Rob Wilkerson

Incoming Skype Calls Don't Ring

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 17:29:09 -0400

This has been annoying me for months. Today I finally took the time to figure out what was going on and to, you know, fix it. I posted the solution in Skype’s support network for others to find more easily.

Federal Hill at Dusk on Flickr.

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 07:40:06 -0400

Federal Hill at Dusk on Flickr.

Size Matters

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:14:19 -0500

Want the TL;DR version? Here you go: I don’t want a bigger cell phone. If I can serve breakfast in bed on it, it’s too damn large. If it won’t fit in my pocket or I can’t bend my leg when I put it there, it’s too damn large. If anyone feels compelled to ask whether I’m happy to see them because my phone’s in my pocket, it’s too damn large.

You know what? Let’s make that the long version as well. I think I’ve articulated my thoughts on the matter about as well as they’re going to be articulated. Anything else would be superfluous.

With that in mind, I link to this review of a Jurassic-sized “mobile” phone because it includes one of the best lines I’ve heard in a very, very long time:

The Galaxy Note’s tagline asks if the device is a tablet or a smartphone, but like a girl in Spanx, it’s so much more.

Ah, yes.

Control Pulsar with Alfred

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:20:40 -0500

Wherein you:

Are a Sirius subscriber, and
Listen to Sirius on your Mac via Rogue Amoeba’s awesome Pulsar application, and
Heart the hell out of the productivity provided by Alfred, and
Have the Alfred Powerpack installed, then

You might be wishing you could use Alfred to control Pulsar so you didn’t have to activate the app every time you wanted to pause a great song by Starland Vocal Band. I was too. Eventually, I decided to do something about it.

Pulsar’s script API isn’t very extensive, but it does cover pause/play as well as a few other useful bits. The Pulsar extension supports:

xm play
xm pause
xm show (display the channel, artist, track and album now being played)
xm next (changes the channel to the next Favorite channel)
xm prev (changes the channel to the previous Favorite channel)

I chose the xm keyword because it’s short and reasonably descriptive since I’m playing a Sirius_XM_ channel, but that’s easy to change once the extension is installed. If you have Growl installed, the xm show command will display a Growl notification. If not, it will degrade to an ugly, but functional alert dialog.

Hint: Any command other than play, pause, next and prev will behave as show. Give it a try.

Download the Alfred Pulsar Extension

Terrell Owens' workout attracts zero NFL teams

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:19:41 -0400

Terrell Owens' workout attracts zero NFL teams:

All dressed up and nobody showed.

If you’re a good guy, you just have to be better than a few of the other guys and someone can take a chance. If you’re not, you have to be better than a few other guys and better than your own personality.

Maybe teams have finally decided that TO can no longer outrun his own baggage.

This Auditable Behavior sounds great! But the links are dead.. is the code still available? /post/867819035/an-auditable-behavior-for-cakephp

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 19:42:00 -0400

Sorry about the dead links. You can find the code on Github.

Solve Gmail's Disappearing Cursor in Safari

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 09:14:18 -0400

Solve Gmail's Disappearing Cursor in Safari:

This has been annoying me for the longest time.

Gmail uses Flash to provide “advanced attachment features,” the capability to attach multiple files at once and to display progress bars while attachments upload. As far as I know, that’s the only place Gmail relies on Flash, and if you switch to Basic Attachment Features in Gmail’s Settings, that eliminates Gmail’s use of Flash and works around the bug.

I’ve looked for a solution before, but it was never given a high priority. I guess I just assumed that Google and/or Apple would care enough about getting it fixed to, you know, fix it. Apparently not.

The fix is somewhat “hacky”, but it works and I haven’t felt any sense of lost functionality in the short time since turning off the whiz-bang attachment functionality.

Photoblog - Bridge to somewhere: Remarkable feats of...

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 07:56:48 -0400

Photoblog - Bridge to somewhere:

Remarkable feats of engineering like the Hoover Dam and now the bridge over the dam are endlessly fascinating to me. I was there just under a year ago and it’s hard to believe that the bridge is now complete.

Licensing State of the Union

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 10:43:54 -0400

Licensing State of the Union:

Nick Paulson (in a guest post to Mike Rundle’s blog, Flyosity):

Most pirates had no intention of purchasing your application in the first place. Donʼt hurt your real customers. If your application is good enough, people will buy it. The best way to prevent piracy?

Make great apps.

Nick gets it. It’s only natural to want to protect your work, but nothing—not our cars, our homes or our software—is impregnable. Someone who wants it badly enough will find a way. So how much time and effort do we, as developers, spend in an attempt to lock it down? How much should we impact our customers’ user experience in that pursuit? Ever the pragmatist, I’d argue not much to both questions.

Most of the article is centered around a description of the licensing options available and their vulnerabilities. If you don’t care about those, skip to the last paragraph. That’s where it all coalesces into something in which I think we all share an interest.

Nick’s philosophy—one that I share, obviously—is simple, concise and it places the focus squarely on the people who cared enough to become customers. That’s exactly where it should be.

Compass, SASS, CakePHP

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 09:15:17 -0400

I’ve learned to loathe CSS. As a developer with a lot of OOP experience, I love the intent, but I can’t endorse the implementation. Then, about a year ago, I found Compass and my grey skies became blue again or, at the very least, they became a whole lot less grey.

The point of this post isn’t to dive deep into either my hostility towards CSS, my newlywed love affair with Compass and SASS or even to spend a lot of time discussing the latter two. Rather, the point is to document how I configure a Ruby tool to play nice in a PHP code base, specifically a CakePHP code base. Since we’re making introductions, though, it’s worth touching on the highlights of the ecosystem. If CSS frustrates you on a regular basis, I’ll leave it to you to read on.

SASS (Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets)

Sass makes CSS fun again. Sass is an extension of CSS3, adding nested rules, variables, mixins, selector inheritance, and more. It’s translated to well-formatted, standard CSS using the command line tool or a web-framework plugin.

As the acronym hints, SASS is essentially just an (awesome) alternate syntax that takes advantage of a “compilation” process to translate the alternate syntax into standard CSS. Baked into that compilation process, though, is a lot of power. Variables and mixins (think functions) right a lot of CSS wrongs.

Compass

Compass is a stylesheet authoring framework that makes your stylesheets and markup easier to build and maintain.

I can’t improve on something as clear and concise as that so I won’t try. Compass includes an executable that provides some handy command line tools and offers a lot of plugins that port many of the popular CSS frameworks (e.g. Blueprint, 960gs, Susy, etc.) to SASS syntax.

As a quick example, rather than littering markup with non-semantic span-[number] classes in a site built on the Blueprint CSS framework, you can drop those classes and reference a mixin that creates the same effect. For a sidebar div that might get a class of span-4, drop the class and update your main definition instead:

#sidebar
  +column( 4 )

Cleaner markup, improved semantics. Win-win.

Ruby

Since Compass and SASS have deep roots in the Ruby community, they may be easily overlooked by other developers. They shouldn’t be. While it’s true that Compass is written in Ruby and old-school SASS looks a bit like Ruby (the old syntax is still supported—I even prefer it—but the most recent syntax is more CSS-like), it compiles down to plain, old, ordinary CSS without all of the headaches of writing (or maintaining) it as CSS.

Because it compiles down to CSS, it can be used in any project written in any language that I can think of. I’ve used it in small, standalone PHP projects as well as framework-based projects using Symfony and CakePHP.

Compass and Cake

Since I prefer CakePHP, I’ll use that as the model, but the instructions should be easily extrapolated for any other language, structure or framework.

Before getting into Compass itself, here’s how the relevant directories of my CakePHP project directory are laid out:

<project root>
+ app
   + webroot
      + css
      + img
      + js

So let’s get started with Compass. If Compass isn’t already installed, just install it via its gem: gem install compass. That’s it. We’re going to deviate slightly from the instructions on the Compass homepage, so for the project creation & configuration, I’m going to ask you not to RTFM until we’re through here.

First, in your Terminal:

$ cd <project_root>
$ mkdir sass
$ cd sass
$ touch config.rb

This creates the top level directory for this project’s Compass framework files and an empty config file that will soon tell Compass how to do what it does. Here’s what my config.rb file contains for a CakePHP project:

http_path = "/"  
sass_dir = 'src'                    
css_dir = '../app/webroot/css'
images_dir = '../app/webroot/img'
javascripts_dir = '../app/webroot/js'
http_stylesheets_path = 'css'
http_javascripts_path = 'js'
http_images_path = 'images'
environment = :development
output_style = :compressed

The config file tells Compass where everything belongs once the project is initialized. In short, I’m telling Compass to install the supporting SASS files in a child directory named src and also how to access CakePHP’s asset directories from the SASS root (e.g. <project_root>/sass).

The *_path variables tell Compass how to reference these assets via HTTP. An image, for example, would be referenced as /img/my_image.png.

The last two variables tell Compass something about the operating environment and how the compiled stylesheet should look. A “compressed” stylesheet contains the entire declaration for each selector on a single line. I’d never create CSS that way because I find it miserable to maintain, but since I won’t be maintaining any CSS, this is a nice space saver. Complete documentation of the config file is available on the Compass site.

All that’s left is to initialize the Compass project. You should already be in your sass/ directory, so:

$ compass install blueprint/semantic

Now you’re ready to go. You can compile your stylesheets manually whenever you’re ready to test in a browser, but it’s much less hassle to let Compass do all of that work for you. It will “watch” your project and compile each time you save a .sass (or .scss) file in that directory.

$ cd ..
$ compass watch sass

Start editing—and saving—your SASS files and you’ll see the terminal come alive with activity. Your plain old CSS files are being compiled and stored right where CakePHP expects them to be. Your days of writing and maintaining CSS are over.

Exchange "remote wipe" is a terrible, terrible bug

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 12:53:06 -0400

Exchange "remote wipe" is a terrible, terrible bug:

coderspiel:

Those sons of bitches.

The day after I left AOL, I woke up to find my Blackberry restored to factory defaults. No warning, no exit interview heads up, no courtesy notification, no dinner, soft music, candlelight or lubrication. Lesson learned.

I’m a pretty accessible guy. I don’t stop answering the phone or email at 5pm. I don’t mind being so available because my lackadaisical approach to work-life balance has never been abused. After that experience, though, I decided that if I ever work for a company that deploys this Draconian policy to mobile devices accessing corporate email then the company has two choices:

Provide me with a dedicated work phone at their expense
Deal with me no longer being available at their convenience

What’s that they say about having your cake and eating it too?

OS X Starter Kit (Plugins)

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 07:55:04 -0400

In case this is your gateway into this series, the context is this: I often explain my (relatively recent) preference for Macs with the statement that they occupy something of a sweet spot for me. Because the operating system is Unix-based, development environments are a snap and stability is baked right in. I also get a powerful command line environment. Because it’s Apple, I get some swell eye candy (hardware and software) and all of the “lifestyle” components (e.g. iTunes, video, upgrades, etc.) are also easy. Speaking very generally and with the understanding that nothing is perfect, Windows misses on the former, Linux on the latter.

This is the fourth post in a miniseries that defines my own personal OS X starter kit. In the first post, I covered configuration—those things (read: settings) I change before I add anything at all. Next was applications, the third party additions to the /Applications folder that have to be installed and configured before my system begins to feel like home. In the last post, I covered third party preference panes which I’ll describe as mini applications that reside in the System Preferences dashboard rather than as standalone bundles in the /Applications folder.

Closing out the series is the plugins. These aren’t quite like anything else. Once I install them, I’m forever forgetting where they went—the don’t live in the /Applications directory or in any other location that you’re likely to spend any time, but they’re there when I need them, where I need them.

Visor

Visor is a plugin for OS X’s Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app) application that makes a Terminal window available via hotkey. It’s a little difficult to describe since it doesn’t launch or quit Terminal, but it essentially toggles the visibility of an open Terminal window. I spend a lot of time in the Terminal, but I’m not always in it. I like being able to put it away when I’m done, but call it back out when I need it the next time. Visor is perfect for that and throws in a bit of configurable eye candy to boot (i.e. I configure mine so that the window will slide down from beneath the menubar). The plugin does break one Terminal feature—window groups, but it’s not one that I’ve ever used.

If you spend any amount of time in the command line interface, I highly recommend this plugin.

Hex Color Picker

It’s hard to believe that this isn’t included with the native OS X color picker, but that oversight is filled by this plugin. Hex Color Picker puts an extra tab in the system-wide color panel that displays the hexidecimal color code for any color. As a developer who spends a considerable amount of time on web-centric work, this is an invaluable plugin.

Thus endeth my starter kit. Four categories, four episodes. What’s in your kit?

RIP, Bobby Thompson

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 05:46:05 -0400

When I was a kid, probably 10 years old or so, I had a babysitter. I don’t remember her name. She had some kind of personal connection to Bobby Thompson. I don’t remember the nature of that connection. One day she asked whether I knew who he was.

The shot heard ‘round the world

I don’t remember how I knew that.

Such was the impact of the shot heard ‘round the world, even some 30 years after it was first heard.

OS X Starter Kit (Preference Panes)

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 08:44:00 -0400

I often explain my (relatively recent) preference for Macs with the statement that they occupy something of a sweet spot for me. Because the operating system is Unix-based, development environments are a snap and stability is baked right in. I also get a powerful command line environment. Because it’s Apple, I get some swell eye candy (hardware and software) and all of the “lifestyle” components (e.g. iTunes, video, upgrades, etc.) are also easy. Speaking very generally and with the understanding that nothing is perfect, Windows misses on the former, Linux on the latter.

This is the third post in a miniseries that defines my own personal OS X starter kit. In the first post, I covered configuration—those things (read: settings) I change before I add anything at all. Next was applications, the third party additions to the /Applications folder that have to be installed and configured before my system begins to feel like home. Today I’ll cover preference panes.

If you’re new to OS X, you may be thinking, “Preference panes? Didn’t we already cover those in the first part?”. Well, yes. But, no. In the first episode, we covered the preference panes that ship with OS X and make up its default System Preferences suite. Today we’ll cover third party preference panes that can be added to that same System Preferences panel. When you install the first, you’ll see a new section of panes in the main window that’s labeled Other. Let’s get to it.

AppTrap

Application Uninstaller

Apple made it damn easy to install apps (even if it takes a little getting used to coming from another operating system). They also made it damn easy to delete applications. The problem is, that’s all you’re doing. You’re only deleting the application. What you really want to do is uninstall the application. Apple installations are more consolidated than either Windows or Linux with almost every file contained within the .app bundle (you may not have realized that the .app file is really a collection of files—similar to a zip archive). There are still a few files, most notably preference files, laying about elsewhere that aren’t cleaned up when you move an application to the trash.

AppTrap takes care of that for you. There are other applications (e.g. AppDelete, AppZapper, etc.) out there that do the same thing, but every other one I’ve found requires an explicit thought. In order to use them, you have to first launch them and then tell them, using whatever metaphor they require, that you want to delete an application. Meh.

AppTrap requires no explicit forethought. Launched via a preference pane, it runs in the background and automatically detects when you drag an application to the trash. It then asks whether you want to move those related files to the trash or leave them where they are. Some balk at having external applications running in the background, but I’m not one of them. I like things I don’t have to think about and, in years of using AppTrap, I’ve never noticed any adverse effect.

Growl

System Notifier

Growl is an unobtrusive system notifier that provides applications with a means of letting you know when “things” happen. What those “things” are is dependent on the application, of course. It’s a bit difficult to describe, so maybe a page full of screenshots will help. In my opinion, no OS X system is complete without Growl.

iStat Menus

System Monitor

iStat Menus packs a lot of powerful tools for monitoring your system status. It can show you the temperature, network usage, memory usage, CPU usage and more. I’ll be honest with you, though, and tell you that what I love most about it is its date/time menubar replacement. It does everything the native date/time preferences do, but includes a world clock and a calendar that drops down like a menu when you click on the date & time display.

iStat menus used to be a free preference pane that I would’ve happily paid for, but has become a full blown application that costs. I find the preference pane less intrusive and have stuck with that. The application isn’t expensive, though, and I’m sure it’s worth it.

SizzlingKeys

iTunes Controller

I have iTunes running all day every day, but frequently pause, skip or perform other actions to control what’s playing or how it’s being played. It always drove me crazy that in order to, say, pause the music, I had to make the iTunes window active before I could affect it in whatever way. In my mind, iTunes is ambiance (i.e. background entertainment or even white noise) and it felt intrusive to have to explicitly activate it before I could alter that ambience. With SizzlingKeys, I can assign hot keys that operate on iTunes while the application is inactive or even hidden. Now iTunes is exactly what I want it to be.

Note: If you’re a Quicksilver (another application launcher) user, its iTunes module offers the same functionality.

Startup Sound

Sanity Enhancer

Sure, it’s better than the Windows startup sound, but that damn Mac chime gets me every time if I’ve had the volume turned up. This preference pane provides a way to specify and normalize the volume of the Mac startup sound.

Other preference panes (BetterTouchTool is rapidly becoming a favorite) come and go on my machine, but these are the essentials.

Code Nomenclature

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 07:46:13 -0400

It’s hard enough to be the new guy on a project of any size so I think it’s important, even critical, that engineers and developers consider the learning curve during the development lifecycle. One easy win is to be conscious of entity nomenclature. All of the usual standards about length, self-documentation, etc. still apply, but I’m going to add one more standard to the list:

Name entities—variables, classes, tables, fields, etc.—according to what they are, not what they represent.

Representations can be both transitory and polymorphic, the data is not. An email address is, and will always be an email address (insofar as anything in technology is immutable) even if it may also be used as an identifier.

If a new developer has to know something about the application in order to navigate its nomenclature, then an opportunity has been lost. I’ve spent hours of my life searching Jurassic-size data models for an email address field only to find that data stored in a field called username.

Grammar Snobbery

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 15:40:00 -0400

Grammar Snobbery:

I always used “i.e.” and “e.g.” somewhat interchangeably without rhyme or reason until an old platoon sergeant of mine set me straight. He shared this mnemonic device with me:

Use “i.e.” when you mean “I Explain”. Use “e.g.” when you mean “Example Given”

Thanks, SFC Allard.

OS X Starter Kit (Applications)

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:07:00 -0400

This is the second post in a miniseries that defines my own personal OS X starter kit. In the first post, I covered configuration—those things (read: settings) I change before I add anything at all. Today, applications. Before we begin, though, let’s align our expectations, shall we?

Do Not Expect

I will not list my favorite apps in every arbitrary application group conceivable. That’s been done many, many times and I feel like being pseudo-original today.
I will not list my favorite apps for specific, specialized tasks. That means I won’t talk about my favorite text editor for writing code (Komodo Edit), my favorite FTP client, my favorite Twitter client (I’m a great big waffler on this one anyway), my favorite browser, etc.

Expect

Applications and tools that make me swoon and that must be on my machine before it feels like home. Until these are all installed and configured, I feel like a couch surfer in my own environment.
As hinted above, what I’ll call “environmental” applications. Apps that are pervasive within the context of how I interact with the system.
“Over the counter” applications. Apple ships with some great stuff (Terminal, iPhoto) and some hidden gems (Digital Color Meter), but they’re already there, baked right in and ready for use. No effort required. Listing those would be kind of like cheating.
Stuff you’d typically find in the /Applications directory. There are a few plugins and utilities that typically reside elsewhere, but we’ll get there in a later post.

Expectations aligned? Good. Here we go.

Adium

Instant Messenger Client

Seriously. There is no better multi-protocol IM client on the planet. Period. All the functional goodness of Pidgin (it’s powered by libpurple), all the sexiness of, well, Apple. Adium offers support for all kinds of third party eye candy to boot (e.g. themes, icons, styles, etc.).

Alfred

Application Launcher

The digital lifestyle is just better with a good application launcher. I appreciate any other tasks a launcher may be able to perform, but my appreciation wanes with each degree of configuration complexity that’s added to support those extras (I’m looking at you, Quicksilver). I’ve used many and all have been good enough, but Alfred has my attention at the moment. I haven’t been using it exclusively for long, but so far it feels like the right balance of functionality and simplicity.

As a quick aside, my vote for best-of-breed in the application launcher category on any OS goes to Gnome Do on Linux. I miss a couple of things after my switch from Linux, but none more than Do.

Dropbox

Best Application Ever

I know that’s not a real category of application, but it might as well be when discussing Dropbox. The other day it actually made me breakfast. Waffles. It didn’t skimp on the syrup. If you frequent multiple computers and don’t know about Dropbox then you’re just not paying attention.

LastPass

Password Manager

Technically, this is a browser extension, I suppose, but it’s every bit as useful as an application and this is my list so I’m going to pull rank. Whatever the web equivalent of tying my shoes might be, I can’t do it without LastPass. It knows where I am, it knows when it can help and proactively asks if I would like it to do so. I would.

Everything on the Internet requires authentication these days and if you want some modicum of security then you need a good password repository. There’s nothing better on the web than LastPass. It’s cross-platform and makes it brain-dead simple to maintain password discipline while retaining some level of convenience in the authentication process.

KeePassX

Password Manager

As good as LastPass is, I still cling to my trusty stand-by. Some authentication info has nothing to do with the web and I put those bits in KeePassX. Most of the stuff that’s in LastPass is also duplicated in my KeePassX database. You can never be too careful or too redundant with this stuff.

SuperDuper

System Backup & Recovery

Like many before me, I learned the hard way. Backup your system. There are other alternatives, but nothing beats SuperDuper, for my money.

There you have it. The application-centric atmosphere of my computing world. As an added bonus, all of these can be had for for absolutely no cost. Several offer paid versions, but free versions are available.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I use other applications, of course, but these are the first ones that get installed and the ones that make my system home.

OS X Starter Kit (Configuration)

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 12:19:00 -0400

In the last year I’ve helped migrate a couple of family members to Macs, advised (to one degree or another) several peers & colleagues on their own switch and built (or rebuilt) several for myself. In that time, I’ve come up with something of a starter kit I consider essential and indispensable. These range from configuration settings to utilities to applications and from minutia to massive, so don’t look for this to be highly targeted.

While writing this post, I came to realize that I could probably milk it into more than one, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Stuff like this is just easier to write and read in bite size chunks.

Configuration

Let’s start with configuration. The proverbial unboxing is complete and you’ve just finished the introductory video and wizard. While everything is still fresh and clean, let’s begin the personalization journey. You may have already done a system update, but if you haven’t, now is a good time. In the menubar, select  > Software Update. Follow the instructions. I’ll wait…

Good? Okay, moving on. Configuration at this stage begins and ends with the System Preferences. Open these from the Apple menu:  > System Preferences…. I won’t talk about all of them because some are relatively vanilla. I’ll just be touching on those that I alter in a meaningful manner. Looking at the preferences panel, I’ll be working left to right, top to bottom.

Desktop & Screen Saver

I’m in the minority here, but I kind of like the wallpaper that ships with Snow Leopard. I usually change it to use one of my own photos, but I’d probably leave it otherwise. That’s just me.

I do, however, uncheck the Translucent menu bar option. Depending on your wallpaper, being able to see it behind the menu bar is egregiously annoying.

As screen savers go, I have several that I kind of like, but nary a one of them ships with OS X. Out of the box, the screen saver options just blow. My current favorites include (in no particular order):

Fliqlo Free. (screenshot)
WordClock Free. (screenshot)
3D Desktop Aquarium (screenshot) Don’t let the web site fool you. The screensaver is every bit as awesome as the site is craptastic. Expensive for a screen saver at $12.95 and the only one I’ve ever bought, but I really like it.

Dock

I tend to make extensive use of application launchers, so I like to get the dock out of my way completely by checking the option to Automatically hide and show the dock. I also move the Size slider much closer to the Small end than the default setting has it placed.

I also position it on the left side of my screen because I’ve found that my cursor doesn’t wander over there as often as it wanders to the bottom which keeps me from accidentally triggering the dock’s visibility as often.

Lastly, I like a bit of eye candy, so I turn on a little bit of magnification. Not too much, but I like a little bit of animation.

Expose & Spaces

I don’t do much with Expose, but it’s come in handy from time to time. That said, the default settings are probably fine unless you’re a power user.

Spaces, on the other hand, I use extensively. I have separate spaces for browsing, for development, for photography and for apps that I often have running behind the scenes. If you’ve never used multiple desktops on any OS (read: Unix systems), then you may not need or want Spaces. If you do try it and like it, but find some aspects annoying, you may want to check out these hints:

Language & Text

Notice the left most pane on the Text tab. Add your own custom text replacement values for words and phrases you type often or even _mis_type often. This is universal autocorrection and it is good.

Displays

Unless you’re a power user, you probably won’t have a lot of need to change your display settings with any frequency, if at all. For that reason, it probably makes sense to uncheck the option to Show displays in menu bar.

Keyboard

I use the function keys all the time. I use the “special features” far less frequently. For that reason, I check the option to Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard keys.

Apple also does something (stupid, IMO) that trips up a lot of new Mac users. By default, when using forms you can only tab between selected controls—specifically text boxes and lists. If you often use the keyboard to navigate forms, it may make you crazy that you can’t tab to a submit button and hit Enter. You can fix that by finding the Full Keyboard Access setting and selecting the All Controls option. I don’t know why this isn’t the default, but I find it maddening when I forget to change this setting immediately.

A while back, it occurred to me that the only time I use the Caps Lock key is, well, on accident. If you find the same, you have the option of simply disabling it. To do so, click the Modifier Keys… button and, in the popup window, select the No Action option in the Caps Lock Key drop down menu. Click OK and the Cops Lock key will no longer be a problem for you.

Keyboard Shortcuts

A subject near and dear to my heart. One of my favorite aspects of OS X is that you can configure your own universal or application-specific keyboard shortcuts. For example, every OS X application that has preferences and was built to standard provides access to those preferences via the ⌘+, shortcut. You’ll get to know that one well, if you’re a keyboard junkie.

Since System Preferences is really just a universal version of application preferences, I create a similar shortcut by assigning ⌘+Shift+, to open the System Preferences application. To do so:

Click Application Shortcuts in the left pane.
Click the + button beneath the right pane.
Select All Applications (should be the default).
Type System Preferences… in the Menu Title field.
Type the shortcut you want to use in the Keyboard Shortcut field. To use mine, hold down the ⌘, Shift and , keys at the same time. You’ll see the value change.
Click Add.

Now explore. The possibilities are endless.

Trackpad

Watch the videos, learn the gestures, ditch the mouse (at least for a while). I can’t recommend this enough.

Sharing

I uncheck everything except File Sharing and Remote Login. And with File Sharing, I only allow access to my Public folder.

Date & Time

If you didn’t set the option to Set time zone automatically using current location during the introductory wizard, you might want to do so now. If you do, you’ll never have to think about it again.

Software Update

Make it easy on yourself. Keep your system up to date. Check the option to Check for updates and do so Daily or Weekly. Make life even easier, by allowing the computer to Download updates automatically. It will let you know when they’re ready and all you have to do is tell it to install (or not).

As I promised, I didn’t mention every possible option, but I hit the high points. Those I skipped are either solid out of the box (no changes necessary), are trivial (how long to wait before activating the screen saver) or are deeply personal and very much based on personal preference.

Whatever you choose to do with your system preferences, I highly recommend that you look through each and every item in the System Preferences window and become familiar with your options. One day you may want to change something and it will be helpful if you have some idea where to go to do it.

I’ll follow up with posts to discuss the applications, preference panes, utilities and plugins that I consider essential, but I’d love to hear about your essential configuration tweaks in the comments.

My Advice to Mac Notebook Users

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 13:27:00 -0400

Put your mouse away.

The fact that it sounds dirty is just an added bonus, but I’m being serious. I’m talking to you switchers, in particular (and welcome, by the way). Now put the mouse away. I know that you have pre-conceived notions about the usability and usefulness of the trackpad, but this ain’t your PC’s trackpad. I think you’ll be surprised.

Look, it’s not for everyone, I know, but give it a try. When you do:

Embrace the full immersion technique and do so for a solid week or so.
Learn the multi-touch gestures.
Fight the urge to return to the familiarity of the mouse.

What have you got to lose? Who wouldn’t love to go mobile with one less peripheral?

Too Smart for Git

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 08:27:38 -0400

Too Smart for Git:

The problem isn’t that Git is to [sic] hard, it’s that smart developers are impatient and have exactly zero tolerance for unexpected behavior in their tools.

Mea-freaking-culpa.