My iPhone Wallpaper

Following yesterday’s post about my home screen, a lot of people were asking about my wallpaper. I picked it up somewhere on the Internet around the time the iPhone 5 released but now I can’t find where. If anyone knows, please send me a note so I can give credit and a link to its creator but for now, here it is.

Click Here to Download

Credit!

Several readers wrote in to say the wallpaper’s creator is Dan Waldron (@dwaldron) who shared it with this tweet. Moreover, I’m pretty sure I found it with this post at MacStories.

Thanks everyone for writing in and thanks Dan for some great work.

TE Snippets: Foreign Thanks 1.1

Thanks everyone for the tweeks and additions to the foreign thanks snippet set. I’ve updated it in the original post and TE Snippet page.

I’ve also received some nice snippet lists from readers for future posting. If you’ve got something you’d like to share, send it my way.

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Home screens: MacSparky

I was looking at the wealth of home screen posts going back to December 2009 and it occurred to me I’ve never posted my own home screen. Well gang, here you go.

On The Dock

Calendar

I need a calendar app in my dock because I often need my calendar. I’ve got this on-again off-again relationship with Apple’s calendar app. I know there are better solutions but at the end of the day I’m pretty scatterbrained and having the date in my dock is useful.

Drafts(App Store)

I’ve written about Drafts before. Plenty. Drafts is the ultimate text capture tool but does so much more. I use it with the keyboard and Siri all the time. Moreover, Drafts just keeps improving with an increasing number of export and automation features.

OmniFocus (App Store)

My precious OmniFocus.

Phone

Well … it is an i”Phone”.

On the Home Screen

I love my iPhone 5 but I also love having a little empty space on my home screen. I emptied out the bottom row a few months ago and now I’m used to it that way. I’m also very specific about App placement. The Camara is always top right, Email is always top left. I’ve played with alternative camera apps but the launch speed of the native app trumps their additional features.

Tweetbot and Netbot (Tweetbot App Store) (Netbot App Store)

There are a lot of great Twitter apps but Tweetbot is my favorite. I like the little delightful bits of the interface and the way everything syncs across Mac and iOS.

Calcbot (App Store)

Calcbot is another great Tapbots app. It’s a friendly calculator with great sound effects. Yes. I said that.

Reeder (App Store)

RSS feeds are my dirty habit. I try to keep the list small but I still find myself checking it several times a day. For this, I use Reeder on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Instapaper (App Store)

I know there are other read-it-later services but I love the way Marco Arment sweats all the details. Instapaper is, for me, a triage of sorts where articles get routed to Evernote, OmniFocus, Reading folders, and the trash. I also pay the monthly $1 subscription.

WriteRoom (App Store)

I have an ongoing battle between WriteRoom and Notesy for syncing my nvALT text files from my Mac. Currently I’m using WriteRoom because it is so damn fast at syncing. (As an aside, sometimes I’ll also run an instance of Notesy just syncing to my current Field Guide files through Scrivener on my Mac.)

Byword (App Store)

Byword is where I keep anything I’m currently writing on. I love the iCloud sync and the simple UI. It just works.

Downcast (App Store)

I originally used Instacast. I paid for the app and the in-app upgrades but they made changes to the UI and I never got used to it. Moreover, the icon was about the same color as the Music and Reader apps, which led to me sometimes hitting the wrong one. (I know how ridiculous that sounds.) So I tried Downcast about six months ago and it stuck with me, immediately.

Music

I know a lot of nerds put the Music app on a second page but I really love music.

1Password (App Store)

Agile’s done such an amazing job with version 4. I use this app probably more than I use Safari since it logs me in so efficiently and the in-app browser is so good.

Setting

I’m a fiddler with iPhone settings so I keep it handy. It would be nice if I could use Siri to do some of the most common tasks, like toggle Bluetooth and WiFi.

A Word about Badges.

I don’t like them. It feels like my iPhone is yelling at me. I turn badges off on just about every app that has them. I even turn them off on the email client. (Actually, I especially turn them off on the email client.) I’ve deleted apps that made too much a chore out of turning off their badges. In OmniFocus, I turn off all badges except “Due”. If OmniFocus lights up a badge, I know I have troubles.

The Second Page

I do seem to collect apps. My second page is a group of alphabetized folders with apps that I occasionally use or am trying out.

My Lock Screen

I rather like my lock screen. The image was created by a friend of mine, Gabe Wilson. You can download it with the below link.

Make me a Pirate (download)

Culture of Fear

Today Macworld posted an essay I wrote about why Apple people are needlessly fretting about Apple’s business and we, as users, should focus on products and services, not lawsuits and market caps.

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Japanese Woodworking

The below clip has been making the rounds the last few weeks. (I first saw it at Kottke.) Every year in Japan they have a competition to see who can make the thinnest plane shaving. The winner here was at 9 microns, which is kind of insane. When I learned about woodworking I started with western tools but quickly found myself switching to Japanese tools. Their tool steel is amazing. Plane blades are folded steel, like Samurai swords. They also use water stones for flattening, which gives the blades a ridiculously sharp edge. I’ve spent many hours happily sharpening my blades on my Japanese water stones. Another point of note in these videos is the way they pull the plane, rather than push it (as you’d do with a western plane). In my experience, pulling gets a more even stroke and isn’t so herky-jerky. I think you’d be very hard pressed getting a 9 micron shaving with a western push-plane, even a very good one with a very sharp blade.

The Japanese woodworkers also use the pull stroke on their hand saws, which make them much easier to control. I’m not going to start talking about Japanese joinery because then I’d just be gushing. I will, however, share a picture of a joint on the computer desk in my office that I made. I found this joint in a book on Japanese temples and it is much more complex than it appears. (You can also see the Japanese influence on my furniture in Alisa’s watch cabinet.)

Evernote Essentials 3.0

In case you’ve been under a rock, Evernote is evolving. They are growing as they acquire other apps and they are growing as they make Evernote better. Brett Kelly’s Evernote Essentials book is the bible for power Evernote users. The book is evolving right along with the Evernote service. Yesterday Brett released version 3.0 of the definitive Evernote book. Brett’s a friend and I know how hard he’s been working on this update with new content and new workflows. If you are an Evernote user, you should purchase a copy of Evernote Essentials. If you’ve already purchased the book, go download your free update.

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iPhone Valentine Box

My daughter made this tonight all by her herself. A chip off the ol’ block.

Use Hazel to Find Dates Inside Files

Timotheus over at macorios.com has a workflow for using Hazel to pull dates out PDFs. Basically, he uses the Contents field to look for strings of text matching common date formats. Clever.

He is selling the rules for $4, which I can understand because it clearly was a lot of work setting them up.

∞

About MacStories and Federico

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I’m very stingy about what RSS feeds I follow. In order to get on that list, a site needs to be really great. It’s particularly hard for a site that has a lot of posts to remain in my RSS reader because I often feel that the signal-to-noise ratio gets out of whack. Fire hoses spiting out many posts a day are usually more trouble than they’re worth. There two exceptions for me, Macworld and MacStories.

I’ll write about Macworld another day. For today, I’d like you to go over and check out the fine work being done at MacStories.net. They have a great mix of reviews, news, and the kind of nerdy tutorials you can really sink your teeth into. Moreover, the man behind MacStories, Federico Viticci (who shared his home screen here awhile back) announced today that after a long battle, he is cancer free. We’ve all been behind Federico throughout his ordeal and while there are a lot of bad things you can say about the Internet, the way it enabled us all to stand behind our Italian friend is not one of them.

So raise a glass to Federico and go check out MacStories. You won’t be disappointed with either act.

MPU 124: Live at Macworld/iWorld

Mac Power Users 124, recorded live on the Macworld show floor is up. During this episode, we took questions from the live audience, got through some great feedback, and talked about some of our best finds from the Macworld show floor. Enjoy.