Automate The Itch - Part 1

Small, single-purpose utility applications have a long lineage in computing history. They are the cornerstone of the UNIX philosophy, and are rampant on mobile platforms. They are the small building blocks in a larger task. These are apps that scratch an itch. They do things that could be done in another way, but with less time and effort.

Every Mac comes with a tool for building your own utility apps quickly and painlessly: Automator. These apps don't need to clutter your dock, but can sit in the contextual menu (right-click) whenever you need them. This series will show you how to build a few useful apps, and hopefully give you the tools to dream up your own.

The first part will deal with files and folders, then I'll dive into network tasks, and finally text. I may also throw in a bonus section on porting some command-line wizardry to Automator.

Batch Renamer

One of the most common, time consuming tasks is emailing files. You may want to rename them, compress them or convert them somehow. Automator can deal with almost any of these tasks. Say you have 1000 files named [DSC1020.jpg-DSC2020.jpg], and want them to be called [Vacation0001.jpg - Vacation1001.jpg]. Here's how Automator can help.

1. Open Automator and make a new "Service"
2. Set the service to receive files or folders in any application.
3. Add a "Rename Finder Items" action. (Don't make new copies of the files)
4. Change "Add Date & Time" to "Make Sequential".
5. In the actions "Options" pane, click "Show this action when workflow runs", so you can tweak the settings each time you run it.

Save it and it will show up whenever you right click any files or folders.

Resize Images

If you email photos a lot, your workflow may also include copying them and resizing them. Here's how that might look:

1. Create a "Service" that receives "image files", or just continue on from the previous workflow.
2. Add a "Copy Finder Items" action. Set it to copy to the Desktop, your Dropbox or wherever you want the new files.
3. Add a "Scale Images" action and set the scaling. 600-pixels is probably good for general usage. If you want to adjust this each time it's run, check the box "Options > Show this action when run"
   4a. Optionally: add a "Reveal Finder Items" action to show you the files in Finder when it's complete. This one throws an error for me, even though it does the job perfectly, so it's up to you…
   4b. Or: add a "New Mail Message" action to automatically add those photos to a new message in Mail. If you're feeling lucky, you can also add a "Send Outgoing Messages" action to automatically send the prepared email.

Other Handy File Actions

• Use "Sort Finder Items" prior to a sequential rename, to organize them by date, kind or size.
• Include "Label Finder Items" or "Set Spotlight Comments" to organize the files you run through a particular workflow.
• "Create Archive" is useful if you want to zip the files before sending.
• "New Alias" is a great one-action service that just takes the selected files or folders and makes a shortcut on the Desktop.
• Use "Choose From List" whenever you need to confirm an action. You then have the option to "Select None" or pick and choose items before the workflow continues.

Bonus Points - Email Screen Recording

Here's a much more esoteric, but potentially very useful workflow. This one captures a screen recording, and emails it to someone.

1. Make a new "Application".
2. Add a "New Screen Capture" action.
3. Add a "Start Capture" action and check the box "Wait for capture to complete"
4. Add a "Ask For Finder Items" action, and set it to start at "Movies". This is where screen recordings are saved by default.
5. Add a "New Mail Message" action like before. The selected movie will get added to the body of the mail message.

This starts the recording right away, if you haven't used screen recording in QuickTime you probably want to run it once manually to set up your levels. Instant tutorials!

Champions Of Order

Software Engineers assume that your data can be ordered logically. This assumption is built in to the file system. They assume that it's an easy task, but that it's best left to the user. Better than imposing an order that doesn't make sense for some users.

But the software engineers are wrong and here's why:

Case Study: Plain Text Library

This is the simplest of all systems to represent digitally. All the items are in the same format, each is a distinct entity. So, you start ordering your items by Author into a heirarchy. The index itself is also an item, but not like the other items, so you decide to put it at the top of the heirarchy.

It is simple and unambiguous. But, like all libraries, there will come a day when you want to extend it a bit. You might want to add a scientific paper, a scientific journal, a DVD box-set or an untitled and anonymous poem. You might want to seperate fiction from non-fiction or keep a commentary together with it's source. At every step, you must decide how to incorporate these new elements and whatever decision you make must be applied unerringly in the future.

From the start, the heirarchy must be robust enough to handle any future additions. The end result - it never works. It's hard enough for libraries with full-time staff, training and documented processes to keep things in order. The average computer user has no chance of making a logical heirarchy that will make sense now or into the future.

Why The Command Line?

Vaporware

The software arms race is heating up. At the forefront are apps, which are small, single purpose programs that are very stylish, but generally have very little functionality. The reason I say that they have very little functionality is because they are built as small standalone, self-contained programs designed for a very specific purpose.

The iPhone needs multitasking because every little bit of functionality is wrapped in it's own app. The average computer user has many windows open and many applications installed because we need many apps to complete one task.

In all these things, I believe that software developers have lost their way. The user is forced to multitask extensively and perform every task one step at a time.

The Killer App

For those that do not understand the UNIX command line, it looks like a deviously complex and foreign language. There are no visual clues about how to accomplish a certain task, no tooltips or interactive dialogs to walk you through.

What they don't see is thousands of purpose-built apps all designed to work seamlessly with one another and to be completely automated. Using a command line is not just a bunch of typing to achieve the same result as a mouse command line, it is a bit of typing to achieve what a thousand mouse clicks could do.

The standard question I get when people see me working in a fullscreen terminal is "Wow, are you a hacker?" No, I'm not a hacker in the sense you mean. I'm not decyphering encrypted passwords and finding loopholes in government databases or anything like that. I am a hacker in the sense that I'm not constrained by the functionality offered by graphical interfaces. I am a hacker in the sense that if I have repetitive or menial tasks, I'd rather let the computer do the work for me.

Learning the basics of the command line takes some work. Learning how to use the powerful text editors like Vim or Emacs takes some work. Learning how and when to use the versatile processors like Sed and Awk takes work. Learning how and when to tie these commands together into shell scripts or functions takes some work. But in all these things, it is work that pays off in higher productivity and far fewer hours spent repeating tasks that are better automated.

But the true value of the command line comes when you can effectively monotask. When you can focus on the task at hand and automate all the housekeeping. And when I say "housekeeping" I probably mean a lot more than you think.

For example, here's my current workflow for blogging:

1. blog why_the_command_line? >> opens a new file in my blog folder in the Vim text editor.
2. Type post using vim and the simple Markdown formatting.
3. %s/CLI/command line/g >> Replace all occurrences of 'CLI' with 'command line', cause I knew I'd be typing it a few times.
4. "publish why..." >> run the file through the Markdown to HTML formatter and email it to my blogger page.

I'm using two simple scripts here, one called blog and another called publish, and for most workflows that's all it takes. I now have a local copy in the easy to read markdown format and one on my blog in HTML format.

The value in this is partly the shortcuts, yes, but mostly the lack of context switching. There is no need for multitasking, because everything I need is a few keystrokes away, which allows me to focus. And that's a good thing.

Building Toolchains

A toolchain can be a very subtle thing.

We make them all the time, a lot of times without even realizing that we are doing it and very often without realizing that there might be a better way. In order to really use computers effectively, we must pay attention to the toolchain, or workflow that we are using.

A simple example could be task lists. Your toolchain could be as simple as: "Every todo list goes on a Sticky note". This works but it isn't terribly versatile. You have to manually clean them up when you are done with them, you can't access them from your phone or another computer, and there's no way of sorting them by date unless you sort them visually by placement.

This could be improved by using a spreadsheet or database like Excel or Bento. Then you have the option of adding priority, type and date fields and sorting them accordingly. You could then use Google Docs and make this spreadsheet accessible online. It's definitely better, but in my opinion it's a bit over the top just for a todo list.

My established toolchain is the task list in Google Calendar. It's simple; the only necessary info is a title which gets a checkbox beside it to check when the task is done. You can optionally add a due date, notes about the task and you can move them to another list or delete them when finished.

But the new toolchain that I'm playing around with is even simpler, it's simply a private Twitter feed. Instead of being limited to todo's, I post anything that I want to remember. I can delete the posts if it's a completed task or I can simply let it fade into the timeline. I can retweet if it's something important that might be getting stale and I can include links if it's related to something on the web.

This is a simple example, but I think it highlights a few important ideas. Anything you do with a computer can probably be done tens or hundreds of different ways. With that in mind, is your current toolchain the best for you? Some things to keep in mind when building a toolchain:

• Is the content properly accessible (over time and space)?
• Does the content need the draft/publish distinction?
• Is there a single endpoint (don't repeat yourself!)?
• Is there a concern about losing your data to a cloud service?
• Do you need a revision history?
• Is there other related tasks that can use the same toolchain?
• Is the endpoint shared, collaborative or private?

Many applications, including most cloud services, manage the data for you. This can be convenient for simple tasks, but can be troublesome if you want to extend or customize your toolchain beyond what the service offers. It's wise to think for a moment whether such programs should be the single home to your content, or whether they should be an endpoint of a larger toolchain.

When I started using blogger, I used the online editor, publishing as I went. After a little while I thought, "Hmm, it would be nice to have a local copy of my blog." It is possible to export your entire blog, but this is not practical on a day to day basis. The better solution is to use the cloud service as an endpoint, not the only point. By working on a local copy of my blog and publishing it to Blogger, I'm able to do some things that I can't with the Blogger tools. I now use Markdown formatting to simplify markup, and I can archive this version with version control using Git.

It's not a complex toolchain, but it's nice to know that I have a platform neutral copy of my blog that I can reuse however I see fit.

8 Geek Tools For Your Mac

Here's a quick roundup of the applications I have found most useful since switching to Mac (from Linux, although I still ssh into my Arch Linux box regularly). Most of these are included but some need the Developer Tools installed and really, even if you're not using Xcode, you should install the Developer Tools and Optional Installs. You want them.

Calculator

Big deal, it comes with a calculator. But this calculator has some barely hidden super powers lurking in the menu options. Paper tape to show your calculation history, scientific and programmer modes, an RPN mode, and a whole load of unit conversions. When you start this calculator it gives the impression of being a $10 Toys-R-Us thing, but there's way more than meets the eye. Grapher

The one thing Calculator doesn't do is graphs, but if you have the Developer Tools installed, you have a program that will do far more than your average graphing calculator. And with style. Located at /Applications/Utilities/Grapher, this app is a graphing machine! From simple parametric equations to complex 3-D differential equations, this thing will graph it. The equation templates and examples are quite nice too if you're not sure where and how to begin. Spotlight I could recommend Quicksilver, which does way more than Spotlight could dream of, but when it comes right down to it I only really used Quicksilver for application and file launching anyway. Spotlight does this really well. There are no applications, other than droplets (see Automator) in my dock anymore. Cmd-Space your way to a clean dock. Icon Composer I don't know why, but I like to create my own icons for the stuff in my dock. Maybe I'm alone in this. But if you want to give it a go here's how I do it:

1. Draw the icon using GIMP / Photoshop, at 512 x 512px (transparency and gloss are your friends!)

2. Drop the saved png into Icon Composer (/Developer/Applications/Utilities/ )

3. Download icns2icon from http://osxiconeditor.phatcode.net/icns2icon.html

4. Drop the icns file onto icns2icon, and the file will become the icon...

5. Cmd-i (Get Info) the icns file and whatever file/folder you want to apply the icon to.

6. Select the source icon in the "Get Info" window and Cmd-C, select the destination icon and Cmd-V.

Automator If you have a repetitive task there's probably an Automator script to do it. There are only three that I use regularly and these are all in my dock as droplet style applications. They are:

Renamer: This is just the "Rename Finder Items" plugin, with "Show this action when workflow runs" checked so that you can choose the options whenever you run it.

Comment: The "Set Spotlight Comments" plugin, again with "Show..when run" checked so it's completely generic. Once in a while I get in a phase where I feel the need to tag all my files.

Desktop Alias: Rather than store my current project folders on my desktop I just drop them on this and it creates a desktop shortcut. "New Aliases" patch. I have done some more elaborate Automator scripts, but these are the ones that are general enough for daily use. Megazoomer

http://ianhenderson.org/megazoomer.html

Okay, this one isn't included with your Mac, but it really should be. You have to download Megazoomer as well as SIMBL.

What this does is add a "Mega Zoom" option to every app so you can fullscreen anything, as you can see from the screenshot, I'm typing this with vim on a fullscreen terminal with slight transparency (just enough to read a website in the background).

This screenshot is not cropped at all.

It's kind of like a bit of 'ratpoison' window manager for your Mac. This is true fullscreen, no dock, no menu bar, no distractions...

Quartz Composer This is an amazing bit of software located at /Developer/Applications/Quartz Composer. See the examples at /Developer/Examples/Quartz Composer/Compositions/Conceptual for some idea of what it can do. This can create some really cool 2D / 3D visuals. Also see http://www.zugakousaku.com/ for some cool visual designs using Quartz Composer. Terminal Finally I must recommend that you pimp your Terminal. If your going to have any geek cred at all you need a sweet terminal. Here's my preferences, mix to your own tastes: Background color: 91% Black, 96% Opacity. Font: Bitstream Vera Sans Mono 13pt, greyish-green, antialiased vimrc: ...maybe i'll get into settings in another post. I have done quite a bit of monospace font testing and this is my favorite. Very close competitors are: BPmono, Terminus and Droid Sans Mono.

And the next step, after you get your Terminal looking really cool, is to learn how and why to use it. Happy Hacking!