The Art of Automation and Productivity with Adam Olson

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jeff Battersby (00:00):
It's probably just a stroke.

Tom Anderson (00:10):
All right, welcome in.
It is another episode of BasicAF.
I'm Tom, along with Jeff.
Jeff, how we doing.

I'm Well, tom, when I just want to point out
that, even though we sound nicenow, we've completely gone off
the rails before we even beganthis evening.

So Well, that's what we usually do.

It's true.

Yeah, and so we're Another show, want to say
welcome if you're new, thanksfor checking us out and giving
us a shot and hope that we earna spot on your playlist and, if
you're coming back for anotherepisode, thank you for your
ongoing support of the show.
We do very much appreciate it.

This episode, jeff, we have a guest with us
again, tom, you, you just don'twant to do things with me alone
anymore.

You kind of weird me out, man.

Adam's already taking us down a path.

Great Thank you, he has so joining us on this
episode, former colleague ofmine, Adam Olson.
Adam, welcome to the show.

Adam Olson (01:19):
Thank you, good to be here.

Yep.
And so when Adam and I workedtogether, how long ago did you
leave, like how long ago?

It feels like it's about six years or so, five
minutes after you arrived.

Adam Olson (01:36):
And I'm glad it feels longer to you, Tom.
I appreciate it.

It does.
Yeah, it seems like it's beenquite a while, but, like we've
said on this show before, likethe COVID period, I'm still
trying to get like time backfrom that, like it got really
weird.
But Adam and I used to gettogether and hang out I don't
know every couple of months, Ithink and we would nerd out on
workflows and automation andproductivity hacks and things

(02:02):
like that.
And Jeff, you had an idea for ashow based, you know, on that
topic and I thought, oh, I knowthe perfect guy to bring in for
this.

Adam Olson (02:11):
I got a nurse.

Right.
And that's when I pulled out mycollection of automations and
then Adam pulled out hiscollection of automation.
I was like, okay, I'm gonna gohome now.
I thought I was doing prettywell, but I got nothing, man.

Yeah, that's impressive, and we're going to
dig into that.
So the premise for this showwill be automations, workflows.
And before we kind of startdown the path, I would encourage
you, if you're listening inyour ear, don't be intimidated
by those words automations andworkflows.
You can have very simpleautomations that you get benefit

(02:54):
from on a daily basis.
They don't have to be thesecomplex 100 step things although
I think Adam's got some ofthose but you just don't have to
have that, and so we're goingto dig into that.
So I encourage you, even ifit's something, you're thinking
how this is going to go way overyour head, it won't completely.
So you know we may, towards theend of the show, maybe dig into

(03:15):
some super nerdy stuff, but wedo want to try to make it
beneficial for you as well, sothat you can maybe take some of
these away and apply them in apractical manner.

Yeah, and to give you an idea of, like, the
simplicity of some automations,one of the ones that I use now
regularly is a double pat,double, a double tap on the back
of my phone to open up theHalide app.
So it's using a feature that'sbuilt into iOS that allows you

(03:45):
to tap the back of your phone to.
You know, typically typicallythat's an accessibility feature,
but I've enabled that so that Ican open Halide, which is photo
app, because iOS at leastpresently and probably not in
the next version of iOS itdoesn't allow you to select a
particular camera app.
So this gives me the ability todo that, and it was a really

(04:09):
simple, really simple scriptthat that I created that I can
use with a shortcut app and justopens up Halide and I'm ready
to go.

Adam Olson (04:18):
So, as Tom says I got screenshots for that same
thing.
Double tap and a lot ofunintended screenshots at that.

Oh good, great.
So just want to point outalready Adam's not as smart as
you be, because he's takenscreenshots with a double tap.
I was embarrassed to be on thisshow.
Now I'm feeling like I'm kindof smart.

We're in our element, Jeff.

Okay, good call.
I'm sorry, Adam, I didn't meanto denigrate you within the
first five minutes but it's done.

Adam Olson (04:56):
We're setting the bar low, so that's good.
I have nowhere to go.

No, we've gone this show man.
So, adam, if you don't mind,you want to tell us a little bit
, like what Apple products areyou using these days?
I know, like I say, it's beenfive or six years, so, like in
terms of Mac, phone, watch, thatkind of stuff, what do you have
these days?

Adam Olson (05:21):
So the gamut.
I don't have my goggles yet,but I've got a watch phone, ipad
, fairly new M1 Mac Pro, so Istill got the old trash can, so
I'm running that as a desktop aswell.
So, and I just got rid of the40 Mac minis that I bought off

(05:44):
of you, tom.

So those are the box you sent me.
Take sure of those boxes.

No, we used to take our old computers at the
office and when they reached theend of life we'd do like a
community, if you want to callit that, a CO, for, like the
staff and faculty and Adam wasalways there picking up stuff
for who knows what projects-After a while.

Adam Olson (06:13):
Why do I have so many of these?
So I just gave them out topeople in the office.
I had probably 10 to 12 ofthose things.
So, oh my gosh.
Oh yeah, I'll use that for aserver.
Yeah, I'll use that for Plexserver or like I want anything
to do with these.

You're trying to look at these.

Adam Olson (06:30):
Exactly so.
That's pretty much my gamut,though.
So I haven't got the new watch.
That does look appealing.
I hiked the grand last year andI got about a thousand feet
from the top and my watch diedon me and I thought if I had the
new watch I'd make it day and ahalf.
So I was pretty mad I didn'tget my elevation gain on that

(06:52):
one.
So Right.
That's been good.

Very cool, and it looks like you have a pretty
hefty list of applications thatyou use on the regular too.
So why don't you tell us alittle bit about, like, who you
are, what you do, how you knew,tom, what you were doing at
Shenandoah and what you're?

Adam Olson (07:12):
doing now?
Yeah, so I, uh, I'm a guitarplayer that ended up messing up
my hands and got into the otherside of the glass with a
recording technology which Iactually wanted nothing to do
with.
I remember early teachers thatwere talking about pedals and
stuff and I didn't want to doanything.
Technology and my days are nowor about 12 plus hours a day on

(07:38):
a computer for the last 25, year, 20 years, something like that.
So it's been.
It's been a lot.
Um, like I mentioned earlier, Ihad a lot of keynotes and very
invested in Apple.
I finally just left Windows,for the most part about three

(07:58):
years ago.
So, um, I was in Pyramix andsome other audio applications
that just from companies that Iwas working in that were on
Windows.
But, um, quicken was my laststretch of just keeping me on
Windows and I finally justbagged that on Windows.
Don't do any more VM boots intothat.
There's a.

(08:18):
There's a rare handful of timesthat I'll have to go into some
Windows for different things,but I I've been an app junkie
probably for about 15 years, sohence Tom and I's conversation.
So I've I've all those dealsthat they they throw out on a

(08:40):
zillion different sites.
I generally tend to buy them.
If they're five, ten bucks,I'll I'll throw money that their
way and see if they're useful,and I've got probably thousands
of apps that I've just left tobe archived and never to use
again.
So, um, but it was tricky whenyou guys asked me, like what,
what are some of the main apps?

(09:00):
But, um, I trimmed it down tothese are.
These are the apps that I douse regularly.
We can, we can get intoOmniFocus.
I mean, there's a handful ofapps that I use all the time.

Yeah, so why don't you tell us what those are
and in the why behind, why youuse them?

Adam Olson (09:15):
Sure, um, just, I guess, fly, fly through these.
So OmniFocus, it's a GTD methodof getting things done and it's
, um, it's the the best one thatI've found.
Tom, are you still using thingsyou had mentioned?
You were on one of your shows.
Did you bag that?

I've been doing an experiment with reminders.

Adam Olson (09:38):
Okay.

Um, but, and part of it's just because of the.
It's got like the position onefor Siri stuff, which I do a lot
of stuff with the watch inparticular um, with Siri to say,
hey, remind me blah, blah, blah, blah, or in the car with car
playing stuff, and you can setup that kind of link between
things and reminders and stuff.

(09:59):
But I thought, well, let megive reminders a shot because it
has the benefit of being theApple app.
But I gotta tell you I openedthings yesterday and I was like,
oh, how pretty it is.
And it was like and I hadn'tlooked at it in a while, uh so

(10:20):
on the edge of going back yeah,I'm thinking maybe I'll go back
or at least try that uh again,try that uh uh.
Integration between the two,where you can set up like a
designated reminders list andreminders that things will just
pick it up from and drop it inyour things list.

Adam Olson (10:35):
So I do that.
Yeah, I wish there wassomething that was a little bit
better integrated.
So so there's been a lot ofamens as I've been listening to
your show on different things.
You're talking about Siri andhow, how things integrate.
You're that's one that drivesme nuts.
I wish I could just do a heySiri easily and and have things
jump into the, into OmniFocus.

(10:56):
Well, but it seems so hit andmiss, even though they've added
those features.
So, um, anyway, so that'sOmniFocus.
That's what I use for that.
I absolutely love the GTDmethod.
Um, won't go into that too much, but um I I think that it's
fantastic that it's super simple.
Or you can make it reallycomplicated based on areas that

(11:16):
you're at and projects andeverything else, but both of
those are basically similar apps.
Um I I just gravitated towardsOmniFocus because it seemed a
little bit more powerful and Iuse Apple Scripts all the time
on it and it seemed a lot betterto use Apple Scripts with it
than than things.
So that's why I went that route.
Um, pro Tools, cubase, newWindow I'm an audio engineer, so

(11:39):
I do.
I'm in and out of Pro Tools allday long, so that's uh app.
I live and die by Logic's beengreat.
I'm a um, certified Logic, umadvanced instructor, but I I
don't find myself in Logic asmuch as I, um, as much as these
other two apps.
So there's just things thatbother me a little bit with
Logic and the way they edit andit.
It does certain things, butfantastic app as well, um, uh,

(12:01):
you, I want me to just keepflowing.
Yeah, tell us, tell us whatyou're using and why.
Yep, yep.
So, um, as far as just straightup, apple, a, a given is
calendar, so I use that.
Um with the app sessions, we canget into that with some um,
some flow workflow things withKeyword, maestro and some other
stuff, but basically, um, the,the thing that I really like
with that is again theintegration with some Apple
scripting things.
That, um that I throw basicallykeeps track of what I'm doing

(12:23):
for my day.
I used my calendar more totrack histories than I do of
upcoming events for Applecalendar.
And, um, tom, you had mentionedin the in an earlier show, just
, I, you know, I I used mycalendar more to track things
that I throw.
That basically keeps track ofwhat I'm doing for my day.
I use my calendar more to trackhistories than I do of upcoming
events for Apple Calendar.

(12:44):
And, tom, you had mentioned inan earlier show just trying to
find a nice integration with thewatch and everything.
And man, I went through so manyapps for the calendar like
dozens of apps I downloaded andpaid probably hundreds of
dollars trying to find somethingthat integrated really well.

(13:05):
I use Fantastic Cal forever andI'm not a fan anymore.
I love the groups in FantasticCal.
There's things that it doeswell, but there's just too many
issues and subscription andeverything else.
So the thing that I actuallysurprisingly settled on was for
the watch at least integrationbetween everything to keep track
of what's up is Outlook.

(13:25):
Outlook actually syncs fairlyfast and it syncs between Apple
Calendar, which I throw out onApple Calendar, and then it goes
to the watch app really welland shows me what I'm doing and
what's coming up next.
We can talk about Pomodoro in asecond, but when I'm doing a
Pomodoro or whatever task I'm in, it tells me when I'm done

(13:45):
really well, and it has a niceintegration there.
So that's what I settled on,which was kind of surprising,
since I don't know if it'sMicrosoft.

Check that out.
Yeah, I'll go back and look.
Jeff, you use Outlook on iOS,right?
Do you still do that?

More very specific things.
I use it for some of the peopleI consult with because their
calendars are in MicrosoftOffice.
I use FantasticOwl that's mygo-to but it sounds like the
things that I'm using it for,which is really just to keep
track of what's coming up, asopposed to historical

(14:21):
information.
So that may be why Everybodyhas a subscription I mean even
Apple now with their iPad appsfor final cut.
And what was the other one?
Logic, Logic, yeah.
Logic yeah, so a little annoyed.

(14:44):
That annoyance goes a long ways, by the way, for every single.
If you're using the sub stackor something like that anybody
that you're reading on sub stackin order to see the details,
you have to subscribe.
It's like damn it.
I just want to.
You know Where's a magazinewhere I can subscribe once and

(15:04):
read 50 articles, as opposed tosubscribe to 50 people and read
it one time.
But you know it's a.
You know I'm a littlesubscribed out and I probably,
when I get a few minutes, wantto think about that.
But I do love Fantastic Hell,so Fantastic Hell for me
integrates really well with thatlook.

Adam Olson (15:24):
So I haven't found anything else.
Maybe you guys have.
That actually does the groupinglike Fantastic Hell does, cause
I have so many differentcalendars for things that just
be able to click and turn all ofa certain group off at once.
That was, and there's keycommands you can assign, so that
I loved about Fantastic Hellfor sure, so it's really good
for that, not that I use thatbut and they raised that

(15:47):
subscription too- last year.

Yeah, they did Right and it was fairly
considerable amount, and I wason the fence but I've kind of,
you know, I've hit the crack andso I'm stuck with it.
So, so, so.
I'll just automate these checkboxes with keyboard by stress
over there, right, yeah, so Imean, it's probably honestly,

(16:10):
it's probably at its limit forwhat I'm like if they were to
say, next year, bump it again.

I'd probably be like hmm, I think I'm good.
Yeah, I might be the same, butwe'll see.
So anyway, all right Adam Cool.

Adam Olson (16:22):
Yeah, so Pathfinder is a huge one.
And this, again, this is one ofthose things that I have looked
everywhere.
I worked with this company fora while, about probably five
years ago I have not foundanything in the Finder that
actually allows you to drag anddrop and just merge the folders
really well.
I mean, I know there's azillion little tiny apps that

(16:43):
you can do and, but justsomething that's smooth like
that.
Windows has been doing thatsince at least Windows 98 and
that will tell you this one'snewer, which one do you want to
keep?
So, yeah, again, tons of littleutility apps, but they do not
do it as well as Pathfinder.
That's the main reason I've beenusing it.
I've been in it for hours andhours at a time At this point

(17:06):
just merging a bunch of old junkand things that needed to be
put together that I didn't wantto go all the way down to the
sub level or if they had sharednames.
So that app has been fantastic.
I loved it.
So, pathfinder, I'm still usingQuicksilver, if you remember
that app from way back in theday.

So Quicksilver, I remember the name, I can't
even remember what it.

Adam Olson (17:30):
It's basically Alfred, so it's like it's a
launcher.
Yeah, as far as I know, I thinkit was probably one of the
first ones that were ever there.
I mean, it'd be Taskbar, andnow what's the one I just spent
time with?
I can't even think of what'scalled.
It's with the queue.

Yeah, I had that on my Mac for a while too.
I think I know what one you'retalking about, which is it's
kind of a freeware app or wasyeah, yeah, yeah, can't remember
what it is, but I know exactlywhat you're talking about.
Great little app.
I liked it.
Yeah, so the one that we can'tgive a name to.
It's Raycast, so Raycast, therewe go.

Adam Olson (18:12):
Yeah, it's not a queue.
So that's Quicksilver.
So Raycast, that one's good.
There was just multiplelimitations on how it managed
screens and different things Idid and it wasn't enough to jump
over.
If it was going to combine afew other apps that I used, then
I would have stuck with it.
But, tom, you guys gripe aboutwindow management on Mac.

(18:36):
That was actually one that gotme into starting the program in
the first place, because I hadspent 100 plus hours trying to
find apps to be able to managewindows.
I now use size up.
I actually wrote my own app back10 years ago that I integrated
with Quicksilver SP Resize,because I was constantly moving

(18:57):
windows around and grabbing thesides.
It was a nightmare and stillit's a horrendous mess managing
windows, especially if you havethings vertically stacked.
No windows, any app that I'veever seen, ever remembers that.
Even within apps that managewindows, they don't ever
remember the right locations.

(19:18):
They don't pull them downlengthwise.
It seems to do OK sideways, butwe've got anyway where I work.
I've got things verticallystacked and then off to the side
and it's just a mess.
I can't stand it.
Windows has had that figuredout forever now, so that one I
love.
There's certain things thatApple does, so two apps that I

(19:38):
use for that again is size up.
And then the other app that isdefinitely worth mentioning is
Switch Res X, and that's allowedme if you mess with that,
that's allowed me to be able toturn off certain monitors.
So I have four monitors that Iwork with.
There's times where I need tojust turn off one of them and

(19:59):
you can just use a key command.
I use that at work all the time.
Tom, when I was with you In thestudio, all four of us that
were in there constantly we hadvertically stacked, which I hate
.
I hate the vertical stacked, theway it works.
So I would always lay the, eventhough they're vertically, I'd
lay them out sideways, and theguys other guys would hate that.
Switch Res X handled all thatstuff.

(20:21):
So it's just, everybody hadtheir own key command assigned.
It also allowed me to throwApple scripts in, so it would
change the desktop backgroundand resize the screen as well,
and so as soon as they came up,they would see oh, it's not my
desktop, I can see we're onAdams or somebody else, as they
would run a key command and thenit would move all the monitors.

So fantastic app for that.
Yeah, that's nice.

Adam Olson (20:44):
And it still works great.
So in Ventura we're using it.
I've been using that, I don'tknow, for at least eight years,
so that one's been great.
So you guys had TextExpander.
I use TextExpander still.
I still don't do thesubscription.

(21:06):
I stopped when I went tosubscription and it still works.
Thankfully I've got so manyTextExpansions and that that
I've attempted to switch overinto other apps, but it would be
too long and cumbersome to dothat, so maybe something
Keyboard, nice and Maestro needsan import feature.
I know, and I've actually triedto do Keyboard Maestro for all

(21:29):
that, and I felt like that'sworthy enough to keep separate.
I do have several of themthat's in Keyboard Maestro, but
it's just been easier to managethose separately.
So I probably would, though ifthey did have a nice quick
import.
So anyway, there's a ton ofapps.
So Sessions, superduperSessions is an app that I use.

(21:53):
I do Pomodoro, so I'll talkabout that real quick.
Pomodoro is basically for me, acomplete lifesaver I found about
15 years ago, which basicallysays do 25 minutes of something
and then you get a five minutebreak.
So you're totally on, game onas hard as you can for 25
minutes and then you can veg out, watch YouTube, go for a walk,

(22:16):
whatever you want to do, andthen back on again, and then
every four times you do that,you take a 20 minute break.
If you're being true toPomodoro, as it comes from, I
guess, an Italian timer some guycame up with, I think in the
80s.
Are you guys familiar with that?
Have you used that at all?
Yeah, very much.
Yeah, ok, so that with GTD,which those two don't even

(22:37):
overlap with each other, it'sjust so good, at least for me,
for keeping my brain on track.
So, sessions, I use an old appcalled Pomodoro.
It would go out and it wouldset a thing for Twitter for me.
It would actually Golder wouldprobably laugh be listened to
this.
But I set up an app for himthat would run on his computer.

(22:57):
That would let him know when Iwas done with my Pomodoro.
So he came to my hand.

Sorry, Golder, bless you.

Stay out of my office.

Pretty much.

Adam Olson (23:11):
I'm a butt, I know, but staying focused is so hard
at work, especially in thesummers when you're trying to do
stuff Anyway.
So I set that up and that appthere was no app that I could
find that really did that well.
And the guy that's been workingSessions, he phenomenal.
He's taken all of thosefeatures.

(23:31):
It throws it into Outlook andtells me what tasks I've done.
It throws it into Calendar.
Anyway, it does a ton of things.
So we could nerd out for a longtime and that one.
But that's basically the ideabehind that app and I have not
seen any app that's even closeto as good as what Sessions does

(23:52):
.
They're working on a watch app,but right now my integration
for that is what I alreadymentioned with Outlook, so it
throws it into my Apple Calendarand then Outlook actually syncs
it and it shows on my watchwhat I do, what I'm working on.
So that's been helpful.
Who to Spot?
I don't know how I missed thisapp.
I've heard that.
Have you guys used who to Spotat all?

Heard of it, never used it.

Adam Olson (24:15):
So I heard of that for years and finally I just bit
the bullet and really divedinto it.
It basically is built onSpotlight, but it is a thousand
times better than Spotlight.
It's so much faster.
It uses Spotlight's database,so Spotlight gets messed up.
It won't work so you have torebuild things.

(24:37):
But it finds everything.
It saves your last search.
You can save your own searches,the filters rather than trying
to click that silly little plusicon and then save them off to
the side and the finder for yourSpotlight searches.
Just all of that, so manyfeatures, and it shows you all
the different things, ways herethat you can actually find Like

(24:59):
I needed to find 64 bitapplications that weren't 64 bit
and the developer spends superhelpful.
Just it's showing me exactlythis is what you look for.
This is what will tell you allthat information.
I come back to that all thetime.
It's so much faster thanSpotlight at finding a bunch of
things.
So who to spot?
Well worth the money.
I think it's like 20 bucks andit's not a subscription for

(25:22):
whatever that's worth, hey.

Yeah, I'm just thinking about that.

Adam Olson (25:27):
Shout out for that.
So anyway, those are.
There's a zillion others, butthose are probably some good
starters.
Bar Tender is one that I usefor menu lets, so just menu
items.
I have a zillion items in mymenu bar, so that one has been
fantastic for just being able toshrink things down and show

(25:48):
what I need to up in the menubar, so it's probably a good
start.

Great, nice list of apps, a bunch of these that
I've definitely used, and it'sinteresting, I don't use the
Pomodoro method directly, but Iuse a personal derivative of it,
which is basically set a timerand shut everything else off.
You know, I haven't.
I've used Vitaminar, which is areally good app.

Adam Olson (26:15):
Yeah, I did time Really really like that.

And actually the writing app that I use, which
I've mentioned about a billiontimes on the show.
But Highland Pro has a built-inwriting timer that I use
constantly just to kind of makemyself actually write for 20
minutes.
Often find myself banging itout to an hour or something like
that once I kind of get into it.

(26:39):
But that method if you donothing else, setting a timer
and paying no attention toanything else at the same time
is an excellent way of beingable to kind of get stuff taken
care of.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know about you guys, but
like if I get so easilydistracted, like Tom, there's a
dog.
Where.

Adam Olson (27:06):
Just saw a shirt today that said ADHD.

It was ACDC logo .

Adam Olson (27:12):
Hey, there's a squirrel.

Yeah right, exactly that's good.

Group.

So, like I've done , like Jeff mentioned in the
time, I'll do it on the watch.
Like I'll do 20 minutes on thewatch and turn on.
You know I'll turn on Do NotDisturb or Focus Mode or
something like that.
But I think the benefit of theapps, though and, Adam, if you
want to talk a little bit aboutthis is that with the apps, you
can set it up to like, restrictaccess to certain things, block

(27:40):
out certain websites, certainapps, and kind of chain all of
those things together, so youkind of set up your ideal
distraction-free workenvironment, right.

Adam Olson (27:51):
Yeah, yeah.
So that app for me, because I'ma nerd, just like it's
inspiring to me to look back andsee OK, this is what I did.
So what I love with that app isthat it's got different levels
of categories and I've Applescripted all of those so,
depending on the category, youcan have certain, like you just
said, certain things shut off.

(28:11):
I actually forgot that I had itshutting off messages and I
kept thinking that messages wascrashing on me, I was not being
faithful.
I'm like start my Pomodoro andthey're like, oh crap, I got to
send a message.
Why did it just crash?
But it was the app doing whatit's supposed to do.
And there's dozens I'm sure youguys have seen dozens of apps

(28:35):
like that that are specificallyshut stuff off and focused.
But if you can put all thosethings into one app that's why I
was trying Raycast for a whileit does all of those things.
The developer is phenomenallyso good with feedback and that's
half the time what breaks appsof me wanting to use them.
If there's not reallysupporting them, they're not

(28:57):
doing things.
So it is a subscription and it'sprobably one of my more
expensive subscriptions I thinkit's like $40 a year.
But there's a smaller versionthat doesn't give you all the
features but for what I needed,with the notifications and
everything else, the app isamazing and it syncs with your
phone really well.

(29:18):
So if you're in the middle ofsomething you walk somewhere
else, it will tell you on thephone.
You can make different screensthat actually have one button
pressed on the phone and you cango straight into a specific
thing.
So I have stuff I do every day.
Like I'll program every day.
I'll do keyboard shortcutsevery day and I'll do learning
of a new software application ora software application.
So I just have those on myphone.

(29:39):
I press a button, itautomatically runs all that
stuff.
So it's super, super nice.

And one thing I noticed in the session that I
did last night was that you getthat input at the end of the
session, like there's a littlefeedback box there, like what
were?
You working on how to go.
There's a.
I think there are emojis there.
You can say how would you ratethat session, and so I kind of
like that part of it.
I'm assuming once you buildthat up it does something with

(30:05):
it, because I saw there's likesome there's like a dashboard
analytic type thing in theresomewhere too, which is right up
Nerd Alley for me, I know ohgood.

Adam Olson (30:15):
I actually lost to SU when I was there Because they
cut my email off right away andI had I didn't transfer this
over, I had thousands ofPomodoro's that actually did
that in Google through, becauseyou guys are using the Gmail
suite, right?
I had that all in the back endand it would go to a spreadsheet
.
It was a Google form.
It would auto fill things outat the end and I would say was I

(30:38):
inflow?
Did I get distracted?
Did Goldor not listen?
Sorry, I was just kidding,totally kidding, but did
something happen in that?
And then I put notes.
So I had just tons of notes totry to help me know when the
best times are for things.
And yeah, that app has it allbuilt in.
So I don't use that a ton,surprisingly, but it's nice to

(31:02):
have there for sure.

I think we're going to have to get this Goldor
guy in here to defend himself.

Adam Olson (31:08):
I did want to mention you had talked about for
writing.
I don't know why I didn'tmention this up front, but
Scrivener has been amazing.
I use that every day, all thetime.
Do you mess with that?
I?

have Scrivener.
It's for my purposes little toomuch.
I know a lot of people.
There are a bunch of people Iwrite with.
I don't write with them, butthat are friends of mine who
write and we kind of allencourage each other and a whole
slew of them have Scrivener anduse it to do every single thing

(31:48):
, and I had it for a long time,set up novels in it or things of
that nature.
But for me and the way my brainworks, it just didn't work.
When I started using Highland,it was originally Highland app
and then became Highland Pro Formy purposes, which is

(32:11):
occasionally writing scripts,writing for once we're magazines
, they're now online outlets andthen writing, working on novels
and things of that nature,short stories, that kind of
stuff.
It is exactly what I need Not alot of buttons, not a lot of
stuff to worry about, set goalson particular pages and be done

(32:35):
with it.
And then the organization isall finder-based organization,
so you put your chapters infolders in somewhere in the
finder or wherever it is now iniCloud for most of this stuff.
You can just drag that in andit will not only let you see
what all the different piecesare that you're working with,

(32:56):
but it'll compile all thosetogether simply by having stuff
in the finder.
So that has become my go-to.
But I do.
I did like Scrivener.
It was just the same thinghappened with Word.
Word is too much junk, evenpages too much stuff to keep
track of.

Adam Olson (33:13):
I can change my font .

I can let me.
No, I'm gonna up it to 12.
Nah, 13 looks better.
You know you end up screwingaround with crap.

Adam Olson (33:20):
13.5,.
What are you talking about?

Yeah, you know you end up screwing around with
stuff and I, you know I that'sjust too much for me, you know,
so I just get in it's straighttext.
It's a.
It's a markdown based textapplication.
It responds to command.
So you know, command B for bulk, command I for italicize.

(33:44):
It puts the markdown in thereand is.

Does it hide the markdown or do you see it in
line?

It hides the markdown.

All right good.

Yeah, but in the actual text is text, and that's
the other beautiful thing aswell.
I went away from Scrivener andhad a children's book I was
working on in there and itdisappeared on me because you
couldn't use text anymore andthat was not a, not a good thing
.
So the beauty of of of HighlandPro is that it is a Just goes

(34:14):
to text files.
It's it's in a package file,but you can go into the package
file, pull them out, straight uptext.

Adam Olson (34:21):
That was my, my thing too, and I was searching.
I didn't want to be in some app, but I think I've been since
the start, probably less than ayear after they, they, they
started and it was, it was alltext files.
If I, if I couldn't pull it outof the package and it was all
gone, that would be devastating.
So yeah, Absolutely true.

Well, I mean you look at for script editing
software.
Final draft was King of theHills, you know, and and you had
to pay and it was proprietaryfile format you can actually
save to in Highland Pro.
You can save the final cut,final draft, final cut.

Close enough.

Adam Olson (34:59):
Final something I looked up that app you were
talking about.
I don't see why you would writethings.

It's really weird, but it does really.
It has pictures.

Adam Olson (35:11):
that means it says it's worth a thousand words.
So many.

So I I plug it in and hope that a thousand
words get generated by the AI.
Is that how it works?

So so, adam, I have a question for you.
You're doing comedy bit, tom,come on.
Well, you know, we got a, wegot other more important comedy
to get to in a minute, but the.

Adam Olson (35:34):
Hey, he calls my name.
I appreciate that.

We go way back old and it's okay.
Have you messed around at allwith the obsidian?

Adam Olson (35:46):
No, okay.

I haven't either, like I hear all the Apple nerds
talk about it and I've looked atit.
I just can't.

I don't know.
Obsidian, yeah, what is it?
So it's a, it's a writing app.

The name I don't know, you're old.
But no, it's one of those, thatwas my thought too, writing
apps, but more for notes andthinking, and it links the stuff
together Like they've gotextensions you can put into it,
but it's all markdown files too,so it's all in text I actually
have.

Adam Olson (36:19):
I have messed with that just just briefly.
That came out way later thanthan where I was.
That was yeah, exactly.
And, like I mentioned at thebeginning, I'm always down for
if something's actually gonnawork better, like I've switched.
I just switched over my journalto to Scrivener after all these

(36:40):
years, just this year, and I'dbeen in Word forever.
I'm like why was I not in that?
And then I switched over to today one for.
And now Apple's got theirjournal app.
That's coming out that you guyshave talked about.

But only on iOS.

Adam Olson (36:55):
Yeah, yeah, exactly so.
So I didn't see enoughcompelling reason to to switch
over the stuff.
That, for me, that I've lovedwith Scrivener is that I can
save all my searches.
I have thousands of notes in inin it that I've automated a ton

(37:18):
of things.
I love the focus writing modethat you can be in that you can
get rid of all the extra stuff.
It's just the, the searches andbeing able to set up on the side
, and I use this all the time.
I'm sure 99% of people probablynever use this, but I set up on
each page Depending on what I'min.

(37:39):
I'll have rankings for for howimportant certain things are,
and so I can go back and my mysearches will say, okay, this is
something I need to study again.
Or for my journal, this is how.
This is an audio related thingor this.
It's basically like tags, butyou can do that as well.
You can tag inside of it aswell.
So it's a little a littleconfusing to explain verbally

(38:00):
rather than something that youprobably want to see on a screen
, but there's multiple levels oftagging would probably be the
easiest way to to say, to searchfor stuff so that so you could
combine all those and searchjust within a page or show the
whole folder or show a wholegroup of folders and that stuff
I've, I've loved and it's it'shard to find those, anything

(38:22):
that really matches that kind of.

Those are really interesting uses for Scrivener.
Though that's you're saying,you're doing that in Scrivener.

Adam Olson (38:30):
Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah .

Those are that.
That that feels feels to melike you're taking it well
beyond what the you know whatnormies like me might use an
application for.
Yeah yeah.
So that's pretty, that's prettythoughtful usage of that
particular application.
But I could see the benefit ofthat.

Adam Olson (38:51):
And that when I, when I first started it that was
actually I just laid out all mycriteria of what what it was
that I needed and I went $200subscriptions was.
I can't even remember some ofthese apps, tom, you're in
academia, you probably use someof them, but, um, it's been.
It's probably it's probablybeen eight years since I've used
some of them.

(39:11):
But basically it would pull in,they'd be their own finder and
they would go out and pull outcertain different databases and
things, and I Looked at a ton ofdifferent things that were out
there and used them, paid forthem, and in the end it was
really Scrivener just was simpleenough and it and it did all
those filter searches of what Ineeded.
It's not something that youreally need to have a ton of

(39:32):
images in.
I use images in it, but thoseother apps just got way too
bloated for that kind of stuffthat I did.

List of stuff you tried.

Adam Olson (39:41):
Yes, devon think, thank you, yes, devon, thing
Okay, yeah, I remember that.
Yeah, I use that for a whiletoo that has like pillar column,
pillars, it's for academiastuff, that searches all all
your notes and pull stuff fromall.
Anyway, there's there's severalthat are out there, but
Scrivener just Crushed those forfor what I needed, for that
that type of stuff.

(40:01):
And I'm not, I'm, I don't, I'mnot really a heavy writer, I
just take tons of notes forthings and and it's nice to have
those all broken out.

So yeah, that's really interesting, really
interesting use case for thatapplication yeah that is.

Adam Olson (40:14):
I'm curious for Highlander Does that?
Does that sync super well withthe phone?
Do you?
Does that?

Is that same for so Highland Pro, both iOS and
iPad OS.
They have beta versions of theapplication that I'm testing.
It feels a little bit likethey're Not paying tons of
attention to.
They keep on renewing the betawithout adding any features.

(40:39):
I'm a little.
The nice thing about it is isit does sync in iCloud, so all
of those sync across iCloud andthey're they're both.
Both the iPad OS and the iOSapplications are decent, but I

(41:00):
will say that I, in a moment ofstupidity, instead of using
notes, a couple weeks back, youknow you know how.
You're standing in line at thegrocery store and you go, oh,
this is genius.
And you know you whip out yourphone and I start started typing
, typing some text into it, andand then I open up my Mac and

(41:21):
was editing something else andgo, oh, where's that?
Where's the stuff that I put inthere?
And then I opened the app againon my phone and it did sync and
overwrote all the edits that Ijust.
Yeah, that was not a happymoment.
So you know, stupid me forusing a beta.
You know, to play with realwork.

Adam Olson (41:44):
Miss with that for Scrivener.
I mean they lock it out andthey'll tell you that it's open
somewhere else.
So that's kind of their way ofdoing it.
If it didn't, if you didn'tclose it, they didn't get rid of
that locked file then.
But I've tried so hard andthere's so many Up, what do you?
What do you call themApologists I'm spacing the word

(42:07):
that Apologize for Scrivener oflike oh, they're doing the best
they can and you're asking fortoo much.
Like okay, I mean, there'sother apps that just sync really
well, day one being one of them.
I think it has been awesome.
So it's not, it's not great forthat.
So I pretty much, after givingit another go at it over the
years, like I heavily put timeinto it this this last month and

(42:30):
it just For me, it's not, it'snot worth it.
So I need to just basicallystay on my computer and not try
it on the phone.
Yeah, that's.

And that's I mean.
Ipad would be a place that Iwould write my phone.
It's only if I have, you know,flashes of brilliance, which are
fewer every day, by the way.

Adam Olson (42:50):
Standing in the grocery line.

Yeah right, that's the place, you know,
that's the place where, wherethe genius comes shower.

Keep nibbling on those kale chips while you're in
line.

It's peanut M&Ms , but yeah.

Adam Olson (43:06):
Mommy, I want this.
I've become, having a stroke ofgenius.

It's probably just a stroke.
I typically now all that stuffjust goes into into the notes
app and then I you know that'sthe easiest, the easiest way to
go.

So in terms of like workflows and automations,
kind of Go back back to thatlike what the show?

Nothing.

Yeah, the Seinfeld podcast, they, they.
If someone was new Then andwanted, like you know, they've
listened to the cool stuffAdam's doing.
They've heard some of thethings that we've done, jeff,
like your double tap to open theapp and stuff like that.
Like for someone it's justlooking maybe to jump into this

(43:58):
stuff new, where would, wherewould you guys recommend they
start?

Yeah, and I would say and I'll point this to
you, adam, we can.
We can definitely have me saysomething, but I would say what
are some basic starting pointsor basic value adds to doing
some automation?

Adam Olson (44:18):
sure what.
What angle do you want to take?

so, no, you're not supposed to ask that
question.
You're supposed to be reallysmart about it and give me an
answer.

Adam Olson (44:30):
Because there's a million different directions
obviously with this.
So it Apple has tried to bringthis to the lay person for a
long time.
I mean, initially Apple scriptswas there Wow, this is really
readable.
And then it ended up being likethis actually really stinks,
because Everybody's got theirown Syndication and even though

(44:50):
you can read it, it's completelyconfusing and it's not not
intuitive, even though it wastrying to be.
And then we got automator andautomator was drag-and-drop.
But how many people ever usedautomator like that was, I mean,
south, so going and I thoughtyou say his name Fantastic, I
think the dude's genius and Love, love his work and the things

(45:11):
that he's that he's come up with.
But it didn't quite make it.
And then now we've gotshortcuts Right so that that
made its way finally to the Macand the short little starting
stint on the IO, on iOS.
I use those a lot, I like thesimple button presses, but
there's still there's so manythings that Don't, for me, don't

(45:31):
seem to work super well orbreak.
Like share this with somebody,like I'll share an app that Says
when I'll be at somebody'splace works great on my phone
and they go through all thesteps and I'm walking through
the steps with them and itdoesn't work, like, why does it
not share properly?
There's just stuff that'ssupposed to be nice and easy
that just I don't.

(45:52):
I don't know what's missing.
Everything's entered exactlythe way it should be, but then
it just doesn't work and you sitthere.
So, as far as simple goes, Idon't know that there really is
a simple for anything.
Automation it's just a matterof is do you do anything over
and over every day?
And would you like that to be alittle simpler?
And and the question I get allthe time from people, gold would

(46:16):
ask me this.
I Think was fun, I guess.
What's that for shout-outs?
The golden now?
Yeah right.

He'll be famous before you.

Adam Olson (46:24):
Who is this golden?

This is now his show.

Adam Olson (46:30):
But he would ask me that I was like dude, how long
did that take to program that Icould automate uploading my
grades and things for stuff I'mI don't know two, three hours,
like how long, without of takingyou to do five minutes.
But for me it was thedifference between doing it or
not doing it At the end of theday, like it's all there, I can
press a button and I've testedit a zillion times, I know it

(46:51):
works.
So.
So that's the part that I thinkis important, like is there
anything that you do over andover that you just like to
simplify?
So Keyboard, maestro, I think,is a fantastic place to start
and just add it's basic signal.
It can go totally deep.
But at just Simulatingkeystrokes, I think we could

(47:13):
talk about Pretty quickly andfairly straightforward for
people some things that wouldjust speed up workflows
instantly that they could do so.
Anyway, that was a long, longanswer.

Yeah, and well, let's let's speak a little more
to that.
In keyboard, my store, keyboardmaestro is pretty much my go-to
for for any kind of automations, and I use it.
For example, I when I doconsulting.
I'm often working for amultitude of companies, you know
, it can be several companiesthat have several different

(47:46):
signatures every day, and so Ihave a Probably Half a dozen
keyboard maestro signatureswhere I put in a particular
signature for a particular event, whether it's theater that I'm
doing work for, whether it's,you know, the Court system
software that that I had beenworking with for for a while.

(48:08):
Each one of these has adifferent logo, has a different
piece of Information, a specificway in some cases, that they
want those signatures Formatted,and I could do all of that with
a simple keystroke.
Those were really simple thingsfor me to be able to do.
I want to point out too We'lljust make this aside the, the
Command tab switcher that's inkeyboard maestro beats the

(48:30):
living daylights out of the onethat's built into the Mac and
that's, you know, a Freebuilt-in, and that's as far as
I'm concerned.
That was the original reasonthat I got keyboard maestro way,
way back in the day, whenthat's all, it was.
Okay, it was, it was so.

Adam Olson (48:46):
That'll tell you how long I've been around, and then
did you start out with versionone, where you were you?

that was pretty early.
I couldn't say version one, butit was, it was.
I didn't.
You know a on the Mac OS it'scommand tab, command shift, to
have to go backward.
You know, like it it works.
It's goofy, I don't know whythey they do it that way, but
keyboard maestro has that builtin really simple, really simple
feature.

Adam Olson (49:09):
Another one those windows thing that took forever
to finally come to Mac, and wegot it.

Yeah, yeah, no, I agree with keyboard maestro's
organization.
Your ability to resize it, makeit work the way you want to is
is definitely Definitely muchbetter.
But those kind of kinds ofrepetitive tasks when you're
typing something similar but notexactly the same in every

(49:38):
single time, that's a perfectreason to To use something like
keyboard my, my stroke, keyboard, my sir, is very complicated.
You can kick off Apple scriptswith it.
You can do a whole bunch ofthings, but Just as a matter of
basics, being able to dosomething like that, for me it's
, it's Kind of a killer.

(49:59):
I want to point something out,though.
You know Tom asked me Before wewe, you know started recording
this actually a couple days ago.
It's how many?
How many keyboard maestroShortcuts do you have?
And I went in and checked and Igot like 75.
Why don't you, why don't youtell us, as of 7, 15, 2023?

(50:25):
It's a couple days.
Beyond that, you might havemore.
How many key keyboard maestroworkflows do you have?

Adam Olson (50:34):
It says 1435, so I don't.
I haven't one prolific.

How do you even keep track of those?
It just knocked my microphoneyou're welcome.

Adam Olson (50:56):
That's a good question actually, so that that
is another one of those I Ireveal nerdiness.
I I have dedicated hundreds ofhours to like how to keep track
of these when I used Q-Base.
Same thing when I assigned keycommands.

(51:16):
So I've got spreadsheets thatwill help me keep track of that
stuff.
I was in Quick Keys.
Are you familiar with that?
These are you guys use QuickKeys.

Absolutely.
I used it for a while.

Adam Olson (51:27):
Yeah, so that's actually what made me jump ship.
I had probably a thousand plusQuick Keys shortcuts, and they
kept saying, oh, we're gonnadevelop, we're gonna develop,
and then anything in the forumthat would mention Keyboard
Maestro, they would delete it.
They never, never updated it.
And so I finally just jumpedship from that, and I'm so glad

(51:48):
I did, just because KeyboardMaestro, at its foundation, it
feels a little bit more like youcan add tricks to your bag.
So, as you, there's somethingmore that you wanna do, you can
go deeper with it.
Where Quick Keys rather did notwasn't so much that, it was
just basically pre-baked thingsthat were not anywhere near as

(52:13):
manipulatable.
So as far as how I got thatmany again, I spend at least a
Pomodoro a day, for it's beendecade plus in Keyboard Maestro
now doing that.
So it adds up, I guess.
So, and keeping track of it.
The key sorry, I got a littleoff, that's okay.

(52:35):
I loved.
What I love that's easier totrack in Keyboard Maestro is the
conflict palette.
It sounds like it's some badthing, but in Keyboard Maestro
if you assign 15 key commands tothe same shortcut, you don't
have to go and throw this in apalette like you did in Quick
Keys.
It just pops it all up and sayshere's the list, and if you

(52:56):
wanna alphabetize it you canalphabetize it, or you can put
secret numbers behind the scenesto it.
There's just tons of littletricks in there, that is.
I don't really need to worrymuch about that, even though I
do have a spreadsheet and I'vegot it very methodical to keep
track of that stuff.

So do I use all?

Adam Olson (53:13):
4,000?
Of course not.

Okay, that's good to know.

Adam Olson (53:18):
That's what you wanted.

That's more the question.
I mean I have to go back inwith 75.
I have a lot of theater-relatedones that I use for when I
stage manage that allow me tosend out production reports and
rehearsal reports to the castand to the crew and everybody
that's a part of a show.
I have a lot of things thathelp me automate those kinds of

(53:43):
things where it makes thingseasier for me to do something
that honestly, if I sit down anddo it every night, it takes me
an hour every night to do arehearsal report or something
like that, to have notes andthose kinds of things.
But I mean 4,435, what are youlike?

(54:06):
What is one of the things youmake it sound like you're going
in and doing or making it aspart of your daily?
You're just creating shortcutsor that's part of what your deal
is.
But what's something thatyou've created and you can go
super deep if you want to tellus something that's really
complicated that you've done.

(54:27):
But what is something thatyou're doing with this Sure that
this automation has justifiedcreating a particular keyboard
maestro workflow with it?

Adam Olson (54:41):
Yeah, and maybe we can just back up briefly.
So, keyboard maestro, maybe youwant to talk a little bit about
what it does, so some of thefeatures that you do, and then
we can kind of dive into howthese integrate.
Because we mentioned so far, itdoes shortcuts.
So if we were to start off,that's what I would say.

(55:02):
If somebody just wantssomething simple, like Tom's
original question, I would sayif there's a series of keyboard
shortcuts that can do a taskthat you may want to do, like
putting an email signature, likeyou said, you may always start
out a certain way.
You can automate that withkeyboard shortcuts.
The other stuff that you canadd, maybe you can talk to that

(55:25):
a little bit, jeff, stuff thatyou're doing, and then I can go
into something longer.

Yeah.
So I think the things that I do, like I said, are signatures.
I will use it to read text froma file that has all the email
addresses for, say, the cast ofa particular show.
Put that information into theBCC field because I don't want

(55:50):
everybody to know what theactor's email addresses are.
So it puts it into the BCCfield, puts production
information in the top of it,dates the production report,
puts the date in for theproduction report in the subject
line and will say whatproduction report or what
rehearsal report it is.

(56:11):
So it's looking at counters anda number of other things, so
relatively complicated things,where it's keeping track in the
background of what yesterday'srehearsal or production report
was, what today's rehearsalreport should be, stores those
in variables and then spits thatinformation out.
So for me it's doing things thatmanually typing would take time

(56:36):
to do, and I've built a numberof automations that I use and in
a lot of cases actually, I use,rather than keyboard shortcuts
to kick those things off, I amusing a palette to enter the BCC
information and so on and soforth.
So it lets me, for example, ifwe get a new cast member or we
lose a cast member, all I haveto do is go, update that text

(56:56):
file, make that change to onetext file and then going forward
, it's making the adjustment.
Plus, I don't have to put allof those email addresses in my
contacts app, so I don't have toput you know, create a group
for the show, put all thoseactors' email addresses in that
group and then use that.
I don't have to cock up mycontacts app in order to do it.

(57:19):
So those are the kinds of thingsthat I'm using.
What's that?

Technical terms for basic AF I like it yeah,
cock up, yeah, cock up, cock up.

Adam Olson (57:29):
So you mentioned a palette.
So a palette's just a thingthat shows up on the screen that
you can click buttons.
Basically Correct, You'repushing icons that you probably
threw in there and then it'sdoing whatever you need.
So that way you don't have toremember.
Okay, what is this keyboardshortcut for XYZ?
So yeah.
For me some of the things thatand how I got so many is.

(57:51):
We talked about sessionsalready.
I've got, just for sessionsalone, I've probably got 100,
100 different shortcuts that Iactually only launch with one.
So I go in and I'll names forall these things.
So Ultra Claw, which would beCommand Option, Control Shift,
that goes out to an old ProTools instructor, and I've got

(58:14):
shortcuts that all use, that arededicated.
So all the keys on the keyboardthose are dedicated to keyboard
maestro shortcuts, and that'sin an Excel spreadsheet as well,
just so I keep track of them.
Right, and for sessions I don'thave to remember 50 or 100
different shortcuts.
I just hit Ultra Claw and thenReturn and it pops up this, what

(58:38):
they call a conflict palette, awhole list of these 100
shortcuts.
And then the next thing I do is, if I'm gonna automate, I next
hit A and it gives me a list ofautomation.
It gives me that narrowed downtask of automation and then I
say, am I gonna do it at home,some other place, or am I gonna
do it at work?
Cause I'm a nerd and I like tokeep track of that stuff, and so

(58:59):
I'll just, I'll hit H or I'llhit one, because that's the
first one I can choose either orit's alphabetical or numerical,
and then it runs a series ofscripts that run in the
background and go down a littlebit of a rabbit hole.
One of the things that Iabsolutely love love with with
Keyword Meistro is that itreferences other scripts super

(59:22):
well.
So I originally was kind ofmessing things up.
I learned this the hard wayreally fast that I would find an
image or I'd run a certain codeand I would put it in every
single script like this.
And so if I have a hundred thatdo basic variations of the same
thing, then I'd have to go backand I'd have to update all of
those.
Or if a software would updateand they would change something,

(59:43):
I'd have to change it everysingle one of those.
So I no longer do that.
I'm super methodical on how Ikeep track of it.
I write in every singleshortcut or macro that I make I
write, I type RM and I useTextExpander RM in any time that
Keyword Meistro is in the fronttypes out reference macro on a

(01:00:03):
bracket and then I can justupdate that one thing and all
those scripts are rolling again.
So that's how I can get.
I got up to so many thousandsbecause there's just a ton of
little things like that thatreference that are broken apart
for other macros.
So if I'm using Pro Tools tabto trans and I may be editing

(01:00:25):
out a beat and I wanna find thefirst beat, I wanna find the
second beat, third beat, fourthbeat and I wanna find eighth
notes, I'll have 20 shortcutsfor that specific thing and
they're all built specificallywhen I'm in Pro Tools.
So another thing that'sfantastic is I have all of these
broken out into specific apps.

(01:00:45):
So I have a group for all myapps.
I have a group that's specificto Pro Tools and dozens of apps.
So when I'm in Pro Tools I havetons of overlapping keyboard
shortcuts for different appsthat don't conflict with each
other, because keyboard maestrois aware of what's in the front.
So that stair step, commandoption, shift and number pad one

(01:01:07):
will be something specific toPro Tools and something specific
to NUENDO or notes or a zillionother apps.
So that goes out up super quickand as far as I'm not just
looking to make shortcuts, I'mlooking at okay, what am I doing
every day and is theresomething that I can refine?
That could be a little smoother.
I send an email every day.
Is there to a certain person,or I send something out

(01:01:28):
constantly.
Is there a way?
When I was sending emails to myex-wife for finances, I had a
shortcut when I was an Applemail that would basically put
finance in the subject lineautomatically and then it would
do a three-day follow-up.
There's another automationthing that it would three-day
and then it would check up likethis was important.

(01:01:50):
Did that get followed throughon?
So those kind of key commandsagain, they just add up super
fast, but that's how I've gottenso many of them are fairly easy
to remember, just because I usethem all the time.

Jeff Battersby (01:02:02):
Interesting.
So what you just said that youdo with Pro Tools, that's the
kind of stuff that I think iswhat makes automation kind of
amazing.
I mean, that's a very, veryspecific thing that you've set
up keyboard maestro to do, whichis to locate information, sound

(01:02:23):
, essentially in your Pro Toolssetup and be able to pick those
things out and allow you to dowhatever it is that you need to
do within Pro Tools to get ridof them or do whatever it is.
So that, to me, is pretty slick, and the beauty of, as you said

(01:02:43):
, of keyboard maestro is you cancreate a bunch of little bits
that are able to be pulledtogether and essentially be
pulled in by keyboard maestrowith one key click or one
keyboard command to be able tokick off a number of other items
, which is pretty cool.
Have you spent much time usingApple shortcuts?

(01:03:05):
I know you said it's kind of ahassle.
I've only used it for a coupleof things, and one of the things
I'll tell you that annoys me isI'd love to be able to edit the
things that I do on my phone ormy iPad on my Mac.
But, for example, one of thethings that I do, I play soccer,
and in actual games you're notallowed to wear Apple Watch, so

(01:03:26):
you can't wear jewelry whileyou're playing.
So I want to be able to say Iplayed in you know, 50 minutes,
60 minutes of that game.
I want to be able to put thatin as a workout.
So put in the calories, put inall that kind of stuff.
There's no way to edit thatthing on the Mac, to play with
it and goof it around with it onthe phone to set it up.

(01:03:51):
I end up creating sevenworkouts in one day.
I troubleshooting.
It was a great workout day,though.
I played soccer for six and ahalf straight hours.
It was amazing Wow.

Adam Olson (01:04:06):
I've had someone that screw up that same thing.
I'm still trying to figure outhow to delete eight hour workout
that I got Like, come on, let'sthrow in my stats off.

Yeah, and those are kind of hassles that are
built in and helped out, thathopefully get fixed.
But those are the kinds ofthings I mean it's a relatively
simple task, but I'd like to beable to have it do math rather
than me, you know, putting in.
I want to put in 45 minutesburning you know 13 calories a
minute or whatever it is thatyou're doing when you're playing
soccer, and have that, you know, kick into it.

(01:04:38):
Apple does have, if you reallyjust want to start out and play
with this a little bit, forshortcuts, apple does have a
pretty decent library of, youknow, pre done shortcuts that
you can use.
For example, you want to walkto coffee.
It shows you a couple of coffeestores that are near you to

(01:05:01):
have the one that you want.
It'll open up maps and give youwalking directions to whatever
the coffee place is.
I mean, there are a number ofitems like that that work.
What's this guy's name?
Alexander Alessio is that?
No, what's his name?
Shoot V.
Last name is V.
We're doing letters here andgetting them all wrong.
Gary Vitter, gary, gary.

Tom Anderson (01:05:22):
V.
He's coming back.
Okay, the only thing is no.

Vitici, vitici, oh Federico.

Federico Vitici yes.

He has scabs.

Gary was close.

Gary was right there .

Yeah, he has tons of those things that you
can and we can put links to him,to his stuff, in the notes, but
he has a number of workflowsthat he's using no one of my
favorite shortcuts that he hasis called Apple Frames.

Have you played with that one?
No, what is it?
You take a screenshot on yourMac or your iPad or your phone
or your watch.
It goes to your photos library,I think in the Mac you can
choose to put it in the photos.
I don't do it on the Mac awhole lot, but so you take a
screenshot and then you go intoshortcuts, you open Apple Frames
.
It says select the picture thatyou want to use and then it

(01:06:18):
drops it into like a frame ofthe Apple device.
So if it's like an iPhonescreenshot, it'll put it onto an
iPhone, so you get a nice image.
That's the iPhone there, withthe screenshot.
Oh, that's cool, that's reallyslick.
I use that all the time and heupdates it every time some new
devices come out.
So, yeah, that was pretty good,and I would say too, take a

(01:06:40):
look in the shortcuts app.
Jeff mentioned the gallery thatthey have, but if you've got
any home kit stuff, you can setup automations around that.
I don't do a ton of that.
I don't have a lot of home kitstuff because I'm kind of
waiting for that.

I've been doing so much of my life on home
automation, yeah, and I'm likeletting the dust set him on that
Right, because it sucks.
Still unsettled, but yeah.

My crowning achievement with that was I
bought one of those little WiIMOsmart plugs and I set it up
near the Christmas tree, so Ihave the lights plugged into it,
you know, and I set up ashortcut so then when you invoke
Siri, it would turn the lightson and start playing like a
Christmas playlist, and so mykids could come in and be like

(01:07:31):
you know, hey, bubble lights,Christmas time or something, and
it would like kick the lightson and turn on all this music
and they thought it was thecoolest thing.

They're too old to be impressed by that now Most of
the time yeah.
Okay, yeah, I was surprised too.
But I've bought dozens ofdifferent brands of lights and
like, hey, siri, make the lightspurple.
Or I've tried different hubs oftry.
I've tried to do it throughAlexa and one light would come
on purple and one would bebright orange and the other

(01:08:00):
would be white.
I'm like, oh, my goodness,you're the same big brand.
I've set these scenes up athousand times.
I'm done, I'm not doing this,yeah.

And in terms of other fairly simple automations
that are in the shortcuts app,they have some stuff for the
watch so you can set up locationbased watch faces, so like if
you've got, a particular workface that you like during the
day it's.
You know you can set it up sothat when you arrive at work
that face kicks in.

I could see your work face right now, that's my
stopwatch.

I know I'm looking at the one.

I'm looking at the one that I've seen on the
camera.

So I'm less than this.
When did you get that watch?
I was noticing that, tom.

When did it come?
I didn't get it right when itcame out, so it was probably
month or two after that.
And then I sweet talk, jeff,and he got one too.

That's my recording watch face, not that
anybody can see it.
Speaking of watch faces, wefrigging burned through another
hour plus.
Yeah, we can probably go fortwo more, but shouldn't.

Yeah.

Well, I noticed in the first I'm looking at the
gallery, by the way the firstone is Start Pomodoro, so there
you go there you go.

See you're a podcast pro.
You brought it tight at rightin at the close, beautiful,
excellent.

Looped back, tied it up.

Basic AF.

Yeah, well, that's us.

Yeah, yeah, basic, and you can choose what
it is.

You know what would make it better, adam is,
if your last initial was F,basic, adam something, what's
your middle?

initial.
Well, I grew up in AmericanFork so I thought it was a shout
out to my hometown.
So thank you.

Yeah, it's your show, exactly, alrighty, we have
.

We burned another hour as we do, and more.

It has been Adam .
Thanks so much for coming on,and really appreciate it.
It's nice to meet you inperson-ish.

Face to face.

And I still say I'm impressed 4,435.
Yeah, keyboard Maestro, I justhit.

Command D.

Command D Duplicate Duplicate.

All the same thing Just sounds good.
Look at that, so as a reminder.

I'm sorry, go ahead.
No, just because of Adam, Ifeel like we should probably
throw some kind of like aquarterly zoom together or
something just to do like theold days and just keep in touch.

It's been a lot of fun.

Yeah, I missed these discussions.

A little bit deeper.
So for sure, yeah, I thinkwe're always good time.

So, like Jeff said , thanks for coming on with us
and Know it's a Friday Night andwe are party animals.

We are, we are.

It's been a party.

It's been great, and if you stuck around to this one
.

be sure to email us at feedback at Basic AF show
and we'll we'll send you twostickers for that, yeah.

Right, they'll look the same, but you'll have
two, you guys actually send usthe gift after peaceful we don't
have friends.
That's why we're here on aFriday evening.

Yep, If you don't mind, if somebody, if somebody.

Yeah, if you listened and If somebody listens
to this podcast.
If you're on a deserted island.

If you want to hang out with us wild guys on a
Friday night, just let us know.
No one was going to say if, ifyou don't mind going into Apple
podcast and giving us a ratingand or review, that would be
very much appreciated.
Please and thank you.
Help surface.
Yes, please and thank you.
It would help maybe get us alittle bump there.
We do have 12 ratings, so weare grateful for those 14 shoes.

(01:11:51):
Yeah, not bad.
And Jeff, what else?
We got Almost 1000 downloads.

Please show art by our good friend Randall
Martin at Randall Martin Design,really, really again pleased
with that.
So I want to encourage you allif you need any kind of artwork
done that's a guided check outfor sure.
Show music by Celsius seven andPsychokinetics.
That's our lead in and lead outmusic.

(01:12:17):
Again.
Celsius seven is new album out.
If you want to check them outGood stuff you can find him on
iTunes and other places.

All right, that's it, man.

Email us at feedback at basicafshowcom.
All right.

Again, adam.
Thank you, sir, it's been apleasure.

Yes thank you.
Thank you, I appreciate it.
All right, take care.

All right, hang on there for us too, so that silly
upload will finish before wedisconnect.

But yeah, don't, don't, yeah we did that before.
Don't quit on us, don't quit onus, don't quit now.

But thank you for listening, for being here for
this episode.
Enjoy the rest of your day,rest of your night and we will
talk to you next time.
See ya, Bye.

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