How to download a YouTube playlist of videos

Posted on April 2, 2012 by David Pfahler

As I wanted to watch an entire playlist of the awesome khanacademy at double speed (with VLC player) I wanted to download the playlist from YouTube. Turns out it’s not that easy, so I try to make it as easy as possible for you with this post.

Note: This tutorial is for MacOS X, especially Lion users. However, much of it will also apply to Linux or Windows. Also note that I’m not sure if you are violating YouTube’s terms of service or something like that. Proceed at your own risk.

Assumptions: You need to have Python installed (or get it here). Experience with the terminal is helpful but not necessary.

Step 1: Download youtube-dl

youtube-dl is the command-line tool of choice, because it’s frequently updated. Download youtube-dl here. Save it to your Downloads folder. Make sure to remove the .txt file extension after saving.

Step 2: “Install” youtube-dl

Open up terminal app (located at /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app) and type (or copy/paste) the following:

cd ~/Downloads
chmod 775 youtube-dl
cp youtube-dl /usr/local/bin/
rm youtube-dl

Step 3: Update

Make sure youtube-dl is up-to-date by entering the following command into your terminal app:

youtube-dl -U

Usage

Navigate to your playlist of choice with your browser and copy the url of the playlist. Now fire up the terminal again and enter the following. Replace $URL with the url of the playlist you just copied:

youtube-dl -ct "$URL"

If you’re like me, you just tried this without reading further, which is why I added the -ct option to the command. The t in -ct tells youtube-dl to not use the random filename of the YouTube video, but the title of the video as the filename. If this is confusing you, think about it like that: -ct will make the downloaded video files look like ‘My favorite dog video-f093hajlsdz91h.mp4′ instead of ‘f093hajlsdz91h.mp4′.

The c in -ct states that youtube-dl will resume a download if interrupted instead of redownloading the entire video from scratch.

Advanced

Other options I used where –playlist-start and –playlist-end followed be a number. Also useful is the -A option that automatically numbers the filenames. youtube-dl can do a lot more than just downloading a playlist. Find out more here or enter into your terminal:

youtube-dl --help

Unmotivated: I don’t know what to write about

Posted on March 18, 2012 by David Pfahler

Total reading time: 1:45 min (based on Alex).

I don’t know what to write about today. For the past 15 minutes I was sitting here in my room at my way too large desk staring at my Macbook’s screen. I seriously don’t know what to write about. I’m in the middle of the deepest inspirational down of the last 12 months if not more. I told myself a hundred times that I really wanted to write a blog and that consistency was king. But understanding it is not enough. I have to make it happen.

It’s the same with working out. You have a strict plan, you know it’s going to work if executed properly and you are super motivated. But after two or three weeks you start to miss workouts or cut them short or whatever. It happened to me several times. Why? Because it takes time and effort to taste the fruit of your labor.

It’s just like that with learning to play an instrument (the piano in my case). A great artist inspired you to go for it, to learn your favorite instrument. You get a book or you sign up for lessons and you know that you’ll have to practice. Practice a lot. But then life gets in the way and you forget it or you are stuck.

Just so with business. When I first started to attempt to make business back in May of 2011, I tried to sell websites. Together with Stephan I wrote an eBook, mailed a hundred or so small businesses a free copy and we got two responses. So we were excited, we were motivated and we put in a lot of time and effort. We then presented at one of the companies that showed interest and – to our own surprise – they almost bought our service. Almost? Last minute another company offered ridiculously low pricing and the customer went with them (they still have no website to date). Frustration kicked in.

So why did I tell you these stories? What is the lesson here? When I started to write this post I had no idea what to write about. I swear, I was not inspired nor excited. But, I kept doing what I set out to do. And look what just emerged from my unmotivated mind: The connection between all of your goals. No matter how different they are, they all share the same pitfalls, the same motivation slumps. So whenever you’re stuck or unmotivated or depressed just keep moving in a positive direction and something of value will emerge.

Pentane – Web Apps via Spotlight, Dock & ⌘+⇥

Posted on March 11, 2012 by Stephan Bönnemann

Often times you use specific Web Apps all the time. Be it Gmail, Wunderkit or, in our most recent case, Basecamp Next.
Such an ubiquitous case of application must be only a keystroke away.

It’s all overkill

There are solutions like Fluid to pack a specific Web App into a Mac App container and access it from there. Actually this is not a satisfying solution, simply because it’s total overkill.
With a completely independent App you will experience a lot of unnecessary trouble. e.g. How to handle links? A lot of settings have to be made before you achieve the expected behaviour.

⌘+⇥, Dock & Spotlight

How do you define “a keystroke away”?
I would say it’s not necessary to have a whole App, but it’s necessary to be able to use standard gestures & shortcuts. Namely that’s the Dock, the ⌘+⇥ shortcut and Spotlight. All of this while staying in the familiar Browser environment.

That’s where Pentane comes into play. In less than 5 seconds you can build an App that’ll open your favorite Web App in Chrome, or if existent activate its tab. Every time you hit the icon in the Dock or activate it via ⌘+⇥ your App will be focused.

Download via GitHub

Principles over plans

Posted on March 4, 2012 by David Pfahler

Total reading time: 1:06 min (based on Alex).

Mig Reyes posted a very intersting, short article called “No Five Year Plan” that really resonated with me. He published the post on his birthday giving a brief summary of his past four years of work. Mig now works as a designer at 37Signals. Something I’d call a huge success.

The concept of having no plan (or no goals) is not new to 37Signals. In their latest book REWORK one of the most important principles mentioned is “planning is guessing”. But how can it be that a successful company – or a person in Mig’s case – can make progress without plans?

Leo Babauta, famous blogger at zenhabits.net made the same point before. He argues that you are much happier and more productive without goals. So are all these successful people clueless? Stumbling into their achievements?

Actually, I agree with both Mig and Leo. Having detailed plans for the distant future is guess work. You do not gain anything but frustration. Circumstances will change but plans, by definition, won’t. Both Mig and Leo have something in common though, that makes up for the missing plan: Principles.

All successful people who work without a plan have a great passion for what they do. They know exactly why they do it and how. The whole planning becomes really simple: All your decisions are derived from your principles. That’s the plan.

On proving a concept

Posted on February 25, 2012 by Stephan Bönnemann

Total reading time: 1:58 min (based on Alex).

You might have heard about the new, awesome Clear App that sold 350.000 copies on the first 9 days of it’s App Store Life.

Watch this video to get an impression:

From the beginning on there was gossip going, if the App could have been built with HTML5 and finally this week a web version went kind of viral on twitter. (even Gruber mentioned it)

On the first impression it became clear that someone recreated 80% of the app’s features, but missed out on the 20% that are responsible for the Apps uniqueness and therefore success. For example, the pinch gestures or some of the fancy slide down effects as well as the sounds were missing.

Well, no problem – It’s just a proof of concept. – at least that’s what I’ve read on twitter.

The replica
(If visited on a touch device you can try it right here)

What’s the concept?

So many people spend a whole lot of time to just create something and put it out there unfinished. I’m constantly asking myself why people do this.
And the only few answers I got were something along the lines of “It’s just fun”, “I’m just trying stuff out” and finally the worst “It’s just a proof of concept”. It’s not my personal opinion but I accept the first two reasons. But seriously what concept are you proving?

The only proven concept I recognize here: It’s possible to waste a huge amount of time.
Indeed a revolutionary perception…

Proving a concept would imply that you are on to something, that you are building at least an early prototype. I can’t see where a stolen idea or just fancy, spinning, jumping & bouncing stuff is even close to being useful. Even more so when posted publicly.

The real motivation & my suggestion

Still I was wondering what was the motivation behind the webversion of Clear. So I played around a little and noticed a task saying “I’m available for hire.” Ahh so there you are! Your work was supposed to impress people in order to get hired.
You know what? Your new concept from now on is I don’t need to get hired! You (almost) built Clear App with Web Technologies in no time!

Think about what you could have built for yourself in that time. What if you used your talent to create something of insane value for you and others? Come up with an original, useful idea. Build it, polish it, simplify, iterate over and finally sell it.

Even in the worst case – if you fail completely and don’t earn a dime – you only wasted some time (oh wait), but you learned a lot.

Your future employer will be more impressed if he sees that you’re able to push things to a final stage. But I guess an employer won’t be your problem anymore.

iPhone Stencil

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Stephan Bönnemann

Regarding Material:

When drawing iPhone UI sketches it is important for me to stick to the original size of the phone. I don’t care about pixels (yet), but about the physical area occupied by a button. Today I created a little stencil for the iPhone screen, so I can draw it in almost no time. (Download the Stencil).

I totally hate using paper when it’s a tool for communication (snail-mail), storing and visualising data, text and images (as well as paper cuts).
But for making sketches even an iPad + Cosmonaut can’t beat it.

P.S.: The printed result will have the exact size of the iPhone if you print it at 100% / without scaling. The black bars represent the size of the standard toolbars. Toolbar | Toolbar w/ Statusbar | Bottom Tabbar (order left to right)

Material over method approach

Posted on February 20, 2012 by David Pfahler

Total reading time: 1:10 min (based on Alex).

In the past weeks I had to learn a lot for both my university courses and development projects. While trying to handle the intensity (and stress) of all this, I rediscovered a principle that I want to share with you.

“What you do is infinitly more important than how you do it” – Tim Ferriss, bestselling author

Throughout school and now university I’ve tried a bunch of different methods of learning. Do you want to know which one worked best? None of them. The answer is stupid because so is the question. Methods do matter if applied to the right things, but no method can ubiquitously the best. Finding the right things can cost a lot of time. Unless, you have the right material layed out for you.

A good book, a manuscript or any type of curated content can save you a lot of time. For exams I often use khanacademy.org and its step-by-step video collections. For general purpose topics wikibooks is a good resource, but I never shy away from a great book.

Good material learned with a bad method is always better than bad material learned with a perfect method. This applies to everything from learning programming to gardening. This principle is truely ubiquitous, which no method can ever be.

Lesson learned: To optimize future learning, I’m going to put a lot of effort in the search of the best material first.

Inventing on Principle

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Stephan Bönnemann

I totally recommend watching this video.
Bret shows some amazing and innovative “immediate connection” demos, but that’s really just the beginning…

Bret Victor invents tools that enable people to understand and create. He has designed experimental UI concepts at Apple, interactive data graphics for Al Gore, and musical instruments at Alesis.

For more Bret, see worrydream.com
This talk was given at CUSEC 2012 s

Business once, pleasure for all.

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Stephan Bönnemann

Total reading time: 3:18 min (based on Alex)

This post is written from a developer’s point of view. Nevertheless, the lessons learned can be applied to a variety of different areas.

As a designer I’m making decisions about the User Interface every day. While creating iPhone Apps I’m trying hard to find the right position for every toolbar, every button – basically every single pixel. I noticed that most results of the design process took the same line.

Just look at the App Store. Most Apps use very similar User Interface patterns. (Toolbars, Tabbed Bottom Navigation, Buttons, Lists) The exceptions are either the really crappy Apps, or the extraordinary ones.
For instance, Apple’s Music App is built on the standard design. Rock solid, but nothing special. With Reminders they broke several conventions such as the swipe-to-delete action – and it’s a huge failure. Guess why Siri is so popular for scheduling reminders. Meanwhile tapbots dominate the charts with Tweetbot. It’s based on the standard interface patterns, but they managed to come up with some genius additions to it. (picture) They tried a lot with their other Apps (Calcbot, Convertbot etc.) and finally they brought their masterpiece to market. This kind of excellence requires that you have the full power to concentrate on the details.

Business before pleasure?

Usually you have to do a lot of repetitive, tiring shitwork – like placing the back button in the top left corner over and over again – before you finally have the pleasure to evolve your creative moments of pure energy, when you make decisions that really matter, when you come up with a new genius idea.
I’ve read so much about avoiding these trivial setup tasks in order to get productive, but that didn’t lead me anywhere. In fact I was just procrastinating when I tried to avoid inconvenient tasks. In the long-term my ratio of shitwork to passion wasn’t getting any better. I really had to tackle the problems…

Once and for all!

Of course I’m not talking about resignating and coping with the same issues over and over again. Precisely because a majority of these tasks are so trivial you can automate them. Imagine using your creativity not only to do the ‘actual’ work, but for abstracting the minor things. Just think about the awesome feeling when you come up with an idea that will save you from doing the same thing over and over again!

That’d be worth a try, wouldn’t it? Do you remember my daily interface creation process from the beginning? You might say building an interface for software is such a profound task as to be irreplaceable. I chewed over my experiences and daily favored designs and framed my preferences. I identified high priority elements – the page title or navigation elements like the back button – and consecutively filled the remaining screen estate. Finally I came up with an algorithm determining the position of all elements on the screen. From now on an incorruptible little script takes my ordinary, but repetitive arbitrations, while I care exclusively about the extraordinary.

Step back!

“That’s fine”, you might think, “but I can’t apply this to my job.” Well, think about that for a second. Let’s say, you have to create a lot of brochures for your type of business. These publications often get changed last minute by your clients and it is a real hassle to go back and change the requested parts as well as the entire Table of Contents. Now, if you took the time to configure your Word Processor (or LaTeX) just once so that the Table of Content was automatically generated by the software, you’d save a lot of time.

By this means almost everything can be at least simplified. Your inbox is stuffed with tons of mail every day. Analyse your contacts and come up with the main types of E-Mail you get. Set up folders and corresponding folder rules to manage these streams of communication. Take the time and unsubscribe to every single scammy newsletter you receive. Always stick to your rules and keep the inbox itself clean if not empty. You won’t miss out on the essential things and more important without being annoyed you have the capability to read/write the actual text with full concentration.

Start with basic foundations and constantly improve your groundwork. After investing a few extra hours for the setup you may then focus on the individual challenges of the particular app, brochure, mail, or project. You will be empowered to do elaborate, innovative work. And all this while being more motivated and faster than ever before.

Find your five hours

Posted on January 31, 2012 by David Pfahler

Total reading time: 2:37 min (based on Alex).

To many questions that have bothered me in the last year or so I found the same answer. Questions like “How do I achieve my goals?”, “What should I do to boost productivity”, “How to write better code, motivate myself to go to the gym?” etc. Did you ask yourself one of these questions recently?

When I first started reading about the topic of personal development in 2008, a variety of unbeliebly complex and diverse systems overwhelmed me in my simple quest of improving just one tiny bit. After countless of hours and a variety of topics tackled I came to the conclusion that the true nature of a subject often is suprisingly simple and elegant.

When I was still in school I usually came home at about 2pm and ate until 2:30pm. After that I always felt dizzy and sometimes forced myself into doing my homework and sometimes – well sometimes I didn’t. As all good student do, I was convinced that school was the reason for me being tired and unhappy.

To my surprise things didn’t change much when I started with university. Now I had the freedom to choose when to get up and when to go to sleep. Still, predictably at 3pm, I became inable to perform any kind of cognitive work. Then I happened to install a piece of software called Rescuetime. It tracks your activity at the computer and ranks it as either productive or unproductive. At the end of every week the program calculates a positive or negative score that describes your overall productivity. The killer feature for me however, was something else.

Rescuetime can display graphs of your productivity over the period of a day (or week etc.). You can literally see your brain at work – or on facebook, depending on the time of day. And there it is: A tiny clause that almost went unnoticed. It contains all the wisdom I gained over the last 3 years.

Looking at the graph was like getting punched in the face. “Why didn’t I listen to my body?”, I thought. It was really obvious. I started working in the morning and productivity went up really fast. I was at the peek of the day after two or three hours and stayed there until – guess what – about 3pm. Concentration broke down and I didn’t come back before at least 5pm.

The point to take away here is: Almost all of the days that were tracked had one thing in common: There were no more than five really productive hours in that day. It didn’t matter too much whether I was getting up early or late. It always summed up to about five.

With this insight I totally changed the way I worked. I became an early riser in order to have as much time before 3pm as possible. In the afternoon I now take a break, a nap or do uncreative but neccessary work such as cleaning my room. And most important: I decide very carefully what I do in my best five hours. You really can’t get goot three subjects at once, let alone master them.

Find your five hours. I don’t care if your goal is becoming a martial arts master or programming like a pro. If you really want to accomplish something, you have to think about what you spend those five hours on AND use them wisely. Think in terms of “Is it really worth to check twitter during my five hours?”. It suddenly becomes easier to say “No.”.

keeplookin

you'll know when you find it