Macintosh Postings

Shapes vs OmniGraffle

If you're looking for a quick way to create simple diagrams, Shapes might be the right tool for you. It's a good application that makes it easy to create diagrams and flow charts.

Product Description

Description from the shapesapp.com website:

Five Things I Learned about Shapes

• I wasn't able to test how Shapes handled opening EPS files since you can't open files during the trial.
• There's plenty of tools that I haven't seen anyplace else, such as a Dialog Window, Person and Double Tearaway. What is the purpose of the bracket tool?
• It's very easy to connect objects. When an object is selected, simply click on the circle below and choose your line type: Line, Segmented Line, Smart Path, or Arc.
• I discovered if you drag the main window edge, by the tools, you can see the tools names and the short cut keys to access them. I wasn't able to find the shortcut keys in any documentation.
• There's a search box to search for tools, some good queries are 'box', 'house', and 'line.' It makes it easy to have like tools available as your working. However, there no documentation on available queries.

OmniGraffle vs Shapes

OmniGraffle has a lot more capabilities and certainly in't fair to compare the two apps. If your just creating basic chart diagrams and don't need a lot of flexibility, then Shapes is your tool.

Some differences between OmniGraffle and Shapes that I found while exploring:

• OmniGraffle has large library of reusable objects, there's no library in Shapes.
• OmniGraffle has the ability to control line hops. Which is nice when you have points that cross.
• With OmniGraffle, I can control of how objects are connected. For example, I can add additional anchor points on an object.
• OmniGraffle has nine fill types, while Shapes only has three.
• Shapes doesn't offer any help pages to explain tips and tricks
• Shapes is much cheaper than OmniGraffle $9.99 vs $149.99.

Trying Out Shapes

Shapes is available on the Apple Store for $9.99.

You down download a fully functional version of Shapes from their website and try it out. During the trial you can not import or save changes.

Type Styler

Type Styler is an application that makes it easy to create logos and text graphics.

I learned about this application from a post in the Affinity Photo Forum and thought to check it out. I was curious to see how this compares to Art Text 3 -(Which I already Own).

Some of the options with TypeStyler.

Nine Things I Learned About Type Styler

There are 95 Text Styles in the library. (That's the colorful A's above.) Simply select some text then choose your text style. You can then configure the style afterward.

There are 45 distortions that can be made.

There are different document presets available such as Page, Poster, Banner, CD, Bag, Box, 3D Model, and Video. (The Video seems very interesting to explore.)

The Glyph Tool allows you easy access to all 4,613 glyphs. I didn't realize that there were that many in the Apple Symbols.

The Body text tool allows you to create new text body. There are 45 different text body types.

The Style Workshop is a creative way to play around with different effects for the text, such as Full, Shadow, and all sorts of effect.

Objects can be clip to the clipboard and paste into OmniGraffle, Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo and other apps. The final results

You can export to Photoshop, PDF, Illustrator, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, EPS, PICT, GIF.

When you export as Photoshop, all the objects are on their own layer as Pixel format. You have the option to set the resolution, the default is 261 dpi.

Type Styler Type Settings dialog box shows some of the options you have.

Type Styler vs Art Text 3

The big difference I can see between the two apps is that Type Styler allows you to format a lot of text.

Art Text 3 is great if you need a logo or text style design. It's a very powerful application with a lot of capabilities. Great when you want to create eye-catching text.

Type Styler is great if you're designing a brochure or a bag and want to apply creativity all over the document. So if you're looking to create an eye-catching brochure - Type Styler would be your best option.

Type Styler Demo

Type Styler on the Apple Store hasn't been updated in a few years. Its last update was to support Mac OS 10.11 (El Capitan) - nearly 3 years ago. Their website has the latest version 10.6 - certainly the best place to get the latest version that works.

If you want to try the application you can from the Strider Software website.

OmniGraffle 2020 Calendar

OmniGraffle is a popular design tool. You can create flow charts, graphic designs, page layouts, process charts, easy-to-read diagrams, and quick drawings to present your points in a clear and concise manner.

I use the application off and on to illustration flow layouts and to illustrate points. The most popular use has been creating quarterly calendar planning.

Sample layout of the 2020 Calendar

2020 Calendar

The year 2020 is right around the corner, it's never too early to start thinking of the new year. So I decided to create a 2020 monthly calendar stencil for Omnigraffle. This is useful when you need to figure out software releases, dance schedules, or birthdays throughout the year.

Simply download the 2020 Calendar GStencil, it's pretty easy add it to your Stencil collection:

• Double click on the file to decompress it.
• Double click on the "2020Calendar.gstencil" file.
• When OmniGraffle opens it will ask if you want to move the file to OmniGraffle Stencils folder. Click on Move and Edit.
• You can close out of the file.

Now the file is in your personal collection for whatever you want to do with it!

FYI: I did submit this to Stenciltown, when it get's approved I'll add the link here. This will allow you to search and install the calendar within the app!

Affinity Easter Egg

In Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo there is a cool Easter Egg that appears on Friday the 13th and on April 1st:

The Style Menu changes to Cats!

In the late 1980s and the 1990s Macintosh Applications had all sorts of Easter Eggs. Most of them occurred when you performed certain actions. Every once in a while one would happen because of a date.

Some apps had Easter Eggs that would only be accessable via ResEdit. Check out my ResEdit blog post from a couple of years ago

My personal favorite was Dark Castle's Christmas Tree that would only appear on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I remember playing around with the system clock so that I could see it. I'll have to search my archive to see if I have some photo of it.

Thanks to RolandJuno on Flickr for sharing this classic Easter Egg:

LaunchBar Instant Send

LaunchBar is a useful tool to make users more productive. Here are some sample tasks using Instant Send to demonstrate some of the capabilities of LaunchBar.

LaunchBar description of Instant Send:

Keyboard Maestro Command in BBEdit

I have been using BBEdit as my daily note tool. Why BBEdit? Here are my three reasons:

Three Reasons I use BBEdit as a Note Tool

• Clean Simple Interface. I have it set as the "Right third" of the screen, and add notes when needed.
• I use Markdown as my note formating - so I can focus on notes and not formating. At the end of the day, I can easily import to DayOne, or Evernote (For Evernote, I preview the contents in BBEdit and then copy/paste the contents of the preview into Evernote.)
• I have BBEdit always open, so why not just use it.

Keyboard Maestro Implementation

Part of the problem with using BBEdit is that I don't need to see the Line Numbers or Gutter tool. BBEdit allows you to assign keyboard shortcuts, but I need to type in two separate commands.

Thankfully, with Keyboard Maestro, I can create a one-step command to show/hide the the Gutter and Line numbers. Note: This is more of a proof of concept than a real issue that was bothering me - can I create a Keyboard Maestro to trigger two menu item at once.

Keyboard Maestro Macro

This is the Keyboard Maestro Macro that I have setup so that it will Show/Hide the Line Numbers and Gutters.

Click on image for a larger version.

Some Notes:

• I set this up so that I type the same command to Hide/Show the Gutters/Numbers.
• I have this in a Group so this command only works in BBEdit. That way I don't mistype the command in another application.
• It was a bit tricky to figure out how to set up the condition statement with application menus.
• I need to wait a few seconds before hiding/Show command. I can't quickly Hide/Show. Not sure if the issue is with BBEdit or Keyboard Maestro. But if I type in the shortcut fast twice, I'll get an error.

Download the Macro

If you have Keyboard Maestro you can download the Macro. It will save time typing in all the above information.

Default Language as Markdown

Since I start my day with using Markdown in BBEdit, I changed the BBEdit Settings to default every new document to Markdown. This is simple config change done using the Terminal Editor.

Simply open up Apple Terminal or iTerm and paste the following:

BlogStomp

Blog Stomp allows you to get your images ready for your blog. It's an easy way for bloggers to display their images perfectly.

The goal of the application is to allow bloggers to focus on the content and not spend a lot of time getting their images ready for the blog post.

Five Things I Learned about BlogStomp 3

1. I liked how easy it was to create a gallery of photos from a group of photos - you can pick the layout that works for you. You can even rearrange the pictures by double-clicking and moving images around. There are styles to add text below the gallery.
2. You can define your own custom Style name - perfect when you want to keep the images the same on your blog - or social media posts. You can set border margins, background colors, Outer/Inner Strokes, Tab Heights, Rounded Corners, JPEG Quality. You can even add your Blog logo. There's no limit to the number of styles, so you can create similar styles with and without the logo. These come in handy when your batch processing images.
3. Quik Mode is enabled when you drag and drop a bunch of images to the BlogStomp icon. You then select the style to apply and then click "Stomp It!" Super Easy way to get the images in the right size for your blog.
4. You can sync up BlogStomp with all the popular blogging applications - WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, ExpressionEngine, and LiveJournal. More connections are coming soon.
5. Social Media Posting - You can easily post your Stomped! images to Twitter with a text message. The Facebook connection was available until Facebook took away the API access. Now BlogStomp opens your Image Gallery in your Web Browser to make it easy to upload the images to Facebook.

Software Recommendations

This is a very cool tool to have if you post a lot of images - such as a photographer or food critic. It's certainly a good way to keep your images the same throughout the website.

I don't publish enough images in the blog posts to justify getting this software. The more I played around with it, the better understanding of how cool it would be to have. It's certainly a great solution to standardizing the images on your blog.

Try Before You Buy

Download a trial version of BlogStomp 3 from Stomp Software website.The trial is unlimited - just the output images contain a watermark.

If you choose to purchase BlogStomp, it cost $49 for a single user or $89 for a studio.

BBEdit Shortcuts

BBEdit is one of my favorite applications. I have tried other applications, but more often I come back to the power and flexibility that BBEdit provides.

I have a lot of shortcuts set up to make it easy to use. This is the list of the most popular shortcuts that I use every day.

Top Ten Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action	Description
F1	Save Current Selection as a Clipping	This quickly creates a BBEdit Clipping. BBEdit Clippings are snippets that appear as I am typing words. These save a lot of time typing the same thing over and over. I can go into the Clipping Folder to remove them if I don't think I'll use it again. This comes in handy when I am working on a short term project and need to type a name or phrase over and over.
Command P	Preview in BBEdit	By default, Command-P is Print. I find that in BBEdit I don't print that often. However, I do preview a lot, so I changed the default Print option to Preview, as I am more likely want to preview a page than Print. This is very helpful when previewing
Command Control P	ScratchPad	Sometimes I just need to jot something quick down.
Command Option F	Live Search	Quickly find something on the page. Note the search matches are highlighted on the right of the window, making it easy to scroll to find similar matches. Simply type the shortcut and then search.
Command Delete	Backup File	I created an AppleScript which basically sends the the contents of the current window to Evernote. This is a super quick way to back up files. No more backup files cluttering the desktop.
Control Z	Zap Gremlins	Remove any unwanted characters that may cause problems. For example the curly brackets that Microsoft Word creates. The text is replaced with ASCII equivalent.
Command 0	Show/Hide SideBar	BBEdit automatically opens the sidebar when you have more than one file open - such as working on a project. Sometimes the sidebar can be distracting.
Command 9	Hide/Show Line Number	Usually I have line numbers on by default, but when I am writing Markdown, line numbers don't cut it. So this is useful when I don't want to see them.
Command 8	Hide/Show Gutter	Sometimes having a gutter is useful, sometimes it's not. Usually I combine the Gutter/Line numbers actions. That's why I have the shortcuts setup with one off numbers.
Command 4	Process Lines Containing	Great way to filter out a log file. I can extract the lines that I care about into another file.

Haunted Mansion Wallpaper

In celebrating Disneyland?s Haunted Mansion 50th Anniversary today, here?s a couple of Personal Haunted Mansion Wallpaper images for your Macintosh.

http://www.cryan.com/daily/2019/DisneyLandHauntedMansion.jpg

This was taken on September 2009, when the Haunted Mansion was closed. It?s a rare opportunity to get a picture of the Mansion with nobody in it.

http://www.cryan.com/daily/2019/DisneyWorldHauntedMansion.jpg

This is one many image that I took at Disney World's Haunted Mansion. It's a very simple image to use as a background as it's not a distraction. I have other dark photos that I will upload at a later time.

How to Install the Wallpaper

Simple instructions to get this Wallpaper image on your computer.

• Click on the above image to download the image to your computer
• Right click on the dashboard and select "Change Desktop Background..."
• Drag and Drop the downloaded image to the box in the top left.

You can use the drop-down to adjust how the image appears. The "Fit to Screen" option works best for me on my 2560 by 1440 monitor.

Enjoy!

MacinCloud

MacinCloud is a cool service that let's you have access to a real Macintosh. While it may seem silly if you own one, but if your doing some development work and need to make sure the application works in different environments it can be very useful.

Each box comes pre-installed with various developer tools including the latest Xcode, Microsoft Visual Studio for Mac with Xamarin components and more.

https://www.macincloud.com/

MacinCloud can be useful when testing software and figuring out why some applications are working and not working in different environments.

Description from the Website

This isn't a free service, you have to pay to access the boxes - which can be a lot cheaper than straight out owning your own box at a colocation center.