November 2011
3 posts
5 tags
Textmate to Tumblr
I went looking for a way to post to Tumblr via the command line the other day, and I was very interested in M. Wunsch’s post. He has created a Ruby gem which elegantly speaks to the Tumblr API and creates posts with attributes specified in a YAML front matter, a la Jekyll. This is brilliant, and wonderful. A really good idea sparks other ideas, and this one sent lightbulbs off in my head. I...
2 tags
SOPA is a Terrible Idea →
Mike from Techdirt nails SOPA to the wall. SOPA has been getting more and more bad press lately, probably why copyright monopolies were trying to ram it through legislation before anyone could protest. I am hoping at this point it dies, even big companies are coming out against it.
2 tags
Writing Again
I plan on a triumphant return to the land of blogging sometime soon, I know that people are desperate for my input on matters technical or otherwise. What I am planning is to get somethings together that make it easy to post, remove some of the friction, so to speak, so that I have a little more flexibility. This particular post is written in Elements, the dropbox text editor for iPad that can...
September 2011
1 post
4 tags
August 2011
1 post
Not Like you Like
Launchbar 5, when invoked from a fullscreen Lion-ified application, rips you out of the custom space and drops you on another desktop. Unfortunate behavior, that. You find anything strange after your upgrade?
April 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Saddleback Now for iPad2 →
I love my iPad sleeve from here, still works on the iPad 2. But their custom built iPad 2 case is certainly drool worthy.
Signals of A Degree →
I certainly enjoyed this as a read, knowing what signals you are sending to a potential employer with your degree is a valuable skill, and one worth knowing.
December 2010
1 post
Remiel: Making the leap to SSD on a MacBook →
remiel:
It used to take 28 seconds for my 13-inch MacBook Pro to load the folders on my desktop after I logged in. Now it takes five seconds.
Large-footprint apps like Photoshop and Dreamweaver now load near-instantly.
The machine now has 1.16 terabytes (1,160 gigabytes) of hard drive space, 160 gigs of…
November 2010
1 post
October 2010
3 posts
2 tags
AutoCAD now out for Mac →
And available for free for students
3 tags
Notational Velocity w/ Markdown →
A simple fork with a simple specific feature. I don’t think it detracts from the Notational Velocity philosophy at all. (‘Crazy fast: dead simple’ if you were wondering)
2 tags
Stainless Browser →
A multi-processing browser for OSX that is not Google Chrome. Very fast, very private, still in development.
September 2010
5 posts
5 tags
OmniFocus and Things, Followup
So maybe you read my last piece on my dilemma in selecting a project organization app from the app store. Maybe you even commented on it, or gave your two cents in answer to my question. Well for me, the question has been solved, and I thought that I should let you know, and give the matter a few final thoughts.
OmniFocus and Things were the two major competitors for my app store dollars....
Baremetal OS →
onethingwell:
BareMetal is a 64-bit OS for x86-64 based computers. The OS is written entirely in Assembly, while applications can be written in Assembly or C/C++.
The operating system binary is 16384 bytes.
I really like this, but I am trying to think of a use case for myself, to justify it.
3 tags
OpenBSD Firewall: Configuration
Now you have your clean, freshly installed system. Or at least you should! This is a continuation of the article I wrote previously on installing OpenBSD. This particular article will cover the system settings that you need to get setup so that you can use your awesome new OpenBSD box as an extremely powerful firewall. So the question is, where do you go from here?
This is actually going to be...
4 tags
Focusing on Things
I do not know if you subscribe to the Get Things Done (GTD) philosophy or not. My personal point of view is that some people make the system more important than the actual doing of the tasks, and it can lead to procrastination. It doesn’t help to have a system if you spend more time curating the system than you do getting actual work done. With that being said, I say do what works for you. I...
5 tags
Note Taking Nirvana
What I want is simple. I want to be able to take notes on any of my devices, and then have them instantly accessible on any other of my devices instantly, and without me having to do anything. Impossible you say? Not so. I have just entered Note Taking Nirvana, and best of all, the price was free! Well, for the software anyway. This is my setup.
On my Macs I use Notational Velocity. It has...
August 2010
10 posts
2 tags
AutoCAD coming (back) to Mac →
I am sure that many people will be happy to hear this, and even though I am not an AutoCAD user, I am happy to see enterprise software come to the Mac. It will be out around October. iOS reading apps are coming, too.
3 tags
OpenBSD: Installation
The primary purpose of this is to get OpenBSD installed. Really, this is much more straightforward than it used to be. Our install will focus on getting a transparent firewall ready, and the decisions that we make will be with that in mind. I know that I said that the install process has been made easier, but it still is fairly complicated, especially if you are not used to it. I will walk you...
1 tag
OpenBSD: Series Intro
Since my work and interests have led me in the direction of OpenBSD recently, I decided to do a brief series on getting OpenBSD running as a home firewall for yourself. Why OpenBSD? Simple: it is secure by default, has some great options that are matched only by some very expensive enterprise firewall appliances, and can almost certainly run on that 2 generation old computer that you have been...
3 tags
OpenBSD or nmap?
I want to do a couple of series of articles. Should I do my series on OpenBSD firewalls or nmap scans first? Decisions decisions…
3 tags
Elements for iPad
Elements, the much anticipated (by me) writing app for iPad/iPhone was recently released by Second Gear Software. What it proposes to be is an excellent writing platform for the iPad, and it is one that I can heartily recommend. It has a clarity of purpose that I appreciate; it is all about the writing here, no fancy shmancy hoopla. The design decisions were clearly all made with this fact firmly...
1 tag
Times for iPad
The problem I have with John Gruber saying that Times for the iPad is ‘very competitive’ with Flipboard is that Flipboard is free, and Times will set me back $8. I don’t mind paying for quality software, but if I am already getting it for free…
2 tags
tumblrbot asked: WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE INANIMATE OBJECT?
2 tags
Snap a Picture with your iPhone 4's Volume Button
Long title, I know. It is something that I have always wanted to be able to do, however. Now, my dream, despite Apple’s efforts, are a reality. You need Camera+ and an iPhone 4. In Safari navigate to
camplus://enablevolumesnap
and, presto, you can now snap pictures using that super handy volume button, enabling much steadier and better shots, at least for me. Camera+ runs $1.99
Update:...
2 tags
Threaded Mail in OSX
I really like the idea of threaded mail, it makes my inbox much easier to manage. So I am ashamed to say that I only recently realized that Apple’s Mail.app has the ability to organize mail by thread. This may be because I am the only one that actually uses Mail, but I don’t think so. Go to ‘View’ and select ‘Organize by Thread’. Of course it is not the cleanest...
July 2010
3 posts
3 tags
(Serious) Writing on the iPad →
Mark Crump’s excellent thoughts. I agree with every word,
3 tags
IRC Limechat, Hello
I think that I remember downloading Limechat when I was first testing out IRC clients for the Mac, but that could just be wishful thinking on my part to try to cover up the fact that I have missed this great tool for so long. One window management, no irritating extra notification windows, a clean and simple interface, and most importantly tab completion. I have dowloaded it to all teh Macs, and...
June 2010
12 posts
2 tags
Neat Little OSX Trick
One thing that I do frequently on OSX is hide applications. You can do this easily from the keyboard, with command-h. To get a visual reminder from the dock about which applications you have running, but are hidden enter the following into the command prompt:
defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool YES
and follow that up by restarting the dock:
killall Dock
That will restart your...
3 tags
Not a minute to soon
I didn’t move onto tumblr a minute to soon, since my trusty old Linux server went kaputs today. Ouch. After all this time, where is the love? I don’t know when I will be able to perform surgery, I have many very busy days ahead of me, so, wow.
I will eventually get the machine back up, or at the least I will get my information off it, and move it to the new blog, but until...
2 tags
Old Blog?
If you are looking for my old blog, I have moved to tumblr for a bit so that I can get my feet under me while I evaluate my Wordpress 3 upgrade/install. Not that I am particularly worried about being able to upgrade, but I am evaluating the usefulness of the blog, and whether I want to continue with it, or simply use tumblr. The old blog is still running, and I may link to it here, whenever I get...
3 tags
OpenBSD, bad sectors
Had some fun on the command line this morning, just wanted to drop a note say how glad I am for command line kung fu. The hiccup started when I plugged in one of my Soekris OpenBSD firewalls that I needed to change the hostname on. It gave me a disk error on bootup. Fortunately, I was viewing it over the console, instead of SSH’ing in. The actual message said.
One or more disk properties...
jitouch, MagicMouse Unlocked
Found this awesome little app called jitouch the other day, finally decided that I like it more than BetterTouchTool, which I still highly recommend. Both programs unlock the potential of the Magic Mouse in a big way. I found that I liked the jitouch implementation enough to spend $5 on it, and keep it for my main tool. There is an amazing Safari tab changer built in, this makes it indispensable...
3 tags
NTFS on your Mac
Macs can read most thumbdrives fine. FAT32, which is what ships on most thumbdrives, is read natively. Occasionally, however, you may find occasion to want to read and write NTFS formatted drives. I know that I had that situation when I had saved a backup of an older computer to an external drive, then reformatted the computer. When I plugged the drive into my Mac to retrieve the files, I found...
Share a File, Get a File, Fast
One of the things that I sometimes find myself in need of is to share a file, fast. Occasionally I have found that I need to have a large file given to me, or I need to give someone an inconveniently large file myself. In the past, I have resorted to many different types of shenanigans. There are lots and lots of ways to share files on the Internet, some fairly shady, some not. Take a look...
Testing Blog Translation
I really like my iPhone. I have had one from the early days when you got them for piles of money. In fact, I could almost buy my iPad today for what my iPhone cost back then. So I have been with the platform awhile. Which means that I have been with AT&T for quite awhile now. That is what I want to briefly touch on, AT&T and what I think of them. I feel like I pay through the nose for...
As a blogging platform
It seems decent as a blogging platform, though. And I sure do like the simplicity of it, I am currently a Wordpress user, and I don’t know if I could abandon that. Especially since I got Wordpress 3, plus MU going, so that I can have multiple themed blogs.
tumblr, interesting
Tumblr seems like an interesting platform. I don’t know if I can get my friends on it, since I can barely seem to convince them to get on Twitter, but hey, it is worth seeing what is out there, right?