BBC documentary on the decay of Detroit:
Bash Directory Stack Expansion
I “grew up” with tcsh, but have lately switched to bash because it’s ubiquitous in the linux world (and I can’t be bothered trying to get tcsh installed on all the servers I use).
For almost a year I thought bash was without directory stack expansion: I’d read the directory stack section in various tutorials and docs, but all they mentioned were pushd, popd and dirs. I’d asked various long-time (albeit casual) bash users, and none knew about it. And my attempts at asking the search engines were not met with success (which was my inability to articulate what I wanted*, rather than the information not being available).
This frustrated me, almost to the point of my switching back to tcsh (or try another alternative).
…until I stumbled on the answer: tilde.
~N
The string that would be displayed by dirs +N
~+N
The string that would be displayed by dirs +N
~-N
The string that would be displayed by dirs -N
E.g.,
$ cd /etc/postgresql/8.3/
$ pushd ~/backup/
$ cp ~1/main/pg_hba.conf .
On the topic, I recommend the following aliases:
alias dirs=’dirs -v’
alias pd=’pushd’
alias po=’popd’
* I was searching for “bash counterpart to tcsh’s equals” or “complete directory stack items in bash” or “bash vs tcsh directory stack”
PuTTY Connection Manager
Manage multiple connections better in PuTTY
YouTube – Changes to JavaScript, Part 1: EcmaScript 5
Yes, this is old, but I still haven’t watched it and don’t want to forget.
tools to make macos more usable
As a Windows user, moving to MacOS has been a bit painful in some areas. While I have no problem learning new techniques for using a new OS, there are areas where the Mac way is worse. These have (and will continue to) bother me unless I can override its default behavior. Here are some tools and configurations that have helped:
- witch – turn app switching into window switching
- get rid of translucent menubar
- give all controls keyboard focus:
- System Prefs > Universal Access > Mouse > Keyboard Preferences > Full > keyboard access
- navigate the menubar with the keyboard
- ctrl + F2
- fix home/end keys
- Add the date to the menubar clock
- http://paulstamatiou.com/2006/06/11/how-to-display-date-in-os-x-menu-bar
- but apparently this changes system-wide date formats
- http://www.charcoaldesign.co.uk/magical
- http://paulstamatiou.com/2006/06/11/how-to-display-date-in-os-x-menu-bar
- Better window resizing / moving
- Zooom http://www.coderage-software.com/zooom/
- Alternative (but only works in Cocoa apps)
- some general tips
Stuff to figure out still:
- find alternative to the dock (that takes less space or is at least not shiny)
- find a better solution to window sizing (not a maximize, but some smart tiling perhaps) – like Windows 7′s ability to dock windows to the left and right, filling half the screen
- witch lets you “maximize” by using the “z” key to zoom. Would be nice to fill the left and right half of the screen too.
- choose a keyboard launcher (e.g., quicksilver)
- actually, spotlight is ok
- better terminal (iTerm?)
- may not be necessary
- turn off “click to focus” (at least in Finder)
- OSX apps are so inconsistent in whether a click to an inactive window falls through the control or is eaten by the activation. The same app sometimes behaves differently when you click and drag (depending on how fast you go)!
- This is so frustrating because it’s inconsistent and I have to wait to see whether the UI is responding, which causes more “user latency”. (argh!)
- Get the menubar to span multiple monitors (it’s stupid to have to move the mouse to another screen to interract with a window on the current one)
- Possible work-arounds:
- http://homepage.mac.com/khsu/DejaMenu/DejaMenu.html
- would be nice if it included icons and keyboard accelerators (as visual cues)
- http://www.themerlinshow.com/ep/008-howto-quicksilver-application-menus
- http://homepage.mac.com/khsu/DejaMenu/DejaMenu.html
- Possible work-arounds:
- TextMate:
- Great editor, but some huge annoyances:
- close a tab when middle-clicked
- better undo
- faster buffer switching on large projects
- faster find-in-files (ack in project fixes this, but doesn’t do replace)
- Great editor, but some huge annoyances:
- Get Shift+Insert to paste
- Sometimes clicking to activate a firefox window then dragging (to move it) doesn’t actually move the window (need to click it again)
- Cmd+home = Cmd + Up; Cmd + end = Cmd + Down
Alternatives to RDBMSs
http://www.metabrew.com/article/anti-rdbms-a-list-of-distributed-key-value-stores/
This guy does his evaluation based on his need to store key/value pairs, but it’s good to keep in mind for other uses too.
More screens = more productive
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/technology/personaltech/15basics.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1
…people who used two 20-inch monitors were 44 percent more productive at certain text-editing operations than people using a single 18-inch monitor…
Why PHP Won
http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-php-won.html
Why PHP has become the dominant language (and in fact, why some of its “shortcomings” are part of the reason it did)
sweet wysiwym markdown editor
http://wmd-editor.com/examples/splitscreen
This is great! I’ll need to incorporate it into the next cms/web-admin interface I work on.
Wonder if I can extend it with custom tags, such as embedding images from a custom asset manager (and still have them appear in preview)
