Original at truthdig.com

As I’ve mentioned before I use Anki extensively to memorize and practice Russian vocabulary. With language learning in particular, adding spoken pronunciations to the cards makes an enormous difference. Since I use Open Russian extensively to provide information to built my Anki cards, it’s a natural source of audio data, too. To optimize my learning time, I built two small scripts to grab and rename the audio files from the Open Russian site. First, I’ll describe my workflow.

When I was a kid, I remember my dad piling leaves and grass clippings into an area in the back of the yard. Eventually, the pile would yield a loamy substance called compost. As time went on, he began to use one of those compost tumblers, a large plastic vessel with a crank. Into the tumbler went leaves and grass clippings again, but the results were more rapid. The increased heat and mixing seemed to yield compost much faster.

You might be the subject of political pandering if:

1. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt are the main tricks in the politician’s kit.

A politician who never tires of scapegoating a feared group, or a feared outcome is undoubtedly pandering. Or a demagogue. Or both. Whether it’s Mexicans, or Jews, or Muslims, or gay people, they never seem to stop talking about why you should be afraid of someone or something.

The U.S. has become well-rehearsed in its response to mass shootings. An event. The pondering over terrorism vs. generalized craziness. The outpouring of prayers and support. Then the internet outrage. And more internet outrage. More meme pictures about guns and love. More color-your-profile picture trends. Empty scripted responses from pious politicians. A week or two, then back to our regularly scheduled programming.

News flash: this isn’t getting better. It’s not going to get better.

Indigo is a well-known home automation controller software package for Mac OS X. I’ve written a plugin for Indigo 6 that allows you to create a virtual weather station from Environment Canada data. If you live in Canada, this will be a useful way of using weather data in your Indigo rules. For example, you could use wind and temperature data to adjust your irrigation schedule.

You can download the plugin from its git repo. After downloading the files, you’ll just need to configure them as a plugin. To do this, create a new folder and rename it EC.indigoPlugin. Copy the Contents folder that you just downloaded. Right-click on the EC.indigoPlugin bundle and Show Package Contents. Paste the Contents folder here. To install in Indigo, double-click the bundle file.

I manage a handful of websites, like this one. Having built a few on other platforms, such as Drupal, I’m familiar with the dreaded error “The website encountered an unexpected error. Please try again later.” On sites that I don’t check on frequently, it can be an embarrassment when people begin emailing you with questions about the site being down.

I wrote the following Python script to deal with the problem:

Indigo 6 is a popular home automation controller software package on the Mac. Extensibility is one of its main features and it allows users to add a range of features to suit their needs.

Using Python scripting, users can create plugins that provide extended functionality. These plugins can provide a custom configuration UI to the user. Since the documentation around a particular feature - dynamic lists was lacking, I’ve written up my approach here.

Hazel and DEVONthink make a great pair as I’ve written before. Using AppleScript, it’s possible to take the import workflow even further by tagging incoming files automatically.

Use case

I download a lot of mp3 files containing pronunciation of words in a language I’ve been learning. I keep a record of these words and tag them appropriately using my hierarchical tagging system.

I’d like to download the files to a directory on the desktop. Keep them there for a few minutes until I’m done working with them, then import the file to DEVONthink Pro Office, tag the file there and delete the original.