskImageIcon}

        tell first document

            make new file at before first file with properties {file path:appFile, left position:55, top position:50} –(change path & file name to the location of your file)

            make new file at before first file with properties {file path:applicationsAlias, left position:280, top position:50} –(change path & file name to the location of your file)

            make new license agreement at before first license agreement with properties {language:”English”, text file path:licenseAgreement}

            finalize image with rebuilding

            repeat while building

                delay 1

            end repeat

        end tell

        quit

    end tell

end run

p> The script is then invoked from my “package.sh” shell script via “osascript”. That line looks like this:

osascript ./other_files/build_disk_image.scpt $BUILDDIR/rooSwitch\ Lite.app/ $BUILDDIR/Applications ${PWD}/other_files/roobasoft_disk_image.png ${PWD}/other_files/defaultvolumeicon.icns ${PWD}/other_files/license.txt

p> Disclaimer: I’m not an AppleScript guru. I barely get around with it. I just wanted to post this because I found FileStorm’s examples lacking in some areas (although this is based largely on their examples). Again, hopefully this helps someone.

p> Tip ‘o the hat to Jonathan Wight for educating me in the ways of SubEthaEdit‘s “Copy as XHTML” magic.

Hazel 1.0 Is Available

BrianC — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 14:06:37 +0000

I’ve been using Hazel since I learned about it the week of WWDC. Hazel introduces itself as

Hazel is your personal housekeeper. Set up rules for any folder that could use some organizing and cleaning. Hazel does its work automatically and quietly in the background letting you focus on the your real tasks.

I have Hazel doing the following things:

Automatically empty my trash after the items have dwelled in there for a week.
Color new downloads blue (I do this for downloads that have existed for < 4 hours)
Delete downloads after 4 days
Color downloads that will be deleted in the next 24 hours red
Color recently worked on projects green (anything in the past two days)

The last one (color projects) is surprisingly helpful. I have a ~/projects directory where everything goes. Coloring the projects I’ve worked with in the past two days makes locating them a lot easier. Plus it’s fun to see what I’ve been doing.

Hazel is $16 and comes with a 14 day trial.

SpamSieve Required

BrianC — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 12:41:59 +0000

For reasons that aren’t interesting I had to use mail.app without SpamSieve for about one week. Two things I noticed:

1) Holy smokes I get a good chunk of spam!

2) Holy smokes mail.app’s “junk” filter is useless

I’ve been using SpamSieve for almost two years now and it seems I now depend on it. When I bought SpamSieve my spam was manageable but it seemed like a good investment. Now that I’ve been posting my email addresses on my websites, it’s less manageable w/o help. Those 25 clams I spent back in Dec. ’05 were well worth it.

MondoMouse

BrianC — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 10:43:01 +0000

Last night I read about MondoMouse via Daniel Jalkut’s blog. At the time I remember looking at the website and thinking, “Hmmmm, that’s sort of interesting”. I opened the link in the background of NetNewsWire and then moved along through my unread count (must fight the battle). This morning I downloaded and installed the MondoMouse prefpane thinking I’d open and then remove it. However, it clicked right away (hehe, get it. clicked? so funny.). The big thing MondoMouse provides is the ability to move and resize windows without the need for putting the mouse on a specific area of the window, or even clicking. You use modifier keys and then motion the mouse to move and resize windows. Not only does this allow move and resize to become a reflex but it’s also just super fun to do.

MondoMouse is 14.95 with a 30 day free trial.

http://www.atomicbird.com/mondomouse is the main page and http://www.atomicbird.com/mondomouse/usage.php has some screenshots of the prefpane that help make more sense of the app.

WebnoteHappy hits 1.1

BrianC — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 20:31:18 +0000

Early this morning, Luis de la Rosa, released 1.1 of WebnoteHappy. The release notes have the details on what’s new. My two favorites?

2. Support for saving bookmarks privately to del.icio.us.
3. Sharing and saving privately can be done from the quick Add/Edit dialog triggered by the hot key.

Why do I care about sharing privately? Because I can abuse it to create a poor man’s sync between my iMac and my PowerBook. I take my last two weeks worth of notes that I hadn’t posted to del.icio.us and share them privately from my iMac. Now I go to my PowerBook and say “File > Import From > del.icio.us”. Bam. Sync’d. Do the same going from my PowerBook back and I’m good to go. This solution isn’t ideal, but I do this infrequently enough that it’ll do for now.

Cut and Paste Long Posts Into Tofu For Easier Reading

BrianC — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 04:21:53 +0000

Just last night Luis pointed me at â€œThe Hardest Lessons for Startups to Learnâ€ by Paul Graham. It’s a healthy sized read. Fortunately, TUAW had recently clued me in to a free app called Tofu. Tofu’s site explains itself this way:

In Tofu, text is arranged in columns, and each column is only as high as your window. So lines are nice and narrow, they don’t move about vertically, plus your text is now in easy-to-digest chunks. You just scroll from column to column horizontally, and feel more in control.

I like columns, but I also like the fact that you can save the doc and it remembers where you are. For articles containing a lot of words, remembering where I was is a huge benefit. This is something I wish my browser did for me.

I think Tofu works great for Mr. Graham’s essay’s because they’re light on formatting and links and are quite detailed. I’m not sure I’ve ever finished one in one sitting.

Oh, and you can pick your own font too. I recommend a nice 14pt Baskerville.

update (06.02.2006): bah, I didn’t realize this until now. By default, Tofu, will not remember your position in the doc if you quit and reopen. To turn this on you have to go to Tofu > Preferences and check â€œremember scroll position within documentsâ€.