I paid full price for this remarkable Mac calendar app and it was still a bargain.

via 512 Pixels

The way Americans boil water:

Several commenters mistook my use of the microwave as the way all Americans heat water and clucked their tongues in disapproval. I’m happy to report to any of those who’ve returned to the site that I’m quite atypical in this regard. The standard American way to heat water is to take a pot of water out to our pickup truck, open the hood (what the Brits call a “spanner”), and lock the pot onto the engine block using a set of latches readily available at any Wal-Mart. Then we drive around at high speed, reciting the Gospels and firing our shotguns out the window. After reading the Gospel of John for three minutes and sixteen seconds, the water is ready. I hope this puts to rest any confusion.

We have got to do a workflow interview with the good doctor.

I thought this week’s Amplified episode was fascinating. In it, Jim Dalrymple explained how he transitioned The Loop from one of pixel chaos to pixel serenity. I remember how noisy The Loop used to be and I am behind what he’s done 100%. The Loop is now gorgeous. Indeed, after having Jim show the way, I spent some time redesigning this little back-water corner of the Internet with the same principles: simple, fast loading, and ads that don’t make you want to drive an ice pick though your retinas.

As a complete aside, while I’ve always enjoyed Jim Dalrymple’s writing, I adore his belly laughs. If you haven’t tried listening to Amplified, you should.

Today Smile released TextExpander 4.0. This new version includes some really useful new features. Specifically, Smile went nuts with Fill-In forms, now giving you the ability to add single and multi-line, option based, and selection based fill-ins. I’ve been using it for about a month and it’s great. This version will not be sold through the Mac App Store since its inherent awesomeness violates the sandbox rules. Get it here.

I recorded a short screencast showing off the new features. Enjoy.

TextExpander 4.0 Fill-In Feature from David Sparks on Vimeo.

As the sandboxing rules kick in, several of my favorite apps are punching eject. Many Tricks’ Moom is an excellent app to arrange application windows. Unfortunately, they’ve announced there will be no further updates for the current iteration in the App Store. They do, however, have a solution that, with a little tedium, gets you a fully licensed, updatable, copy based on your App Store license.

I’d much prefer to keep getting App Store updates but this will have to do. While I understand why Apple is putting sandboxing in place, I wish there were a way to accommodate some of my favorite utility apps.