Gordon Meyer

"The Gift of Mystery" on Medium

Medium is an interesting publishing platform from the original Twitter-ers. I've published my first post there, The Gift of Mystery.

Built-in disk dock for OS X

I've used Dragthing since the days of System 7. (For you youngsters, that's before OS X was Mac OS.) But lately, thanks to Alfred and Keyboard Maestro, I hadn't been using it much at all. When I recently switched to a newer Mac, I decided to try living without it.

The thing I miss most, it turns out, is its "disk dock;" a feature that makes it easy access all drives. As an alternative, I put the Volumes folder in my OS X dock. I set the folder to display as a fan; an option that's available via the contextual menu. Here's how it looks:

It turns out this is a pretty good substitute, although you have to get used to seeing the occasional odd volume that gets mounted by various maintenance tasks, which you'd normally never notice. If you're not familiar with the Volumes folder, it's one of those Unix-y things. To access it, so you can drag it into your dock, in the Finder choose Go > Go to Folder, then enter "/Volumes" and click Go. Then drag the Volumes folder proxy icon, from the top of the Finder window, to a spot in the dock.

There's a good chance I'll end up installing Dragthing for some of its other nifty features, but I'm pleased to have remembered a solution that doesn't require any additional software to make it work.

Hue gets smarter

Philips has announced an upgrade to Hue, which will allow the lighting system to work with IFTTT, geofencing, and other tantalizing options.

See also: A Word About Hue and Philips Releases Hue API

Automation to move messages to a folder in OS X Mail

Back until a few releases ago (OS X Tiger, i think) OS X's Mail app would remember the last folder you moved a message into, even between launches. In other words, if you moved a message into the folder "Orders," the menu item Message > Move to 'Orders" Again would persist until you moved a message to a different folder. This was very handy for me, as I rarely file messages, except for receipts from web-based shopping.

I finally got sick of manually filing these messages. (Hey, it only took a couple of years, right?) So I investigated ways of automating this process. This Mac OS X Hints thread was useful, but way overkill for my needs.

I ended up creating a Keyboard Maestro macro that simply moves all selected messages in the "Orders" folder, which is "On my Mac," inside the "Personal" folder. It's only available when Mail is the active app, so it's not otherwise cluttering up my macro menu. See below for the details.

Naturally, after creating this solution, it occurred to me that there's probably a much easier way. And there is, albeit still a little manual. Just add the target folder to Mail's Favorites Bar, then you can drag a message to the folder. Yeah, sure, that works too.

Door Jammer brace provides easy home security

Not all "Smart Home hacks" have to be automated, or even high-tech. Sometimes the handiest, most useful hack is also the simplest. Consider, for example, the Big Jammer Door Brace. It's a fantastic security device that I've used for almost 20 years, in 3 or 4 different homes. In addition to working with any door that opens inward, it works with sliding glass doors too. Well worth having and provides much peace of mind. It's also available from Amazon.