Daily Note - December 15, 2021

Home

• Looks like Calm is offering 40% off the Premium plan.

• Looking through the Calm app, I think I like Headspace better. I like their morning routine with the breathing and The Wake Up.

• I tried a 15-minute sleep meditation with Calm but I’m not sure if it helps. It felt like as I was dozing off, the voice kept waking me up. Lately, by making sure I’m in bed by 22:00, I haven’t had trouble falling asleep, and my Oura ring confirms this, so no need to fix what isn’t broken. I should stick to the daytime meditations in Calm to compare to Headspace.

• I did the 20 min Chest & Back Strength workout with Chase Tucker

• Tried Trader Joe’s Cauliflower Gnocchi for the first time. Not bad, especially with Rao’s Homemade Marinara Sauce.

Business

• Tried out Twitch Studio as a live streaming tool. I was trying to figure out how to share the entire desktop without the endless loop when Twitch Studio is in focus. There is a fullscreen app setting, which means in theory that only apps that are in fullscreen are visible to people watching the stream. But this didn’t work consistently. When I went out of full screen on Safari, sometimes it would stop sharing, sometimes it wouldn’t. I only have one monitor, so if I need to enter sensitive information during a livestream, I need to be able to easily stop sharing and then resume. The fact that this doesn’t work reliably is a deal breaker. I need to look at other solutions like OBS, Wirecast, and services like Restream, Melon, Streamyard, etc.

• I like that Twitch Studio shows you real time stats like CPU usage, slow frames, dropped frames. I only tested recording the video to the hard drive, without streaming at the same time, and CPU usage stayed around 30%.

• I noticed that Twitch Studio by default saves local videos in FLV format. Apparently the reason why Twitch Studio uses FLV by default is if you want to have a separate audio channel, and also if the stream gets interrupted it handles that better? Looks like Vimeo supports FLV uploads, and I can play them locally with VLC, so not an issue for me, but I’m curious to learn more about the differences.

• Before recording a screencast or livestreaming, I need to change the screen resolution to 1280x720. I looked into automating this because it can get tedious. Neither Shortcuts, Keysmith, or KM seemed to be able to do this natively. At least not clicking the 1280x720 option. Looks like this can be done through AppleScript, although they’re using the default 5 options that you can click on directly, the lowest being 1600x900. mac - Is it possible to change display resolution with a keyboard shortcut? - Ask Different

• Need to see if 1600x900 is acceptable. Otherwise, see if AppleScript can option-click and scroll down, or see if there’s a terminal command via defaults write.

• One trick to see which settings changed is to take a snapshot of the current settings: defaults read > a, then change the resolution, and take a new snapshot: defaults read > b, then look at the difference with diff a b. It looks like quite a lot changed:

<         "NSWindow Frame BrowserWindowFrame" = "0 0 1280 1415 0 0 2560 1415 ";
---
>         "NSWindow Frame BrowserWindowFrame" = "0 0 640 695 0 0 1280 695 ";
10081,10082c10081,10082
<         lastVisibleScreenRect = "{{0, 0}, {2560, 1415}}";
<         lastWindowPosition = "{{570, 612}, {680, 430}}";
---
>         lastVisibleScreenRect = "{{0, 0}, {1280, 695}}";
>         lastWindowPosition = "{{181.91489361702128, 89.035950110051317}, {680, 430}}";
15967c15967
<         "NSWindow Frame SwiftUI.ModifiedContent<SwiftUI.ModifiedContent<HelpViewer.TipsContentView, SwiftUI._AppearanceActionModifier>, SwiftUI._PreferenceTransformModifier<SwiftUI.SceneBridge.ActivationConditionsPreferenceKey>>-1-AppWindow-1" = "827 476 906 780 0 0 2560 1415 ";
---
>         "NSWindow Frame SwiftUI.ModifiedContent<SwiftUI.ModifiedContent<HelpViewer.TipsContentView, SwiftUI._AppearanceActionModifier>, SwiftUI._PreferenceTransformModifier<SwiftUI.SceneBridge.ActivationConditionsPreferenceKey>>-1-AppWindow-1" = "187 0 807 695 0 0 1280 695 ";
21948c21948
<         "NSWindow Frame Main Window" = "780 552 1000 678 0 0 2560 1415 ";
---
>         "NSWindow Frame Main Window" = "140 13 1000 678 0 0 1280 695 ";
22613c22613
<         "NSWindow Frame Main Window Frame SystemPreferencesApp 8.0" = "466 600 668 380 0 0 2560 1415 ";
---
>         "NSWindow Frame Main Window Frame SystemPreferencesApp 8.0" = "466 52 668 431 0 0 1280 695 ";
23540,23541c23540,23541
<             "0.000000, 0.000000, 260.000000, 1415.000000, NO, NO",
<             "261.000000, 0.000000, 1019.000000, 1415.000000, NO, NO"
---
>             "0.000000, 0.000000, 260.000000, 695.000000, NO, NO",
>             "261.000000, 0.000000, 1019.000000, 695.000000, NO, NO"
23544,23545c23544,23545
<             "0.000000, 0.000000, 443.500000, 1415.000000, NO, NO",
<             "444.500000, 0.000000, 574.500000, 1415.000000, NO, NO"
---
>             "0.000000, 0.000000, 443.500000, 695.000000, NO, NO",
>             "444.500000, 0.000000, 574.500000, 695.000000, NO, NO"
23575c23575
<         "NSWindow Frame GTMainWindow" = "0 0 1280 1415 0 0 2560 1415 ";
---
>         "NSWindow Frame GTMainWindow" = "0 0 1280 695 0 0 1280 695 ";
28442c28442
<         "NSWindow Frame Macros Window" = "1448 191 984 797 0 0 2560 1415 ";
---
>         "NSWindow Frame Macros Window" = "272 0 984 695 0 0 1280 695 ";
29051,29053c29051,29053
<             "0.000000, 0.000000, 260.000000, 1096.000000, NO, NO",
<             "261.000000, 0.000000, 879.000000, 1096.000000, NO, NO",
<             "1141.000000, 0.000000, 295.000000, 1096.000000, NO, NO"
---
>             "0.000000, 0.000000, 260.000000, 695.000000, NO, NO",
>             "261.000000, 0.000000, 723.000000, 695.000000, NO, NO",
>             "985.000000, 0.000000, 295.000000, 695.000000, NO, NO"
29063c29063
<         "NSWindow Frame MainWindowController" = "782 137 1436 1096 0 0 2560 1415 ";
---
>         "NSWindow Frame MainWindowController" = "0 0 1280 695 0 0 1280 695 ";

• I came across a newsletter that uses Typeform (with Zapier I’m assuming to feed into ConvertKit) to let people update their subscriber preferences. I was thinking of doing that as well but with Reform, and compare the experience to Smart Subscriber.

• I bought the Obsidian Catalyst plan that I mentioned in yesterday’s note. I followed the instructions to enable the insider builds and the new editor. It looks nice! For some reason, the writing and viewing modes don’t share the same fonts, so when you toggle between them, the UI changes.

Productivity

• Looked into the TagWrangler plugin for Obsidian. It’s not what I thought it was. Doesn’t look like I need it now. It was still worth looking into it because I discovered a setting to enable the tag pane.

To Do Tomorrow

• Ship Discogs order
• Pay Discogs invoice
• Update daily notes template in shortcuts to include 3 Pinboard RSS items
• Update daily notes template to add time for working on todos and ebook
• Update daily notes template to add section for what needs to be done tomorrow
• Record short video demoing shortcuts and KM and say the full step by step will be available to subscribers only
• Send broadcast, share link to shortcut and KM macro, announce upcoming posts: 2 books I wish I read earlier, what I’ve been up to since quitting my job, daily notes
• Tweet video