Sometimes the best software comes from scratching your own itch. That’s definitely the case with BarCuts, my take on a contextual macOS Shortcuts launcher. What started as a personal annoyance turned into a proper little utility that I’m genuinely proud of – and it’s been quite the journey getting here. The Problem That Started It All Picture this: you’ve got dozens of Shortcuts workflows on your Mac. Some are for processing files in Finder, others for grabbing URLs from Safari, maybe a few for formatting text in your notes app.

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Yesterday, I finally got around to moving my Discourse forum to a new hoster. The last two years I had it running at Communiteq – rock-solid, but the (reasonable!) $50/month is more than I am willing to keep spending on a very low-traffic forum. So I looked into a couple of hosting companies and, in the end, decided to go with PikaPods. It’s a European outfit (Malta); I like what they have on offer, and my stuff resides in the EU.

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Update 2025-09-16: This morning, I received an email from Dave M. @ Google: […] you should be able to get to our models without Proxyman now. Use https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/openai as the URL, and we should now handle the rest. I gave it a spin, and indeed: The proxying described in the original post below is no longer needed. So in Xcode 26, this is the form input now: Type: Internet Hosted URL: https://generativelanguage.

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macOS 26β is out, and so is Xcode 26β with LLM support. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get any of it to run as the beta refuses to allow me to use Apple Intelligence – because apparently Apple Intelligence isn’t available in virtual machines at all? Wild. But not being able to set up Apple Intelligence means not being able to use the ChatGPT models in Xcode 26β which is one of its main draws for me.

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When life gets rough, it’s easy to become sarcastic or cynical, but I realized a long time ago that that’s not healthy at all. In a way it’s like really having to pee when you’re in a swimming pool with other people (bear with me). You could be blasé about it, and every time there’s a bitter laugh about the situation, you pee a tiny bit. It’s a big pool, right?

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While everything seems to be terribly bleak right now, please remember that not everything is. There’s a lot of good stuff done by good people all around the world. Societal progress isn’t a fantasy, it’s happening all around us. These #newsletter show what’s already working: climate solutions ready to scale up, environmental policies making progress, successful conservation efforts, and real advances in human rights. Good things are happening everywhere. Here are a few links to sites and newsletters highlighting those.

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November was a blur.1 We were preparing for a move (new apartment!) and dealing with a number of things. I didn’t have many spare cycles left for mindful consumption of anything media. 🎮 Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Xbox – GLORIOUS. Dragon Age: Inquisition is one of my favourite games of all time, and Veilguard looks like a worthy follow-up, at the very least! Elle Griffin: Mondragon as the new City-State – Great, clear-eyed independent look at one of the largest group of worker coöperations in the World, the Mondragon Corporation in Spains Basque region.

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Another year has gone by, and my toolkit hasn’t changed much since the last time I did a post like this… 📨 Mail Client: Fastmate 📮 Mail Server: Fastmail (since 2013!) 📆 Calendar: Fastmail via Fantastical 📁 Cloud File Storage: Fastmail, iCloud Drive, and Hetzner Storage Box 🙍🏻‍♂️ Contacts: Fastmail via Cardhop 📝 Notes: Obsidian ✅ To-Do: Obsidian for day-to-day business-related work and high-level planning, Linear for (code) project planning and issues, Apple Reminders for personal stuff

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A roundup of noteworthy things I’ve played, read, listened to, or watched over the last few weeks. It was simpler times. 🎤 Gary Gulman: “Born on 3rd Base” (2023) – For me personally, a funnier special than his previous two. 🎮 PowerWash Simulator | Xbox – I have no excuse. I liked it a lot for some reason. At some point my mind turned this game into part 2 of the excellent Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture.

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A roundup of noteworthy things I’ve played, read, listened to, or watched over the last few weeks. 🎤 Steve Hofstetter: “Secret Optimist” – Hilarious stand-up special. Time well spent. 🎤 Steve Hofstetter: “The Recipe” – Excellent, very personal stand-up comedy special. This one had me lightly tear up once or twice. I love comics that tell personal stories, not just jokes. 📚 Phoebe_Zeitgeist: “Standard Operating Equipment”, Archive of Our Own – A short fan fiction story, placed in the late, great Iain M.

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Some things I believe might happen in the next few years, in response to the utterly insane 2024 US election that went to Trump. I just want to get this shit out of my head onto another canvas so it doesn’t circle around in my brain the entire time. I need to function, and that ever-present feeling of doom and dread doesn’t help. Preface: These are just the high-level thoughts my brain spit out.

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A roundup of noteworthy things I’ve played, read, listened to, or watched over the last few weeks. I was surprised myself, but I spent several hours watching outsidexbox’s videos and live streams on Youtube. Just what the doctor ordered: A great team of adults with good chemistry, playing games I don’t want to play but enjoy watching, bantering. Entertaining. 🎥 Tenet (2020) — Late to the party as usual, but I’ve enjoyed that weird-ass movie quite a bit.

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TIL that when you use the venerable keyboard customizer Karabiner Elements on macOS, Karabiner will emit a USB device key signal for the fn/🌐 key. This is great because I can now tell Keyboard Maestro (and likely BetterTouchTool, too) to use a fn press as a macro trigger! For example, this is how it looks when I configured ⌘fn as such a trigger: Useful!

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A roundup of noteworthy things I’ve played, read, listened to, or watched over the last few weeks. Busy times, so I kind of forgot about this list, so I’m trying to reconstruct it from memory. Which, incidentally, is a good yard stick! If I can remember it, it obviously was “noteworthy”, right? That’s just science, people. 🎥 The Fall Guy (2024) – Loved it. The whole movie just worked for me.

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A roundup of noteworthy things I’ve played, read, listened to, or watched over the last few weeks. In May, we were on vacation in Sweden in celebration of our respective birthdays, and I still am/was working a lot on my new macOS app, UI Actions. (Which is coming along quite nicely, thank you!) Redwood Material’s Nevada EV Battery Recycling Facility Attempts to Rival China - Bloomberg (Archive) – Recycling FTW.

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A roundup of noteworthy things I’ve played, read, listened to, or watched over the last few weeks. Not much, this time; I am/was working a lot, new macOS app and all. Late Night with Seth Meyers on YouTube – Love it. When he talks about “jackals”, I feel wholly included, which either tells you everything you need to know about my sense of humor, or nothing at all. 🎤 “Live (At the Time)” by Demetri Martin – I had a blast listening to this stand-up special, but it’s a different form than what I’m used to.

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A roundup of noteworthy things I’ve played, read, listened to, or watched over the last few weeks. A bit late, as usual, so … not really late. 📚 “Childhood’s End” by Arthur C. Clarke – A classic scifi work, new to me. Enjoyable, and painted in broad-enough strokes to not feel super-old. I love reading these really old foundational works and then discovering their clear influences in other novels, movies, stories that came later.

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A roundup of noteworthy things I’ve played, read, listened to, or watched over the last few weeks. It was a busy month, and I didn’t have much time for reading a book or playing some games. It happens. March is going better already. 😉 🎙️ “Socio” by Daniel Sloss – Funny stand up special by a funny Scotsman, a bit crass at times, enjoyable. I liked his earlier specials a bit more; I think it has something to do with him not being as professionally self-assured as he is now, if that makes any sense.

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A roundup of noteworthy things I’ve played, read, listened to, or watched over the last few weeks. 📺 For All Mankind: Season 3 – They don’t let up! The farther the show goes into speculative territory, the broader it gets. And it felt a bit rushed at times. High points: everything on Mars, even if the timing and logistics of the North Korean capsule don’t make sense to me (did they travel from Earth to Mars in that bucket?

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A roundup of noteworthy things I’ve played, read, listened to, or watched over the last few weeks. 📺 Star Trek: Discovery: Season 2 — Hoo boy, that was way, way too much. Everything was on fire, all the time, all at once, everything was at stake yadda yadda yadda. I think if it had 5-10 story arcs less the season would’ve been better. I’ve realized once again that Disco is not made for me, and that’s okay.

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Inspired by Assaf and Maique. 📨 Mail Client: Fastmate 📮 Mail Server: Fastmail (since 2013!) 📆 Calendar: Fastmail via Fantastical 📁 Cloud File Storage: Fastmail, iCloud Drive, and Hetzner Storage Box 🙍🏻‍♂️ Contacts: Fastmail via Cardhop 📝 Notes: Obsidian ✅ To-Do: Obsidian, Linear 🔖 Bookmarks: Obsidian 📖 RSS: Feedbin 📑 Read It Later: Feedbin 🌐 Browser: Brave (macOS/iOS) 💬 Chat: Telegram, Signal, Messages, Slack 🛒 Shopping Lists: Apple Reminders 🎤 Podcasts: Pocketcasts

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