Tools I Use

I wanted to buy an iPad Pro 11′ with OLED screen for a long time. The only issue? Until today there was none.

But starting today, the iPad Pro line has OLED screens across both devices.

Adding in the mix the new M4 processor, this iPad will be used 5-7 years from now as well. Seeing that now I still use a 2018 iPad Pro, it wouldn’t surprise me, frankly.

Other things announced today:

• iPad Air 13′
• Apple Pencil Pro
• camera on the long side of the device

There are other things you might be interested in, including Final Cut Pro changes, but the above are the things I care the most about.

I’ve just created an account on Bitclout.

I didn’t hear too many things about this crypto based social network before, but I’ve recently read an article on AVC about it so I thought it’s worth creating an account just to test it.

I don’t know if Mirror is the new WordPress or if Bitclout is the new Twitter. We will see. But it sure feels like we are back in the early 2000s again, experimenting with decentralizing media. I have the same feeling of excitement I had back then.

From here: Decentralized Media – AVC.

It really is worth “experimenting with decentralizing media”. It reminds me of the early days of Social Media, as well.

I’ve changed both my laptop and desktop to M1 Macs recently. One thing I had on the previous laptop that I loved was that I had some quick actions to resize images and to change image type from HEIC to JPG.

Some friends asked me about it and I never remember how to do it. Since I’m looking for it on my own now, here are links to the solutions:

• Quick action to change to JPG
• Quick action to resize images

The solutions are using Automator, an automation MacOS app that exists on every Apple computer.

I’ve found myself searching on reddit for links from specific domains lately and I always forget how to do it.

So here it is, in case you ever need it:

https://www.reddit.com/domain/longreads.com/

Of course, change the domain name for whatever you need.

It’s a neat little trick that can help you at some point.

I’ve been adding some design elements to this site and I always forget what they were. I put them here just so I don’t always go back to research.

It’s nothing in particular, just the size of the post title font, the blockquote design and the shadow for the images on the site.

.entry-title {text-transform: none; font-size: 40px;}

blockquote {
margin: 20px;
padding: 20px;
background: #ffeeee;
font-weight: 500;
font-size: medium;
font-family: inherit;
font-style: inherit;
border-left:5px solid red;
}

cite {
font-style: italic;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: small;
}

.post img {
border:2px solid #C0C0C0;
box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #ccc;
-moz-box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #ccc;
-webkit-box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #ccc;
-khtml-box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #ccc;
}

Featured photo by Pankaj Patel on Unsplash

Like many of us now, I have lots of calls these days. Usually not back to back, but with 10-15 minutes in between them. And you know what happens in those 10-15 minutes? I start writing an email. Or reading something. And I forget when the next call starts. I remember 5 minutes in and I’m embarrassed.

So I asked our developer at KeepClose.ai to build an iOS shortcut for me that creates an alarm 2 minutes before each meeting I have in the Calendar. I start the app in the morning and I have alarms for the entire day. Of course, if I add another meeting during the day, I need to re-run the shortcut.

Here’s the shortcut (you need to allow Untrusted Shortcuts to be installed, see here how):

Calendar Alarms Shortcut

Now, there are some things you need to know. Because of the limitations of the Shortcuts app, you need to keep these things in mind:

• if there’s already an alarm set for 2 minutes before your call (from a previous day), it will be put to on. BUT! It will not change the name of the alarm (it can’t be done through Shortcuts on iOS). We can’t delete it and replace it, as well.
• it only reads the iOS calendar, so you need to have your calendars added to that app, otherwise it won’t work
• because it reads the iOS calendar, if you add a call through another app (Google Calendar), you need to wait for the iOS Calendar app to sync, otherwise the shortcut won’t see the new meeting. There’s no Sync button on iOS Calendar, so sometimes it can take 5-10 minutes. I couldn’t find any way to change this.

P.S.: Finally, a little bit of promo for what I’m working on now: I think LinkedIn is bloated and almost unusable. So I’m working with my team on a solution that allows you to take back and easily manage your professional network. It’s called KeepClose.ai and it’s still in the early days, but if you think you might need something like this, get on our email list to be notified when we launched our alpha version.