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Well… I spent a week at Apple Connect 2010 and learned a buttload!!

So, when I got home… what’d I do… wrote an Applescript :)

You see, I used this App called Omnifocus. All in all, a kick ass App for keeping yourself organized. The problem as I see it with this app, and this is just for me, is that it was overcomplicating something that should be rather simple.

I just wanted something to keep track of my things… essentially, a to do list with due dates and priorities. Google’s Tasks is too simple for what I wanted and, the iPhone client for it is even worse.

So, I discovered another app called Things

It’s the same concept as Omnifocus… breaking down everything in to projects with tasks.. but… much simpler to use… AND more easily facilitates something like “Buy Milk”… you don’t need to create a project of grocery shopping, with a task item of remembering the milk, with the context of Grocery store, under the folder Personal and then again under another folder of errands.

Things let’s me throw in the simple things, assign a due date (as well as a follow up date)… I can just “Tag” things (for those who know I’m a huge fan of the label vs folder setup) with labels.. thus allowing something to be an errand, personal, important and at the grocery store.

So.. what does this have to do with Applescript?

Well… I had to move everything over…. There’s no pretty export and import between these two…

So, enter Applescript. This… as I understand it now, is why programmers all pipe up calling Applescript useless, difficult to work in, etc…

Applescript is not a programming language. It wasn’t meant to make applications out of… It was also meant to be very simple, easy to use and user friendly.

This is why, I’m told (and I can see why having done programming in the past), programmers don’t like Applescript.

Applescript IS however an automation language.

You don’t build programs from Applescript, you write script to perform a repetitive task for you.

Rather than me copying and pasting a hundred some odd entries from Omnifocus in to Things… I wrote a script, in under an hour (and it was my first script…. so….) to do it all for me. I transferred every piece of information that was relevant over. (Admittedly, I cheated a little since even in Applescript, Omnifocus was proving to be more complicated than need be… so I exported all the data to a CSV and then did it)

In conclusion, Applescript is going to make my life on OS X much easier…. I won’t be writing full blown applications, but I’ll certainly be able to get the mundane and repetitive done much quicker.

Here’s a copy of the script for the nosey folk :)

Andrew’s trying to start some shit… and I like the idea and enthusiasm… I’m going to roll with it for a while and see what kind of shit I can disturb. [Co-host : Andrew Wong]

Click here to download the MP3 file

Oh Yes! We’re back baby!! After a few weeks off… we come back strong talking about puke mostly… and some odd away from home stories too…. [Co-Host : Andrew Wong]

Click here to download the MP3 file

At a local pub, we all stood around the tiny box with a top label that had my address neatly printed out and had the words “SIX INCH CLIP-ON” written on the sides.

Features:
- Two Speeds
- One Year Limited Warranty
- Adjustable Vertical Tilt and 360 Pivot
- Powerful clip holds on almost anywhere.

This prompted a lot of weird looks from everyone until I removed my beer glass that covered the word “FAN”.

For a little back-story, a few months ago Andy had convinced me to join and use Twitter. It was an application where no one could exactly tell me what it was for, but used it in hopes that perhaps other people could tell them what it was for.

I was highly skeptical.  I wondered how I would get other people to follow me, why all the celebrities were incredibly boring and more importantly, I wondered why people weren’t tweeting about their bowel movements like it was previously advertised.

I made the decision to make an attempt at being humorous. After all, at 140 characters it’s the perfect length for a quick setup and a punchline.

“Why did the chicken cross the road? Because your mom”. “A horse walked into a bar and the bartender asks why the long face. Because your mom”. “Can anyone tell me the zip codes in New York? Because your mom.”

Genius! I didn’t need anyone else, I could just entertain myself!

Before I knew it, followers were appearing in hordes. As I started to follow people back, I realized that there were having actual conversations. It suddenly hit me. It was a frickin’ instant messaging application.

The ever so lovely @cruelhazel had stumbled across my insane and perverted ramblings and got the idea to make Truffles infused with the  nectar of the gods drink-mix Tang.

Visit her website for more information.

In a completely unexpected move and breaking the cardinal rule to always be an internet dick, she was kind enough to actually mail me some across the border to here in Canada. When I got home from work  I found it sitting at my door. I immediately grabbed it and called a couple of my buddies to do a taste test.

I opened the box to find mostly packing peanuts and a nice little note with a pretty diagram outlining how all the chocolates were stacked on top of each other. It was simple, Tang-Filled hearts on the top, then a “Dual layer of Dual layer Tang + Truffles”, and hand-rolled truffles in cocoa-tang coating at the bottom.

It all came in a Chinese Take-Out box. I assume not only because I’m Chinese, but to give the illusion that people were going to be eating duck only to be punched in the face by Tang Chocolates.

The first thing we did notice is that the chocolates did not completely escape harm from their travels. The package was pretty sticky and I’m pretty sure I saw some Tang filling stuck in the packing tape. Sure enough, as described in the diagram, the hearts on the top. I found that 80% of the hearts were actually empty which is probably why the package was so sticky with Tang love juice. We all tried some of the ones that still had Tang in it and we all nodded in agreement silently munching away. After having some hearts, we dug deeper.

We all dug into the Truffles. Unfortunately, they were so good that we didn’t manage to take any pictures because everyone ate all of them. It was around this point it was actually difficult to get the chocolates out of the box without getting your hands sticky like a game of operation. To top it off at the end, the hand rolled cocoa-tang balls at the bottom were like a dessert after a dessert.

So there you have it! Taste-test complete and a huge success! Now whenever I meet people who say Twitter is dumb, I just tell them I got Chocolates from it and they didn’t.

-@awonger

I would also like to give a great big thank you to @longos for letting me post on his website, it’s a huge honour. A shout out goes to @daedilus as well for participating in the taste test.

The Live recording form the Luau on July 11th. We raised around $400+ for the Weekend to End Breast Cancer… and I got to eat cake shaped like a boob!

Click here to download the MP3 file