This is a test to see if it disappears

I realized that what I truly enjoy most is scripting in all forms. On the Mac I use Drummer to create scripts that initially were for blogging but now the scripts are becoming more utilities to connect different programs and web site/APIs. I also use Shortcuts in Monterey as “glue” between Drummer and other “end points”. More to follow.

A new test for Obsidian again.

I like where this is heading integrating Drummer with Obsidian. I’ve got a shortcut that I call from the Services menu that takes the data for a particular day and creates a file in Obsidian with the same date in the microblog folder.

Testing the link to Scripting News

Today I have been noodling more that coding! I am truly amazed that the Mac Shortcuts app is running so smoothly since I cleaned up it’s corrupted prefs and database! 😃

Testing the link mechanism in Drummer

On a side note I am also noodling about recreating what I’m doing in shortcuts as root scripts like I used to do with Frontier and its object databases.

Now onto nested subs and image attributes!

Turns out it was a nested if/end in my main shortcut causing the issue because of how I was putting my debug alerts in nested if/end blocks as well! 😱

This is a final line test.

After further testing it appears that my “function” shortcut isn’t getting called at all when the alerts are turned off. Almost like a timing issue!

Ran into some issues with creating a “function” shortcut to handle looping through the subs in the Drummer JSON. If I put in some debug alerts it runs fine but if I disable them it doesn’t do the final sub in my test.

I also need to figure out how to handle Drummer images in Obsidian.

I’m starting to believe that I’m wasting my time getting outline mode working in Obsidian.

This line is a sub of the previous text but is showing up flat in Obsidian. Time to start digging!

And another sub with additinal text to make it wrap around. And another sub with additinal text to make it wrap around. And another sub with additinal text to make it wrap around.

Another sub test.

Continuing work on my Drummer/Obsidian/Shortcuts integration focusing on the Mac today. I have come to realize that my shortcut I am using from the Services menu doesn’t honor multiple levels of my outline so when I send the data over to Obsidian it is flat which for archiving purposes is fine but it would be cool if I could recreate the outline in Obsidian.

For some reason my micro.blog site isn’t updating as fast as it used to but I don’t know if it is related to E/D or something else. The posts show up in the micro.blog dashboard but not on my actual site so it must be a micro.blog issue.

I am exploring using Electric Drummer for my work with integrating my outlines with my Obsidian enviornment. What’s very cool is using url schemes in Electric Drummer do not trigger any security dialogs like Safari and Chrome! This could lead to some very cool capabilities on the Mac! I have many “automation tools” I currently use on the Mac including Shortcuts, AppleScript, Python and Node-Red.

Now fighting an iPad version of the shortcut not working properly!

I like where this is heading integrating Drummer with Obsidian. I’ve got a shortcut that I call from the Services menu that takes the data for a particular day and creates a file in Obsidian with the same date in the microblog folder.

I’m starting to believe that I’m wasting my time getting outline mode working in Obsidian.

This line is a sub of the previous text but is showing up flat in Obsidian. Time to start digging!

Continuing work on my Drummer/Obsidian/Shortcuts integration focusing on the Mac today. I have come to realize that my shortcut I am using from the Services menu doesn’t honor multiple levels of my outline so when I send the data over to Obsidian it is flat which for archiving purposes is fine but it would be cool if I could recreate the outline in Obsidian.

Testing the link mechanism in Drummer

Today I have been noodling more that coding! I am truly amazed that the Mac Shortcuts app is running so smoothly since I cleaned up it’s corrupted prefs and database! 😃

Finally feel like I have a great path forward!! And no more use of url schemes from within Safari! 😀

I’ve taken a new path for integrating Drummer content with Obsidian. Thanks to Federico Viticci of macstories.net and his Obsidian Clip for Mac shortcut I have a starting point for how I can accomplish my goal. I’ve modified his shortcut so it will work both on the Mac as a Service and on the iPad as a Share Sheet extension. Very exciting night! I will now be able to make different shortcuts that will integrate different outlines in Drummer with specific areas of my Obsidian vault!

I wish Safari handled url scheme permissions the way the Shortcuts app does. Ask you once and then remembers your choice from that point on.

The one challenge with using url schemes to pass data from Drummer to any app (Shortcuts or Obsidian at the moment) always prompts a permission dialog box in Safari and Chrome on my Mac and iPad. I will have to live with it as that is the security model in both macOS and iPadOS. Sadly I can’t use the Scheduled scripts to pass data automatically due to this limitation. I’m going to look again at how shortcuts could possibly take care of this by pulling the opml from Drummer.

Back to working on integrating Drummer with Obsidian. Last night I discovered the reason my Shortcuts app on my Mac was so unresponsive was due to a corrupt SQLite database under the hood. Deleted it along with the other pref files in Library > Shortcuts and let them get rebuilt. Now the Shortcuts app is working the way I had expected! :)

I used to do a lot of Frontier scripting and automation back in the day and Drummer is starting to get me going in a similar direction.

My goal is to use Drummer for most of my data collecting and note taking and then pushing them into Obsidian as my main location for all of my data storage.

I’m looking into bypassing the shortcuts app and using Obsidan’s url scheme directly. Initial tests look promising. Using this approach would eliminate a lot of heartache on the Mac side with shortcuts being an unfinished product. Plus I can do a lot of text manipulation via the scripting interface of Drummer!

I’ve got a pretty good start on a script that will allow me to pass over the data from my outline entries via a Siri shortcut. The next step will be to pass this text over to Obsidian…

Now I am concentrating on learning what the limits are of Drummer’s scripting environment. I’ve already discovered that I can call a Siri shortcut using the verb webBrowser.openUrl(). I can see Drummer becoming my main way of launching all type of inter connected scripting environments starting with shortcuts! Very exciting!!

So now I’m using Drummer on my 11” iPad Pro and it’s working quite well! I take my this iPad Pro pretty much everywhere I go since I have an LTE SIM card I switch back and forth between my 12.9” and 11” iPad Pros.

I have discovered that deleting my outline doesn’t delete my micro.blog which is cool but now they are out of sync but that’s ok as I’m just experimenting at the moment.

Well gotta start over as I accidentally deleted my Drummer outline that I was using to create my micro.blog.

Working on a shortcut that will parse the OPML of this blog into JSON and finally into markdown to be stored in Obsidian.

Gotta look into changing the CSS used in my micro.blog site so lines like this won’t have an additional date.

So I decided to give Shortcuts on Monterey a try again since I had been attempting to use them all summer during the beta period but was just too painful! Alas, nothing has changed and the Shortcuts editor is basically too buggy to do anything worthwhile! Back to using it just on the iPad for the foreseeable future! Really too bad as I wanted to do something similar on the Mac with Drummer that I am doing with the iPad using some automation shortcuts.

Working with Secure Shellfish to upload files from my iPad Pro to my little used WordPress server and setting the clipboard to the path so I can add the image attribute. Tester.

So I wrote a python script on my Mac that uploads an image to my WordPress server that I’m not really using and puts the url on the clipboard so I can paste it into an attribute in Drummer like the image below. Very cool! I think I’m going to see if I can do something similar on my iPad Pro maybe with either Pyto or shortcuts.

Digging into Obsidian and seeing if there is some way to capture what I write on my gwthompson.micro.blog site in my vault.

A longer post that would be a normal post length in another blogging platform. I don’t know the limits of micro.blog but will find out soon enough! I think I might try using a custom domain eventually but for now I’ll use the default gwthompson.micro.blog.

Very cool!!

Posting to microblog from Drummer