It’s weird moving back somewhere you’ve lived before. I already know how to get everywhere without looking it up, what all the food I like is, if transit was a thing I was doing right now, I’d already know how all of that works. Kind of wild.
Think I might be able to publish my first public Rails project by the end of next week if I work on it a little everyday and haven’t way underestimated how hard running a periodic background task to update the database will be.
Since moving to using Ruby and Rails more instead of Python and Django, I’ve really come arond on Nova. It’s been the easiest to setup a custom tasks with and make things of anything. Debugger support would be nice, but I hear that’s coming maybe?
Even with the help, moving is incredibly exhausting. So glad it’s the home stretch.
Packers are here finishing up everything I didn’t get to, and then folks coming to put it all in the truck tomorrow. Of all the things you can pay someone to do for you, taking 90% of the burden of moving off your shoulders might one of the best values.
Packing just feels never ending. My apartment is full of boxes and it still seems like there’s a ton to do.
The Run Loop returns with special guest Gus Mueller to talk about Acorn 7, Real Basic, unit testing, and a lot more. It’s a good one!
Like any good computer person, I maintain a collection of dotfiles. Mine is pretty basic. I don’t use any crazy zsh package manager framework thing or external dependencies. I do have a bunch of aliases, however, that I think are pretty helpful. I’m sharing them here. I hope some of these are useful to other people.
These three are pretty straightforward. You probably already have one or more of these if you’ve customized your shell at all.
alias ls='ls -G'
Always show colors for ls.
alias l='ls -lG'
Show directory contents in list mode.
alias ll='ls -aGl
Directory contents in list mode with color.
alias brewup='brew update && brew upgrade'
Update and then upgrade Homebrew if that was successful.
alias gemup='gem update --system && gem update'
Update all Ruby gems.
alias allup='brewup && gemup && mas upgrade'
Upgrade Homebrew, Ruby gems, and the Mac App Store together. If any fail, stop so I can fix it.
alias ibrew=’arch -x86_64 /usr/local/Homebrew/bin/brew’
For the time being, there’s enough x86 only Homebrew packages that I’m running both the x86 and ARM versions in parallel. Maybe I should just run the x86 version for everything? For the time being, at least, I have this alias to run the x86 version.
alias zshconf='bbedit -w $HOME/.zshrc && source $HOME/.zshrc'
Open zshrc in BBEdit and then source it after it’s done being edited.
alias in="arch -x86_64"
Run any command in x86 mode.
alias ded='rm -rf ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData'
Delete Xcode derived data. Make sure you close Xcode before running or it will complain. Thanks Brent!
alias domains_grep="defaults domains | sed 's/,/\n/g' | grep -i"
Grep to find the user defaults domain of something.
take() {
mkdir $1 && cd $1
}
Create a directory and change to to it.
After doing the bbedit ~/.zshrc followed by source ~/.zshrc a few times, I realized I could write this alias to speed things up a bit:
alias zshconf='bbedit -w ~/.zshrc && source ~/.zshrc'
What this does is opens my zshrc in BBEdit, waits for me to edit the file, and then sources it once I’m done. The -w is the wait flag for the BBEdit command line tool, but most other editors I’ve used have something similar you could use.
Last week, I moved from the one computer lifestyle to having two different Macs — an M1 Mac Mini and MacBook Air. Using both is creating two points of friction I’d really like a better solution for.
The first is that I have a lot of little test coding projects that I start that I might want to use both computers, but which I’m not ready to create a new repo on GitHub for. What do I do? I can either:
The second issue is syncing app preferences. The only app I know that does this without intervention is BBEdit, because of course, it does, but I’d also like my Xcode keyboard shortcuts, Terminal themes, and everything else to work this way. The best solution would be for this to be a feature of iCloud, obviously, but it isn’t.
One solution is I could add each thing individually to my dotfiles repo and use a script to set up symlinks. I do this for my actual dotfiles, and it works fine for those, but there are not that many of them — doing it for every app I want to sync sounds tedious. I also don’t like that I have to remember to commit and pull to keep things in sync.
I could also use this Mackup thing, which is a project on GitHub that claims to do what I want automatically, but which I find a bit terrifying to unleash on my machines?
If anyone has a better solution for either of these, please reach out. My goal is to pick up either of these functionally identical computers and use them without worrying about how they’re set up or where things are.
Maybe I’m crazy, but hear me out — using popular open-source libraries for things that are not the core functionality of your app, and you could replace if you had to probably isn’t the dumbest thing.
If writing a YAML parser or whatever excites you, though, be my guest.
A couple of things have really helped me with productivity and focus lately.
I’d suggest either to anyone, but as someone with ADHD, it’s been huge.
A couple of different angles of my little writing nook. If you’d like a letter, just let me know.
Sometimes I’m too extra even for myself.
The top couple of books for adult ADHD everyone says you should read are about 500 pages long, and I think that is kind of hilarious.
I’ve been working on a little Django Python project I want for personal use here and there for a few days, and it’s really coming along. Not bad for a few hours with a framework and language I only kind of knew going in. I’m using Nova by Panic which is quite nice!
Trying to get more exercise and also more sun in the morning to help with sleep and general health. Today’s was a walk through the neighborhood in the morning and a walk to a park and back a little bit from my house.
One of my best friend’s dads just died of COVID after battling it for several weeks until he was eventually in a coma. They were forced to remove the feeding tube when there was nothing else that could be done. She is heartbroken. Quoting her, “A COVID death is not like other deaths. It is far, far lonelier. And it leaves very lonely people behind.”
Her dad did the right things and still was infected with this horrible disease, probably from someone who didn’t even know they had it.
Wear your mask and get your parents vaccinated. If you can’t get them vaccinated yet, do what you can to get them to stay home and not take unnecessary risks. I’ve struggled to get my own parents to take this as seriously as they should. Don’t let anyone you love die hooked up to machines alone in a hospital.
I’ve spent the day watching the Capitol building be raided and trashed by armed terrorists attempting some kind of coup. I will never forget the president calling them patriots, repeating his lies, and saying he loves them. What a dark time to be alive.
The last few years I’ve enjoyed keeping a paper journal of some kind for both personal and work related things. The separation is good so that private work stuff can stay at work, and also so that I’m not looking at work when I should be relaxing or doing other things.
For 2021, I’ve landed on using a Hobonichi Techo (A6) for my personal planner, and a Hobonichi Cousin (A5) for work. The larger size is helpful for work because it gives me room to take notes and sketch out ideas, where for home, I think the smaller size will be nice since I can more easily take it with me.
Another benefit of the Cousin is the integrated weeks pages — the smaller planner has weeks as an add-on book — which I hope will be good for planning out my work tasks. A week at a time is feels like about the right resolution for me to be thinking about work, so I’m hoping it’ll work out well.
I’m surprised that the further we get away from the election, the less threatening all the bluster from Republicans about throwing away votes and stolen elections seems, and the more sad and pathetic it all looks. Not that I don’t think refusing to concede, and claiming Democrats stole the election without evidence, is disgusting and will only make the next several years that much more miserable than they needed to be. Still, this thing which felt so threatening before feels so impotent and laughable now.
Congratulations to everyone on electing Joe Biden President of the United States. No one knows what happens next, but a lot of people worked incredibly hard for this, and all of us have suffered in one way or another under the evil and malice of the last four years.
We all deserve to celebrate today, and then it’s time to win those Senate seats in Georgia.
I’ve been reading all of John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series of books — of which there are six — and was interested to read this article on his writing process.
I’ve been writing books now for 20 years and my experience really is that it’s not complicated, it’s just mostly sitting down and doing it, one day after another. Inspiration for me happens because I’m writing, not the other way around. In talking with other long-time writers, I’ve learned that’s how it works for most of us.
This reminds me a lot of when I read Stephen King’s autobiography or Anne Lamont’s Bird by Bird. I guess the “sit down each morning and write for a set amount of time“ method is a pretty common one among successful writers.
I think Trump was trying to project strength – or something – when he went back to the White House, but all I saw was a sick old man struggling to breath, and who was too caught up in his own macho act to not put himself and the people around him in unnecessary danger.