journal

Backing up Org-Mode Files

2009-09-05T13:07:47Z

As many already know, I live in org-mode and keep my org files in a private bitbucket repository for safe keeping. One thing I don't (or didn't) do is push those files to the repository on a regular basis. The other morning I ate my wheaties and gained enough super power to rectify the issue.

The bash script

I keep all my dotfiles in this uber-private repository, not just my org files. To continue with this approach I added a bash script within my dot files directory which will do my grunt work.
#!/bin/sh # Add dot file changes to bitbucket - to include my org files REPOS="hgfiles" for REPO in $REPOS do echo "Repository: $REPO" cd ~/$REPO # Add new files hg add . hg commit -m "$(date)" hg push done
The variable "REPOS" holds the directories that I want pushed to bitbucket. If you have more than one, add them to this variable. Basically, the script just loops through the REPOS and adds any new files, commits them with a message of the current date and time and pushes it. If there are no new files it just fails silently and my world doesn't implode on me.

If you are using github or a similar service, just change out the hg commands with the git commands. If you're using svn... I'm so sorry to hear that.

The plist

Now since I'm horrible at pushing these on a regular basis and don't have the money to buy a trained monkey to push them for me, I added them to Mac OS X's launchctl. To do that it's fairly simple.

I created a plist file which is also stored in my dot files directory.
cd to/the/directory touch greg.dotfiles.orghg.plist
Open this plist file in your favorite editor and add the following code.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>Label</key> <string>greg.dotfiles.orghg</string> <key>ProgramArguments</key> <array> <string>/Users/greg/hgfiles/management/hg.commit</string> </array> <key>StartInterval</key> <integer>3600</integer> </dict> </plist>
ProgramArguments is the path to the bash script I created earlier so Mac knows where to find it. The StartInterval is the interval to run the script. In my case I have it push every hour. 3600 seconds divided by 60 equals 60 minutes. You get the picture.

Schedule it!

Now that this is saved it's time to hook it up and test it. For testing purposes, I changed the StartInterval to 2 minutes (180) so I could watch the console for errors in the log.

The plist file needs to be copied to the proper directory and added to the daemons.
cp greg.dotfiles.orghg.plist /Library/LaunchAgents/greg.dotfiles.orghg.plist launchctl load /Library/LaunchAgents/greg.dotfiles.orghg.plist
All done and I can once again sleep knowing my org files are safe and sound within my repositories.

If you're a linux user, you won't need the plist parts, just create a cron job that will run the bash script every hour (or whatever your desired interval).

Twitter Change

2009-08-05T00:03:11Z

After two years or more I have finally been able to get my real name on twitter (gregnewman) and will be switching over to using that as my main twitter account. I will keep 20seven around as a pointer to gregnewman but please re-follow me there and I'll be working on re-following all my friends under that account.

Personal Site Sprint

2009-07-29T11:32:48Z

The beginning of August, following my relocation to Charlotte, will kick off the Personal Site Sprint along with my friends Chris Harrison and Bryan Veloso. The sprint will end with a launch date of September 1st.

What this means is we will all be redesigning and documenting the process of our personal site refresh. I will be detailing the process from initial pencil sketches all the way through to final launch. I might even throw in some screencasts.

I am also going to take this opportunity to leave Movable Type in favor of Django. This is something I've wanted to do for a while and haven't had the time or energy to do.

Personal projects are a PITA so I'm hoping that doing the sprint with two other great designers will keep me motivated.

Pyrohose Logo Design

2009-07-14T16:49:43Z

I spent last weekend finishing up a logo for a super secret project I can't go into yet at the client's request. I can share the logo in the meantime.

When the client gives me the green-light I'll come back and update the post with a link to the project.

Django-Loupe for Design Collaboration

2009-06-20T11:33:59Z

I've been using Basecamp for years and have a love/hate relationship with it simply because it costs me money for clients that don't want to use it. However, I can't get rid of it because there are a few clients I have that need collaboration for designs. For coding projects I use various ticketing systems from Trac to Sifter and I won't get into that in this post.

During a current project Trac is being used for the backend parts but it falls apart on design collaboration. After a few late nights I'm thrilled with the progress of Django-Loupe for design collab.

Features

Projects
Corkboards
Images (screenshots, sketches, etc.)
Comments
Image Notes
Fully pluggable so you can add it to your existing Django projects

How it works?

Like other project management tools Loupe allows the site admin to create projects and assign the users that have access to them.

Each project has what's called corkboards. A corkboard is a grouping of images for a project such as home page mockups. The corkboard stores all revisions of this design and it's relative conversations using django's comments framework.

Each image in the corkboard has it's own comments thread and notes. Notes are flickr-style image notes drawn directly on the image to help pin-point problem areas in the design process.

Dependencies

Python imaging library
ImageKit
Django-extensions

Instructions

The project is hosted on bitbucket. Clone the project or download a package and add 'Loupe' to your projects settings under INSTALLED_APPS.

Add the following to your settings.py or local_settings.py and adjust appropriately:


# Width in pixels of the thumbnail
LOUPE_RESIZE_THUMB_WIDTH = 100
# Height in pixels of the thumbnail
LOUPE_RESIZE_THUMB_HEIGHT  = 75
# Crop thubmnails? True or False 
LOUPE_RESIZE_THUMB_CROP = True
# Width in pixels of the display size (not full size image)
LOUPE_RESIZE_DISPLAY_WIDTH = 800
# Pre-cache images on upload? True or False
LOUPE_PRE_CACHE_IMAGES = True
# Increment the view count on images? True or False
LOUPE_INCREMENT_COUNT = True

Loupe assumes that users are registered and authenticated and does not handle user registration. For that I suggest django-registration.

Included in the project is an sample project for an example of how to work with Loupe. It currently does not have registration included. You will be running this as the administrator.

Planned additional features

RSS and/or Atom feeds
Notifications

These features will be rolled into the project hopefully this weekend.

If anyone would like to see other features added to this, feel free to jump in, leave a ticket, shoot me an email at greg at 20seven dot org, or find me on twitter

Org-mode logo refresh

2009-06-19T23:59:38Z

Next out of the gate this week is the org-mode logo refresh. Well, actually it done last week but I'm only getting around to posting it now. As I mentioned in the last post, it's been hell-busy here.

Org-mode is an Emacs Mode for keeping notes, maintaining ToDo lists, doing project planning, and authoring with a fast and effective plain-text system. I live in org-mode daily and when it was announced that it is up for a Sourceforge Community award I freshened up the logo for Carsten Dominik. The original logo was by french illustrator
Christophe Bataillon.

The image shows the before and after of the logo. The site now has the new logo posted.

Djangodose Logo

2009-06-19T23:26:20Z

I finally got some time to work on my backlog of logos this week and they are starting to hit the streets. So if you're waiting on me to finish the commissioned logos, they are coming quickly! Sorry for delays, it's been hell-busy here.

First out the door is the new djangodose logo for they great guys of TWiD fame Eric Florenzano, Brian Rosner and Kevin Fricovsky. I believe they have announced they are recording this Sunday for those (including myself) who are anxious for the new show. I'm still working on the site design which will be finished just in time for the show release.

Django Clippings for BBEdit

2009-05-25T11:21:40Z

I took a break from Emacs this weekend to give the new version of BBEdit a spin. The first thing I noticed was that it doesn't have snippets (clippings are the accurate term) for Django. Personally, I use yasnippet in Emacs so I took an hour and converted the library I use to clippings for BBEdit in the hopes someone finds them useful.

I put the clippings up on Github for download or fork/clone. Download and put them in ~/Library/Application Support/BBEdit/Clippings or clone the project and symlink it to the same directory. If you find a problem, open a new issue at the project page or fork it and fix it.

Applescript to Send Safari Url to Emacs Org-Mode

2009-03-20T23:10:08Z

I've been a long time OmniFocus user and am a daily (or habitual) emacs user so it only makes sense for me to dabble with org mode for a GTD system. After all, when I'm writing code, why not have my projects todo lists in the next window. So this morning I figured I'd give org mode a try. It's not polished like OmniFocus or Things but seriously; why does a todo list need satin pajamas? I'm not sure I'll stick with it but I at least need to give it a trial run for a week or two.

How I Roll
When I get an email from a client that needs attention I use the clipper that comes with OmniFocus (Clip-o-tron 3000) to create a new task with a link to the email embedded. I also like to send research urls from Safari for projects to my todo lists as notes. This helps keep me on top of things (if that's possible) as projects progress.

The Immediate Problem; No Clip-O-Tron
Since org-mode is basically a text file displayed within emacs, I need a way to send these to my org-mode file. I'm using gmail these days (trying to) and gmail has unique addresses for each email. All I need is to capture that url and send to org-mode.

Applescript to the rescue!
I wrote this applescript today that will capture the url from the foremost Safari window and save it to my org-mode file where I keep a "Inbox" at the very bottom of my file. Before saving the link I have it prompt me for a title for the link so that I can name it something meaningful. After it saves it to the end of my file, I get a growl notification telling me it's done.

The AppleScript

To use this effectively, change the line 19 which reads set theFilePath to "Macintosh HD:Users:greg:gtd:" & "greg.org" as string to the path where your org file is located. I also keep my "Inbox" at the bottom of my org file so that when these new urls are saved, they are appended to the bottom of the inbox.

If you can't get the script from this page, you can grab it over at Snipt here: http://snipt.net/gregnewman/send-safari-url-to-emacs-org-mode

If you use this script and find it useful, leave a comment and let me know about it. If you have ways to make it better, I'd love to see your changes.

Eldarion Logo

2009-03-01T14:07:33Z

Those of you who follow my good friend James Tauber on twitter, facebook or through the Pinax Project have already heard that James has resigned from mValent.

James approached me about a logo for this mysterious endeavor, which I jumped on in short order. I unveil the eldarion logo and I'm sure a lot of you will immediately recognize from it what influences James was looking for in the design.

If you want to learn more, follow the eldarion team on twitter or the eldarion website. I'm confident there will be more announcements very soon.

James, I wish you success in the next score you compose!

Freshmeat.net Logo and New Site

2009-01-21T20:15:28Z

Most of you already know of freshmeat.net. Over the last few months I've been lucky enough to work with Patrick Lenz on the next incarnation of freshmeat.net.

Along with the new site design I'm creating I also provided the new logo for the freshmeat identity. Coming up with a concept for freshmeat was not an easy process in the long run. After many days with the sketchbook and conversations with Patrick the logo was finalized.

As for the site design, I'm not going to expand on that just yet until the beta invites are sent. Patrick has written an article about the new site and the beta signup process; I won't duplicate his efforts here. Head over to freshmeat to find out how to get involved.

Emacs Starter Kits

2008-12-17T10:13:29Z

Outside of my usual ramblings I wanted to point out that Phil Hagelberg has a great collection of emacs starter-kits over at github for those interested in going for a swim but don't know where the water is.

I am currently working on a Python/Django starter kit to add to his collection. We definitely don't want the Ruby guys to have all the fun now do we? Phil is also working on a Peepcode screencast which the little birdies have told me might be available later this week if all goes well.

Emacs mode for dpaste.com

2008-12-08T11:56:56Z

Since Paul Bissex announced the api for Django-powered dpaste.com last week I've had it's been on my todo list to make a emacs mode for posting pasties.

Last evening, again while watching football, I whipped up a emacs mode and have it hosted over at github.

git clone git://github.com/gregnewman/dpaste.el.git and add to your .emacs

or track the changes within your .emacs configs

git submodule add git://github.com/gregnewman/dpaste.el.git vendor/dpaste

M-x dpaste-buffer

Will post the current buffer to dpaste.com and put the curl to the paste in the kill-ring

M-x dpaste-region-or-buffer

Will post the marked region or current buffer to dpaste.com and put the curl to the paste in the kill-ring

If there is any interest, I can also make a version for my vim using friends.

I have a few items remaining that I want to do with it but at this point it is fully functional. If you have a wish or a bug, either leave a comment here or at the github project. I hope you find it useful.

Textmate and Gist for Emacs

2008-11-27T23:21:57Z

First of all, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. I hope you're enjoying food, family and football, I know I am. I'm also enjoying my new emacs minor-mode developed by Chris Wanstrath, aka defunkt.

Textmate.el for Emacs

Since switching from Textmate to Emacs, the only thing I have missed is ⌘T or Go to File. I used it all the time in Textmate and although there were some minor-modes for Emacs that got me closer, it still wasn't ⌘T.

Chris has developed Textmate.el, a minor-mode that brings some of the similar key bindings to Emacs for those of us who relied on Textmate bindings.

From the readme:

⌘T - Go to File
⇧⌘T - Go to Symbol
⌘L - Go to Line
⌘/ - Comment Line (or Selection/Region)
⌘] - Shift Right (currently indents region)
⌘[ - Shift Left (not yet implemented)
⌥⌘] - Align Assignments
⌥⌘[ - Indent Line
⌘RET - Insert Newline at Line's End
⌥⌘T - Reset File Cache (for Go to File)

A "project" in textmate-mode is determined by the presence of a .git directory. If no .git directory is found in your current directory, textmate-mode will traverse upwards until one (or none) is found. The directory housing the .git directory is presumed to be the project's root.

In other words, calling Go to File from ~/Projects/fieldrunners/app/views/towers/show.html.erb will use ~/Projects/fieldrunners/ as the root if ~/Projects/fieldrunners/.git exists.

In your emacs config:

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/vendor/textmate.el")
(require 'textmate)
(textmate-mode)

Chris's example above is typical of Rails projects but I can attest to the fact that this works nicely for Python/Django projects.

Thanks Chris!

Gist.el for Emacs

While you're visiting Chris at Github I recommend you also grab a copy of Gist.el. Gists are like pasties for those who aren't familiar with the term. What Gist.el does well is paste the buffer or region to your account on github and return the url in your kill-ring, public or private. Gist.el will also allow you to yank a gist into a buffer.

Emacs: Dired Directory Management

2008-11-16T14:04:59Z

Picking back up on the Emacs series I started earlier this month I would like to take some time to discuss the Dired mode for directory management.

I've used ECB in the past and found it nice, feature rich but in my opinion it had too much information and was in my way, not to mention it drastically increases emacs load time. So I removed it from my configs and now only use Dired. Once you get used to it it really is very powerful.

The Basics

To initiate a Dired buffer type C-x d and you will be prompted for a directory path starting in the directory of your current open buffer. Navigate the path you want to open and return to open it. If you haven't extended Dired with additional modes, you'll get something that looks like a terminal directory listing (ls -lna). I'll tell you how to change this later.

Navigation
Movement in Dired is exactly like any buffer so I won't go into that here. For long directories I always navigate with iSearch (C-s and C-r). It's much easier to jump to a particular location.

To open a folder press f (find-file). To go up a directory type ^. Every time you open a new directory a new buffer is opened in the background for you and always accessible until you kill it.

Top view a file in read-only mode, press v. To return to the Dired buffer press q.

o will open the file in another window while RET or f will open the file in the current window. At anytime in the Dired buffer you can sort by typing s.

Deleting files

Dired allows you to perform actions on files and folders such as deletion, renaming, etc.

To delete files, you first must mark the files you want to delete by navigating to the file or folder and pressing d which will place a capital D to the left of the file. When you are done with your selections x will initiate the actions and you will be prompted to confirm your actions. Typing # marks all the autosave files for deletion with a D status and typing ~ marks all the backup files for deletion with the same status. At any time, if you accidentally mark a file you can press u to unmark it.

Copying and Renaming Files

To copy a file first navigate to it and press C (capital C). Emacs will ask you for the name of the file to copy to. Enter will execute the copy. If you type C4 from the file you are on, the current file and the next three will be copied.

To rename a file type R. Are you getting the naming conventions yet? Emacs will ask you for the new file name and again, Enter will execute it.

File Compression

You can compress and uncompress files from Dired by typing Z. You will be asked to confirm. Z is universal in that it will uncompress a compressed file or compress it if it's not compressed already.

Diffs

Dired lets you compare a file with its respective backup file. This has come in handy many times for me. Find the file you want to compare and press =. You'll be presented a buffer showing you the difference in the two files.

Extending

To make the dired buffer a little more presentable and less like terminal I installed a few other modes. Install Dired+ which will give you extra command and expand on existing commmands. It will also give you some better file highlighting than what is present in the default Dired mode. I also installed Dired-details and Dired-details+ to customize the look of my Dired buffers like the picture above.

With these additions I added the following to my dotemacs files to hide files I don't want to see, such as .pyc, backups and autosave files.


(require 'dired-x) 
(setq dired-omit-files 
      (rx (or (seq bol (? ".") "#")         ;; emacs autosave files 
              (seq "~" eol)                 ;; backup-files 
              (seq bol "svn" eol)           ;; svn dirs 
              (seq ".pyc" eol)
              ))) 
(setq dired-omit-extensions 
      (append dired-latex-unclean-extensions 
              dired-bibtex-unclean-extensions 
              dired-texinfo-unclean-extensions)) 
(add-hook 'dired-mode-hook (lambda () (dired-omit-mode 1))) 
(put 'dired-find-alternate-file 'disabled nil)