Don’t know where I picked this one up, but here is a tip for today.
I totally heart vi, I can’t deny it. Knowing how to manipulate can sometimes be tricky, and nobody says it has an easy learning curve. Maybe somebody will find this useful:
To find a particular line in vi you could first press / and then type in what you are looking for. And poof, you go to that line. Press ‘n’ and you will keep going. But sometimes I want to go straight to a line but don’t quite know what it is. For that…
# grep php -n httpd.conf
26:LoadModule php5_module modules/libphp5.so
137: DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
382:AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .phtml
Now you know the lines of whatever you are looking for. Now open up vi, press : and then enter the number, e.g.
:382
Press enter and you are there. Yay.
Wikity is a miniature wiki in your OSX dashboard. If you’re a GTD true believer, it’s can also be the linch-pin of your system.
I keep four instances of Wikity open in my dashboard, one for my ‘next actions’ list, one for my ‘waiting on’ list, one for my ‘projects list’, and one for my ’someday maybe’ list. My someday maybe window usually gets cannibalized to look at other wiki pages I keep in the system, like my errands list, or the various agenda lists I keep for people.
This system fits my style because I, for my own picky reasons, really hate having extra icons in my dock or seeing them listed in the task switcher. So that rules out apps like Kinkless GTD. I just hit F12 and my lists pop-up, hit it again and everything disappears.
Wikity used to even work with Quicksilver, but the plugin seems to be broken for me right now. Still, I swear by this simple system, even not playing nice with my beloved Quicksilver wasn’t enough for me to abandon it.
I’ll admit, I think one of the thickest barriers to entry regarding Linux is variety. I love variety, but general end users don’t adjust well to change (IMHO). Thus enter the stage: Portland. So, what does this mean to the end user? This means that, eventually, the UI throughout linux will all look similar — regardless if it is designed to utilize GTK, QT or anything else (that is, if it is built off the Portland standard).
And as a runner-up, worth mentioning, the user driven Tango Desktop Project
One command, instant leech:
$ wget -m http://www.thoughtdeposit.net
$ ls -l
$ drwxr-xr-x 25 ian ian 4096 Oct 09 03:53 www.thoughtdeposit.net
You can even use the –convertlinks switch to make the site browsable locally, and preserve style sheet linking.
CoRD is a Cocoa-based app for accessing Remote Desktop. The speed is comparable to MS’s client, but with no bookmarks, keychain integration, etc., file this under “revisit at 1.0″
Right now the biggest reason to use CoRD is if you want to use concurrent multiple Remote Desktop sessions. That’s not possible with MS RD Client unless you make copies of the executable and run each independently. Bleh.
Two wishlist features it may have someday are “Quicksilver plugin” and “VNC Support”, now that would make it a killer app.
One of the most cumbersome parts of *nix is typing out god damn directory paths. Worse is when you need to switch back and forth between them. If you’re like me, you never typo directory names when shuffling back and forth (sure… )
pushd & popd allow you to memorize a directory, and then quickly switch back to it. Try this on for size:
$ pwd
/home/some/long/directory/name/goes/here/
$ pwd | pushd
$ cd /home/ian/
$ popd
$ pwd
/home/some/long/directory/name/goes/here/
Handy!
I like most standards, I can’t deny it. One thing that I find too humorous is the amount of sites that are not valid, even sites that claim they are. One tool in my box is HTML Validator, an extensioni for Firefox. A nice little icon appears in the lower right, indicating whether a page is valid, not-so-valid, or really-not-so-valid. Makes it easy to check your own sites, and others.
Situation: You need to do some mass desktop deployment, but the scrap heap NICs that come with those budget boxen don’t support PXE booting. Plunk, goes the life preserver as it hits you in the head.
ROM-o-Matic is a webpage that will generate image files which you can then burn and boot off. Pick your NIC and image type, hit Get ROM and you’re done. No software to download, how sweet is that?