Solarized

I’ve received several emails asking me about my love of Ethan Schoonover’s Solarized color scheme. Solarized is a set of colors Ethan selected for use in a text editor or app development platform.. Computer programmers spend a lot of time gazing at computer screens and Ethan thought it would be a good idea to package up a pleasant and complimentary set of colors for the purpose. While I don’t spend much time programing computers, I sure spend a lot of time looking at screens and I’ve been using the Solarized colors set for years. I’ve got no training on picking colors and I’m happy to take advantage of Ethan’s generosity here.

The download file has the colors in several formats including Adobe Photoshop, Xcode, BBEdit, and even Vim. (Yes, Vim. I really like the way it works with the Apple Color picker. Here’s how you install it.

First download the file from Ethan’s site.


Screen Shot 2013-03-14 at 2.46.33 PM.png

When you open the file, you’ll see there are a lot of places to install Solarized.


Screen Shot 2013-03-14 at 2.47.26 PM.png

I opened up the Apple color picker folder. Inside there is a script to launch the color picker. Fire it up.


Screen Shot 2013-03-14 at 2.48.32 PM.png

Click on the palette and then open. Then select the ‘Solarized.clr’ file and you’re in business.


Screen Shot 2013-03-14 at 2.49.07 PM.png


Screen Shot 2013-03-14 at 2.50.43 PM.png

PDFpen Sale

As promised, for the next two days you can get PDFpen 6 for $29.99 and PDFpenPro 6 for $39.99. I recommend getting it from the App Store for the iCloud support. I just purchased my copy of PDFpenPro. Because I know the developers, I could probably have asked them for a free promo code but I didn’t. I plan on using the heck out of this software and in these days of $1 apps, I want to make sure that companies willing to put more effort into their products can stay in business. Anyway, that’s enough of the soap box. It’s a great app and now is your chance to get it at a great price. If you missed it before, here is a link to my PDFpen 6 screencast.

Buy PDFpen in the Mac App Store

Buy PDFpenPro in the Mac App Store

Japan? Check.

Starting today Paperless and 60 Mountain Lion Tips are on sale in 51 countries, including Japan. I love that a little guy like me can publish in 51 countries.

PDFpen Version 6

This weekend’s Mac Power Users episode announced the pending release of PDFpen for Mac, version 6. I’ve been in the beta test and I really like this update. PDFpen has always been a great PDF solution on the Mac and this upgrade really improves upon it.

User Interface

The new tool bar and edit bar make performing quick edits much easier. Everything is accessible with one mouse click. The new icons are also all retina friendly and look great on my fancy MacBook Pro.


Screen Shot 2013-03-17 at 10.06.18 AM.png

Export to Word

I’m trying to figure out if I’m an edge case but I really love this new feature. Shady attorneys send me PDFs (when they should be Word or Pages documents) for review on a weekly basis. Now I can easily take the PDF, convert it to Word, and send it back to them with change tracking. I’ve already been doing this and they think I am some sort of dark wizard. This new feature does a really terrific job, capturing things like columns, graphics, and even some typography. This feature is worth the upgrade price alone.

Form Creation

Here is another great feature I didn’t know I needed but now love. If you scan a form, you no longer have to manually add the form fill in boxes. PDFpen does it for you, with one button. (This is a Pro version only feature.)

Pricing

Because the App Store doesn’t provide for upgrade pricing, Smile is going to put the apps half off for the first 48 hours they are available in the App Store. That’s $30 for PDFpen and $40 for PDFpen Pro. Buy it then. I’d get the Pro version because some of those features are really useful and at $40 it is a steal. You can do the traditional upgrade route through Smile but if you want iCloud support (I do), you’ll need to buy it from the Mac App Store. (Both the version they sale directly on their web site and the Mac App Store version support Dropbox syncing.) Exactly when this sale starts is unclear. Last I heard, they are waiting for the green light from Apple. As soon as it does go on sale, however, I’ll post and tweet about it. You’re going to want to get in on this sale.

I love it when a software company delights me. This new version of PDFpen does just that. It takes a product that I already loved and makes it better (without screwing up the things I loved about it to begin with). Here is a video I made showing off some of my favorite new features.

Permalinking SquareSpace with TextExpander

I get a lot of requests about how I put permalinks at the bottom of link posts. People think I’ve done this with some clever bit of web programming but the answer is really just a TextExpander snippet.

Here is the snippet text:

[∞](https://www.macsparky.com/blog/%clipboard)

You’ll have to replace the “macsparky” bit with your own domain. The trick is to grab the name of a pending post and put it in your clipboard. You do this in the Options tab for a new SquareSpace post.


Screen Shot 2013-03-15 at 4.10.13 PM.png

As you can see I’ve highlighted the blog post name and the copied it (⌘+C). Then I flip back to my post text and put the cursor at the bottom and fire off the above snippet. (I uses “pperma” for my shortcut.)

That produces the following markdown.

[∞](https://www.macsparky.com/blog/permalinkingss)

This shows up as a permalink.

Home Screen: Thanh Pham


profile-sm.jpg

This week’s home screen comes to you courtesy of Thanh Pham (Twitter) from AsianEfficiency. I’ve long been an admirer of Thanh’s and his excellent content. I was fortunate enough to meet him this January at Macworld and found out that in addition to being a really smart guy, he’s also a really nice guy. Also, remarkably, he lives in the same county as me and we’ve never had dinner. We’re going to fix that. Thanh, show us your home screen.


Thanhs phone.jpg

What are some of favorite apps?

1Password

This app is a must-have. I almost browse more in 1Password than I do in Safari.

Air Playit

I have a lot video courses on my Macbook that I want to access with my iPhone and iPad. Instead of syncing the video files (which can be big) I like to stream them to my iDevice. So whenever I’m in bed or on the couch, I can pull out my iPhone, pick a video, stream it onto my iPhone and continue learning.

Habit List

I’m always experimenting with my habits. Sometimes I’ll add or change multiple habits at the same time so having an app to track my progress is great. Over the years I’ve tried many different ones but I like Habit List the most.

OmniFocus

Do I really need to say more? It’s the best task manager out there. Period.

Downcast

I’m pretty new to listening to podcasts and I’ve found that Downcast appeals to me the most. Design is really important to me and this app is the best designed out of all podcast apps (just play with a couple gestures to see why).

Instapaper

I do a lot of reading so Instapaper is a must-have. Whenever I get a chance, I like to catch up with my articles in my inbox.

Drafts

This is my go-to app for capturing. It’s fast, simple and you can easily store your notes in the right places. I’ll often use this too for dictating my thoughts because it’s so easy afterwards to get it stored in OmniFocus or Evernote.

Tweetbot

Simply the best twitter client out there.

Weather+

A gorgeous weather app that gets the job done. I mostly use this app just because it’s so beautiful.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Kingdom Rush

It’s not on my home screen for a good reason. If you want to throw productivity out the window, this is the tower defense game you must have. You have been warned.

What is the app you are still missing?

I’ve tried a bunch of fitness apps for tracking progress, nutrition and measurements but none have really won me over. There are a lot of apps that excel at one thing but there is no app that does it ALL really well. I just want to easily track my progress, know how many calories I had today, track my weight, body fat and water weight without much effort. Integration with Siri would be really nice to have so I can just say what I did and ate, and have it all processed for me.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?
During the hours I’m working, maybe once an hour. I try to hide my phone whenever I’m engaged at work. However, as soon as I take a break or call it a day, I’m constantly on my phone.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?
I really like Siri. I use this feature a lot for sending texts, starting a timer, weather forecasts, reminders and directions.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?
I would like the idea of “charging your phone” to be non-existent. It’s something you shouldn’t have to think or worry about.

Another issue is iOS. I got an iPhone the first day it came out and I have never used another phone since then. However, with the lack of iOS innovation sometimes I feel like I’ve been using the same phone for a decade. There are a lot of opportunities for iOS to be even better, e.g. customizing the look and feel, lock screen utilities, customizing gestures and much more.

Anything else you’d like to share?
Thanks for having me! I really love your home screen series because I get to see how other people use their iDevices and I always learn something new. I hope I did the same for someone else.

Thanks Thanh