Amerpie by Lou Plummer

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Prolific blogger.I lean towards Mac flavored tech, but I …

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Last post: Sep 21, 2026
Posts in 24 h · 7 days · 30 days: 0 · 2 · 11
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Six Free Utilities, Zero Subscriptions
Sep 21, 2026 · original
TL;DR: Five free Mac utilities worth a look this week: a menu-bar fix for notification banners landing on the wrong monitor, a drag-and-drop media compressor, a keyboard-backlight scheduler, an unusually hard-to-skip screen-break app, a notch utility with AI-agent alerts, and a local-only document search tool that cites its sources. The apps I have been testing this week include a couple of entries from someone whose Mac was doing X when they wanted it to do Y, so they built an app to make it do what they wanted. I wish I had those chops, although with AI, the days of being locked in to someone else's UI choices isn't the limiting factor it once was. Make Banners Appear Where You Want Them BannerHither — free. A small menu-bar utility solving one specific multi-monitor annoyance: macOS always shows notification banners on the "main" display, which in many multi-monitor setups isn't the s
Crucial Track for September 20, 2026
Sep 20, 2026 · original
"The Weight" by The Band Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. Which song would you use to introduce yourself to someone new? - The Weight by The Band After pulling into Nazareth, the son's narrator get's no relief from people who keep passing the load but in the end, the whole town shares the weight. This is a song about community and its importance. View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile
Crucial Track for September 14, 2026
Sep 14, 2026 · original
"Graceland" by Paul Simon Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. Share a song that got you through a difficult time - Graceland by Paul Simon Losing love is like a window in your heart, everybody sees you're blown apart. - The album on repeat at the end of my first marriage. View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile
That Sticky-Icky
Sep 10, 2026 · original
I entered adolescence in the disco era. I gotta admit, out of all the songs that they could play at the roller skating rink, you could do a lot worse. It was still the post-Woodstock decade and many attitudes weren't far removed from the ones that people ordinarily associate with the 60s. Cocaine was consumed openly at Studio 54 and the prevailing attitude was "rich people, what can you do?" The devil's lettuce was everywhere. That's how, at the age of 12 I found myself all of a sudden on the way to smoke my first joint with a new, more street-wise friend from our apartment complex. We found a nearby construction site. He pulled a fat but loosely rolled joint from his sock. It was damp with sweat and hard to light. I did not catch the slightest buzz from half a doobie of sweat-soaked, low-quality, Mexican ditch weed. And that was that. I did not immediately seek out more. In fact, I wait
McKinley: The SF Symbols Editor Apple Never Built
Sep 8, 2026 · original
The Apple-created graphics that appear on your folders are called SF Symbols. There are thousands of them, and they're designed to stay legible in multiple sizes and weights, from tiny up to headline-sized. Apple allows you to create your own, in a process that turns out to be pretty complicated when done correctly. You're drawing potentially nine weights (Ultralight through Black) at three scales, making sure the strokes stay visually consistent at every combination, making sure the whole thing still reads as the same symbol from thin to bold, and doing it all in a way Xcode will accept without silently failing. Most people who've tried this by hand in Illustrator or Sketch will tell you it's tedious, error-prone, and genuinely difficult to keep consistent. McKinley is a dedicated app built to solve exactly that problem. It's a vector drawing tool, but unlike a general-purpose one, it a
Crucial Track for September 8, 2026
Sep 8, 2026 · original
"Get Back" by The Beatles Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. Pick a song from an artist or band that’s had the biggest impact on your life. - Get Back by The Beatles I count myself lucky that Beatles records found themselves stacked on my parents' record player during my childhood. John Lennon's death hit hard when I was in the 10th grade. I am so glad that Paul and Ringo are are in decent health, View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile
Enjoying the Ride
Sep 4, 2026 · original
Moving from the only home we'd known in our married life this spring required us to downsize in ways that once would have caused me oceans of anxiety. Certain material goods were so intertwined with my self-identity. As avid, life-long readers, our bookshelves were overflowing, although our reading has mostly been on a screen for years. We bagged up hundreds of books and spent hours driving around stocking every Little Free Library we could find. The remnants of my passion for road cycling took up a disproportionate amount of room, an entire closet of spandex and lycra, more extra wheels than a grown man could hold in both hands. And of course, n+1 bikes that I hadn't ridden in an embarrassingly long time. My local bike shop sold everything for me inside of a week on consignment, netting me a laughably small check. As it turns out, living without being surrounded by dead trees isn't bad.
Crucial Track for September 1, 2026
Sep 1, 2026 · original
"Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards" by Billy Bragg Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. What's your favorite song about moving forward? - Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards by Billy Bragg Bragg's version of it isn't naive optimism, it's someone clear-eyed about how slow and disappointing progress actually is, choosing to keep pushing anyway ("just because you're going forwards doesn't mean I'm going backwards"). That's a more honest read of "moving forward" than most songs manage. View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile
Five Free Apps With No Telemetry & No Accounts That Do One Thing Well: TetherShot, Folder Forge, Image Fuel, doktor, and Kompakt
Aug 30, 2026 · original
TL;DR: Five free, mostly open-source, no-telemetry Mac utilities from this week's testing: docktor (dock widgets + hover previews), Kompakt (drag-and-drop image/video compression), TetherShot (live iPhone screen capture over USB/Wi-Fi), FolderForge (rule-based folder icon styling), and ImageFuel (import-free folder browsing with RAW support). Each gets a free alternative below if you want to compare before committing. Removing Irritation My app testing time this week was spent on free apps, most of them open source and all privacy-respecting. No accounts needed. No telemetry. I've been looking for original, niche apps that do one thing well. docktor docktor calls itself the dock you deserve. It's free, notarized, requires no account, and comes from a solo dev who regularly responds to users with new features and bug fixes. The app fills the unused side space on either end of the Dock wit
Crucial Track for August 28, 2026
Aug 28, 2026 · original
"Desperados Waiting for a Train" by Guy Clark Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. What's your favorite song about patience?- Desperados Waiting for a Train by Guy Clark I'll keep going back to the Texas singer-songwriter well forever when the subject is some aspect of the human condition. This is a tune about the patience of an old man waiting and watching as a boy grows up. View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile
Crucial Track for August 27, 2026
Aug 27, 2026 · original
"Something More Than Free" by Jason Isbell Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. Share a song that captures the feeling of being proud - Something More Than Free by Jason Isbell It's a working-man's song about quiet pride in honest labor: "I don't think about you, I think about who's gonna do this work / When my back gives out." View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile
Five Free and Low Cost Apps: Holeberry, Dock Party, Neon Vision Editor, MojiBar and Snick
Aug 23, 2026 · original
Here are the best apps I tested this weekend. Two will save you time, two are fun ways to waste it on UI tweaks, and one's for a certain psychological profile. I'm sure you can figure out which one. Holeberry - A native Swift 6 app for macOS 14 and up, built by developer Pedro Vieira, Holeberry puts the Pi-hole controls you actually use right in your menu bar. See real-time blocking status and query stats without keeping a dashboard tab open. You can disable blocking for five minutes, an hour, or indefinitely, giving you the same toggle as Pi-hole's own web UI, just one click closer. The feature that actually earns the download is per-tab unblocking. Holeberry reads the active tab in Safari, Chrome, Chromium, Firefox, or Zen, and when a site is broken because Pi-hole blocked something on the page, it can identify and allowlist that domain without making you dig through the query log your
Crucial Track for August 22, 2026
Aug 22, 2026 · original
"Faithless Street" by Whiskeytown Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. What's a song you associate with your biggest mistake? - Faithless Street by Whiskeytown No, I'm not telling that story on the Internet. View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile
Crucial Track for August 21, 2026
Aug 21, 2026 · original
"New Madrid" by Uncle Tupelo Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. **What song makes you want to write poetry? - New Madrid by Uncle Tupelo" I love how this song conveys so much with so few words. View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile
Legendary Meals from the 70s
Aug 21, 2026 · original
My siblings and I are retired or close to it, but we still have conversations that start with "Do you remember when Mom made X?" Thus commences a discussion of Old El Paso taco kits, Chef Boyardee pizzas, waffle irons, liver, English peas and frequently, bread burgers, a 70s-era delicacy, that sounds a bit awful now, but actually wasn't that bad. The grocery stores of my youth were a lot different than what we now have. They sold one kind of lettuce, iceberg, and two kinds of apples, Red Delicious and Golden Delicious. In the south, where I'm from, the stores considered bagels to be a Northern affectation and didn't sell them. I was in high school before I learned such a thing existed. The other factor from the 70s that played a part in food choices was the horrible economy. It was a decade of inflation, scarcity and interest rates in the stratosphere. Times were lean and feeding five pe
A Grits Explainer
Aug 20, 2026 · original
I eat grits. I always have and I always will. Because they're delicious, that's why. Grits are a simple dish: ground corn, salt and a little butter, the traditional way. Sometimes folks get a little fancy and start adding cheese, chopped sausage or bacon and other delicacies. Grits are a savory dish. They are not oatmeal or cream of wheat. Keep the sugar and milk away from them. People who aren't from the parts of the south where grits are commonly served are often suspicious of the dish. After all, the name suggests something you'd spit out rather than swallow. Because of all the other well-earned baggage being a southerner entails, I've never been one to join the battle of Grits Mountain to defend our dietary choices. Don't like grits? Fine. More for me. You don't know what you're missing. Never tried grits? Don't be close-minded. Just because you are in a place surrounded by Southern
Crucial Track for August 19, 2026
Aug 19, 2026 · original
"Into the Mystic" by Van Morrison Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. What's a song you'd want to hear while watching the sunrise? - Into the Mystic by Van Morrison The song is built for exactly that moment; foghorns, tide turning, "let your soul and spirit fly" is dawn imagery even though it's technically about a boat coming into harbor. View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile
AppAddict Records 1,000,000th View
Aug 19, 2026 · original
When I wrote and published my first software review in 2024, I had no idea I'd still be going strong after 500+ reviews. Thank you to all of my fellow App Addicts and all the developers out there who keep writing high quality Mac software. ✉️ Reply by email
Crucial Track for August 18, 2026
Aug 18, 2026 · original
"Kodachrome" by Paul Simon Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. **What's a song you associate with your favorite photograph? - Kodachrome by Paul Simon" "When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school..." I love this tune! View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile
Crucial Track for August 17, 2026
Aug 17, 2026 · original
"In Spite of Ourselves (feat. Iris DeMent)" by John Prine Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. Share a song that captures the feeling of being understood.- In Spite of Ourselves by John Prine and Iris DeMent It's the strongest fit. It's built entirely on being loved and known despite your specific, ridiculous flaws, "she thinks all my jokes are corny, convict movies make her horny," View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile

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