What caught my attention in week fourty-nine, 2023

In continuation of week 48, here are a few thoughts and things that caught my attention in week 49, 2023:

• 🦠 Yes, I had already feared it, and unfortunately, it happened: My wife's Covid-19 infection did not pass me by. Therefore, my weeknote is regrettably appearing a little too late "this week."

• 🔫 You may not necessarily like the content, but technically, the trailer for GTA VI definitely blew me away.

• ✏️ Another PDF editor that I will look at in my long search for an alternative to Preview¹ is PDFgear - PDF Tasks Made Easy.²

• 🪟 Gruber released An AppleScript for Safari to move all tabs in the frontmost window, from the current tab to the rightmost (last) tab, to a new window: Split Tabs to New Window.scpt. But even better is the tip from Jack Wellborn, that you can easily drag and drop multiple tabs into a new window.

• 📝 I have been doing most of my (transformative) text work with BBEdit for decades. I really wouldn’t know what to do with my life without Multi-File Search and Regex, but sometimes I also like to use TextBuddy or Text Workflow. Another nice app that does something similar is by Chris Hannah and now apparently even free for iOS and macOS: Text Case.

• 📝 While I'm on the topic of text editors. CotEditor now also has a Quick Action Bar - if only the programs could agree on a uniform shortcut!

• 🕹 For the 30th anniversary of Doom, I bought it again and immediately installed it on my MacBook and Miyoo mini plus. In keeping with this, John Romero released SIGIL II. Speaking of Miyoo mini plus - there is now a native pico-8 wrapper, too 🥳.

• 👾 I started playing Super Mario Advance (GBA) on my Analogue Pocket. I noticed that I definitely never played Super Mario Bros. 2 before. (I could have sworn that I had at least tried all the major releases.) You can tell that the second part is a reskin and somehow it doesn't really fit into the series. I also find it absurdly difficult already in the third / fourth world. Let's see how far I will get in the game.

• 🎮 I don't know if it's a coincidence or due to the recently released firmware updates, but lately my Playstation Portal has been running absolutely smoothly 🥰

• 🧵 Unfortunately, I now have to crawl out of my European library again, because soon the fun begins here too! (However, I will continue to ignore Threads, just like Facebook and Instagram, for the time being.)

• ↔️ In terms of features, it's not yet an alternative to Kaleidoscope, but it's affordable: Text Differ - Meet Text Differ, a native macOS app that shows beautiful differences between 2 texts.

• 🎙 Lately, I was a little annoyed by the ever-same content in my overflowing podcast subscription list. I think I will actually export all my subscribed podcasts, delete Overcast, and in Apple Podcasts, subscribe to Ruminate and Hemispheric Views, and then consider whether and which other two of the usual suspects I choose. Also, I followed Robb's advice and turned off Smart Speed and reset the playback speed to 1.0.

• 🛑 I have now forbidden 1Password on all my devices from wanting to fill anything anywhere and only use it as a (backup) vault. I have exported all my passwords from 1PW into the Apple Keychain⁴, and my life has become significantly less annoying. I'm going to look at this for a few weeks now and then consider whether I completely get rid of 1PW or keep it running alongside.

• 🖊️ iOS 17.2 was released, and with it the Journal.app. I can't do anything with the app itself, but DayOne is allowed to use the same API and can suggest the same things. That's cool!³

• ⌚ watchOS 10.2 has brought back the ability to change Watch Faces by simple swiping. Thank you, Apple! I had to search for quite a while until I finally understood that this setting can only be made on the watch itself: Settings > Clock > Swipe to Switch Watch Face

1. In the past, I have suffered significant data loss after annotating PDFs with Preview.app, and since then, I no longer trust the application. Thank you, Apple.↩︎
2. However, I have not yet really understood their monetization concept.↩︎
3. At the moment, I primarily keep my Daily Journal in Obsidian but transfer a copy of it to Day One via Shortcuts.app; I need to rethink my use of Day One separately.↩︎
4. Of course, Safari crashed immediately during import; whoever is responsible for software quality at Apple, in my opinion, should be fired.↩︎