Some TODOs for the new site
As I prepare to make this new version of dzombak.com live, I wanted to make a note of some things that are left for me to do.
Featured Posts ★
Sunset over Canyonlands National Park, viewed from BLM's Needles Overlook in Utah.
Recent Posts
iOS 15 & Safari 15
Part of the iOS 15 Bugs series.
iOS 15 is out. Overall I'm happy-ish with it, but I've run into some bugs/annoyances. A lot of these are around Focus Modes, which is maybe the iOS 15 feature I've played with most so far. …
Integrating URLs into the Finder file-browsing experience
macOS services to quickly create URL shotcuts on the filesystem.
I wrote ‘hosts-timer’ to help quit my (desktop) Twitter and Facebook habits
Part of the Project Announcements series.
It was really easy for me to get into the habit of checking Facebook and Twitter while waiting for my computer to finish something. These sites are, after all, designed to be addicting.
There are some apps that are supposed to help solve this, …
Tiny Side Project: Lofi Cafe.app
An Electron wrapper for lofi.cafe and friends.
I got into 3D printing, and it feels like magic
In which Chris gains a superpower.
LAKE.app
Following a recent weekend trip, I wrote a simple little app that plays a recording of waves on Lake Michigan crashing at the shore. It’s around 14~15 minutes long, and it loops perfectly. The app’s “artwork,” such as it is, consists of two photos (shot on iPhone) …
Michigan COVID Vaccine Links
The COVID-19 vaccine rollout appears to be a disorganized mess. Here, in no particular order, are some helpful links for people in Michigan (and particularly in Washtenaw County):
* Washtenaw County COVID-19 Vaccination Form
* Washtenaw County COVID-19 page
* Meijer COVID-19 Vaccine Clinic Info / Registration
* Rite-Aid Vaccine Scheduler
* CVS Appointments
* Walgreens Vaccine …
Deferred Tasks, Project Templates, and More: Customizing Things with AppleScript
In this post, I share some AppleScripts I use to implement additional features in the Things to-do app: OmniFocus-style deferred tasks, project templates that live in the Bear notes app, and more.
Now: Feb. 2021
Reading: As I was last month, I’m still working through and enjoying Barack Obama’s A Promised Land; I’m about halfway through it now.
I’m also reading Where Wizards Stay Up Late by Katie Hafner, a 1990s-era dive into the history of the Internet and its predecessor, …
Redirecting Hacker News traffic away from your site via Nginx configuration
If you wish to redirect traffic from Hacker News away from your site for some reason, placing these nginx configuration directives in your site’s server { block will do this trick. This won’t work inside a location block, at least in my experience.
This snippet was last updated December …
Why I use Arq instead of restic for macOS backups
I recently finished upgrading all my Macs to the long-awaited version 7 release of my preferred backup software, Arq. I use it to backup all my Macs and Windows computers to the cloud storage provider Wasabi, which is inexpensive relative to eg. AWS S3. I use the open-source backup software …
Ship electricity usage data from an Energy Bridge to InfluxDB
Part of the Home Energy and Environment Monitoring series.
A while back, I signed up for DTE Energy’s Insight feature, which lets you monitor your home’s electricity usage in real time (and natural gas usage, but only at one-day resolution). To make this work, they ship you a …
Replacing iTunes, Music.app, iTunes Match, and iCloud Music Library
Part of the Project Logs series.
More follow-up from my recent “Now” post: I’ve finally (mostly) extricated my music library from the entirety of Apple’s music ecosystem. This post documents how and why I did that.
The Problems
A long, long time ago, I used iTunes to play …