Love listening to Brett Terpstra. Looking forward to listening to this episode.
Iâve just looked at the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard - thatâs insane!
Despite the huge number of options Iâve understood the benefit a keyboard that splits or tents. It just seems like an extra barrier to typing as efficiently as possible.
I mean I guess it would be possible to get used to it in time, but still, itâs not for me.
I havenât listened to the episode yet, but hereâs a shout out to one of my favorite keyboards.
Sorry to miss two in a row. Been out of pocket with a family situation thatâs just about resolved. Looking forward to publishing our next episode which is a real fun one. In the meantime, Iâm pumped to dive into this interview.
For true keyboard geeks, QMK compatibility will often be the deciding factor for whether a keyboard is actually âconfigurableâ or not.
Luckily, itâs quite easy to get or make a little dongle that sits between the keyboard and the computer and makes it possible to run QMK with even Apple USB keyboards. (No bluetooth yet)
Hey David,
If your iPad Pro keyboard is failing, go to Apple and get a new one. Iâm on my second Smart Keyboard case and on my third(!) iPad Pro 10.5. If itâs a hardware problem and not your fault, they will give you a new one.
I have not a single device from Apple that hasnât seen a form of free service (just got my watch series 3 replaced as well [force touch was failing and the battery life was at 15 h]).
I always enjoy the broadcasts when Brett Terpstra is a guest. I went and took a look at
nvUltra and it looks really interesting. I look forward to itâs release. The concept of the app alone has me diving in my purse. Good show guys!
I agree. The tenting idea throws me for a loop. I suppose I could get used to it, but why?
Tenting is commonly seen as better for RSI. No idea if it works.
What episode is Fletcher Penny featured in? He was mentioned in this Brett Terpstra episode.
Google is your friend:
37⌠Thatâs like⌠pre-war!
Brett mentioned a git-like app for writers. He couldnât quite get the name. I confirmed with him on Twitter that he was thinking of Draft Control ¡ Save every version, track every change.
I have used this and really liked it, but it hasnât been updated in like 2 years. I think it was about $10 which wasnât enough to be sustainable, especially with a niche audience.
(UPDATE: Brett confirmed that Draft Control no longer works, so if you were thinking of buying it despite its age⌠donât.)
I also like Tower, but I donât use it enough to justify the $70/year subscription price, so Iâve stuck with version 2 which had a single-purchase license, and which does everything that I need.
This seems like something that could be emulated with Hazel. Each time the file changes, save it with a date & time appended - maybe into a hidden folder.
To be honest, the reason I didnât ever really use it (even though I owned it) was that:
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I get 30-dayâs worth of âundoâ from Dropbox
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Almost all of my files are in Dropbox
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I canât recall ever wishing that I could go further back in time than what Dropbox offered me
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Dropbox largely âjust worksâ and Draft Control often didnât
Keeping a copy every time you save is fine if youâre working with small text files, but if youâre working with something large and complex, you wouldnât want to duplicate it on each save (git and programs like it are able to save just the differences between changes, which is much more efficient).
Youâd probably find that âevery saveâ is actually too often in most cases. What you really want is more like every paragraph or every page. If you changed a word, saved, then wrote a sentence, saved again, then re-wrote it, and saved again⌠you might want each of those versions, but you might not. The trouble is, itâs hard to know until youâre in the thick of it. For some documents, you might really only want to save a âversionâ of it each time you close the file and finish working on it for the day.
Agreed. I just saw an editor with infinite undo, canât recall which.
iCloud has versioning too, though I donât have occasion to use it.
I keep everything important (except binaries/data) in git repos.
This would be a good indication that youâre using Word 
Yeah, in fact I have never found it necessary to have more than the end of the dayâs version. And not much use of that really. Sometimes I think it is a case of us following the capabilities of the technology rather than vice versa.
I did form my writing habits on hard copy I admit. I find I have really developed new habits since IT; forming sentences on the screen rather than in my head I might put it. I donât need prior versions for that though, I just keep correcting a paragraph or sentence at a time and never need previous versions.
My first paper though was done on Word I think 30+ years ago. I do write better electronically I think and did from the get go: however that one was a kind of fight with Word software as I remember it. I use Ulysses all the time now till final version and find it meets all my needs and without any âbattlesâ.
I have written articles on mimeograph, lots at one time: that was an irritating challenge with no room for error and I donât long for the âgood olâ daysâ. However some older writers who famously wrote âstraight off the batâ, Bertrand Russell for example, produced what remain classics of style and content. I use, for final versions, LaTeX; very often because I love the program for aesthetic reasons you might say; the visual type set result of it too. It was designed as a type setting program as you know and is not relevant to this topic!
Thatâs okay. If you mention Word, you can mention LaTeX. It restores the balance in the Universe.
Re alternatives to git-hub, particularly for writing you donât wish or shouldnât be made public, my choice is Fossil SCM, written to support development of SQLite. Admittedly itâs command line driven, but is quite simple.