Five12's Blog

Requiem for Detroit

five12 — Sun, 09 May 2010 18:55:50 +0000

BBC documentary on the decay of Detroit:

Bash Directory Stack Expansion

five12 — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:35:13 +0000

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

five12 — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 15:02:37 +0000

Manage multiple connections better in PuTTY

PuTTY Connection Manager.

YouTube – Changes to JavaScript, Part 1: EcmaScript 5

five12 — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 15:01:19 +0000

Yes, this is old, but I still haven’t watched it and don’t want to forget.

YouTube – Changes to JavaScript, Part 1: EcmaScript 5.

tools to make macos more usable

five12 — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:27:38 +0000

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
- http://tony.mattke.net/2008/11/30/cmd-tab-replacement-for-mac/
get rid of translucent menubar
- http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20071115135215262
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
Better window resizing / moving
- Zooom http://www.coderage-software.com/zooom/
- Alternative (but only works in Cocoa apps)
  - http://infinite-labs.net/afloat/
some general tips
- http://regebro.wordpress.com/2008/11/07/switching-to-os-x-obstacle-2-switching-between-windows/

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
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)
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

five12 — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 23:46:44 +0000

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.

Jozin z bazin

five12 — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 19:28:42 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cV2NpPqIHnw

More screens = more productive

five12 — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:41:14 +0000

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

five12 — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:04:49 +0000

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

five12 — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 05:14:04 +0000

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)