I bought some cyber clean, and now I’m finding pleasure in cleaning every little piece of technology around the house. Even the light switches and power outlets are getting the treatment.
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I keep meaning to do this! Thanks for the reminder.
I thought of another thing that regularly brings me joy, and I’ve been experiencing it for years and it hasn’t really lost it’s charm. I do a lot of illustrations for slide decks and I love that I can draw something on my iPad (in GoodNotes), lasso it, tap copy and then paste it directly in the slide on my computer. (This works best in Google Slides because it never tries to turn the drawing into text. PowerPoint does that and so you have to paste special, which is not as elegant.)
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Glad I could remind you!
Along the same lines, we’ve got an automation for our outdoor lights to automatically turn on at night and off in the morning. It’s very nice not to have to think about that, especially since we never had to worry about it in our old condo.
I do this, too. The porch light is set to turn on at sunset and off at sunrise, and I never need to touch it.
Still no joy on the garage door front. I set up an automation to disconnect WiFi when I connect to CarPlay. Closing the door from CarPlay works just fine.
I can see the door’s status when I’m away, and can easily open and close the door remotely. But if I’m anywhere near my apartment, I can’t open the door until/unless I connect to my home WiFi. It’s bizarre.
¯\__(ツ)__/¯
Love this idea @beck!
When I tried in Keynote, it does turn into text as you mentioned and I’m not sure if there’s a way to avoid that (like you mentioned for Keynote). One general workaround is to paste into Preview and then copy/paste to Keynote or app of choice from there.
This thread is bringing me a lot of delight. Please keep sharing folks.
My parents came by to visit last night, and they had clearly spent some time at an Apple store. My dad pulled up his sleeve to reveal an Apple Watch (Series 7, he’s more up to date than me!).
Soon after, my mom pulls out a brand new iPhone SE. I was delighted and totally shocked. This is her first ever smartphone, and she’s excited to be able to text with more ease and get pictures of her grandkids too!
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And of course I have to add my favorite app Keyboard Maestro which endlessly brings me joy creating cool automations.
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Since I started this thought I needed to add another joy from this afternoon. I am currently in the LONG process of repurposing my Flickr account (long story) and move a bunch of photos to the Photos app. Frankly, Flickr in general is a bit of a pain to work with including the fact that whenever you download images stored there they cannot simply give you a file with the original name. Instead they give you file with the original name plus 13-15 additional characters (the joy is coming…wait for it). So, I figured this was a job for Keyboard Maestro! Got a script that stripped all that extra crap off saving me HOURS of work (there were, and still are, a lot of images). The reason it was important for the images to have their original filename was so that when I imported them into the Photos app I could choose not to import images that already existed saving me even time. Anyway, that brightened my day!
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Hi,
your advice was spot on. I am loving the nvalt app and it grows on me more and more as I discover it’s potential which is actually invisible by just looking at the interface.
And, yes it has this feeling of lightning speed allowing you to type as fast as you think and want to create new files with new thoughts.
Thank you for this joy returned!!!
Inky
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Very nice! I got a similar experience setting up a couple pi-holes and a pi-based NAS. 
The automation checks to see if one of the lights that is triggered by the automation is at the desired setting. If so, the automation doesn’t fire. Here’s a screengrab of my “Good Morning” motion-triggered Home app automation:
We have two dogs, but they sleep in their kennels at night 
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Several months ago I installed the Philips Hue Light Strips under our kitchen cabinets. After that I installed them on the lip of our staircase. I felt super cool and my kids thought I was cool, because they could change the color of the staircase.
The 2nd part of all this…the staircase becomes the night light for the house. There’s an automation that at sunrise…the staircase turns off, and the kitchen cabinets turn on.
May not be “joy” per se, but it feels cool and a sense of ‘ahh, let’s get this day started’
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I know someone has already mentioned this but using siri to turn off all the lights in my home when I’m ready for bed using just the word “goodnight”, always brings a little smile.
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We set a scene called “deluminate” for this (and we named a lamp “lumos”).
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Have you used “nox” in another way?
I love nvALT but I thought it was dead and we are all waiting for Terpstra’s next version???
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No, but NOW WE WILL.
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Yep, but while we wait (and wait and wait and …) nvALT is still available. So why not use it?
It has been a long time coming …
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