I use gnome-do. It’s fairly useful. One quick trick: press SHIFT – <ENTER> instead of plain <ENTER> to launch without closing the launcher box. Therefore, if you want three terminals, type: <SUPER> – <SPACE>, t(erminal), (<SHIFT> – <ENTER> X 2), <ENTER>.
I was recently asked to give a lecture for the PRELUDE series at McGill. Here was my abstract:
I don’t like computers, and neither should you.
We spend too much time figuring out how to talk to them, instead of having them figure out how to understand us.
There’s a big discontinuity between what software is providing, and the killer features we want!
We’re not completely lost though. There are a lot of good tools and methodologies available!
Until the feature gap closes, let me introduce you to some of these tools, and show you how I use the computer.
I spoke about a variety of topics with the intention of filling in everyone’s knowledge about the useful tools available to users and developers. I included a section about git-bisect and have posted the script in the examples section of the bash-tutor tarball. It is now available for you to download and share.
I hope everyone enjoyed the lecture, and I always appreciate feedback!
Makefiles are both scary and wonderful. When both these adjectives are involved, it often makes for interesting hacking. This is likely the reason I use bash.
In any case, I digress, back to real work. I use Makefiles as a general purpose tool to launch any of a number of shell scripts which I use to maintain my code, and instead of actually having external shell scripts, I just build any necessary bash right into the Makefile.
One benefit of all this is that when you type “Make <target>”, the <target> can actually autocomplete which makes your shell experience that much more friendly.
In any case, let me show you the code in question. Please note the double $$ for shell execution and for variable referencing. The calls to rsync and sort make me pleased.
rsync -avz --include=*$(EXT) --exclude='*' --delete dist/ $(WWW)
# empty the file
echo -n '' > $(METADATA)
cd $(WWW);
for i in *$(EXT); do
b=$$(basename $$i $(EXT));
V=$$(echo -n $$(basename "`echo -n "$$b" | rev`"
"`echo -n "$(NAME)-" | rev`") | rev);
echo $(NAME) $$V $$i >> $(METADATA);
done;
sort -V -k 2 -o $(METADATA) $(METADATA) # sort by version key
The full Makefile can be found inside of the bash-tutor tarball.
i use gnu/linux. it’s probably no secret. what is more of a secret, is that i secretly (well actually not so secretly) love using gedit for editing text. i still use vim, echo (gnu bash) and emacs (but only for org-mode).
vim is really, really great. but for day to day full-screen coding, i love working in gedit. i only have one [1] longstanding gripe, and today i believe that it is solved. here is the magic combination which appeases my troubled spirit:
install these, restart gedit, enable them, and happy coding!
while it will be much friendlier to use spaces for indentation, i still recommend using tabs, i mean, that’s what the 0x09 was invented for!
[1] actually i wish that everyone would just use eight-space-tabs for all their coding needs, but i realize there are some problems with this, and so i reluctantly am glad that modelines and the above magic exist.
[2] http://git.gnome.org/browse/gedit-plugins/tree/plugins/smartspaces
[3] http://code.google.com/p/gedit-autotab/
[4] http://library.gnome.org/users/gedit/stable/gedit-modelines-plugin.html.en
i decided i’d compile a short list of features / functionality which should be added to the new nokia N900 to make it totally pro. it’s pretty good as it is, despite it not working with the bell networks. i’ve attempted to order this list in order of importance (more or less).
unfortunately i haven’t mentioned this phones positive features– many before me have– there are many! overall it’s a nice package and i look forward to seeing improvements to the above.
The Technical Blog of James 