In my day job as a developer, I tend to invest some time in customizing my tools and exploring new tools and methods. It inspires me to discover new ways of doing things or new angles from which to look at my work, so it's only natural that I would do the same when it comes to my audio mixing.

This is the first of three posts exploring some perhaps less obvious productivity tips for the Reaper DAW. Let's jump in!

1 - Save good default presets for plugins

On some plugins, the default preset has a volume bump. This fools you into thinking it sounds better just by inserting the plugin. When I discover this, I usually save a new default preset without this volume increase, so I am able to start from a more neutral point of view. If the plugin doesn't enable you to save a new default plugin, Reaper has you covered: use the plus sign in the toolbar.

2 - Add keyboard shortcuts for inserting specific plugins

If you have a selection of plugins you use more than others, it might be helpful to add keyboard shortcuts for these. Reaper enables you to right click the plugin in the Add FX dialog and selecting Create shortcut....

In my setup, I use Option+⌘+1 for the Pro-Q 3 equalizer for instance, and Option+⌘+2 for the UAD API Vision Console.

3 - Keyboard access to the actions and main menu

I find keyboard shortcuts helpful for speeding up my interaction with applications, but it is sometimes a lot of muscle memory to practice and I find I have an upper limit for how many shortcuts are useful. The less often I use a shortcut, the more likely I am to forget it between each time I have use for it.

Reaper has a great feature called Actions that I find useful for these situations. By pressing ? you can search for actions and execute them without leaving your keyboard. This is a great way to discover new features and to quickly access features you don't use often enough to remember the shortcut for.

In addition, I use Raycast on my Mac to search for actions in the Reaper main menu. Raycast has a function called Search Menu Items. I've added a global shortcut of ⌘+Slash for this. An example of how I use this is selecting a track in Reaper and searching for the menu item Render tracks to mono stem tracks (and mute originals), a function I use just seldom enough to not warrant a specific keyboard shortcut.

This is fun, a shop selling coffee beans over SSH.

ssh terminal.shop

I will surely find a use for this commit message generator, and this quick one-liner from DevOps Toolbox to pipe it right into your Git commit make it even better:

git commit -m '$(curl -s https://whatthecommit.com/index.txt)'

Current favourites:

commented out failing tests

and

This should work until december 2013.

... both hit all too close to home, I'm afraid.

If you're a developer using NeoVim on the Mac you might want to check out my new plugin simctl.nvim.

Part of my day job involves writing apps in React Native, and so I spend a good amount of time developing and running apps on the iOS Simulator. I wanted a way to automate tasks that slow me down and make me take my hands off the keyboard.

The most common uses of this plugin for me is automation for running Expo apps and shortcuts for quitting and reinstalling Expo Go. I have also set up a lot of useful key mappings so I have shortcuts for commonly used Simulator settings such as adjusting the content size for accessibility testing, as well as quickly switching between light and dark mode on the device.

I recently had a minor argument with Apple Shortcuts about running a Python script. In the end the solution was simple so I thought I'd share it here.

My goal was to have a simple way converting downloaded bank statements in CSV format to the CSV format that YNAB, or You Need a Budget, expects. I've made it so this shortcut is available when I right click a file in the Finder.

The specifics of the script isn't important but here's an abbreviated version of it to give you a basic boilerplate to start from:

import os
import csv
import sys
import locale

input_file_path = sys.argv[1]
input_file_name = os.path.basename(input_file_path)
input_file_dir = os.path.dirname(input_file_path)
output_file = os.path.join(input_file_dir, "ynab-" + input_file_name)

with open(input_file_path, "r") as file, open(output_file, "w") as out:
  reader = csv.reader(file, delimiter=';')
  writer = csv.writer(out, delimiter=',', quoting=csv.QUOTE_NONNUMERIC)
  header = next(reader)

  writer.writerow(["Date","Payee","Memo","Outflow","Inflow"])

There's a couple useful parts to this in conjuction with Shortcuts:

• The script reads the input file name as sys.argv[1]
• It takes the input file name and prepends ynab- to distinguish the converted file

I recommend getting your script working from the terminal before you try to use it in Shortcuts; sometimes Shortcuts will just silence any errors completely and sometimes it'll show you what's wrong but it's much clearer to figure that out from a command line or a debugger. Run the script with:

python script.py input_file.csv

If all goes well it should write a ynab-input_file.csv file.

Now to get your script into the context menu of Finder!

Open the Shortcuts app on your Mac and create a new Shortcut:

1. Add a Run Shell Script action
2. Choose python3 as your Shell and select to Pass Input as arguments
3. Paste in your working Python script

Then, in the info pane of your Action, select to Use as Quick Action in the Finder.

That's it. You're done. When you right click the file you should see your new action under the sub menu Quick Actions.

If, like me, you have a problem where your script silently fails to run, try giving Finder full disk access on your Mac: open System Settings, search for Full Disk Access and add Finder to the list of apps with access to your whole disk.

I am looking forward to Tom Whitwell's list of 52 things I learned in 2023 every year, and this year Leo Kottke published his own. Favourites from the two:

Tom Whitwell's list:

35. Scotland’s forest cover is nearly back to where it was 1,000 years ago, while England has risen to levels last seen in 1350. [Hannah Ritchie]

Leo Kottke's list:

11. Baby scorpions are called scorplings.