by cameronreilly | Jan 30, 2015 | Mac, Podcasting, technology
If you have ever wanted to feed your system audio into a Skype call – for example, you’re recording a podcast and you want to play a clip from a song or a movie or a voicemail from a listener and you want the other person on your call to hear it and you also want it to come through cleanly on your recording – then this might help (assuming you’re on a Mac).
I’ve wanted to do this for ages and just figured it out. As it turns out, it wasn’t difficult at all and I should have taken the time to work it out ages ago. So I’m writing this for anyone else who might go searching for a solution.
Here are the apps you’ll need to install:
1. Audio Hijack
2. Soundflower
Steps.
1. Set up a new Audio Hijack session we below. So what you’ll end up with is two audio inputs – your mic and your system audio (or you could make the second one an app, like iTunes or Chrome, etc) feeding into your headphones and then through to Soundflower.
2. Once you’ve done that, open up your Skype settings and set “input” to Soundflower.
Once you’ve done that – you’re set.
Turn on Audio Hijack my clicking the round button in the lower left corner.
When you want to feed your secondary audio source into Skype, just click the secondary source node in Audio Hijack and set its status to “on”.
When you have finished with that piece of audio, turn its status back to “off”.
That’s pretty much all there is to it.
Using Audio Hijack and Soundflower to feed System Audio into Skype
by cameron | Mar 25, 2014 | Apple, Evernote, Hazel, Mac, technology
I’ve got an old scanner (Canon MP250) and I wanted a way of automating the process of scanning documents and getting them into Evernote.
There’s probably a way of doing this all in
Keyboard Maestro, but I couldn’t work it out quickly enough. It’s my first time using KM and I’m still a little confused by it. But I know my way around
Hazel and I used
this Applescript from Macworld as a cheat.
So, when I hit my hot key, KM opens up Image Capture, scans the document and puts it on my desktop where Hazel picks it up and imports it into my “!Inbox” notebook in Evernote where I can process it later, and then deletes the file from my desktop. KM then waits a minute and kills the Image Capture app.
Keyboard Maestro
Hazel
Hazel AppleScript
tell application “Evernote”
activate
create note from file theFile notebook {“!Inbox”} tags {“scan”}
end tell
by cameron | Oct 22, 2013 | Mac, technology
For the six years I’ve been using a Mac, I’ve often wanted to learn how to use AppleScript to automate processes I repeat. Today I finally did.
As part of my routine for keeping my Mac running efficiently, I like to re-boot it every couple of days. And to make sure it continues to boot quickly, I’ve made sure I’ve deleted everything that wants to auto-startup at boot. That way, I get a nice, clean, quick boot if I need it.
However, there are also a number of sites and apps that I use all day that I need to run. So instead of opening them all up individually after a new boot, I’ve written an AppleScript to do it for me.
Now if you’re an old AppleScript hand, this is probably stupidly simple. But I know lots of friends and family who have moved to a Mac in recent years and who aren’t programmers, so this is for them.
The Steps.
1. Open AppleScript. It comes pre-installed on your Mac. Find it by searching Spotlight.
2. Start a new script.
3. Cut & Paste my code from below. Change the URLs you want to open and the App you want to run according to your tastes.
4. Click “Compile” on the AppleScript toolbar.
5. Flie > Save. Save it to your Applications folder. Make sure the “File Format” is “Application”. Call it whatever you want – mine is just called ‘Startup’.
6. Lastly, open up the Applications folder and drage the icon for the new app to your dock. Close AppleScript.
Now, when you boot, after the dock loads, just run the new app and it will open all of your sites and apps for you.
open location “http://gmail.com”
open location “http://facebook.com”
tell application “TextExpander”
activate
end tell
tell application “Alfred 2”
activate
end tell
tell application “CrashPlan”
activate
end tell
tell application “PopClip”
activate
end tell
tell application “Bartender”
activate
end tell
tell application “Fantastical”
activate
end tell
tell application “Moom”
activate
end tell
tell application “Skype”
activate
end tell
tell application “TweetDeck”
activate
end tell
tell application “Evernote”
activate
end tell
tell application “Spotify”
activate
end tell
