Hacker News Reader

lanceron Show HN: Rift – A tiling window manager for macOS

Longtime former Spectacle and now Rectangle user here. An ancillary issue I'm curious how people deal with is efficiently getting the mouse pointer from one display to another. When working with two apps on two screens, constantly dragging the mouse all the way across one display to the next and back is tedious. I found Keymou [1] years ago to solve this with hotkeys but am wondering if there are other tricks or apps to help.

1. https://manytricks.com/keymou/

lanceron Show HN: Export Mail for Microsoft Outlook for Mac

Emailchemy looks like a pretty useful tool. I'll take a look!

lanceron Show HN: Export Mail for Microsoft Outlook for Mac

One might think so, but a quick search didn't turn up any results. Outlook for Mac has had AppleScript automation for at least a decade, so you'd think there would be some mention of it if there was.

lanceron Show HN: Export Mail for Microsoft Outlook for Mac

I imagine IMAP would provide access to most cloud-based email services, and I bet there are some IMAP-based export tools. However, in my experience, Microsoft Exchange email accounts are only accessible through the Exchange Server protocol, whatever that might be. Outlook is the perfect intermediary.

lanceron Show HN: Export Mail for Microsoft Outlook for Mac

I put this macOS app together to help me archive 250,000+ emails from Microsoft Outlook to local storage. (In a format that would outlast an OLM file.) It started as a simple AppleScript script and multiplied by asking myself, "I wonder if I could make it do X..." a hundred times over. The project was ready to share four years ago but a spontaneous cross-country move left it to languish. A recent HN "share your half-baked project" post motivated me to open Xcode and polish it up for 2021. As a former SaaS CTO and Win32 developer in a former life, it has been quite a journey down the rabbit hole of macOS app development. Unfortunately, the "New Outlook" doesn't support AppleScript to the extent the "Classic" version does [1], so its shelf-life is unknown. It's free to run in either a limited Trial mode or you can request a beta license key to remove the export message count limit. No doubt this targets a niche market, and it would be great if there is enough interest to support continued development.

[1] https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/924856-the-new-outlook-...

lanceron Show HN: Export Mail for Microsoft Outlook for Mac

I put this macOS app together to help me archive a decade of mail from Microsoft Outlook to local storage. (In a format that would outlast an OLM file.) It started as a simple AppleScript script and multiplied by asking myself, "I wonder if I could make it do X..." a hundred times over. The project was ready to share four years ago but a spontaneous cross-country move left it to languish. A recent HN "share your half-baked project" post motivated me to open Xcode and polish it up for 2021. As a former SaaS CTO and Win32 developer in a former life, it was quite a journey down the rabbit hole of macOS app development. Unfortunately, the "New Outlook" doesn't support AppleScript to the extent the "Classic" version does [1], so its shelf-life is unknown. Business/pricing model is TBD. It's free to run in either a limited Trial mode or you can request a beta license key to remove the export message count limit.

[1] https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/924856-the-new-outlook-...

lanceron Ask HN: Show me your half baked project

https://exportoutlookmacmail.com/

I started this Mac App project in early 2017 that uses AppleScript to export/archive mail messages from Microsoft Outlook for Mac. I was looking for beta users right as my family abruptly moved to a new city. I haven't made time to touch it since. It essentially went from close-to-baked to mothballed. I'll share it here with the caveat that it does not actually work at the moment due to an AppleScript-related error. If there's enough interest in the idea, I'll find time to look into that!

lanceron Simple Personal Finance Tracking with GnuCash

I'm in the same boat! One Windows laptop in the house dedicated to MS Money. With 27 years of financial history, and counting, it still does everything I need it to. Once a year I export it into Excel to do some forecasting and analysis. I'd really love if there were a reliable and future-proof way to get at the data. Sunriise[0] is the only way I know to export raw data but it has a few issues and the source code isn't public.

[0] https://bitbucket.org/hleofxquotesteam/dist-sunriise/wiki/Ho...

lanceron Show HN: Bash Script to Install a Webserver and PHP on a Clean OS

No doubt! I have so many scripts I had to create a framework to manage running them :)

[0] https://github.com/lovette/bootstrap-bash

lanceron Show HN: Write a private diary using good old email

A friend and I had the same need for an email diary service in 1998. DailyDiary [0] has been online ever since :)

[0] https://dailydiary.com

lanceron Show HN: Write a private diary using good old email

I have a feature in the fast track queue that sounds like the "draft response" you're inserting with script. Ping me - I'd love to get your input on that. lance at dailydiary.com.

lanceron Postal: Open source mail delivery platform, alternative to Mailgun or Sendgrid

After the demise of Mandrill I started to divide transactional email between Elastic Email and SparkPost. I send around a thousand messages a month through them and haven't had any problems with either. I still miss Mandrill though. I send high volume mail through Mailgun and have had a great experience with them and their API. I tried integrating with Sendgrid but they have some constraints around MX records that were showstoppers for me.

lanceron Ask HN: Do you keep a personal journal?

I began journaling in my 20's by quickly recapping the day's itinerary in a Sierra Club day calendar given to me on every birthday. (Sadly, those somehow went missing during a move years ago. I'm hoping they're just buried in the bottom of a box somewhere!)

Since 1999, I've been using DailyDiary [1] to journal and track specific topics such as my personal day-to-day activities, weight, exercise, health issues, kid's day-to-day, specific projects, etc. The key for me is to be consistent, and the email nature of DailyDiary tries to reduce that friction as much as possible.

Having so much (searchable) written history has proven immensely helpful on occasion. And it's fun to reminisce when reminded of an event in the past. The kids get a kick out of hearing stories of their past too.

[1] https://www.dailydiary.com/

Disclosure: I'm the founder.

lanceron OhLife is shutting down

At the moment it does not include past entries, but it will soon!

lanceron OhLife is shutting down

Will do. The site was recently overhauled and there are still a few important pages, and features, that are in the pipeline.

lanceron OhLife is shutting down

Thanks for all the comments. An importer is in the works. And an option to include past entries in daily reminders will follow.

lanceron OhLife is shutting down

Thanks for all the comments. An importer is in the works. An option to include past entries in daily reminders will follow.

lanceron OhLife is shutting down

Less functional in the sense that it doesn't support attaching a picture to replies and doesn't include a past entry in the daily reminder, but I'm happy to fast track both of those features if there's demand. Let me know if there's other features you'd like to see!

lanceron OhLife is shutting down

For everyone who enjoys journaling via email, you may find DailyDiary a suitable alternative.

A comparable question might be:

https://www.dailydiary.com/questions/342540/how-did-your-day...

Disclosure: I'm the founder. If there’s interest, I’m happy to add an import for OhLife exports.

lanceron Securing your ssh server

FireHOL looks like a neat tool, but seeing their last (official) release was in 2008 turned me off. I'm using Shorewall now, and as a plus, it supports ipset (mentioned by rw-).

lanceron Ask HN: Review my startup, ActiveInbox (GTD Gmail plugin w/ $20k donations)

I like the idea too, but would rather subscribe to an RSS feed. I get enough email already...

lanceron Ask HN: Apps to document my life?

I use http://dailydiary.com. It uses email to help you keep track of personal metrics (either numeric or free-form text). It doesn't have a native iPhone app though (yet).