Two Methods To Use AppleScripts Faster Through Keyboard Shortcuts

If you’re interested in learning more about AppleScript, be sure to check out the AppleScript and Automator Resources Page. It’s filled with links to books, videos, tools, and websites that’ll help you get started!
-Justin.

A reader sent me a message because she was having a hard time setting up a keyboard shortcut to run an AppleScript. She wasn’t a new Mac user by any stretch — in fact, she’s a tech professional! So I went back and re-read my own previous descriptions of how to assign a keyboard shortcut to a script.

Looking at it with fresh eyes, I realized that I could do better… and that it was important to do so. Proper use of keyboard shortcuts can have a massively positive impact on making your computer a lot easier to use!

In the same way, AppleScripts are designed to speed up the way you use your Mac. When people understand how they can use both scripts and shortcuts together — invoking complex actions with the same ease as cutting-and-pasting inside a document — they tend to become really enthusiastic about using them. For a “utility script” that you only use occasionally, it’s no problem to manually run it. But for the scripts you want to use repeatedly throughout the day, keyboard shortcuts aren’t just desirable — they’re essential!

So let’s take another pass at this and walk through two ways you can set up a keyboard shortcut to run an AppleScript.

[Read more…]

Two fun script projects that I’m calling “The Idea Roll” and the “Vocabulary Builder” which take advantage of Evernote’s new AppleScript Append function — and also showcase some fun things you can do with HTML and Evernote to create your own document templates.

Hello Everyone!

Idea Capture

As way to say “Welcome to Veritrope.com!” to my many new readers today from the Evernote Blog, I thought I’d publish two fun little script projects that I’m calling “The Idea Scroll” and the “Vocabulary Builder”.

Each of these scripts takes advantage of a new addition to Evernote’s scripting vocabulary — an Append function! They also both showcase some fun things you can do with HTML and Evernote to create your own document templates. (This is something we’ll explore more in later projects)

They’re pretty similar to each other — and that’s a bit by design. I want to make a point about how easy it is to adapt some code quickly to fit your own needs… so let’s dive in!

[Read more…]

Some Extraordinary Uses for Ordinary Tools… and a Sneak Preview of What’s Ahead!

In the United States, today is the Labor Day holiday. For many students here, this is traditionally a moment when they think “Where the hell did my summer go?” rather than having any deep meditations on working or the nature of work, per se. It’s also an incredibly beautiful day here in New York City and, the holiday’s bloody origins notwithstanding, it’s clear that most people planned barbecues rather than marches to observe the occasion.

Spending a holiday outside in the fresh air without having to consider its origin is one of the privileges — maybe even one of the pleasures — of living in an affluent, First World country. And although I like a good burger as much as anyone, this year I am going to be a bit more reflective.

So I’m skipping the grilling and the sunshine — and I’m sitting at home instead, planning something else…

And So Begins “Scriptember”

Throughout September, Veritrope.com will continue it’s series on Travel and Technology — I’ve got some great, useful stuff coming up that I think you’ll enjoy!  But, at the same time, I going to try to connect both traveling and tech to something… bigger.

As I’ve mentioned before, tools aren’t nearly as interesting to me as how people use them. So we’re also going to shuffle a few other cards into our deck.  This month, we are going to take AppleScript — a basic programming tool included with every Mac — and we are going to do extraordinary things with it.

Extraordinary? AppleScript?

Uh-huh. We are going to use it as a pretext to explore something together:

How can you take your ordinary tools and, with a little imagination and creativity, use them to change your world for the better?

As some very smart people have suggested, you can probably do almost anything with a little help from your friends… and I have some very kind friends who are pitching in this month to help out. I’m calling our collective effort “Scriptember” — and I think you’ll be a fan once it gets the big reveal!

But let’s start things modestly by laying a little groundwork for the things coming later this month…

It Starts With A Whisper

Okay — just between us — I am opening up the Veritrope.com AppleScript Code Library for testing today.

There are some excellent resources to learn AppleScript available, but I hope to augment those by offering another resource to you here. It’s a place for you to share your bits of AppleScript with others — or to find some snippets of code you can reuse in your own AppleScript projects. Your fellow scripters can offer suggestions for streamlining your code… or offer their thanks for your help!

In the coming days, I’ll be posting new revisions of almost all the existing AppleScripts on this site into the code library. There will also be many brand-new projects coming — ones that will bring smiles to many faces!

And maybe most exciting of all, you will finally be able to add your own projects through this simple submission form.

It’s a little rough around the edges, so I’m going to give you guys a few days to play around with it while the look and workings are still being sorted out. Please try it out and let me know what you think. When I think it’s in fairly stable shape, I’ll add it to the navigation bar up top as a fully fledged part of this site. But for right now, it’s just for the people who read posts from beginning to end!

Stay In The Loop

Trust me — you aren’t going to want to miss what’s coming this month! Follow the Veritrope Twitter feed for the latest announcements or you can subscribe with your RSS reader if that’s how you roll.

Review of the Red Oxx Sky Train — A Bag Built For An Around-the World Trip!

The Aeronaut and The Sky Train -- Chilling Out At The Sofitel Papeete

In Part One, Lauren and I were trying to find luggage that met both of our requirements for the round-the-world trip. Somewhere along the way, we also had developed our own concept of “one bag travel” — one that was a little different from the way we saw other people doing it.

Unlike some One Bag Only purists, we decided that everything we brought along should be able to fit into one bag — but we didn’t necessarily need to be dogmatic about it. If it made things more convenient for each of us to supplement our main suitcase with a couple of small bags as well, that was fine by us… so long as we could fit everything back into our main bags should that become necessary. We also both wanted something that we could carry onboard airplanes, fit into the overhead racks of trains and ferry boats, and also be sturdy enough to check if we wanted to.

But Lauren wanted a backpack and I wanted something a little less…. granola.

***

By unpacking my travel attitudes a bit before planning our trip, I had to face up to the fact that I had a kind of aesthetic allergy to backpacks. For me, I felt like I’d look more like an invading soldier than a respectful guest if I hoisted around some enormous, oversized pack that fellow pedestrians would have to dodge.

Was there a way to split the difference so that we could keep a low profile while moving around easily and quietly? Was there such a thing as a “carry on / backpack hybrid” that was also sturdy enough to survive as checked luggage, but didn’t make me look like I was about to climb K2?  Perhaps a bag elegant and simple enough to not be out-of-place in either a nice hotel or in a hostel?

After some research, I discovered two bags that I thought fit the description and were enthusiastically recommended by other world travelers: The Red Oxx Sky Train and the Tom Bihn Aeronaut.

Would either of these bags be able to meet all of our needs? I bought one of each to find out.
[Read more…]

Teaching An Old AppleScript Some New Tricks!


Here’s a quick bit of Script-fu for all you Evernote users:

A user calling him/herself “gatekeeper” (probably a guy, but you can never rule out the possibility of a Sigourney Weaver / Ghostbusters variety of Gatekeeper) posted a message on the Evernote forum asking if there was “a way to generate in to a text file only the urls from all my snaps ?”

I can see how this could be useful in certain circumstances — especially for those people who use Evernote as a sort of private delicious.com substitute (in other words, as a sort of anti-social bookmarking service).

I had published a script here a while back that saved a list of Note Titles as a text file…
Could that be easily adapted to do the job here?
(Spoiler Alert: Yes, it can.)

[Read more…]