2011-11-03T14:53:08-07:00 http://swig505.com/ Brian Smith bsmith@swig505.com 2010-12-28T00:00:00-08:00 http://swig505.com/2010/12/28/command-line-navigation <h2>[QuickTip] Mac OS X Terminal: Moving the Cursor Intelligently</h2> <p><img src="/images/drawings/terminal.png" alt="Term-nom-nom" class="inline-left" /> If you've spent much time in a terminal, you probably already know the key bindings <code>Ctrl-A</code> and <code>Ctrl-E</code> to move the cursor to the beginning and end of the line. While this is nice, it just doesn't jive well with the OS X standard key movements (and arrows are just more consistent to my easily confused mind). Also, sometimes I catch myself typing foolishly long commands and I'll find a typo in the middle &mdash; and suddenly pressing the left arrow 25 times seems unnecessarily tedious. <em>sigh</em></p> <p>Let's rectify this nonsense!</p> <p>Open up a Terminal window and go to <code>Terminal -&gt; Preferences -&gt; Settings -&gt; Keyboard</code>. We're going to add the following keyboard shortcuts:</p> <ul> <li><code>Ctrl →</code> will map to <code>\001</code> (equivalent to <code>Ctrl-A</code>) and will move the cursor to the beginning of the line (<a href="/images/screenshots/terminal-ctrl-left.png" rel="facebox">screenshot</a>)</li> <li><code>Ctrl ←</code> will map to <code>\005</code> (equivalent to <code>Ctrl-E</code>) and will move the cursor to the end of the line (<a href="/images/screenshots/terminal-ctrl-right.png" rel="facebox">screenshot</a>)</li> <li><code>Option →</code> will map to <code>\033b</code> and will move the cursor to the next word (<a href="/images/screenshots/terminal-option-left.png" rel="facebox">screenshot</a>)</li> <li><code>Option ←</code> will map to <code>\033f</code> and will move the cursor to the previous word (<a href="/images/screenshots/terminal-option-right.png" rel="facebox">screenshot</a>)</li> </ul> <p>Ahhhh, this pleases my irrationally OCD self. Sure, I may be taking my hands off the home row (shit, I'd have <a href="http://www.catonmat.net/blog/bash-vi-editing-mode-cheat-sheet/">bash in vi mode</a> if I cared about that), but there's happiness in my fingers while using arrow keys for cursor movement.</p> 2010-12-07T00:00:00-08:00 http://swig505.com/2010/12/07/nothing-is-a-priority <h2>TIL: When Everything Is A Priority, Nothing Is A Priority</h2> <p>Priority, severity, importance and urgency only work insofar as their relativity to things that are less important, less severe and less urgent. Asking your team to <em>sprint</em> only works if your regular pace is a jog. A team that is always sprinting quickly slows to a walk &mdash; and often remains there indefinitely.</p> <p><strong>Note:</strong> Please don't read too much into the term <em>sprint</em> here. I'm not taking any shots at agile methodologies that use this term, it just seemed like an apt analogy.</p> 2010-12-03T00:00:00-08:00 http://swig505.com/2010/12/03/ninety-percent <h2>TIL: A 90% Solution Today Is Better Than a 100% Solution That Never Happens</h2> <p>I've been working on a Markdown-based Notes app for Mac, and I've hit a few tough spots lately. Specifically, I've been pondering different ways to do the syntax-highlighting and a few other grammar-based actions and rules to make editing easier. As far as I saw it, I had two alternatives:</p> <ul> <li>Create (or alter an existing) Markdown parser that would create a parse tree from a formal grammar</li> <li>Use pattern matching via a series of regular expressions</li> </ul> <p>The computer scientist in me took the reigns and decided to start writing a recursive descent parser for Markdown a few days ago. And then today, I was discussing the project with my friend and colleague, <a href="http://www.jayswain.com">Jay Swain</a>, and he started prodding me about when I would release it, what I had left to do, etc. As I started explaining how I'm working on this "awesome Markdown parser" and how it will take a little while longer, I could see the excitement start to fade. I realized that as a potential user, Jay didn't care whether the app used a beautiful parser with a formal grammar or whether it used a bunch of hacked-together regex's &mdash; he would rather have a version that worked <strong>pretty darn well tomorrow</strong> than a version that worked <strong>really well in a few weeks</strong>. So I've stashed my backtracing recursive descent parser (sounds fun, right?) into a branch, and tomorrow I'll be implementing syntax highlighting with pattern matching (and thus releasing much sooner). I have to thank Jay for reminding me:</p> <p><strong>A 90% Solution Today Is Better Than a 100% Solution That Never Happens</strong></p> 2010-12-02T00:00:00-08:00 http://swig505.com/2010/12/02/y-combinator <h2>TIL: The Y-Combinator (not the VC firm)</h2> <p>As a <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/">Hacker News</a> reader and start-up scene follower, I come across the term <strong>Y Combinator</strong> quite often in reference to the <a href="http://www.ycombinator.com/">startup funding firm</a>. Most geeks know the term refers to a functional programming construct, but that's as far as we go &mdash; and that's as far as I'd gone until today! However, rather than rehash other individuals' eloquent explanations, I'll pass along the list of the resources I used so that you may create your own journey. Enjoy!</p> <h4>Resources</h4> <ul> <li><a href="http://mvanier.livejournal.com/2897.html">Mike's World-O-Programming: The Y Combinator</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.dreamsongs.com/NewFiles/WhyOfY.pdf">The Why of Y</a></li> <li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_combinator">Fixed Point Combinator - Wikipedia</a></li> </ul> 2010-12-01T00:00:00-08:00 http://swig505.com/2010/12/01/inspiration-and-heavy-nudging <h2>TIL: Inspiration often needs some heavy nudging</h2> <p>I've been neglecting my personal corner of cyberspace (do people still use this word?), so I decided to spend an hour today cleaning it up. In addition to a few minor cosmetic changes, I've changed the organization to hopefully encourage more frequent posting and "wiki-fying" informational entries to encourage updates and deprecations. My goal:</p> <p><strong>Add a brief blog entry each day about something I learned that day</strong></p> <p>I'm hoping this course succeeds in two ways: 1) hopefully I will post more often, and 2) this is a way to consciously make an effort to learn something new <em>every</em> day. So here's the first post in this crazy experiment:</p> <h3>Today I learned that inspiration often needs some heavy nudging</h3>