All posts filed under “Technology”

December 8, 2014

Rename Markdown text files to .txt

I write in plain text – have done for years; clean, agnostic, robust, ‘future-proof’ – and latterly I’ve started using basic Markdown formatting commands. I primarily use iA Writer Pro currently, though I like Realmac Software’s new Typed app and Metaclassy’s Byword.

One tiny problem with most Markdown apps for me is that while the files they create are plain .txt files, they prefer an .md – or, in the case of iA Writer Pro’s idiosyncratic workflow system, .note, .write, .edit, and .read – extension, which understandably can lead to a few perplexed emails from editors when they double-click to open copy I’ve submitted to them and their Mac or PC reports it doesn’t know what to do with it.

It’s a simple matter of replacing whatever file extension the document has with ‘.txt’, but to save me or them the time, I made a tiny app in Automator whose sole job it is to do that; it lives in my Finder Toolbar so it’s there wherever I am in the Finder (without cluttering my Dock) and all I have to do is drop the file on it before emailing it off to my editor.

This is how you create it after choosing Application from the new document picker:

Rename to .txt grab

Or you can grab mine, which I’ve applied a default text document icon to:

Download Rename to .txt app
December 2, 2014

➚ Think Retro: The craziest-looking keyboard Apple ever made

Fun piece to write for Macworld, on the Apple Adjustable Keyboard, ergonomics and touch typing: http://www.macworld.com/article/2854292

Apple Adjustable keyboard

So few of us type “properly” these days that you might never have done this before, and you’ll notice that while your arms stretch towards the keyboard at about 45 degrees, your hands have to splay outwards uncomfortably. This can lead to some terrible carpal tunnel syndrome, severely damaging your hands. Ergonomic keyboards, then, attempt to solve this by allowing you to rest your fingers on the home keys while keeping your wrists straight.

Taking that photo was a challenge for a works-on-his-own freelancer! Pile of books, iPhone resting on top held in place with Blu-Tack, timer.

December 2, 2014

➚ What will it take for the Chromebook to go mainstream? Google to want it to

My latest column for TechRadar, on why the Chromebook still isn’t a hit with consumers.

Few people will have heard of Chromebooks, fewer still will be aware what a Chromebook is, even fewer than that will have the reason and motivation to find out why they might want one, and fewest of all will have the knowledge and gumption then to buy one after a pubescent youth in a branded polo shirt tells them they should probably just stick to Windows.

Pleasingly high standard of comments too. Do read the bottom half of the internet on this occasion. http://www.techradar.com/1274825

November 25, 2014

➚ Think Retro: a box that sells itself

My new Think Retro column for Macworld is live, all about the box – yes, the box – one of my Newton MessagePad came in.

Apple

For a child of the ’80s like me, that style of photography—moody, low-lit, with shafts of light picking out form and texture—is still desperately exciting. And even as a kid, I was excited about the idea of working, of business, of being productive, so the kind of language and lifestyle you see in the pictures was terribly beguiling. (I’d like to blame the ’80s for this too, with its emphasis on self-improvement and free market economies, but maybe I was just a weird kid.)

Maybe everyone knows about the historical context in which packaging took on a marketing role, but I didn’t when I researched it for an essay when I was at university, and it still fascinates me today. macworld.com/article/2851994

November 18, 2014

➚ Think Retro: Find and open your old ClarisWorks documents

For my second Think Retro column, a guide to opening ClarisWorks documents (after I’ve fanboy’d about it for a while) – and why you might want to.

No matter how much nostalgia we have for ClarisWorks, mind you, often what we value are the things we produced using it rather than the software itself. Happily, all your work and fun stuff isn’t lost, so long as you can mount whatever discs or disks you have it stored on. When I did this I found, amongst countless other things I didn’t even know I’d forgotten, my wedding vows, the start of a long-abandoned novel, and this, a letter from when I was at college, written to Macworld.

Such a fanboy. http://www.macworld.com/article/2848770

November 16, 2014

➚ Let’s see if the comments vindicate this column’s topic…

My TechRadar column this week is on the inherent uselessness of a public-voted star ratings.

The fault isn’t really with the system, though, but with people. How else can you explain the 4.9/5 rating the first picture the Philae lander sent back from the surface of comet 67P currently has? What kind of towering arsehole looks at that picture – a picture taken 316 million miles away by a probe we launched 10 years ago and which landed on an object travelling at more than 30,000mph – and rates it anything other than five stars?

http://www.techradar.com/1273133

November 11, 2014

On cameras in mobile phones

I took most of the photos for the first instalment of my new Think Retro Macworld column on my iPhone 6. They would be better with an SLR and a good bit of macro glass, but on a technical level they’re perfectly good enough, especially with a little tweaking in ACR.

The last shot though was taken with a Sony Ericsson W800i in 2006; it replaced the K700i I’d had before that, and I eventually replaced it with the K800i, my last featurephone/dumbphone before I got the original iPhone. The first three generations of iPhone had a camera that was essentially just another input sensor – acceptable for documenting stuff but certainly not a creative tool. They were a big step back from my Sony Ericssons.

It’s become clear over the years that the camera is the most important hardware feature to me in a carry-anywhere device like a smartphone, so it’s a testament to the allure and novelty of the iPhone that I allowed myself to suffer a worse camera for three years.

Here are some shots from my Sony Ericssons that I uploaded to Flickr; remember, some of these are shots from a phone nearly 10 years old. (The soft-focus in the second is artificial!)

November 11, 2014

➚ Think Retro: A love letter to the Apple logo

I’ve long-admired Macworld in the US, so I’m honoured now to have a byline there for a new regular column, Think Retro. For my first, an indulgent pean to the rainbow Apple logo.

There’s something intensely pleasing, isn’t there, about how it’s glossy and smooth, nestled in that sea of roughly textured black plastic—a wave-polished pebble on a sandy beach.

http://www.macworld.com/article/2846013

November 9, 2014

➚ Office is now free on iOS – free as in dignity

This was fun to write, though it has to be said my editors chose to remove some of the bits I thought were funniest so it has slightly more of an earnest tone than when I wrote it.

You’re allowed five grabs on iTunes, Microsoft; use four of them to show people doing inspiring things with your software, and you can use one to reassure people that it can still do all the dull stuff too. Even if that one page is just a blank Word document with ‘Oh, yeah, and it can do, I dunno, like, PivotTables and all that other crap you actually need for your job’ set in 36-point Calibri.

http://www.techradar.com/1272194