Graham English

I’ve been AppleScripting my @blogging context workflow. At first, I created a simple script that launches TextMate, NetNewsWire, and Safari along with some URLs to help me get started. It basically launches my workspace for my @blogging context. But I wanted something a little more flexible that would accept some initial user input.

Now what I do is invoke Quicksilver, enter text mode and type my blog title, tab over to the action pane, type “Tex..” (for TextMate), and execute. TextMate creates a new file with the blog HTML template in my ‘Writing’ directory on my desktop and it automatically fills the blog header with the Title and the Excerpt tags. To make full use of the Excerpt tag, you’ll need to hack your blog xmlrpc.php and TextMate blogging bundle. Buy me a cup of coffee and I might teach you how. If you prefer to use Markdown, all you have to do is change the extension in the script from “.blog.html” to “.blog.markdown”.

Here’s the Quicksilver TextMate action script: Click here to open the script in Script Editor.

Here’s my entire @blogging context script: Click here to open the script in Script Editor.

Here’s my bare bones @blogging context for when I don’t know what to write yet. Save this script as an application and put it in your Applications folder, on your dock, or anywhere that Quicksilver can get to it: Click here to open the script in Script Editor.

Update: After a night of dreaming AppleScript, I came up with the be all and end all of my @blogging context. Like my full @blogging context script above, this script creates a blog post in TextMate and opens a couple of apps and a few URLs but with one major difference. Now you can type a pipe “|” after your blog title in Quicksilver and add keywords. These keywords will query Google and Technorati automatically. In Quicksilver, the text you would type would look something like this, “This Is My Post Title|intitle:keyword1 keyword2 -keyword3″. As you can see, you can add modifiers and keywords are space separated. And you don’t have to type the pipe or keywords. You’ll get an action similar to my previous @blogging context script.
Click here to open the script in Script Editor.

Time is nature’s way of making sure that everything doesn’t happen at once.

Space is nature’s way of making sure that everything doesn’t happen to you.

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Tags: AppleScript, Blogging, contexts, GTD, hacks, HowTo, LifeHacks, Markdown, NetNewsWire, Quicksilver, Safari, scripting, scripts, TextMate, workflow, workspace, writing

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 12th, 2007 at 1:18 am and is filed under Prose, Technology. You can leave a comment if you follow my Living Room Rules. If not, you can leave a trackback from your own site.