March 2012
2 posts
I almost co-founded GitHub
## The Truth
Okay, that title is a bit misleading. I mean, how do you almost co-found one of the most important technology businesses for engineers, yet be basically a nobody.
Yes, I am just a rat race running, weekend entrepreneur. No, I didn’t exactly “almost” co-found GitHub, but I did have a possible opportunity to. This is the story of how I missed that opportunity.
...
2 tags
My iPhone Home Screen
My home screen, inspired by this Signal vs. Noise post.
You’ll notice the following:
None of my apps have badges.
I leave the fourth row empty so that I can use it to scroll.
Links to apps:
Calendar
Clear
Day One
Desk
Evernote Food
Gaug.es
GitHub Issues
Nezumi
Pastebot
Simplenote
Tumblr
Tweetbot
June 2011
4 posts
What sucks about TuexDuex
I wrote this a while ago, and have since moved on to using Flow by MetaLab, but I thought I would share my list anyway.
Lack of a “today” view.
No print stylesheets.
No way to export data.
The dumb sync function of the iphone app.
Lack of an iPad interface
Poor man's Git hosting
For those who don’t know me, I am very cheap. Actually, it’s a point of pride, and something I reflect in a positive light. I don’t think it’s bad to be frugal. This is true for the way I host my Git repositories too.
At any given time I have a dozen of so tiny repositories filled with little experiments of mine. Instead of paying $300 a year, I just stick them in my free...
tumblrbot asked: WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE INANIMATE OBJECT?
2 tags
Updating all outdated Homebrew packages
I am not sure why this isn’t built-in to Homebrew, but if you frequently want to update all outdated packages like I do, this command should help out:
Maybe I should contribute a similar command?
May 2011
1 post
3 tags
Installing RVM on Mac OS X 10.6
I recently got a new MacBook Pro, and haven’t gotten around to installing RVM yet. So when I took on this task today, I was totally surprised buy the issues I faced.
Prerequisites
Git
Terminal chops
Installation
The default installation method is the easiest, so I suggest you follow it. As documented on the official RVM site, just use this one-liner:
That’s it, or so I...
September 2010
2 posts
3 tags
Backup Navicat with Dropbox
I recently started using Navicat for MySQL as my Mac database administration application of choice, and quickly wondered how I could back up my data. Particularly, Navicat has a great query interface, and in a few days I compiled 27 queries that I really did not want to have to rebuild.
Without over engineering a solution, and since there is no sensitive data to worry about as passwords are...
Melissa is well into labor now.
Just installed Django again and boy did I miss it.
2 tags
How to add a CakePHP book to Coda
I have to use PHP at work so I have been eyeing the CakePHP framework. Although it is nowhere near Rails in my opinion is does have some documentation and a big enough community. As my PHP development tool of choice I use Coda, from Panic. I know one of the latest features of Coda 1.5 was the ability to add your own Books so I thought I would write about how I setup a CakePHP book.
The assets
...
Just set up MySQL replication.
Just setup Feedburner. Curious as to how many people have stumbled onto this site.
3 tags
Why Google Chrome is great for Safari
Google Chrome is the new browser on the block, and boy is it getting all the neighborhood girls excited. I am sure you can find some entertaining article about why Google Chrome will rule the world, but I am going to tell you why I like it. Webkit. Yes, Google Chrome uses the exact same rendering engine as Safari which is my browser of choice, mobile Safari, and Android. This means that any site...
Melissa did not let me take pictures of her during week number 39.
Watched season 1 episode 3 and 4 of Lost.
Just setup neighborly cron jobs on all of my slices.
August 2008
4 posts
2 tags
Start backing up your Mac to S3 in 5 minutes
There are many tutorials out there on how to back up your Mac to Amazon S3, but over time this process has been simplified.
Requisites
Before we get started we will need a few things. Also, make sure you have your Amazon S3 access identifiers at hand. You can get those from your AWS account.
Amazon S3 account
Mac OS X Leopard
Terminal Skills
Back it up
In order to keep this under five...
2 tags
Stones brings Go to the iPhone
Exactly a month ago I read an article on Rails Spikes titled “Why programmers should play Go”. If you found that article interesting, and own an iPhone or iPod Touch with version 2.0 of the firmware, you will love Stones.
Right now Stones is for two players only, which means there is no AI, but it is still very fun. Plus, like chess, the best way to master Go is to play yourself.
Resources
...
3 tags
Java and Tomcat on Ubuntu Hardy
I just spent my entire morning trying to figure out how to install Tomcat on one of my servers. I needed it to demo a business intelligence application, and boy oh boy was it a pain. There is a lot of talk out there about this particular install, but nothing specifically for Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy.
What follows is a quick guide on how to setup Java 1.6.0 and Tomcat 5.5 on a “new” Ubuntu...
2 tags
Quickbooks Online is retarded
So I have recently decided to get my act together, and start up my business ventures again. It has been a few years though, so I need to get my hands on some new accounting software. “So much has changed”, I though to myself. “There is going to be a lot of really cool accounting software to choose from.” Man was I wrong.
I searched for days only to be left with sore...
July 2008
1 post
2 tags
Git on Media Temple
Unless you have been sleeping under a rock, which I hear is good for your health, you have come to hear about Git. Originally created by Linus Torvalds, Git is an open source version control system that has quickly gained a lot of traction with Rails developers. This could be credited to the great GitHub, but I think it is because of Git’s feature set. Visit the office Git website to learn...
June 2008
1 post
“If I have to be smarter to use your technology than your technology sucks.”
– A great mind
May 2008
2 posts
2 tags
Tim Ferris talks with some great minds
Tim Ferris just posted the audio to a talk from SXSW on his blog. If you have an hour to kill I highly recommend you give “The Art of Speed: Conversations with Monster Makers” a listen. It was an extremely intelligent talk with a very high quality panel of speakers.
1 tag
Ripped: digg.com
This is the first in a series of posts where I single out design rips from all over the web. Todays crook is Tech Support Guy who shamelessly copied the Digg.com design.
I am all for being inspired by someone else’s design, but this is not inspiration. Even the login Javascript behaviors were copied. Petty Tech Support Guy, just petty.
April 2008
7 posts
2 tags
The most useful Ruby Gem
One of my favorite features of Ruby is Ruby Gems, the powerful package manager. There are tons of Ruby libraries available as gems such as Rails, Mongrel, and even one for Twitter. The gem I find the most useful nowadays is called cheat. Cheat basically puts tons of cheat sheets inside of your command line, so that you have quick access to the information you need without resorting to those hard...
1 tag
Gary Vaynerchuk's book release
I just read on 37 Signals that Gary Vaynerchuk’s book, 101 Wines, was released today. It is already in Amazon’s Top 40, but I am sure it will continue to climb as the news spreads.
My hats off to you Gary, maybe now you can get to work on Cork’d.
2 tags
A better way to share files
Aireo is a new web based file management application by the guys of Vure. It has a user friendly Flex based interface that makes handling your files OS like. Data is stored on Amazon S3 in the back end, but Aireo stores aliases of your files in a database. This brilliant implementation allows you to move files between folders, a feature currently unavailable on S3.
Check it out at...
2 tags
Lighthouse 2.0 is out
The amazing folks over at ENTP have pushed the latest version of their issue tracking application, Lighthouse. I have been extremely happy with the application and it seems that I am not alone on this one.
2 tags
Free domain: djangopodcast.com
So, I bought the domain djangopodcast.com over 2 years ago with the obvious intention of starting a show about Django, the amazing web framework written in Python. Somewhere along the way I fell head over heels for this beauty called Ruby and going back to Python, although attractive in her own way, just did not feel right to me.
If you, or anyone you know, would like to host djangopodcast.com,...
2 tags
MindNode Mind Mapping
MindNode, which is Leopard only, is a new mind mapping application with a sweet interface.
2 tags
Better volume control on Mac OS X
The other day I stumbled upon a very useful keyboard shortcut for Mac OS X Leopard. If you hit ‘option’ + ‘shift’ + ‘volume down’ or ‘volume up’ you will get a more sensitive volume control. Four times more sensitive to be exact. This is useful if you have very sensitive speakers that need a smaller adjustment to get to that perfect volume...
March 2008
1 post
2 tags
Stop supporting Internet Explorer 6
I have wasted way too many hours debugging CSS for IE6, not ever thinking beyond the fact that over 30% of internet users still use it today. Now that IE8 is in public beta I have decided to drop support for IE6 forever.
Do you have the courage to do the same?
February 2008
3 posts
2 tags
Building Git on Mac OS X
You have surely heard of the latest thing to happen to version control. Git, written be Linux creator Linus Torvalds, is a popular version control system designed to handle very large projects with speed and efficiency. Installing Git on Mac OS X Leopard is actually pretty simple and blazingly fast. It installed so quickly I thought it was a mistake.
Prerequisites
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard...
2 tags
The bash_login file
The /.bash_login file is a pretty good place to put your shell paths and variables for Mac’s Terminal. For future reference here is a copy of my .bash_login file:
# Path, Shell variables
export PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:$PATH"
export SVN_EDITOR="/usr/bin/mate -w"
# Backpack
alias todo='ruby /Applications/backpack/todo.rb'
# Finder
alias ot='open .'
# General
alias code='cd...
2 tags
ScreenFlow
There is a new screen casting application available for Mac OS 10.5 called ScreenFlow. Although it comes with a hefty price tag of $100, it is by far my favorite screen casting application available for Mac.
November 2007
5 posts
3 tags
Mephisto on Media Temple
At $20 a month, Media Temple’s Grid-Service is an incredible bargain. I recently broke up with Django and decided to move my work back to Ruby on Rails. What follows is another tentative guide to installing Mephisto on Media Temple’s Grid Service.
First things first
Enable Rails container
Log in to your (mt) account center and select your primary domain.
Click into the “(gs)...
“Don’t ever argue with an idiot…they’ll drag you down to their...”
– Anonymous
“May medicine be your food and food be your medicine.”
– Local restaurant
“Only a fool looks at a finger that points to the sky.”
– Amelie
“What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.”
– Tim Ferris
October 2007
3 posts
2 tags
Subversion on Media Temple
Using Subversion on the Media Temple Grid-Service is much easier than it seems. Actually, it is easier than my previous host.
Setup the repository
ssh serveradmin%domain.com@domain.com **OS X
Terminalserveradmin@domain.com **Windows
cd data
mkdir svn && cd svn
svnadmin create --fs-type fsfs reponame
Initial import
On your local machine.
mkdir reponame && cd reponame
mkdir...
3 tags
Beast on Media Temple
What follows is a tentative guide to installing Beast, a forum application written in Ruby on Rails, on Media Temple Grid-Service.
First things first
Enable Rails container
Log in to your (mt) account center and select your primary domain.
Click into the “(gs) GridContainers” section.
Click the “manage” link for the Rails GridContainer.
Click “Enable...
1 tag
Radiohead makes millions selling a free album
Radiohead shocked the music industry, and their fans, by releasing their latest album “In Rainbows” for free. Yes, free as in beer. You pay as much as you think the album is worth.
The Seminal writes:
According to a source close to the band, In Rainbows has sold approximately 1.2 million copies as of October 12th. In comparison, that’s more albums sold in the first week...
September 2007
3 posts
“People never get the flowers while they can still smell them.”
– Kanye West
“Even God has a logo.”
– Douglas Jarquin
“Look after your cents and the Dollars will look after themselves.”
– A millionaire
August 2007
4 posts
“A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.”
– Jonathan Swift
“Don’t break the chain!”
– Jerry Seinfeld