Maps at Night

I used the Maps app through much of the beta and never had any problems. I used it to drive from Orange County to San Diego and Los Angeles several times. It didn’t route me any different than my prior driving app, Motion X.

In truth, I just don’t think I’m much of a Maps power user. I put in an address and I go there. I don’t do much more and, as a result, didn’t bump into a lot of Maps’ sins. I’m not denying that the app has troubles. It does.

My biggest gripe with the Maps app is driving at night. It displays the driving directions in the full screen with a brightly colored background. I use a window mount and the Maps app plays hell on my night vision. It feels like a safety hazard for me and I stopped using it when driving at night. I complained about this on a recent MPU episode and listener Mike wrote in with a great temporary fix.

Go in the Settings app and tap on the Accessibility screen. Then tap the Triple-click Home button and select Invert Colors. Now tripple tapping the home screen inverts your iPhone colors, which makes the maps nice and dark at night. I recognize this isn’t a long term solution and Apple should fix this properly but for now, it works.


Alaska 1 1.jpg


Alaska 1 2.jpg

Hide Archive Items from Apple Mail’s VIP Inbox

During a recent MPU episode, Katie lamented the fact her VIP inbox included previously archived items. I knew there was a way around that but couldn’t puzzle it together during the show. Listener John wrote in with the solution.

  1. Select the VIP Inbox
  2. Select View/Sort By/Inbox Only

This isn’t exactly intuitive but it works.


TextExpander Expense Snippet

I spent most of yesterday in court. As I fired off my TextExpander expense reporting snippet, it occurred to me, “people may like this.” This snippet creates a fill-in form with all the relevant boxes. I can use it in any text application, I usually do it in a blank Byword or Pages documents and staple receipts and the other relevant pieces of paper. Download it here.


Using TextExpander for Markdown Reference Links

Patrick Rhone (from MinimalMac) did his first screencast this week about creating a Text Expander snippet for Markdown links. Like Patrick, I write everything in Markdown (although I use the MultiMarkdown
variant), which lets me export to nearly any format and write on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac without friction. I wrote the whole book in MultiMarkdown.*

Anyway, Patrick’s video got me thinking. Patrick puts his links right next to the linked words. I use Markdown’s reference links. The advantage of using referenced links is that the text is much easier to read. You can also use the same reference more than once. Reference links can be set anywhere in the document. Some folks do it at the end of the paragraph. I do them all at the bottom.

The syntax for reference links in Markdown works as follows:

First you type some [Link Text][Reference]
Then more text … yadda yadda yadda
[Reference]:Web URL

The Link Text is the text that shows up on the page. The Reference is an index. It can be a number or words. The Web URL is the link you are pointing toward. Here is concrete example.

This is one [nerdy Mac site.][1]
Really, the guy just won’t shut up.
[1]:https://www.macsparky.com/

So I decided to take a page from Patrick’s playbook and create my own TextExpander snippet to create referenced links. It’s not that hard.

Snippet Walkthrough

If you are thinking ahead while you write, you can do this all in one step. This snippet, upon activation, asks you to insert the Link Text and Reference and then creates a Reference entry on the next line using the Web link from your clipboard. Finally, it puts the cursor back at the end of your link text. Fire up TextExpander and follow along.

Create a new snippet and start with two sets of brackets. The first will hold the Link Text and the second will hold the Reference. The Snippet should now look like this:

— Begin Snippet Code —
[][]
— End Snippet Code —

Next, create a Fill-In blank for the Link Text. These are blanks that Text Expander will prompt you to fill when the snippet runs. To create a Fill-In blank, insert the cursor between the first two brackets and select Fill-In from the Cursor drop down shown below.

— Begin Snippet Code —
[%fill:name%][]
— End Snippet Code —

Next, create a second Fill-In blank in the second set of brackets. This will be the blank for the Reference. When you create this second FIll-In blank, change the text from fill:name to fill:reference. This name is a variable. If you use the same name twice, TextExpander will copy it into both places. You will use this later.

— Begin Snippet Code —
[%fill:name%][%fill:reference%]
— End Snippet Code —

Next you’ll create the reference. First add a few carriage returns and then create the reference syntax, which is a pair of brackets and a colon.

    — Begin Snippet Code —
[%fill:name%][%fill:reference%]
[]:
— End Snippet Code —

Add a Fill-In blank in the brackets and rename it fill:reference. This duplicates the reference used above so you only need to type it once.

— Begin Snippet Code —
[%fill:name%][%fill:reference%]
[%fill:reference%]:
— End Snippet Code —

Next, add the Web URL. Place the cursor after the colon and select the Clipboard option from the cursor drop down shown in the figure below. This step dumps your clipboard in as a link. In order to make this work, you must first select and copy the link you want to use before activating the snippet. (You can do this in Safari by navigating to the desired page, pressing Command-L and then Command-C.) Alternatively, you could also make this a Fill-In field and type the URL in manually.

— Begin Snippet Code —
[%fill:name%][%fill:reference%]
[%fill:reference%]:%clipboard
— End Snippet Code —

Finally, move the cursor back to the top line at the end of the link and select Position Cursor Here from the Cursor menu. This resets the cursor back in your text so you can continue typing.

— Begin Snippet Code —
[%fill:name%][%fill:reference%] %|
[%fill:reference%]:%clipboard
— End Snippet Code —

I named this snippet Markdown Link and use the keyboard combination .[ to set it off.

Here is a picture of it in action.

And here is the resulting code.

Link as Afterthought

The above workflow assumes you think of creating the link while you are typing. If you want to add a reference link later, I created two more snippets.

The first takes highlighted text in the body of your text and sets up the text and reference number. Here is the TextExpander snippet code. I use .] to activate this snippet.

— Begin Snippet Code —
[%clipboard][%fill:reference%]
— End Snippet Code —

The second snippet creates the reference link. I use .: for this one.

— Begin Snippet Code —
[%fill:reference%]:%clipboard
— End Snippet Code —

Are you a Markdown nerd and using TextExpander? Let me know or, better yet, leave a comment and describe it for everyone.

OmniGraffle Folder Trick

If you drag a folder on the OmniGraffle application icon on your Dock, you get an interesting dialogue.

After clicking OK, OmniGraffle creates a diagram of your folder structure. Really.

Little things like this make me smile.
Thanks Landya for the tip