Stop moving my iPhone icons!
Aug. 20th, 2008, 12:20 AM | Computers | Post a comment
Hey, Apple:
I know of all the things that are wrong with the iPhone (what, you mean its not perfect?) is that my icons move with every application update... bah!
Is it a stupid thing to be complaining about? I don't think so. Part of being a designer means having a propensity to be anal-rententive about how things are arranged. In this case my icon arrangement and placement is deliberate and based on categorization and usage.
Simply put - I placed the icons in that order, and on that page, for a reason. Is it really that hard to remember which icon was where and properly replace it after an update? I'm surprised an interface designer let this one through 'cause it seems like a no-brainer to me that an update should not re-arrange the interface.
Oh, and do something about my battery life. It is atrocious.
Water water.
Aug. 18th, 2008, 08:48 AM | Life | Post a comment
2.5 days of rain. And water seeping into the basement. Ugh.
Fortunately the only damage was to CD/DVD boxes that had been stored away more than 2 years ago since everything is now in iTunes. We threw away more than 300 CD cases and a few DVD Cases. Fortunately the old VHS cases were OK.
There was a nice smell of mold, though, so we bought some disinfectant and cleaned out the corner but will still want to call in a mold cleanup person and then probably need to have the area tuck-pointed after that. It looks like that area had been incurring some damage for a while but since it was only seeping in it wasn't obvious.
The spiders back there sure loved it. I sucked up at least 15 with the vacuum cleaner. ;)
Between cleaning out the water damaged items and the general cleaning spree that the whole thing spawned I threw out close to 600 CD and DVD boxes. They were hanging around under the pretense of "I might need them some day" but some day doesn't look like its gonna come. I used to go through a lot of CDs and DVDs when doing a lot of freelance work, and that was a lot of print work, but any more I'm all web based and not really doing a lot of freelance. And all the backups are on redundant hard drives so CD/DVD backup isn't as relevant any more. Anyone want to buy a spindle of CD-Rs? I didn't think so.
We ended up with a full car load delivered to Goodwill - a car load is much larger than it used to be with the new WRX, I guess I forgot to post about our new WRX. And we're not done. There's so much more we should get rid of. So much we're hanging on to for one reason or another. Downsizing feels so good, but it makes for some tough choices.
Okay, so enough meandering.
SU from within VIM
Jul. 28th, 2008, 09:22 AM | Computers | Post a comment
I can't even count how many times I've edited a read only file in VIM, not even noticing the warning that pops up telling me so. Its a royal pain to type in thing twice, especially config changes. After a little looking around I found a way around it. Its not perfect and its not really a solution, per se, its just a way to get around having to type things twice when you forget to sudo.
So, when you forget to sudo in and need to save that file this will get you fixed up. First, exit edit mode by pressing escape, then enter a colon to start the command mode, then enter:
cmap w!! %!sudo tee > /dev/null %
While I'm not 100% sure what is happening in the background I think what happens in that VIM's buffer gets overwritten with admin privileges, essentially sudoing the changes into the file. Pretty slick. Not a replacement for doing it right the first time, but it'll work in a pinch.
SSH Connect Script, Hax, Whatever...
Jun. 26th, 2008, 08:58 PM | Computers | Post a comment
I work with many different servers at work. Most tedious part is that I need to ssh in to them on a regular basis. Not all of them can I, nor do I feel should I, be adding SSH keys on to.
So I finally got around to writing a little script to hold onto logins and passwords in a handy little connection script.
Caveat Emptor...
Is it a bit insecure to put these into a single file in my home folder? Maybe. Is it even less secure that said file is executable? Sure. Is it damn convenient? Yes.
So, now on to it:
WordPress Lipsum Plugin
Jun. 20th, 2008, 10:57 PM | Web Design | Post a comment
Tired of copying/pasting Lipsum placeholder text?
Me too.
Behold Gippy's Lipsum Plugin. Bask in its laziness. With a simple {lipsum} in your post, page or comment you can embed 3 paragraphs of Lipsum text. It works on the creation or edit of those items.
Want a more specific number of paragraphs? Ok, you can do {lipsum:1} to get just on paragraph, or {lipsum:5}, all the way up to 10. I stopped at 10 'cause its a reasonably long enough post or page to fill.
Tested with WordPress 2.0 through 2.5 though there's nothing special about it and it should work with 1.5 as well (in fact, I think it does, but you shouldn't be running anything that old anyway). The text could be streamlined a bit while sensing the current activity and I'll do that once I'm more familiar with WordPress, but in getting started this will do.
So, now, go forth and pay attention to better things and let the placeholder text take care of itself.