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Hot take on the Apple Vision Pro

· WWDC

Yesterday at the WWDC23 keynote, Apple introduced a new hardware platform, the Vision Pro. It’s always fun to give hot-takes and first impressions on a new technology, especially when I haven’t tried it yet, so here’s mine, for what it’s worth. I’m excited about it. While the initial device is far short of the ideal of unobtrusive glasses or similar, that let you overlay information on the world (augmented reality, or AR), it has an impressive array of technology and concepts, showing great potential. I don’t know how comfortable it would be to wear for hours, or how well the virtual windows…

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Simon extras

· FAQ · Simon

Dejal Simon is a powerful and flexible website & server monitoring tool. One of the reasons it is so flexible is that in addition to the many built-in services, filters, notifiers & reports, you can extend it by using or writing custom scripts (or port sessions). Simon comes bundled with many examples of such scripts; check out the Services, Filters & Notifiers lists and look for the items with a "Script" subtitle. You can inspect and edit those to customize them to suit your needs, or use them as inspiration for your own. As an additional resource, the Simon site has an Extras page, which…

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Where can I find more sounds for Time Out or Simon?

· FAQ · Simon · Time Out

Time Out comes with a number of built-in sounds that you can play as part of the Break Actions, plus it lists all sounds you have installed on your Mac, which includes system default ones, and any you have added to the standard sound folders. It's worth noting that you can also have Time Out play any music from your Apple Music library, too. Find more sounds To add more sounds, you first need to find and download them from a website. There are many sites that offer sounds of varying length, quality, themes, etc. Some for free, some as paid offerings. Usually with previews so you can listen…

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Does Time Out have a lifetime purchase option?

· FAQ · Time Out

In ye olde days, software was sold once, for what would be considered nowadays to be a high price, and every year or so the developer would release a major paid upgrade, typically charging about half of the original price. I still do this for Simon, my pro tool to monitor websites and servers for changes or failures, since that model is still common for pro apps. Though it is also available on Setapp, as part of a subscription along with hundreds of other apps. But for Time Out, my popular break reminder app, I wanted to try something different. I introduced a "supporter" model, where people…

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How can I change the order of filters in Simon?

· FAQ · Simon

The Simon app has pages for filters, notifiers, reports and auto pause times while editing a test. These can be reordered very easily, by dragging them to the desired order. The order really only matters for filters, since subsequent filters can refer to the output of previous ones, though others might look better in a custom order. Simply click and drag anywhere outside a control to move a filter etc to a new position. Here's a looping video example:

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Time Out 2.9.2 released

· release · Time Out

I'm pleased to announce an update of Time Out, my popular break reminder tool. This update includes some nice fixes and tweaks: Now uses more modern ways to start the break helper, the automatically start on login option, and access the System Settings. Fixed app icons not appearing in the Activity log for apps with display names that don't match their filename. Fixed a break sometimes stopping too early when using the Ask When to Start option. Fixed a break not being rescheduled past midnight when a natural break occurs. Added themes for the Sinclair Trails blog and YouTube channel, and…

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Simon 5.1.1 released

· release · Simon

I’m pleased to announce the general release of an update of my website and server monitoring app for macOS: Simon version 5.1.1. This update includes just a few — but important — fixes: If not signed in to iCloud, Simon now doesn't offer syncing, with a message explaining that, instead of assuming it's available and sometimes crashing. Fixed a crash when dragging to reorder filters, notifiers, and reports in the test editor. When loading the default data when first using the app, the services, filters, and notifiers are now organized into groups (this was previously only done when updating the…

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The importance of a good backup strategy

· FAQ · general

I received a support email from a Simon customer who had a hard drive failure, and lost their data. Worse still, they were in the process of recreating their Time Machine backup at the time, so didn't have a backup. That prompted me to post about my backup strategy. When you live your life and make your living on computers, there is little more valuable than the data they contain. So it is critical to protect it from a loss that could set you back years. Fortunately nowadays most important data is in the cloud... various remote servers. For example, if you use Apple Music, your music…

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