When I build shortcuts, I like to think through all the usual ways that someone might want to use it. And then I try to think through the unusual ways someone might use it. To account for different preferences, many of my shortcuts now ask setup questions upon installation that propagate variables in my Setup Stuff™ area at the top.
But what should happen when a shortcut doesn’t get set up quite right on that first go? Or what if it’s designed to run actions on some bit of data passed into the shortcut, but nothing is passed to it?
My latest update to the ‘Publish to Micro.blog’ shortcut addresses some of these anomalies, and I want to share the techniques I use to mitigate them.
Import Questions Gone Wrong
Look, I get it. You don’t know exactly what a shortcut is going to ask you to set up when you tap that ‘Get Shortcut’ button. You might not have the necessary information at hand to answer all the questions in the moment. And while you can go back into the shortcut’s info screen → Setup and choose “Customize Shortcut…” to go through the import questions again, or just edit the actions in the editor view itself, I don’t know that everyone feels confident in doing those things.
This means that, despite your best effort, a user might not get their info into the variables needed to successfully execute the shortcut. Here’s how I worked around that eventuality this time.
This ‘Text’ action is supposed to contain a number. What now? ⌘
In this case, the user was supposed to add their blog ID number during setup so that the shortcut can post to the right blog if they have multiple ones. Luckily, Micro.blog can still accept a POST web request even without an ID and it will just get posted to whatever blog was last used. But it requires sending the request to a differently-formatted URL.
So, instead of hard-coding the URL into the ‘Get Contents of URL’ action, I put an ‘If’ conditional block right before it and use it to evaluate if the ‘blog-id’ variable from the Setup Stuff has any value. If it does, that means the blog ID was entered, and we can send it to the URL that includes the ID. If it doesn’t have any value, it uses the default URL without extra appended parameters.
‘If’ blocks come in handy to evaluate the contents of variables. ⌘
This approach provides an additional benefit that if the user has just one blog, they don’t need to worry about finding its ID. The shortcut will just handle sending it to the default one anyway.
Addressing a Lack of Input
Now back to the matter of the shortcut’s input. This one was designed to be the final publishing step in other shortcuts, and to accept text from them as input when run as a subroutine. That’s kind of an advanced technique though, and someone might download this shortcut expecting that they can run it from the Shortcuts app, type into its text box, and have that text get published to Micro.blog.
If someone runs it standalone, we basically have three options:
Fallback gracefully with a way to get some text to publish
Until today, this shortcut resorted to option 1. It just didn’t work, and there was no notice sent to the user. Not great. But now it accommodates for just such an occasion.
This shortcut can still be useful, even if nothing is passed to it. ⌘
Another ‘If’ conditional block checks to see if the special ‘Shortcut Input’ variable has any value. If it does, great, we’ll use the input. But if not, an ‘Ask for Input’ action solves the problem. I added some explainer text to the action’s prompt. And I saved the user from the need to paste in their clipboard, the most likely way they’ll add text, by setting the default answer to the clipboard’s contents. They’ll have the opportunity to edit or delete the text, or can stop the shortcut by tapping “Cancel” and trying again.
Now, you might wonder why I didn’t address the lack of input way at the top of the shortcut by using the built-in fallback-to-clipboard option:
It’s because I didn’t want to bypass the opportunity to tell the user what’s going on and allow them to edit the text. Sometimes, I need to use the clipboard in other ways first, and getting its contents right away can complicate things. The ‘If’ conditional makes it super clear what happens if there’s no input, and it allows me to address the problem in other ways than with just the clipboard. I could have strung together any number of actions in that ‘Other’ block if necessary.
‘If’ Saves the Day
So if you haven’t done much with the ‘If’ action, here’s your encouragement to play with it some more. It vastly expands what your shortcuts can handle. In this case, it’s helped make mine way more user-friendly and accommodating outside of the intended use case.
A ‘Show Alert’ action works well in this case, and you just disable the option to continue. Or follow it up with a ‘Stop This Shortcut’ action just to be sure.↩︎
I wrote the other night, after several hours of keyboard-mashing, mouse-clicking, and DNS-wrangling:
Too tired to write a proper introduction post, but I’m happy to say that oneamonth.club is now a thing that exists! It’s something I’ve wanted to put together since being inspired by @manuelmoreale.com. Please send me more sites to feature! And you can support my site for $1/month at dingus.club. 🫶
Well, I’m not much more mentally awake right now, but I am excited to tell you about the One a Month Club. It’s an idea, inspired by Manu Moreale, that kindness from internet strangers can be enough to support a small web project. And that tiered membership overly complicates things. And that it’s hard enough to convince someone to pay anything to support your work, so why would you want to gate any of those fans from seeing what you’ve worked so hard on for them?
We all want writers, code wranglers, and other web artists to be able to get the monetary support they deserve while reaching the widest audience they can.
It manifests like this. To join the One a Month Club, the asking price to support your work and gain access to all of it should be as little as $1 per month. It’s low enough that if someone has any budget at all to spend on extras, they can afford $1 per month. They can set it and forget it, as it shouldn’t make a meaningful impact on their budget. And, as they say, we’ll make it up in volume. Oh, and folks can choose to pay more if they want to. But that’s optional.
Really, you should go read Manu’s blog post about landing on $1+/month as the ideal singular tier for membership. It’s how I got here.
Anyway, ever since reading that post and following suit with my own $1/month supportership at dingus.club, I thought there should be a page that rounds up all the sites and projects that adhere to this framework. A page like nownownow.com or uses.tech. I kind of thought Manu would make one. Instead, it lived in my head and my to-do list rather than on the web for months.
With the introduction of Micro.blog’s single-page sites in January, I knew I could make it a reality. The perfect domain name was available and reasonably priced. I snapped it up as the last piece of the puzzle. (Since the initial idea wasn’t really mine and I see myself as more of a caretaker of it, I’d feel a little weird about hosting the project on my heydingus.net domain and site.)
With a few minutes spent setting up that single-page site in Micro.blog, a few more minutes searching around the web for more sites that meet the $1-for-everything criteria, and many more minutes tweaking the design while waiting for DNS to propagate, oneamonth.club was born.
The web travels fast
As far as I can tell, Manu doesn’t use social media, so I couldn’t adequately notify him with a mention in that initial announcement on my microblog. I intended to send him an email as a heads-up about putting the site together and to open the door for any suggestions, but I wanted to make sure I was happy and settled on its presentation first. Much to my surprise, the next day (yesterday) I already received a request to be added to the site. The inductee said they found it through Manu’s blog.
He’d already found the site and linked to it. Wow! 😅 Turns out, he had been considering putting a similar page together himself after all. I suppose we can both cross that item off our lists now.
Join the club
The club is open to anyone who wants to join.1 As Manu put it in our brief email exchange about the project:
Honestly, I just want more people to jump on board because I’d love to support a bunch of different blogs. We need more of this to keep the web open and sustainable.
So open your tip jar (Ko-Fi and Buy Me a Coffee are pretty popular and easy to use), and send me links to it and your project. And take a look through the sites already listed there. Maybe you’ll find an awesome new site to help prop up. I have! Let’s keep working on that open and sustainable web together. 🙌
I suppose I should be clear that I’m not going to link out to hateful garbage, so don’t even try if that’s what you’re asking support for. In short, no assholes.↩︎
I’ve not weighed in on Apple’s battle with the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act because, frankly, it seems out of my depth, and I’m not a citizen of the EU so I don’t think my opinion about it counts for much. But I feel compelled to share a few that thoughts solidified as I read Chance Miller’s summary for 9to5Mac of the latest changes to developer’s options over there:
Now, Apple has announced a few additional changes in response to feedback it’s received from developers so far. Most notably, Apple will launch a new Web Distribution feature later this spring that lets developers offer their apps for download directly from their website.
There’s a bunch of stuff here that we would have celebrated Apple for introducing had it done them on their own. Instead, the DMA dragged into them it. Web distribution similar to the Mac? Wow! More linking out opportunities? Great! But knowing Apple hates having to do these so much that they didn’t even make it into the first go at compliance leaves it all feeling insincere and hollow.
As a user, I’d wary of all the new ways to download apps if they were available in the USA. Call me basic, but I value the simplicity of one place to download, update, and restore apps.
As someone sympathetic to developers who have been frustrated by Apple’s iron hand ruling of the App Store, I understand the desire for more options, and for real competition to push Apple to make a better distribution product.
As an Apple enthusiast, I wonder how differently the cards would have fell had Apple loosened their grip on their own, rather than have the European Commission do it for them. For one, I’m confident everything would have been settled before their announcement. The fits and starts of changes to the agreements and options are mightily confusing. And I’m sure the community would feel far more charitable toward Apple, rather than the tinge (and often much stronger) of resentment knowing they have no desire to build any of this.
Apple missed their opportunity to do a developer-friendlier App Store 2.0 on their own, and I’m disappointed that they seem too prideful and firm in their convictions to see how that would have paid off in the long run.
Although we missed the first week of March, I’m happy to say that Valerie and I got things on track this weekend and kicked off our month of being PenPals. Valerie is living and working in Kyrgyzstan, which I’m eager to learn about (and hope I’ll be able to confidently spell by the end of March)!
Our first exchanges touch on — what else between strangers? — the weather, and also our interests in outdoor pursuits.
You can read along with our conversation this month here, and check out Valerie’s site here. (I see in her bio that she mentions harboring an interest in Pokémon… I’m excited to explore that!)
2️⃣ Great, now I want a MacPad. It really seems like an ideal computer. Like a SurfaceBook, but with OSes I actually want to use. [🔗 Federico Viticci // macstories.net]
3️⃣ James gives us (another) 100 things we can do with our blogs. #61 is calling to me. [🔗 James // jamesg.blog]
4️⃣ I’ve been experimenting with the <details> element and this post has some great ideas for making it look better. [🔗 Ralph Mason // sitepoint.com]
6️⃣ Arun’s hand-drawn line art of cameras that he uses in blog posts is divine. It really boils down the physical object to its key characteristics. [🔗 Arun Venkatesan // arun.is]
7️⃣ My jaw hung open to the floor throughout this video of Tori Kelly and Jacob Collier recording runs for “Bridge Over Troubled Water”. Their vocal control is out of this world. [▶️ Jacob Collier // youtube.com]
Speaking of Tori Kelly, she’s featured on one of my favorite songs (“Winter Wonderland / Don’t Worry Be Happy”) in this, one of my favorite Christmas albums. Pentatonix is in my heavy rotation of music throughout the year, but they certainly feature heaviest during the winter because I can listen to their many Christmas albums without fear of retorts from bystanders.
I was never really into acapella until Pentatonix broke into the mainstream back in my college years. I dig their arrangements, I did their chemistry, I did their choice of music to cover and write, I dig their music videos, but most of all I dig their voices. They’re really an A-tier performing group!
Seeing as we got a little snow today, I don’t feel bad about sharing a Christmas album in March.
Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.
4️⃣ Some common sense (once you read them) rules for web design. [🔗 anthonyhobday.com]
5️⃣ Apps like this ARMIDI Widgets creator are exactly what I was hoping would get explored with Vision Pro. Such a clever use of anchoring settings to your wrist. Can’t wait to see more like this in action. [🔗 Geert Bevin // youtube.com]
6️⃣ I’ve always been frustrated by folks who talk shit about e-bikes and how they “make you lazy”. Now there’s research that shows people riding e-bikes get more exercise than riding traditional ones. Anything that gets people more likely to get outside and moving is great in my book. [🔗 Micah Toll // electrek.co]
7️⃣ Are you an uphill person or a downhill person? (I’m uphill leaning, but I sure do love going down on skis too!) [🔗 @outsidemagazine // instagram.com]
So, I have a thing for stylistically stripped back music where lyrics take center stage and ear worm tunes. I can’t remember how I happened across dodie’s music, but it fell right in place with those preferences. I like to think of her as a bedroom creator, just noodling around on her songs, crafting them till their just right and recording without many frills. My imagination is probably all wrong from reality, but it’s how I like to picture this music coming to be.
Human is just a tight 23 minutes, but it’s one of my favorites and provides an excellent intro to dodie’s music. If you get to the end of the seven tracks yearning for more, well, you’re in for a treat. She has a number of EPs and singles, as well as another full album, waiting for you.
Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.
I’ve been busy the last few days, so I’m taking advantage of this extra leap day that February has provided us to catch up on my annual birthday post.
The past few years, I’ve used my birthday as a chance to lay out a set of goals that I wanted to complete over the next year. It was aspirational, but ultimately a bit too “New Year Resolution-y” and ended up being more of a stressor than a motivator. With 28 or so things to do in a year, that means accomplishing — checks math — one of those items every couple of weeks. Yikes. In reality, I hardly looked at the list until the end of December, and then scrambled over the next couple months to try to check a few more off. Yikes. Though I still like the idea, it wasn’t leaving me feeling good.
So I’m not gonna do that this year.
Instead, I’d like to reflect a little on my 30th year here on Earth, and ruminate a bit on where my life is headed. And I’ll probably make another list… but different. You’ll see.
My Thirtieth Year
As far as milestones are concerned, this past year was dominated by going through the process of finding and purchasing our first home, and, of course, moving in and making it our own. If I’m honest, I’m still not particularly thrilled about the whole thing, but it makes my wife very happy which is good enough for me. Someday I’ll tell the whole story of our journey into home ownership — in fact, I typed a large portion of it out just now, but this isn’t the right time for that tale.
I lost a few loved ones. I made new friends. I enjoyed my first full year of mountain guiding — a goal I’d been working toward for over a decade. I achieved climbing, running, and skiing goals that I’d set for myself. It was probably the most active year of my life.
I faced difficult conversations when I wasn’t doing my best in some relationships, but emerged stronger, more self-aware, and gained more humility from them.
But perhaps the best reflection going into my 30th birthday came from a question my wife posed to me on a walk just a few days ahead of her own 30th (just two days before mine): Did I feel good about going into my 30s or did I resent it?
It seems like there are a whole lot of people who resent turning 30. Maybe because it’s seen as leaving the last years of your youth behind? Maybe because it can be a wake up call if you’re not traveling along the path you imagined for yourself career or family-wise?
But not me. I have no regrets about my 20s, and feel very fortunate to say that I’m happy where I’ve landed so far. I’ve got a wonderful wife and little family with our fur babies. I’m working in the field that I want, and actually get to use what I studied in school. I’ve learned so much over the last decade about who I am, what I’m good at, and what I’m not. I’m living in a place that allows me to pursue climbing, running, skiing, hiking, and many other outdoor adventures. I have a place of my own to live, and some financial stability. I’m not left needing, only hungry to experience ever more.
I think my 30s will be my best decade yet.
The Next Decade
Alright, I promised you a list. Rather than stuff my calendar with more obligations each month, this year I’ve been thinking about a more measured and manageable approach to goal-setting.
This year, I’d like to lay out a set of 10 goals that I’d like to accomplish over the next decade. At just one per year, and with the option to readjust each birthday, I think I’ll be cause to stay on the bandwagon this time around.
Now, I did just put together my Impossible List just a few months ago, which serves a similarly purpose. But I’m thinking about this post as an opportunity to prioritize some items already present there. Let’s dig in.
Start my own small business. The big one, and what I’m most anxious and excited to pursue this year. I’ve come to realize that I’m only truly happy and fulfilled when I get to call the shots. I’ve got ideas that I want to be able to implement without asking anyone’s permission. I want to be able to set my own schedule to allow more time for learning, training, and progressing, in addition to wanting the opportunity travel and spend more quality time with my wife. I’ve got both short-term and long-term plans/dreams that I think could work really well, and I’m eager to give them a shot. It’s my big leap.
Climb in Yosemite National Park.
Complete a thru-hike.
Run a marathon.
Visit a new country.
Develop an app.
Earn my AMGA Rock Guide certification.
Establish annual trips with a few close friends and family.
Reestablish an annual big backpacking trip with my wife.
A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.
1️⃣ It’s probably the hub’s fault that your devices aren’t responding. Try to purchase hubless lights and outlets instead.
2️⃣ You probably need more remotes/switches than you thought to replace/add physical controllers for the non-nerds in your household. This Wemo one works quite well and offers six different commands in a tiny footprint.
3️⃣ Setting up automations for when the first person arrives home (turn on lights, raise thermostat), and when the last person leaves (turn off lights, lower thermostat) are some of the most useful things you can set up and that everyone will appreciate.
4️⃣ Don’t overlook the Home widget. You can turn off the automatic feature where it guesses which devices you want to control in a given moment and instead set the eight-ish accessories/scenes that you want quick access to. Mine is full of the things I’d want to control first thing in the morning or last at night in bed.
5️⃣ I can’t stress enough how much it helps to ask your partner/housemates what they’d expect to happen when you say a phrase like “Hey dingus, good morning”, or when you long press the bottom button on a remote/switch. They should have some say in how the devices react, and you’ll get more buy-in if things do what they expect.
6️⃣ I’ve been using indoor Nanoleaf lights in outdoor sconces throughout the very chilly winter weather here in upstate New York, and it’s been totally fine. Worth a shot rather than looking for outdoor-specific devices.
7️⃣ It’s expensive, but the physically wired HomeKit switches from Lutron have been so worthwhile and rock solid (even with the hub) for us. I wish I had a little more control over what happens when you press a button (maybe let me run a scene?), but having more lights, fans, and things be HomeKit addressable while still using the existing wiring for physical switches has been great.
My inner Disney child is showing, but the Tarzan (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) still rocks. I remember dancing around my room to these songs, pretending I was swinging from trees. In college, “Trashin’ the Camp” (with *NSYNC?!) was a very common song to be heard being skat from my roommate’s and my dorm. “Son of Man” still gets the blood pumping, and “You’ll Be in My Heart” still brings out the tenderness.
Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.
“The tech podcast where we’d like you to be our valentine.”
⏱️⏱️⏱️
Dan Moren: How many peripherals do you usually have connected to your computer?
Well, let’s take a look! I’ve got my monitor, a 3-in-1 cable that usually connects my mechanical keyboard (but that often gets used to charge things or connect the occasional other gadget), an external SSD for Time Machine backups, a webcam, and an old HyperDrive hub dock thing that is also a Qi charger (it’s kinda flakey, but gets the job done for how little I use it and was a cool Kickstarter project at the time). Wirelessly, I’ve got a Magic Mouse, a Magic Trackpad, and a HomePod mini stereo pair that I’ve routed music and stuff to play through from my Mac mini.
Lex Friedman: What is your tech setup when watching TV or movies — meaning what do you watch it on, and what are you doing while you watch?
If we’re talking specifically about TV or movies, the vast majority of my watching happens on our main television. It’s an LG 55-inch C94KOLED from a few years ago which looks great and sounds great through our Sonos Beam/One surround setup with it. I typically watch shows with my wife while eating dinner, and I don’t do a whole bunch of TV time otherwise. That’s beginning to change now with my Vision Pro, which I bought partially to have another nice large screen to watch stuff on while my wife plays games on the TV.
Sometimes I watch things on an iPad, but that’s usually just YouTube.
As for what I’m doing while I watch TV or movies — well, usually nothing else! I’m easily distracted by the TV, which is good since when I make time to watch something, I want to catch all of it. If I’m not super into the show, maybe I’ll poke around on my phone, but that’s not very often. Unless, of course, it’s to figure out where I’ve seen that actor before using Callsheet.
⏱️⏱️⏱️
Mikah Sargent: Which do you prefer, voice dictation or hand typing as input for messaging?
I think of my text conversations as private, so I rarely feel comfortable dictating a message out loud around other people. So 98% of my messages are typed by hand (or thumb). But I will say that I’ve made a conscious effort to try dictation more often because I know it’s gotten better and can be much faster in some contexts. Audio messages are another thing I’d like to try more.
Oh, and I suppose I dictate fairly often to messages with CarPlay, so there’s that.
⏱️⏱️⏱️
Kathy Campbell: Have you worn an Apple Vision Pro out in public, or have you seen them?
Nope, and nope. The closest I’ve come is bringing it to work and wearing it during my lunch hour, which I spend alone most days. And even then I felt so self-conscious that it was hard to enjoy the experience. I think it’s going to be a home computer for now, and perhaps a travel one where I’m only around strangers and don’t care what they think.
⏱️⏱️⏱️
Bonus Topic: Do you have any Valentine’s Day traditions?
The only thing that springs to mind is the typical dinner date with my wife. This year I even managed to call in a reservation nearly four weeks(!) in advance. I guess you could call our usual discussion about how we feel our relationship is doing, where it’s been, and where it’s going as traditional as well.
I saw a video somewhere of an older couple hanging out in a convenience store together looking through all the greeting cards in stock, choosing the best one, “giving” to their partner, and then putting them back without purchasing anything. That seems kind of fun, and might suggest it to my wife for next year.
⏰⏰⏰
Overtime Topic: Where do you want to take the human out of the equation, like driverless cars?
I’m going to have to go with house cleaning, but the real kind, not just a Roomba. I’m super uncomfortable with the idea of inviting someone into my home to clean up my messes for me, but I’d be very happy with a dexterous and capable robot that could get the job done.
🙋♂️🙋♂️🙋♂️
My Question for Readers: Is there any particular creator online that you’ve recently started supporting that you want to share with the world?
I’ll give a shoutout to Matt Birchler of birchtree.me who spun up a membership (More Birchtree) to his website. Matt has the sort of site I aspire to, with regular posts about a wide range of interests. Sure, he’s got his hot takes, but it’s more common for Matt to share a measured, well-reasoned perspective about what’s going on in the technosphere, and to do so with kindness and empathy.
That, the longevity of his blog, how much value I’ve gotten out of reading his writing, and the accompanying high-quality (and quick) YouTube videos all made me happy to shell out a few bucks per month to help him keep things going and show my support for the effort he puts into his site.
A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Sundays. Sometimes themed, often not.
1️⃣ If you, like me, are more into Superb Owls than Super Bowls then The Atlantic has you covered. Might be my favorite webpage of the year. 😁 [🔗 Alan Taylor // theatlantic.com]
2️⃣ I’m a fan of these little montages from their shows and films that Apple TV puts together around special events and holidays. This one was pretty cute for Valentine’s Day. [🔗 Apple TV // youtube.com]
5️⃣ If you’re a climber, you might be interested in the newest contender to the GriGri, the Ederid Pinch. This (long) video is a discussion of the design decisions and prototyping done over five years to bring it to market. I found it fascinating! [🔗EDELRID // youtube.com]
6️⃣ I’ve started a 30-day yoga challenge using Yoga with Adriene’s YouTube videos (link is the playlist). So far so good. Anyone want to join me? [▶️ Yoga with Adriene // youtube.com]
7️⃣ I just got home from watching a showing of the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour here in Lake Placid, and WOW! I watch a lot of mountain sports-related video content, but I was impressed by the breadth, quality, and themes of this year’s film lineup. It wasn’t the usual suspects. You can check out some of their stuff on demand if you want a taste. [▶️ Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity // banffcentre.ca]
Get to know Maisie Peters because she’s the real deal. I first came across her music as a guest artist in season one of Trying on Apple TV+ (excellent show, by the way) and then I guess they liked her so much that she was contracted to write the entire soundtrack for season two. She’s also been an Apple Music Up Next artist, and has been putting out studio albums as well. The Good Witch is her latest one. She’s signed on by Gingerbread Man Records (headed up by Ed Sheeran) and just seems to be having the time of her life.
She’s building mastery of lyrics in a Taylor Swift-esque style, I’d say, which is a huge compliment in my books. Her music can be raw and heartbreaking one moment, and party-pop fun the next. Like I said, keep an eye on her.
Thanks for reading 7 Things. If you enjoyed these links or have something neat to share, please let me know. And remember that you can get more links to internet nuggets that I’m finding every day by following me @jarrod on the social web.
