The first computer I spent any time on, was an Apple ][.

Three decades later, I’m writing this on an iMac. And many of you will read it on some Apple-designed device whether it be a Mac, iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad. The company at the forefront of several revolutionary products, Apple, just lost their Wonka yesterday. We all feel a sense of loss at his passing, I consider him one of the fathers of modern computing. No other iconic figure represents the inventions and devices that many of us use every day like Steve Jobs did.

For the last 14 years, he rebuilt the company he created from the ground up to be one of the strongest in the world. And how did he resurrect a company that was near death? Passion and a love for the work.

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

Love what you do, and follow your heart. It’s the only true north you can count on, to take you forward in life.

So many things he brought into creation have dazzled us, and changed the face of industries thought to be immovable. The company he cultivated and taught to be insanely great, yet again, is his legacy. When his resignation came on August 24th, 2011, there was something prophetic in the letters words, and it lingered in the back of my mind:

"I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come,"

A little over a month later, unfortunately, that day has come.

Our condolences to his family for their loss. Every one of us that he had an impact on, have a bit more illumination and color in our lives thanks to his passion.

“Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”

EDIT: Follow this link for the latest scripts which utilize Spotify’s more enhanced Applescript support

If you’ve been following the latest invite craze, the latest one has to be for the European import Spotify. Basically millions of tracks you can play instantly on your computer for free + ads, and for a fee they’ll remove the ads, and an additional fee they’ll let you stream their catalog from your mobile phone (iPhone or Android). I don’t have any more invites, but I know a lot of folks have had success putting their email in for @amanda. And of course, visit here to download the Spotify client.

If you’re a user of Launchbar or Quicksilver, these Applescripts (for Launchbar) placed in ~/Library/Application Support/LaunchBar/Actions/Spotify should help in controlling your music playing without having to constantly open Spotify. For updates and the original author of these scripts visit this blog article. After adding these applescripts activate Launchbar and select the Index menu > Update Index > All Rules. Or just activate Launchbar and press Cmd-0.

Spotify - Next Song

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tell application "System Events"
	set MyList to (name of every process)
end tell

tell application "System Events" to set appList to ¬
	name of application processes whose frontmost is true

set activeApp to item 1 of appList
if (MyList contains "Spotify") is true then
	tell application "Spotify" to activate
	tell application "System Events"
		tell process "Spotify"
			click menu item 3 of menu 1 of menu bar item 6 of menu bar 1
		end tell
	end tell
	tell application "System Events"
		set visible of process "Spotify" to false
	end tell
end if

Spotify - Previous Song

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tell application "System Events"
	set MyList to (name of every process)
end tell

tell application "System Events" to set appList to ¬
	name of application processes whose frontmost is true

set activeApp to item 1 of appList
if (MyList contains "Spotify") is true then
	tell application "Spotify" to activate
	tell application "System Events"
		tell process "Spotify"
			click menu item 4 of menu 1 of menu bar item 6 of menu bar 1
		end tell
	end tell
	tell application "System Events"
		set visible of process "Spotify" to false
	end tell
end if

Spotify - Play/Pause

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tell application "System Events"
	set MyList to (name of every process)
end tell

tell application "System Events" to set appList to ¬
	name of application processes whose frontmost is true

set activeApp to item 1 of appList
if (MyList contains "Spotify") is true then
	tell application "Spotify" to activate
	tell application "System Events"
		tell process "Spotify"
			click menu item 1 of menu 1 of menu bar item 6 of menu bar 1
		end tell
	end tell
	tell application "System Events"
		set visible of process "Spotify" to false
	end tell
end if

Searching in Spotify

Searching is vital to using this new tool for us folks over here in the United States, and our European brethren have been busy with helpers like searching Spotify with Quicksilver. I liked this so much, I’ve adapted the instructions for Launchbar:

1. Activate Launchbar and select Index > Show Index or Option+Cmd+I
2. Browse to Search Templates (UTF-8) and click Add
3. Add the following entries:
   • Name: Search Spotify for Album Detail: spotify:search:album:*
   • Name: Search Spotify for Artist Detail: spotify:search:artist:*
   • Name: Search Spotify for Song Detail: spotify:search:title:*
4. Update Index for Search Templates (UTF-8) or All

If using Spaces

Some folks have reported that when using Spaces in OSX the Applescripts have switched to that Space. Simplest thing to do is set the preferences for Spaces so that Spotify shows up on “Every Space”.

Enjoy the music!

EDIT: Follow this link for the latest scripts which utilize Spotify’s more enhanced Applescript support

There is a bit of discussion over on the new favorite social network Google+. Some enterprising folks are copying Google’s short URL for accessing Google which appends a plus sign following the domain like so: mysticcoders.com/+. In this short article we’ll show you several methods of achieving this on your Wordpress blog from cleanest, to not.

Full privileges to web root

The most effective means of redirection is to edit the .htaccess file in the web root:

Redirect /+ https://plus.google.com/[your-plus-id]/

No administrative rights to create .htaccess files

If you do not have access to edit the .htaccess file on your host.

1. Create a directory named + in the root
2. Edit and save a new file named index.php and insert the following block of code:

<?php header('Location: https://plus.google.com/[your-plus-id]/'); ?>

Avoid using a PHP script

If for some strange reason you’d like to avoid using PHP for any reason at all, you can follow the same steps from the second method, but instead create a file named index.html in the + directory with the contents:

<html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="0; url=https://plus.google.com/[your-plus-id]/" /> </head> <body> <a href="https://plus.google.com/[your-plus-id]/">Click here to access the Google+ profile</a>. </body> </html>

NOTE: If you’re using Tumblr see this great blog post about how to implement the redirection from their interface.

For updates from MG Siegler’s original post.