think differently big

Causes and Mitigations of DNS latency

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 10:46:24 +0300

DNS lookups can become a significant bottleneck in the browsing experience. […] We believe that the cache miss factor is the most dominant cause of DNS latency, and discuss it further below.

Assigning App Shortcuts to AppleScripts With BetterTouchTool

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 00:08:05 +0200

You can assign keyboard shortcuts to Automator workflows and you can overwrite specific app shortcuts in System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts. But there’s no easy way to assign keyboard shortcuts to AppleScripts.

If you don’t want to use a 3rd party app, one trick you could do is to create Automator workflows that execute your AppleScripts and assign keyboard shortcuts to them. It works, but it’s an extra step.

The space of 3rd party apps is wide. Here’re the top options for solving this.

There are a couple of apps I know of—and probably many more that I don’t—whose sole purpose is to provide this feature: assigning shortcuts to AppleScripts. The two I ‘ve tried: FastScripts and Aptivate are apps whose sole purpose is to address this problem. There’s also Keyboard Maestro whose breathing keyboard shortcuts for workflows.

Another option is app launchers. A couple of them provide this feature. The ones I know of to support this feature are Alfred 1 and 2, Quicksilver, Butler. Unfortunately LaunchBar, the one I’ve been using for a while mostly due to his support for presenting results from AppleScripts, doesn’t.

Finally, here’s the trick I discovered tonight and the reason of this post.

You can assign keyboard shortcuts to AppleScripts using BetterTouchTool. If you haven’t heard of it until now, do yourself a favor and download it. Now. The extra gestures that you can add to the Mac touchpad, Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad will transform these into Awesomely Magical Mouse and Trackpad.

Back to AppleScripts and keyboard shortcuts though. If you go to the Keyboard tab, you can create a new Keyboard shortcut and make it trigger an Open Application/File/Script.

That’s all.

Four Alternatives to Apple's Podcasts App

Sat, 22 Dec 2012 21:32:46 +0200

Four Alternatives to Apple's Podcasts App:

TidBITS’s Josh Centers reviews 4 podcast apps for iOS (Instacast, Downcast, PodCruncher, Stitcher) trying to see which of them accomplishes a list of expectations for such applications:

it should have a simple interface that doesn’t requrie careful tapping

it needs to be able to intelligently download and store episodes when I’m on Wi-Fi

it also needs to be able to efficiently stream those [episodes] I forget to download before leaving the house

I nedd to be able to easily rewind a few seconds to catch up

I need the capability to skip past them [ads]

I need lock screen and headphone controls that let me rewind and fast forward within an episode

I’ve tried a dozen of podcasting apps for iOS and there’s only one answer: iCatcher!. It is a 5 star app.

My DayOne Before and After the Word Journal

Sat, 22 Dec 2012 18:59:46 +0200

This is how DayOne looked before (October) and after I started to use the Word Journal:

Apple Comes Out With a Black Eye

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 10:19:39 +0200

Dr. Drang:

Apple is considered to have come out of this with a black eye.

I don’t see how Item 4 follows from Items 1-3.

Let’s check some facts then. Apple:

after releasing Maps, Apple gets tons of complains
Tim Cook has to post public apologies
they fire the manager of the project
Australian police issues a public warning about Apple Maps.

Google:

releases a high quality iOS app in 3 months
Google Maps becomes the App Store’s most popular free app, just 7 hours after launch

Google Maps Timing

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 04:30:36 +0200

Marco Arment:

What this timing really shows is how much Google needs to be on iOS.

To me it only shows two things:

some companies are able to come out with fantastic results under pressure
business is run after the old fighting principle: “Kick him when he’s weak. Kick him where it hurts”

Word Journal - a Recipe With DayOne and Wordnik

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 06:08:00 +0200

How many words are in a language? How many words do I know? How many words do I actually speak on a regular basis? Do all languages have similar numbers of words? Does your age influence the vocabulary you can learn in a foreign language?

If you Google any of these questions you’ll come up with very contradictory answers. As you probably expect neither do I have the definitive answers to any of these questions, nor am I planning to continue looking for them.

Instead, I want to introduce to you a solution I’ve baked to help me simplify and improve my learning process of new words. I named this solution the Word Journal

Here is the list of ingredients that make up my solution:

2 AppleScripts
1 Python script
Wordnik
DayOne

Before detailing the “recipe”, let me show you how the output of these ingredients looks like:

in DayOne:
in a terminal (nb: I’m using iTerm 2):

First usage scenario of my Word journal is to capture some of the unknown words I encounter while reading on the web. The first of the AppleScripts is used to retrieve the selection from a browser, the page URL, and ask for the specific word from the selection that I want to be added to Word Journal.

The second AppleScript is meant to allow me adding a word directly from LaunchBar.

The heavy lifting is done by the Python script which retrieves, filters, cleans up, and formats the output. The format I use includes the main example (retrieved from a web page), various definitions, a couple of examples, and a series of related words. Wordnik provides all the data I need. DayOne provides a Markdown-enabled¹ time-based storage.

Putting these together and baking them for a couple of hours at moderate heat, I’ve got a solution that allows me to track and hopefully learn more new words every day.

I hope future releases of DayOne will improve the way it handles Markdown. And the way it presents entry overviews (which currently completely ignore the markup) ↩

Typewriter Style Delete on Mac Default Text Inputs

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 07:08:05 +0300

Since learning about the DefaultKeyBindings from Brett Terpstra, I’ve been using and over-abusing it.

The last adventure that led me again to DefaultKeyBinding started after getting this typewriter-inspired WriteRoom theme. I actually wanted the typewriter feeling of deleting characters by over-typing them.

The first solution I’ve thought of was to define a system wide shortcut that would insert one of block ASCII characters (light shaded, medium shaded, dark shaded, or black box). But I couldn’t find an easy way to do it.

The second idea I had and it was also suggested on Twitter—thanks @_pablo and @Mads_Hartmann —was to use the symbol and text substitution feature of Mac OS or some sort of TextExpander. Unfortunately that wouldn’t.

Kontra suggested the use of AppleScript as a service and this has been the solution that I thought to be the one that will work, but would not be the simplest.

Just before starting to write the script I realized that I was missing an option: the DefaultKeyBindings. Once I’ve remembered it, everything just worked. Here is the definition I’m using:

"$\U007F" = (deleteBackward:, insertText:, "▒", moveBackward:);

If you are not familiar with DefaultKeyBindings this means: when pressing Shift+Delete, delete one character backwords, insert the medium shaded block, then move back one character. Here is a screenshot of how a paragraph would look when using this shortcut for deleting characters:

Safari Address Bar Usability Improvement

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 06:49:38 +0300

Safari 6 introduced—finally—the omnibar, a feature that has been present in Google Chrome and Firefox for quite a while. But usability wise it’s still not on par with the behavior of these other browsers. By now you probably wonder what do I mean.

If you enter an URL and click enter the focus moves to the page/viewport. But if you enter a couple of words for a search and click enter the focus remains on the address bar. I don’t have a good explanation why the behavior is different in these two cases¹.

I’ve been searching around for solutions for this issue, but couldn’t find any. Most of the answers suggested using Tab or Opt+Tab, but the behavior and number of clicks required make these a non-solution.

Right before giving up—already tried the AppleScript/Automator way— and starting to hope that maybe the next version of Safari will address this issue, I’ve got another idea. It actually worked.

Here is the shortcut that will get you from the address bar to the page in a finite, short, and guaranteed number of clicks:

Cmd + F ( => page level search) -> Esc ( => hide search) -> Page focus

If the explanation you have in mind for the second scenario’s behavior is that for a search you might want to continue entering search terms, I think you could use the same explanation for the first scenario. Plus let’s keep in mind that getting from the page to the address bar is just a shortcut away: Cmd + l. ↩

Kendall's Notation: Classifying Queueing Models

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 12:30:54 +0300

Kendall's Notation: Classifying Queueing Models:

In queueing theory, Kendall’s notation (or sometimes Kendall notation) is the standard system used to describe and classify the queueing model that a queueing system corresponds to.

Reading it now.

Looking Into Monitors

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 05:56:00 +0300

In the last two days I’ve been asking on Twitter suggestions for monitors. What I wanted to figure out is if there are good alternatives or alternatives at all to the Korean monitors Jeff Atwood has posted about.

TL;DR

If you are looking for very high resolution IPS monitors and have a limited budget the Korean ones are the only option. You’ll be able to find them on eBay; pricing, guarantees, return policies vary.
The model Jeff Atwood has written about is quite popular on eBay. You’ll be able to get it starting with $330. But do not forget that if you are on a Mac, you’ll also need a DVI dual-link which will add $100.
Being a bit more conservative about dead pixels and return policies, my current choice is the Dell UltraSharp U2412M. I haven’t ordered it yet though.

Below you’ll find a table of the monitors I’ve looked into and some characteristics I’ve considered when trying to make a decision.

Monitor	Link	Price	Size	Aspect ratio	Resolution	Response time	I/O	Panel surface	Ratings	Rate	Comments
LG IPS231P-BN	Amazon	$250.28	23	16:9	1920x1080	5ms	D-Sub In, DVI-D in, HDMI in	anti-glare	23	4.3	e-IPS; not vibrant colors; pixel response time slower than TN; light leaks in the corners due to LED lighting; no HDMI;
LG IPS235T	Amazon	$241	23	16:9	1920x1080	5ms	D-Sub In, DVI-D in	anti-glare	6	3.5
LG IPS235V	Amazon.com	$199	23	16:9	1920x1080	5ms	D-Sub, DVI-D, HDMI	anti-glare	9	2.9
ASUS ML249H	Amazon.com	$235	24	16:9	1920x1080	8ms	HDMI, D-Sub, DVI-D (via HDMI-to-DVI cable)		14	4.4
NEC EA232WMi	Amazon.com	$265	23	16:9	1920x1080	14ms	Display Port, DVI-D, D-sub		8	4.0
Dell U2312HM	Amazon.com	$203	23	16:9	1920x1080	8ms	DVI-D, DisplayPort,		16	4.4
Dell UltraSharp U2412M	Amazon.com	$270	24	16:10	1920 x 1200	8ms	DVI-D, DisplayPort, VGA		81	4.5
FSM-270YG	FSM-270YG	$306.5 + $50.5	27	16:9	2560x1440	6ms	DVI
Acer B243PWL	Amazon.com	$325	24	16:10	1920x1200	14ms	DVI-D, VGA, DisplayPort		0	0
DGM IPS-2701WPH	TFT Central Review	$553 + $151	27	16:9	2560x1440	6ms	HDMI, DVI-D, DP, VGA

Leave a comment if your favorite monitor is or isn’t in the list.

Piping Twitter Links to Pinboard With IFTTT

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 23:11:10 +0300

Macdrifter describes an IFTTT solution for importing Twitter links into Pinboard.

But if you go into your Pinboard settings and then click Twitter you can configure Pinboard to automatically import either links in all tweets or the links in your favorites. Pinboard will tag these new entries automatically with from:twitter and from:twitter_favs respectively. Plus it can add any #hashtags as tags.

Growl Themes

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 22:37:31 +0300

1 David Leatherman theme.

More? 10 themes

Even more? 36 themes

My default is Nucleic Dark, with a couple of apps configured to use the iOS 5 Notification theme.

The Future of Digital Stuff in Free Form

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 13:49:55 +0300

Warren Buffett in a letter to editors & publishers:

We must rethink the industry’s initial response to the Internet. The original instinct of newspapers then was to offer free in digital form what they were charging for in print. This is an unsustainable model and certain of our papers are already making progress in moving to something that makes more sense.

Tim Cook at D10:

We don’t want their stuff to be ripped off¹. A whole generation thought [digital stuff] should be free, and if that continued, you won’t have any artists anymore. That’s not good for any of us.

In this interview Tim Cook refers to Hollywood. ↩

Instacast and Downcast Real Playback Speeds

Fri, 11 May 2012 17:56:00 +0300

Last night I tweeted that I dislike podcast apps advertising playback speeds that are not the real ones. I feel like they are stealing my time. Imagine you have a 15 minutes break or you want to exercise for 15 minutes. You choose one episode whose playtime is around 30 minutes so you’re able to finish it. Surprise! That’s not going to happen, as what is written on the can as 2x is actually a completely different playback speed.

Two iOS podcast apps that are doing this are Instacast and Downcast. These are very popular iOS apps, so I assume that either nobody really cares about real playback speed or that there is some inherent iOS limitation that doesn’t allow them to do it or that podcast publishers are in some sort of coallition with app developers (maybe even Apple?) to disallow listeners to consume the podcasts at high speed.

Downcast comes with a wide range of speed options, but except the normal 1x, there rest are not real. Here is the conversion table for Downcast:

Conf speed	Real speed
0.5x	0.8x
1.25x	1.15x
1.5x	1.3x
1.75x	1.42x
2x	1.55x
2.5x	1.67x
2.75x	1.73x
3x	1.8x

Instacast comes with only 4 options: .5x, 1x, 1.5x, 2x. But once again, except the 1x, the rest of the playback speeds are not the real ones:

Conf speed	Real speed
0.5x	0.75x
1.5x	1.25x
2x	1.5x

In conclusion, don’t rely on your podcast app to estimate the time spent listening to the podcast.

My Dropbox Writing Workflow

Fri, 04 May 2012 16:54:13 +0300

My Dropbox Writing Workflow:

Federico Viticci for MacStories:

In my workflow, there is a distinction between apps “for writing” and tools for quick “note-taking”, but in order to minimize the effort required to keep everything in sync and tied together, I set out to make sure the differences of such tasks could coexist within a single ecosystem.

Read the post to learn about some applications you might not be aware of.

But when thinking about workflows, if I’d have to choose every time between 10 applications to transform the input into the desired output, I’d invest some time into simplifying and automating the process. The way I’d start would be answering some basic questions:

what kind of inputs do I usually use?
what kind of outputs do I usually produce?
what is the shortest path from input to output?
what is the best app to accept my input?
what is the best way to produce this type of output?
if it’s a multi-step process, can I automate it?

Google Amd the Mistake That Wasn't

Thu, 03 May 2012 18:58:45 +0300

Google Amd the Mistake That Wasn't:

Charles Arthur for guardian.co.uk:

And what did Google say? Initially, that the data collection happened “mistakenly”. No, it didn’t. Initially, that only “fragmentary” data was collected. No, it wasn’t: the first page of the FCC report says that: “On October 22 2010, Google acknowledged for the first time that ‘in some instances entire emails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords’.” That it was the work of one engineer acting alone, and not in any way part of how Google rolls.

Think if you don’t want to revisit the Google Drive Privacy.

Google Clones Dropbox: Lock, Stock, and Privacy Gaffe

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 09:05:01 +0300

Google Clones Dropbox: Lock, Stock, and Privacy Gaffe:

Ed Bott about Google Drive privacy for ZDNet:

Google used those exact same words, with absolutely no awareness that a direct competitor had already made the exact same mistake just a few months earlier.

It’s a perfect example of Google’s inability to pay even the slightest bit of attention to anything that happens outside the Googleplex.

Your Most Reliable Work

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:59:25 +0300

Pat Dryburgh:

Your most reliable work will always be within your range. Go just a bit outside of that to show your passion and stretch yourself. But go too far beyond that and you’ll be so strained that ultimately the work will suffer.

Mark Cuban:

Don’t follow your passions, follow your effort. It will lead you to your passions and to success, however you define it.

Google Drive (No)Privacy

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:36:06 +0300

Google Terms of Service:

Some of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.

When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide licence to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes that we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights that you grant in this licence are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This licence continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing that you have added to Google Maps).

I was planning to write that this is just the usual user unfriendly legalese. Then I stopped for a second to imagine how could a sync service become better by creating derivative work, publishing, and publicly displaying and distributing my files. I have no ideas.