App Defaults

As the idea has been making its way around the Internet for a couple weeks, it’s time for me to add my own set of apps to the blogroll¹. There are many lists like it, but this one is mine.

Social Distancing Part 8 - Reading List

At the end of 2018, I wrote what I hoped would be the first in a series of once-a-year posts under the title “Books I Read in 2018.” At first, continuing the trend in 2019 didn’t seem like a Herculean effort, so I kept adding to my Goodreads list that which I’d already read and those I had yet to read.

Social Distancing Part 7 - Escape Hatch

It all started because of a failed Python upgrade. I began to wonder if I would be forced into an OS upgrade just to get Homebrew to behave - on a six year old machine - that isn’t anyone’s idea of a good time.¹

Social Distancing Part 6 - (Not Quite) Language-Agnostic Interfaces for Words and Code

Inspired by Parker’s post on the same subject, I decided to write my own now that it’s been up and running for a few days. I say ‘not quite’ in the title because - as will become apparent - I only use a few languges to do most of the work.¹ At the end of the process, I had entirely reorganized my Jekyll Scripts repository - now called Rake Jekyll - from a series of shell scripts into a single Rakefile. I also migrated my Reverse Job Posting to use Rake. As I worked, it got me thinking about how I approached the same task in other projects.²

Social Distancing Part 5 - IndieWeb, Inside Out

So, while writing a function to send a tweet when a new item gets added to feed isn’t hard, it does typically involve a bunch of Javascript. Far more than I’m comfortable dealing with at this point.

Social Distancing Part 4 - When Government (Almost) Gets It Right

So it has come down to this. A topic I thought I would never, ever write about here. But, through a series of mostly COVID-19 related events, here we are.

Social Distancing Part 3 - A Better Linkblog

For as long as I’ve had a blog of any kind, the idea of quick, short-form writing - sometimes called linkblogging - has been an area of interest. I first remember seeing this concept sometime back in 2006, when I found my way to John Gruber’s long running site, Daring Fireball. His being the gold standard for this kind of thing, I found myself wanting to do likewise. For interesting articles that I find through RSS or just browsing around the web, it’s convenient to have an outlet for the stray thought that passes through my mind as I’m reading.

Social Distancing Part 2 - Adventures in Continuous Integration

It all sounded so simple.¹ At least this is what I told myself when I decided to move off of my previous host and on to Netlify. It was going to be great - almost all of the capabilities of a VPS for free, but I didn’t have to manage it.

Social Distancing Part 1 - Hello, Zsh!

This is what (I hope) will be a series of posts about what I’m doing to keep my mind occupied while practicing COVID-19 induced social distancing. When you work for a public library (but are closed to the public), just about everything slows to a crawl.

Drafts in Six Lines of Code

A few years ago, I came across a presentation¹ that Brian Kernighan gave back in 2009 called The Elements of Programming Style, a title borrowed from his book of the same name. In it, he made one point which I think applies equally well whether you are writing words or code.

Make All

With the exception of my “draft” script, I’ve moved all my shell scripts for this site into a Makefile. Originally, I used gulp-shell, but was quickly reminded of the sheer number of packages you need to do even the simplest operations in Node. At that point, I decided to find an alternative solution.

Audible, Goodreads, and a Very Long List

Because all the cool kids are doing it, I’ve compiled a list of all the books I’ve read in the past year. You might think, ‘Who reads anymore’, or ‘Who has the time?’ Surprisingly, this was easier than I thought and only required 3 things:

A Brief Reprieve

I don’t know how long it will remain, but the potential endgame for Safari extensions described in my last post may be further off in the future than originally thought. After all, Apple isn’t Bare Bones, who extensively document how to restore prior behaviors in their apps - usually by editing a property list. As time goes on, I would expect the number of hurdles that must jump through in order to continue use legacy extensions to increase, but the inclusion of the “unsigned” option in the Develop menu gives me hope.

The Future of Safari Extensions

In most technology circles, hearing somebody say “the Future of X” when referring to a given technology is a bad sign. It’s the death knell, usually means time is running out, and a big change is on the horizon. With this in mind, The Safari team announced at WWDC that legacy .safariextz extensions distributed outside of the Extensions Gallery will not load in Safari 12. While they will accept new submissions until the end of this year, it’s clear that App Extensions and Content Blockers are the future of extensibility in Safari.

The 60% Keyboard

Unless there’s a change coming next week, I might need to consider something like this - or bite the bullet and dive headfirst into the Wirecutter’s keyboard reviews. My current MacBook Pro will be 5 in December, so it’s getting to the point where I should start thinking about what comes next.

Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Subdomains

Subdomains are out and collections are in; which means a proper linkblog can live at the same domain as the rest of the site. It took some time - reading docs, asking questions on the Jekyll Talk forum, and watching a CloudCannon tutorial - but now, interesting links have their own index (naturally, it’s /links) and associated URLs.

SSH for Humans

Let’s Encrypt should really think about getting into the business of managing SSH keys - it would save everyone (e.g, me) the headache of looking up credentials which haven’t been used since…

Sites on the Cheap

As this site’s content has become a bit of a running commentary regarding its own creation, let’s continue with that theme.

Going Offline

Well actually…

Security by Deletion

I guess there’s a first time for everything, so imagine my surprise when an email from GitHub about a security warning showed up in my Inbox this past week.

Invalid

Note to self: Having invalid markup in a Liquid template makes HTTP caches go crazy. Also, service workers are still weird (and awesome).

A Desk and a Chair

I need a new desk and a new chair. The desk I’m sitting at is at least 20 years old and the chair - which originally belonged to a child’s school desk - is even older than that.

Drunk with Power Management

Just when you get to the point where you think everything is ready to go, with the “i’s” dotted and “t’s” crossed, nothing can possibly go wrong and…no.

Adventures in rsync

As I was saying, wait…what was I saying? Oh yes, something about removing obstacles to writing.

Minimum Viable (Writing) Product

You say you want to write for a living, just do it.

Enough Already!

The EU [just won’t quit][].

Dan Lyons and Jim Goldman Throw Down

For those who haven’t seen the video.

Consumer advocacy at work

Some companies will do anything to get favorable reviews for their products. The good news is that these scams are usually easy to spot, especially when reviewers are openly solicited for their opinion.

Aurgasm's New Face

People are now using YouTube as a reference tool.

Aurgasm's New Face

One of the best music related blogs has a new look. Credit to site owner Paul Irish and designer Tom Kershaw for giving Aurgasm its own unique style.

NYT: US Airways Flight 1549 Graphic

I love when the Times does [these][] things. They have the integration of reporting and technology down to a science. The guys at CSTV should pay particular attention, after they dismantled the [USC Athletics][] site beyond recognition with possibly the worst use of AJAX ever; even though almost all collegiate athletics departments who outsource their sites seem to suffer from the same problem. This is Flash done the right way. [these]: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/01/15/nyregion/20090115-plane-crash-970.html [USC Athletics]: https://web.archive.org/web/20090115212045/http://usctrojans.cstv.com/

Inbox Zero

When the email starts to pile up or I haven’t checked it in a week, I come back to this video. Merlin’s ideas are insightful and remind me of all the tips and tricks I need to keep my inbox in check.

NYT’s Stone: Jobs doesn’t have cancer

Two people who are familiar with Mr. Jobs’s current medical treatment said he was not suffering from a recurrence of cancer, but a condition that was preventing his body from absorbing food. Doctors have also advised him to cut down on stress, which may be making the problem worse, these people said.

There must be an easier way

Two things have always frustrated me about the ‘Current iTunes Song’ status in iChat:

Apple, meet your PR nightmare

[Steve’s out until June][], Tim Cook’s in charge. Stock drops 10% in 5 minutes. Cook’s good (He filled in for Jobs during his recovery from cancer in 2004), but this certainly isn’t a good sign.

Well, that explains it...

Long story short: I come home for semester break (having gotten a flu shot the last time I was in Chatham several weeks earlier) and promptly get sick within 72 hours. Something weird is going on.

See? I know this stuff

Fat chance Apple was going to attend CES next January. It’s just [not happening][].

[not happening]:

Minimum Viable (Writing) Product

The economy sucks, no big surprise. At least this way you’re probably guaranteed 4 years before getting a new job. If all else fails, there’s always grad school.

Minimum Viable (Writing) Product

Several others have reported than although Apple has officially stated they will not attend Macworld next January, but that they will have a presence at CES in 2010. This has raised a few questions to say the least about the company’s reasons for the switch. What are they going to accomplish by being there?