Last night I spent some time reading on my iPad, and I noticed a few articles that I might want to link to from my blog. Except I didn’t want to start creating drafts in iA Writer, or doing any manual work. I just wanted a way to remind myself that I want to link to this at some point.

I started to think that I could simply create a reminder in the Reminders app (I’ve switched from Things), possibly with the URL as a note so I could get back to it when I needed it again. However, that would require me to then later load the URL, and fetch the details from it. And seeing as I would have had the article loaded at the time of reading, it made more sense to store this data, and then be able to reference it at a later date.

So I came up with an idea of two shortcuts, one to store relevant data about the article I wanted to reference, and then another which I could use to select from the list and kick off a draft in iA Writer.

That’s when I thought about using the recently released data store app, Data Jar, which is a fantastic tool for storing all kinds of data.

Store Link Post Idea

To start off, the Shortcut I created to do the initial data storing and reminder creation was relatively simple. It accepts input from the Share sheet, in the form of a Safari web page, and then has just three actions:

1. Add a new reminder with the title of the article to my blog list.
2. Create a dictionary with four pieces of data – the title, URL, any text that was selected that I want to quote, and also the author. Although I’ve found the author to not be very reliable.
3. Store this dictionary at the end of my drafts list in Data Jar.

Download the Shortcut: Add to Drafts List

Starting a Link Post

This shortcut is a bit more complex, as it has to do quite a few things:

• Retrieve the list of link post ideas from Data Jar.
• Show the list, and allow the user (me) to select an option.
• Transform the various pieces of data into a link post outline.
• Create a new document in iA Writer.

It’s a bit long, so I’ll put the long screenshot below, and then explain why it may seem pretty complicated for what it does, and the things I had to work around.

To start off, the shortcut gets the list of drafts from Data Jar. This contains all the drafts that have been saved.

It then does a little transformation with that data, using a temporary variable in Data Jar. It clears the value for the specific key I’m going to use, and then it loops through the list of articles, and extracts the title and the index of each article into a new list. This is because we need to show the list of articles, and also perform operations on the specific article that was selected.

The temporary list is then displayed, and from the chosen article, the Index is then used to fetch the complete article data from Data Jar. That includes the title, author, page selection (snippet), and the URL.

Once that data is extracted, the page section is formatted as a Markdown Blockquote via Text Case (my app), and then it’s put together with the rest of the data to form a basic link post outline.

Finally, the outline is URL encoded and opened as a new document in iA Writer via the URL scheme.

Download the Shortcut: Start Link Post From Draft

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These two shortcuts are simple in theory, and to be honest I could have achieved the same result with less complexity, and maybe even without Data Jar. However, I like that the storing and kicking off a link post in iA Writer are separate processes. Because it allowed for more flexibility in the future and also doesn’t distract me at the time of reading an article. Which was one of the big reasons for me making these.

I really liked using Data Jar for these as well, so I hope I can make use of it again in future shortcuts!

Links

Find the apps used, and the shortcuts below:

• Data Jar
• iA Writer
• Text Case
• Add to Drafts List Shortcut
• Start Link Post From Draft Shortcut

Text Case is getting it’s second update of the year (as you can probably tell by the version number), and while it’s not a big one, it contains one fix and support for pointers in iPadOS.

The fix is for the Sentence Case format, which by default capitalises any word that comes after a full stop. However, it didn’t apply this rule after question marks and exclamation marks. This has now been fixed.

Because of the new pointer support in iPadOS, I’ve added a slight hover state for the formats in the main list, and also other parts of the interface. A side benefit of me doing this, is that this also works in the macOS version as well. Simply because that is a Catalyst app. It reminds me that without Catalyst, I probably wouldn’t have made a macOS app for Text Case at all. But now I get to develop essentially for three platforms at once, the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

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Find Text Case:

• iOS/iPadOS App Store
• Mac App Store
• Text Case Website

I was just out in my garden with my cat, Jay, seeing as that’s as far as I can go at the moment. But he was walking up and down one of the fences, so I decided to grab my camera[1] and take a few shots of him.

What I’ve now learned, is that I really like the colours at this time of night. Or more specifically as blue hour, (as opposed to the more commonly known golden hour), which happens in the twilight ether just before sunrise or just after sunset when the sky has a really blue tint.

Anyway, that’s a good enough excuse for me to post some photos here on my blog. Enjoy.

Now practically everyone is in lockdown, everyone seems to be having fun sending around various quizzes. My family have been sharing various emoji quizzes between ourselves, so I decided to make a few myself.

I’ve got quite a bit of spare time, so I actually made the effort to design a proper layout, and look reasonably good.

Each quiz has just 10 emoji phrases, and you’ve got to guess what they represent. The four different topics I chose were:

• Movies
• TV Shows
• UK Landmarks
• English Football Teams (Based on nicknames)

I’ve got an image for each quiz, and also a version including the answers. I’ll include each of the below, but for the answers you’ll have to click on the relevant answers link.

Movies

Questions

Questions and Answers

TV Shows

Questions

Questions and Answers

UK Landmarks

Questions

Questions and Answers

English Football Teams

Questions

Questions and Answers

I’ll start by saying, I haven’t worn my Apple Watch in about two weeks. There was no big decision when I stopped wearing it, but I’ve noticed that over the past month or so, I would just be less bothered about wearing it. So much so, the tan line on my wrist has near-enough disappeared.

I know it was about two weeks because that’s when my heart rate data has ended on the Health app. But it occurred regularly before that, where I would wake up and instantly grab my phone and watch. But I would sit down with a coffee, put my phone and my watch both on the side, and never pay any attention to my watch until it was time to put it on charge again.

My original lack of interest with the watch started I think when I wasn’t going to work. Because that’s probably the only time that I felt I needed constant access to everything. Whether it’s the time, the weather, access to music that’s playing from a device just in my pocket, or all the notifications that I would instantly dismiss.

Now when I think about what I can actually gain from the Apple Watch, I’m not sure if I’m ever really going to wear it regularly again.

Here is a list of all the things I’ve ever done with an Apple Watch:

• Get the time.
• Pause/Play/Skip music/podcast.
• Track a workout. (Not a real workout, just small walks)
• Checked the weather. (Not that it matters to me that much, my outfit doesn’t change all year-round)
• Tracked my sleep. (It didn’t take long for this to stop)
• Played a game called Field Day for a while.
• Triggered a few interactions with Pokémon GO.
• Checked football scores.

And that’s about all I’ve ever done.

Now for what I use my watch for, just before I started to not wear it as often:

• Get the time.

I’m starting to think I don’t need a smart watch anymore.

No music/podcasts are being controlled on the watch anymore, because I have AirPods that can do that. I don’t track workouts because they were never real workouts anyway. I don’t play Field Day or Pokémon GO anymore. And if I want to check anything like the weather, football scores, text messages, I just take my phone out of my pocket.

I’ve started to actually like not having my wrist being the interface between myself and the internet. And I’ve grown tired about being notified about things that I just don’t care about.

Maybe I’ll eventually put my watch back on charge and then I can see if there is any remaining use for it. But for now I’ll be keeping it off. Maybe I’ll even think about buying an analogue watch.

Me and my girlfriend had a but of a small photoshoot with our cat today. He was making all kinds of poses on the sofa, so we instantly got our cameras out. It also gave me an excuse to use my relatively new Fujifilm XT100, with my brand-new Fujinon XC35mm F2 lens.

The light was behind us, which didn’t help, and the blanket on the sofa was pretty reflective. However, I did get a few that I liked. So here are my favourites, which have been slightly adjusted in Lightroom.

Josh Constine, writing about ‘ZoomBombing’ over at TechCrunch:

The world is vulnerable to a new type of trolling as people turn to Zoom video calls to feel connected amidst quarantines. Jerks are using Zoom’s screensharing feature to blast other viewers with the most awful videos from across the internet, from violence to shocking pornography.

That’s just what happened today on the WFH Happy Hour, a popular daily public Zoom call hosted by The Verge reporter Casey Newton and investor Hunter Walk. Suddenly, dozens of attendees were bombarded with disturbing imagery. A troll entered the call and screenshared Two Girls, One Cup and other horrifying sexual videos. Attempts to block the attack were thwarted as the perpetrator simply re-entered the call under a new name and screenshared more gross-out clips. The hosts ended the call rather than subject viewers to the assault until they could stop it.

To be honest, this is a clear example of why you shouldn’t really have communication channels freely open to the public internet, if you don’t want to risk the chance of seeing something you don’t like. However, I probably would have found it pretty funny. But then again, I do enjoy a bit of dark humour.

While I found the situation pretty funny, there was something I would like to point out in the article that I do not agree with:

The problem stems from Zoom’s policy that “The host does not need to grant screen share access for another participant to share their screen.”

Surely that’s not the source of the problem, the “problem” is simply allowing unrestricted access for participants to share any source of video. Who’s to say you couldn’t offend[1] someone via a webcam.

Filip Hodas, a 3D illustrator, has created some fantastic pieces of art depicting various dystopian worlds featuring pop-culture icons.

A few of my favourites:

(All photo credit obviously goes to Filip Hodas)

There are 2 parts to this collection:

• Part 1
• Part 2

He also created another great collection titled “Cartoon Fossils“. But that’s not all, I highly recommend following him on Instagram for more of his work.

That headline may seem a tad scrambled, but it’s all true. Here is a YouTube channel which features videos of retro cameras, in various different places around the world.

For example, here is a Kodak Six-20 by Lake Garda in Northern Italy:

Jeff Perry just shared a massive collection of icons designed for use with Shortcuts:

After having the idea of making custom Siri Shortcut icons less than 24 hours ago I am very excited to share with you my Alphabet and Numbers Icon Pack.

[…]

This icon pack is exactly how it sounds, custom icons that go from A-Z and 0-9 in various colors with both white and black backgrounds. There are 10 color options for the white background and 10 color options for the black background. In total there are 720 icons to choose from.

It’s super impressive that this was generated just using Shortcuts, with help from the Toolbox Pro app! I’m downloading these right now, and adding them to the icons I have from the MacStories Pixel collections.

Under the hood the icons that are generated are from SF Symbols, Apple’s massive collection of configurable symbol icons. So I’ll be interested to see if this collection can be expanded upon in the future.