From the category archives:

Mac OS X Automation

An AppleScript Function to Zero Pad a Value

October 22, 2009

An AppleScript function to zero-pad integers.

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Testing for Missing Value in AppleScript

October 14, 2009

The other day I got temporarily stuck on an AppleScript I’ve been tinkering with because I could not figure out how to test for what I perceived as a “null” value. I had set a variable to a property of a class and was getting the result “missing value”. Here’s how I solved it.

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Great Examples of TaskPaper AppleScripts

October 9, 2009

I’ve been taking a look at TaskPaper of late and stumbled across this page on their company wiki. This is a gem. It’s like an AppleScript Dictionary on steroids for the application.

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Thinking in AppleScript

October 7, 2009

am starting to “think in AppleScript”. I question pretty much anything that I do that seems remotely time intensive or rote and ask myself, “can you script that?” I am adding scripts to my “ideas list” faster than I’m able to write them at the moment.

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Use Dropbox to Create a Yojimbo iPhone App

October 1, 2009

This morning I read that DropBox announced their new iPhone app, and it occurred to me that you could set up the Dropbox iPhone app to clip images directly into Yojimbo with very minimal effort. I was so pumped. The lack of an iPhone app for Yojimbo was the reason I started using Evernote, so this was a total game changer

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Ken Clark’s Blog on the Mac Power Users Podcast

September 30, 2009

Earlier this week, David Sparks and Katie Floyd of the Mac Power Users podcast released Episode 11: Services and Macworld 2010. This show featured a discussion about Mac OS X Services and Mac automation and included a mention of my blog post, Using Mac OS X Services to Import Files into Evernote.

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Learning Applescript… One Script At A Time

September 30, 2009

I have been pushing myself of late to take my Mac knowledge to that next level, and as far as I am concerned the path to get there goes straight through Mac OS X’s automation tools, and Applescript in particular.

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An Applescript to Move Screenshots From the Desktop

September 30, 2009

This Applescript is a folder action I wrote that moves screenshots taken with Mac OS X from my Desktop to a designated screenshots folder.

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A Quick and Easy Way to Back Up Posterous with Automator

June 29, 2009

One of the concerns I had with using Posterous for my blog was ensuring I had my own backup of my posts given the company is still in start-up mode and the content is hosted on their servers.  Luckily, they have an API, and if you are a Mac user it is very easy to [...]

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Applescript: Count Characters in Clipboard for Twitter

June 29, 2009

Every now and then I need to copy text into my Twitter client app and need to know if I am bumping against the 140 character limit.  I wrote this quick applescript to simplify my life.  It counts the number of characters in the clipboard and subtracts that number from 140, so you know if [...]

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