Gilles Peterson, as you may already have realized, is the man. A couple of weeks ago he mentioned this video at the tail end of Nihal’s show (during the record swap).

Wish it was longer, much, much longer… but as it is, it’s 4 minutes of legend.

I’ve search and tried a few different solutions in the past — this MacWorld solution works, but you have to have a document already in the folder to control-click. What if it’s a blank folder?

I’ve recently become an enormous fan of Alfred. Why not use Alfred to create a hotkey to run an Applescript which does this?

Another approach is to create an extension which runs a shell script, but that’s not my thing — I also couldn’t work out how to use the current folder in the shell script.

After lots of trial, error and Googling, I had something which I thought should have worked but I kept getting permissions errors. I posted to MacScripter and very soon had two working versions from Yvan Keonig (who is the MAN at AppleScript by the way).

This is the version I’m using (the second version) which Time/Date stamps the blank file — otherwise if there was a file called “untitled.txt” in the folder it would get rewritten. I used it by creating a hotkey to launch it but you could probably just as easily add it as an extension to Alfred:

on run
tell application “Finder” to set myFolder to (folder of the front window) as text
tell application “TextEdit”
activate
make new document
tell application “System Events” to tell process “TextEdit” to tell menu bar 1 to tell menu bar item 5 to tell menu 1 to tell menu item -1
if enabled then
“.rtf”
else
“.txt”
end if
end tell
save document 1 in file (myFolder & my dateTimeStamp() & result)
end tell
end run

–=====

on dateTimeStamp()
return (do shell script “date +_%Y-%m-%dT%H.%M.%S”)
end dateTimeStamp

–=====

Thanks Yvan!

Btw, there’s also another solution by Jonas Wisser which is pretty cool — it’s called New Text File Here. If you use it with Alfred, you’ll get an extra step “Press Run to run this script or Quit to quit.”… slightly annoying. But it does let you title the file first— this could be a handy feature for some.

Problem solved!

Edit: The reason I was always getting the dialogue “Press Run to run this script or Quit to quit.” was because my Alfred hotkey contained the control key — the final post in this thread confirms that when the control key is held when running a script, you get that dialogue. I changed my Alfred hotkey and voila! no dialogue. These are both excellent solutions—question is, which works best for you?

Journler

On my iPhone I use Moe’s Notes. Love it. Does what I need it to do. Evernote offers conveniences and some terrific features but I like to keep my data close to home.

I’ve been struggling with what to do with my Moe’s notes on my desktop for over a year. I was thinking of investing in Pear Note but didn’t because it doesn’t offer a mobile counterpart and was limited in other crucial (for me) areas. I’ve tried everything else.

Simultaneously, I’ve been struggling to replace Journler as my Go-To note taker. I love Curio for creative brainstorming, like DevonThink for permanent/archived things and I like Notational Velocity for quick notes and syncing with SimpleNote on my iPhone, but nothing replaces the ease and reliability of Journler.

I happened to look at the website to see if there was any news (despite being great software and Phil offering good support (to me at least) and an active forum, it’s been abandonware for some time). But low and behold there was a beta of a new version for Snow Leopard and Lion. I downloaded it, thinking I had already dismantled my database but to my great joy it fired right up   well over a year later. Needless to say, it brought back memories.

I flashed to my Moe’s problem, and 2 minutes later I had the answer to my problems. All of the Moe’s folders imported as folders, in their place and each folder had the same files as in the original folders. Images were intact in one file. Audio — playable from within Journler — in another. And notes in a third and metadata in a fourth.

Problem solved.

Journler

In Journler: File -> Import Files. Select your Moe’s backup folder. You’ll see the box above - select your category, tags, label and how to deal with the dates. Make sure ‘Preserve folder hierarchy’ is checked below your selected folder. Sit back and wait (folders with lots of data might take a couple of minutes). You’re done!

On a recent road trip though I was passing through Nashville while on the phone with a friend and he told me to turn on the radio—so happy he did. I not only discovered WRVU but I tried the same thing in Atlanta and discovered WRAS. WRVU is currently fighting for their existence, if you have a moment visit their site and take a listen… then take action.

Thanks for the great music!

Fantastic track, even better video. New York Club in the 80’s… New York Eyes by Nicole McLoud & Timmy Thomas.

The longtime Radio 1 DJ Gilles Peterson has been doing free podcasts for a few years now. This one’s a classic.

I haven’t been this homesick for New York City in ages… wonderful hour.

I first saw this when the views were a couple hundred thousand… then they went to a million. Now we’re at 18. Eighteen million views.

I’m probably 20 of those. No matter how many times I see it, it gets better and better.

Genius is fun

No idea where or how I first head this from Pennsylvania-native Meg Baird.

Doesn’t matter. I’m speechless.

It’s on last.fm and amazon.com.

MySpace.

Eighteen minutes that will rewire your brain: journalist Richard Preston on the Pacific Northwest Redwoods.

Pure genius — and surely officially-sanctioned viral marketing though it’s kept on the DL.

Hire a DJ to remix an infomercial? Why not?