Noah Coad

Peeking Into Modern Open Source Web Dev w Ruby on Rails

Published on January 24, 2013

Having worked with .NET since its beta, for the last 11+ yrs, a Microsoft C# MVP, then working on Visual Studio for six years, I felt it was about time to peek my head into the open source space. It’s been an incredible journey of discovery. I’ll write more about it later, but for now here are a few getting started resources I’ve found handy. These are all free and run great on Windows, Ubuntu, or MacOS.

The 1,2,3 to Start

Text Editor: Sublime Text 2, I’m thoroughly enjoying this editor, wrote a plugin, ‘evaluation’ is free and doesn’t expire, but they do ask for $60 if you like it, and it’s changed the way I use my computer
Ruby on Rails: Install on Windows, http://railsinstaller.org/ (use RVM in MacOS or Ubuntu)
Get Going: Getting Started Guide, a ‘one page’ guide to creating a blog site and get familiar with Rails, this is what got me going

More Info

Control Code: git is so cool for local source code control (remote too, but I really like it locally). Just install locally, run git init in your directory to create a new local repository, git add –A to add all changed files, git commit –m “my comment” to commit your additions to the repository, and gitk to visually see. I use it now non-code folders too, like for documents, personal text files, etc.
Get Live: Heroku, free site hosting, get your site live in like 4 commands (do this first)
How To: Rails Casts, lovely quick little videos showing awesome gems, watch some of these
Discover Gems: The Ruby Toolbox for finding gems. Ruby on Rails uses ‘gems’ as modules or libraries to add functionality, like devise for authentication, cancan for authorization, slim for minimalistic html
User Groups: get plugged in, find a user group in your area and check it out. They’re cool peoples. For example, here’s the Austin TX and Dallas TX groups. Most cities have one, or more. Dallas has a weekly Tues ‘hack night’. Just search meetup.com. Also checkout HTML5, node.js, and Python groups.
Book: Read Getting Real, by 37signals, creators of the Rails framework, it’s like an ADD or twitter form of business book, it’s about building something now as opposed to any specific tech, totally motivating
Popularity: to get a completely unscientific idea of how popular Rails is to other frameworks coming out of one mecca of new web development, see google’s search terms in SF CA (try adding more).
Videos: these guys have 9 cute little “Mac vs PC” style Rails vs other frameworks videos
Ubuntu: everything here works in Windows, but it does run a little faster in Ubuntu, and it’s is such a cool powerful command-line environment to use and entirely free. VirtualBox is a powerful free virtual machine environment you can run it under. I’m using VBoxVmService to run it in a Windows background service, putty to shell into, samba to access folders from Windows, and tmux for awesomeness.

This is what it feels like…

Concluding

A few thing that have jumped out at me:

Watching someone use these makes a big difference in learning them. So get to a local Ruby event, user group, or hack night to see people using them and ask questions. There is a lot of ‘institutional knowledge’ that’s trickier to pick up than I find the .NET stuff to be.
This stuff is fun. It is really enjoyable. I get the feeling it was created by guys like you and me to build websites fast, fun, and flexible. Read Getting Real and you’ll see the culture behind the movement.
Learning how Ruby and Python work as languages, their associated frameworks, and the cultures around them, has really given me a new perspective on my .NET coding and habits. It’s good to go beyond one’s comfort zone to bring in fresh new perspectives.
There’s a culture of using accelerators and modern tech, once you peek in, you’ll immediately start seeing the awesomeness of stuff like bootstrap (changed how we build websites), meteor (you must watch the video), backbone.js, node.js, and other mind-blowing frameworks I was not familiar with previously.
It’s been a lot of fun discovering these techs. Python really rocks too. Have fun!

Tags: opensource, rails, ubuntu

1 Comment

Catch All the CES 2013 News w The Verge RSS Feeds

Published on January 8, 2013

CES 2013 is upon us! Quick easy way to stay on top of CES 2013 news: Just click All News or The Best Of to pull up the The Verge’s feeds in Google Reader (free). You won’t miss a beat. Try Reader’s hotkeys ‘n’ for next post and ‘f’ for full-screen viewing. Great mobile interface too. The Verge is the official CES news outlet. Using Chrome? Try the RSS Subscription extension. For reference, here are the all or best raw rss xml feeds.

And keep an eye on my CES Fav Gizmos list where I’ll be linking to the best of the rest gizmos not to be missed. Geek week FTW!

Tags: events, gizmos

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Instant Web Pages

Published on January 3, 2013

You can make simple web pages that are instantly published online leveraging the power of free easy cloud tools dropbox, pancake.io, and markdown. Here’s an example: Changed My Delicious Styling. Get ‘em installed and you’ll be making quick little pages live in 5 min. You can use HTML, but using markdown (a ‘simplified HTML’), is just so quick and easy.

The Tools

dropbox syncs a folder on your computer to the cloud
pancake.io publishes files in a dropbox folder to web pages
MarkdownPad (Win) or Mou (Mac) lets you instantly see markdown
Handy markdown reference or one-page PDF cheatsheet

Just 3 Steps

Download apps and create pancake.io account
Open your Dropbox\Apps\Pancake.io folder and create a new .md markdown file using the editor
Go to you pancake.io account, click the file, and grab the URL. that’s it

Tags: dropbox, instant, pancake.io, publishing, web

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Hotkey to Open Clipboard Contents in Text Editor

Published on December 31, 2012

Windows and Mac… be a Text Editor power user…

Ever open your text editor just to paste the clipboard contents? Maybe to view, edit, or strip formatting? Or how about opening notepad just to type a quick note, thought, or save some text? I find I’m constantly doing these throughout the day. To make this snappy, here’s how to make a global PC or Mac keyboard shortcut to open the editor with the clipboard contents (and automate away the save dialog).

What You Get (for Windows, Mac OS read below)

Win+W opens Notepad with an empty temp file
Win+Shift+W opens Notepad with the clipboard contents in a temp file
Then when closing Notepad the temp file is automatically saved. Only if it’s one of these temp files, to get rid of that pesky “Do you want to save this file?” dialog. If you want the text in something other than a temp file, just use Save As. Space is cheap so it’s fine to have plenty of these temp files. It also gives a way of searching for past text.

Watch it in Action

Supported Editors

The script includes support for Notepad2, Notepad2-mod, Sublime Text 2 (my fav), Notepad++, and UltraEdit. Windows notepad.exe and SlickEdit don’t work as the file name in the save dialog isn’t available to automation.

All uber-geeks have their favorite text editors, so to modify for another editor:

Have the editor registered to open .txt files. Most other editors have some tools options setting for it or right-click on a .txt file and select “Open with” > “Choose default program…”.
Update the dialog matching info, title and dialog contents regular expression, to match that unique editor. Use the AU3_Spy.exe tool that comes with AutoHotKey to get the contents of your editor’s save file dialog.

The AutoHotkey Script

This uses a handy little AutoHotkey (a free, open-source, windows scripting tool) script. Save the script and run it. To keep active on boot, make a shortcut to this script in the Start Menu > All Programs > Startup folder. It uses a little .NET app EditClipboardText (download or source) to put the clipboard contents into a file and open the file since encoding with AutoHotkey is tricky.

(if the code isn’t showing just above this line, you can get it here: https://gist.github.com/4064637)

Doing this in Mac OSX

Use your favorite global hotkey app to launch this script, such as Quicksilver, Sparkle, or Alfred Powerpack. Remember to mark the file as executable, sudo chmod u+x ~/scripts/cliptext.rb The dialog automation part is tricky (I don’t know how to automate MacOSX dialogs, even if it’s possob), but not needed if you use Sublime Text 2 and set the save_on_last_focus setting.

(if the code isn’t showing just above this line, see it here https://gist.github.com/4315822)

Update 1/2/12: Added UltraEdit, Notepad++, and Sublime Text 2 dialog automation. Fixed AutoHotkey script. Added EditClipboardText tool. Added video example.

Tags: autohotkey, hotkey, macos, techtip, tools, windows

5 Comments

The OS GUI Holy Combo: Global Hotkeys, Command Launcher, GUI Automation, and Clipboard Ring (Windows, Mac, Ubuntu)

Published on December 17, 2012

For max GUI productivity, my favorite apps are a command launcher, global hotkeys, GUI automation, and clipboard ring tools. (see full list of tools here) I’ve got these optimized for Windows, but am trying to move to Mac OSX or Ubuntu and haven’t been able to find quite the equivalent there. This post is for sharing what I’ve found works well on Windows, but is also a call for help to my dear Mac OSX and Ubuntu readers… What do you use on Mac OSX or Ubuntu for these? I’d really like to try moving over to Mac OSX or Ubuntu, but am a keyboard fiend and haven’t found the level of productity over there yet.

Windows

AutoHotkey, global hotkeys and GUI automation
Great script based automation tool! Super easy to define global hotkeys and automate windows. I’ve got >100 pesky ‘are you sure?’ model dialogs automated so they disappear almost as fast as they appear. Also just over 50 custom global hotkeys.
SlickRun, command launcher
Extremely simple! Just define your own ‘magic words’ commands which can take a parameter to launch websites or open files/folders. Like “sebay” to open “http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?satitle=$W$” where $W$ is what you type after, like “sebay altair”.
ClipX, clipboard ring
Again, so simple. Just hit Ctrl+Shift+V to pop up a menu of previous items in the clipboard. Keeps the list in ‘most recently used’ order with the previous item at the top.

Mac OSX

Alfred, command launcher (free) and global hotkeys ($15 powerpack)
Nice UI, but real complex! Wish there was something as simple as SlickRun, just create your own commands. Also the global hotkeys cost, are there any good free alternatives?
Gui Automation?
Haven’t found a great GUI Automation option yet. Yes there is Automator and AppleScript, but in playing around with these they seem to either have complex UI dialogs to navigate or are limited to the access points provided by apps (like iTunes). How do you just like detect when a certain app’s modal dialog appears (like “Are you sure you want to exit?”) and click a specific button, preferably via code?
Clipboard Ring?
The options I’ve seen so far appear overly complex. New GUIs to click on, large UI, etc. Where’s just a dirt simple one hotkey (like cmd+shift+V) menu popup like ClipX?

Ubuntu

- No idea!! Please help. What fulfills these categories in Linux GUIs?

Other Stuff

There are tons of other little differences between the OS’s that I’m comfortable with on Windows, but feel I can make the transition okay with. Like I love command prompts (Take Command rocks on Window!) and they’re super great in unix shells. Scripting with PowerShell is great on Windows, but there’s Mono, ruby, python, etc in unix. Then there’s the other keyboard stuff that for the most part just takes getting used to, like navigating Finder with keyboard, or click-only dialogs being a pain. It still feels like Windows is more navigable via keyboard, like having a key for the apps context menu, hotkeys for sizing windows, all dialogs are keyboard navigable/scriptable, etc. Any other recommendations in being productive or workflow automation apps in Mac or Ubuntu GUIs would be appreciated. thanks

Tags: autohotkey, call_for_help, mac, productivity, windows

6 Comments

Favorite Sublime Text 2 User Settings

Published on December 15, 2012

Sublime Text 2 is my favorite code editor as of late. It’s just brilliantly simple and powerful. Cross platform, free or $60 to support the team, and super easy to create new addins w Python. Here are some helpful settings. My favorite is “save_on_last_focus” which automatically saves files when focus is moved away, such as to another file or program. To edit user settings, click the Preferences menu > Settings – User. What are your favorite settings?

(if you don’t see the code just above, view it here)

p.s. If you’re new to Sublime Text 2, here are a few things to try:

Install the Sublime Package Control addon, then use it to install SideBarEnhancements and Open URL (Preferences menu > Package Control)
Try Project menu > Add Folder to Project… then Ctrl+P to jump to files quickly, Ctrl+B to build (and run) many file types, and Ctrl+Shift+P to run Sublime commands.
Take a look at the settings and key bindings in Preferences menu > Settings – Default and Preferences > Settings – Key Bindings Default. Give some of them a try and create your own in the Preferences > * – User files.

Tags: mac, sublimetext2, windows

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Change Screen Resolutions Hotkeys in Windows

Published on November 12, 2012

I’m frequently changing my screen resolution when (1) sharing my screen in online meetings, (2) recording screencasts, (3) showing people something on the screen, and (4) when using a projector or TV. Here’s how to have hotkeys to instantly change to several common resolutions.

Get AutoHotkey (a free open-source Windows scripting app)
Get Display Changer (a few command line resolution changer)
Create yourself a ResolutionHotkeys.ahk file with the contents below
Add a shortcut to the file from you Program Files > Startup folder

If code isn’t showing above, see here: https://gist.github.com/4060079

Which maps these hotkeys:

Win+Ctrl+0	Maximum Resolution
Win+Ctrl+1	1024×768
Win+Ctrl+2	1280×1024
Win+Ctrl+3	1280×800
Win+Ctrl+6	1600×1200
Win+Ctrl+7	1280x720
Win+Ctrl+8	800×600
Win+Ctrl+9	1920×1200

p.s. I’ve got these old posts on the same topic which I can’t edit anymore, which is why this new post: Change Screen Resolution with One Keyboard Shortcut and Windows Hot Keys with AutoHotKey

Tags: autohotkey, hotkey, productivity

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Ultimate Windows Command Prompt: Take Command

Published on November 6, 2012

Ditch cmd.exe. It’s ugly, limited, has hardly been updated in 20 yrs, and is just a pain. If you ever use the command prompt, you owe it to yourself to get a much better shell. Take Command is awesome powerful. Far beyond other cmd.exe replacements. I’ve used it practically daily for 15+ yrs and love it.

btw, I’m in no way affiliated with Take Command, jpsoft, it’s author, etc. Just a Raving Fan.

What it’s Got

Here’s a sampling of what’s included:

140 additional commands
480 internal variable and functions
tons of additional parameters on commands
advanced tab completion
fully supported copy/paste on prompt
optional Windows Explorer like dockable UI
works w FTP/HTTP the same as local files
full cmd.exe parity
huge help system (my fav feature)
colored file listings
20x to 200x faster output than cmd.exe
an active online support forum
integrates w Ruby, Python, and Perl
includes a batch file editing IDE and debugger
has been active for over 20 years (started in 1989
is regularly updated
portable xcopy deployable, like on a USB stick
and the list goes on….

Video Overview

Here’s showing off some of my favorite features…

Get It

Download now. TCC/LE is freeware. The full pro version has a trial period and is $100 for the (at the time of writing this) and upgrades are half the price. Best money I’ve every spent on software, hands down. I started with it over 15 yrs ago, back when Norton Utilities licensed the then 4DOS as NDOS and a DOS command.com replacement. The fantastic help system is what won me over. Been using it daily since.

Win+C to Open Command Prompt

I mention in the video using AutoHotkey to open a prompt with just Win+C. To do the same, just download AutoHotkey (free open-source Windows scripting app), create a hotkeys.ahk file, put a shortcut to that file into your Startup folder, and put this in the file. (of course replacing the path to your tcc.exe or tcmd.exe for the GUI)

; Open a command prompt
; #=Win ^=Ctrl +=Shift !=Alt
#c:: Run c:\tools\tcmd\tcc.exe

PowerShell & Bash

I’m also a big fan of PowerShell and use it for using .NET library goodness. And I use bash in Ubuntu and in cygwin. But there a place, a major place, for having something quick and powerful to replace cmd.exe with that’s fully cmd.exe compatible. I find I can do more, faster w Take Command and am consistently finding new efficient ways to use the command prompt. I wouldn’t consider PowerShell & Bash ‘cmd.exe replacements’ like Take Command, as they are entirely different types of commanding environments.

Other Consoles

There are many cmd.exe replacements available, like Console2, ConEmu, PowerCmd, PromptPal, even new attempts like Kickstarter project Wish (and probably more, cmd.exe is that bad). Many are buggy, have quirks that make them not quite perfectly cmd.exe compatible, or are not as actively maintained. It is hard, damn hard, to make a truly great command prompt. I’ve tried many of these, but Take Command continues to stand out as the best-in-class.

Lipstick on a Pig
Many of these (I checked ConEmu and Console) are shells around cmd.exe or other std in/out console apps. The provide a UI and on-the-prompt editing (like tabbing), but are actually redirecting standard input and output to the console app (like cmd.exe or PowerShell) underneath. This means they don’t actually give you any more commanding power in the way of additional commands, better parameters, etc. It’s lipstick on a pig, looks a little nicer but it’s still a pig under there. (update 11/12/2012: Thanks to Maximus for pointing out that many of these shells will work with any command environment under them. Text above updated.)

Since Take Command started as a command.com replacement in DOS (in 1989), its true power is in the intensely enhanced commanding prompt environment itself. As in additional commands, help, added parameters and command features, cmd.exe compatibility, etc. Most of the other console apps focus on adding a some nice UI around the prompt and REPL editing, but are still basically on the level cmd.exe in terms of actual command power. TC takes it way beyond.

p.s. Here’s my old review of Take Command from 7 yrs ago.

Screenshot Tour

If you just want to scroll through some pretty screenshots instead of watch the video, here ya go

Full Explorer-like UI with multiple tabs, colors, dockable windows, multiple consoles…

Close up on that status bar

Simplified view, notice it’s much wider now than cmd.exe allows, changed UI theme, and take advantage of that extra screen area with dir /4

Windows Explorer integration to open a command prompt directly at a folder

Ctrl+Tab between prompts, and that dir /4 from above auto adjusted to a 3 column view to fit

Batch IDE with Debugger! Yes, that’s a watch window, breakpoints, step-into, step-over, etc

Lots of options configurable via a dialog.

Very rich thorough help system, with references, examples, links, etc. Type a command, like dir, and F1

My favorite view, just the terminal console prompt itself. Also all commands have a one screen reference like below and many extra parameters. For example, cmd.exe doesn’t have these: /2 /K /M /H

Type a parameter wrong? Super quick reference:

Ctrl+Tab in console for filterable list of autocompletion

Same goes for command history with PageDown

Commands work directly off FTP and HTTP sources. See /j makes the transfer restartable incase of interruption and /g shows transfer progress.

Includes 460+ internal variables and functions

And did I mention 140 additional commands beyond cmd.exe? Oh the goodies goes on…

Get the freeware version or try the pro app: Take Command

Tags: autohotkey, takecmd, tools

5 Comments

Get Back Missing Windows Keys on Mac Keyboard

Published on August 1, 2012

When using a mac keyboard in Windows, like on a MacBook Air/Pro or my favorite the small bluetooth Apple Wireless Keyboard, you may notice some keys are emulated via Boot Camp drivers (see Apple’s chart), but there are some keys still missing. Such as print screen and the apps context menu key. Using AutoHotkey it’s easy to get these keys back.

AutoHotkey is a free, open-source, utility for Windows that makes it easy to remap keys, create hotkeys, and automate windows.

In addition to the keys listed on the Boot Camp Keyboard Chart, there are also these undocumented mappings supported out of the box.

Mac Keyboard		PC Side
fn+esc		pause
fn+control+esc		break
fn+return		insert

Here are the keys beyond what’s supported by Boot Camp that I use and map via AutoHotkey. The last two are just for convenience.

Mac Keyboard		PC Side
right alt		apps (context menu)
shift+right alt		shift+apps
command+delete		browser back
command+=		print screen
control+right alt		insert

Here is a script that brings back these keys: MacKeys.ahk

; MacKeys.ahk
; #=Win ^=Ctrl +=Shift !=Alt

RAlt::  send {AppsKey}
+RAlt:: send +{AppsKey}
^RAlt:: send {Insert}
#Backspace:: send {Browser_Back}
#=:: send {PrintScreen}
!=:: send {Break}
+!=:: send +{Break}

For more AutoHotkey goodness, see related posts. Any other keys you use not listed here?

Update (8/20/2012):

Just found out fn+return is built in to Boot Camp for the insert key.
Also shift+F10 is a standard Windows shortcut for the apps (context menu) key.

Tags: autohotkey, fixit, keyboard, macbook

3 Comments

Dallas Laptop WiFi Friendly Cafes

Published on July 24, 2012

Want to know where to hang, just you and your laptop in the Dallas area? Since living in Seattle I got ‘the laptop hang’n bug, it was a big thing up there. Now it’s tricky to know where the best laptop zones are here in Dallas. We’re going to do this using a collaborative Google Maps, aka a wiki map.

Yes there are many ‘locate free wifi’ sites out there like laptopfriendlycafes.com, but none that I’ve seen can just show you a Google Map of the places around you that the community updates based on laptop or hangout rating. Sure you can do an advanced filter on yelp.com, but I find the experience lacking. So this is a bit of a social experiment, can us Dallas people collectively put a map together?

The idea of this map is to point out places us techies have actually been to; where we have first hand experience. It’s not enough these days just to have open WiFi, but instead to create a friendly atmosphere for creativity. Someplace where you feel comfortable hanging out for a few hours with your computer. These kinds places are usually good meet up spots for playing a board game with friends too (ok, maybe a bigger deal in the NW, but picking up steam here in Dallas too).

Please keep the map to the Dallas area, including Plano, Irving, Carrollton, Addison, Lewisville, Denton, Prosper, Garland, Grapevine, Flower Mound, Richardson, Irving, Arlington, Carrolton, Lewisville, Grapevine, Allen, McKinney, Frisco, etc

Basic Ground Rules

Join the open collaborative Google Map
Add a place that is laptop friendly with free WiFi (with or without purchase), power, seating, and a chill ‘here for laptop time’ atmosphere. The local car wash w free internet doesn’t count.
When adding a place, include:

Description, tell about why the place is good for laptops.
Colored marker, use one of these markers…

	Average Place Like a coffee shop, bubble tea shop, donut shop, etc
	Super Laptop Hang Zone A place really catering to laptop users, usually not a chain
	Big Chain Like a Starbucks or Tully’s

View Dallas Laptop Friendly Cafes w Free Internet in a larger map

Other Resources

Here are places that list free WiFi in the Dallas area:

openwifispots.com, big long list with map of free wifi (but which are laptop hang’out friendly?)
laptopfreindlycafes.com, they’ve got a list w user comments, but terrible location searching, no master map and searching for “Plano, TX” doesn’t return any results. If they added a good map you could move around (to look outside of Dallas proper, like in Plano) and an overall ‘laptop friendliness’ rating, they’d have it! There’s be no need for this map.
yelp.com free wifi in Dallas, probably the best list I’ve found so far, easy to use navigation, user comments, and good overall ratings, but still the signal to noise ratio is low since even your car mechanic and sushi bar have free wifi these days, it’s hard to find by a ‘laptop friendliness’ rating.

Update: Thanks to @latish for the contributions!

Update (12/19/2012): Please join us and vote on getting a 24-hr Starbucks in Dallas

Tags: dallas, laptop, wifi, wiki

1 Comment

Boost volume on laptop speakers

Published on July 21, 2012

Or “My speakers have far less volume than before and are so quite, how do I maximize and increase the sound level to make them loud again?”. Are you not getting a good solid sound volume from those puny little laptop speakers? Well if you’re running Windows XP or newer (Windows 7 instructions below) most laptops have a few sound adjustments that may make a big difference. My Macbook 13” Bootmodel with Boot Camp 3.3 had a poor low volume output level… these audio enhancements make a big difference. BTW, many have reported that updating the audio driver directly from Realtek or Cirrus Logic, but that didn’t work out for me, these did.

The type of enhancements (if any) are dependent on the sound chipset in your particular computer. The setting with the largest difference I’ve seen is to have the “Loudness Equalization” setting turned on.

Tags: bootcamp, laptop, macbook, sound, techtips, windows7

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What’s in your bag? The Portable Office

Published on July 18, 2012

It used to be a thing for techies to show off what’s in their backpack… In fact just yesterday Gizmodo showed the amazing mass of contents in Steve Wozniak’s backpack. Personally I find the challenge and joy in optimizing the signal to noise ratio, filtering down to carry just what I actually use most often. I get my kicks from pulling everything out and re-triaging (using the Rapid Pickup Process). Here’s the lineup I use…

The Bag Trio

Main Go Bag
Stuff carried into and out of work, home, meetings, or other relatively quick engagements. REI Shoulder Sling Bag: slim, simple, plenty of pockets, fits stuff just right, bag I have isn’t being sold anymore, but here are some similar ones, REI Urban Sling Laptop Bag or REI Monorail Sling, as with all bags its best to take laptop with to try fit
Travel Case
Used for extended laptop use, such as when hanging at a coffee shops for extended period, traveling, and working remotely. Usually kept in the car or thrown in luggage. All fits in a small 6”x6” inch old Case Logic CD player carrier.
Bose Headphones
Bose QuietComfort 15 Noise Cancelling Headphones: amazon, in its own separate case, taken when needed.

Main Go Bag

The portable office. Goes to and from home/office/wherever. All together 6.75 lbs.

Contents…

Darth Vader Key Ring (amazon, on bag zipper pull, gotta get your Vader on)
MacBook Pro 13”: 512 GB SSD, 8 GB RAM, Windows 7 (only, no MacOS, apple.com)
Amazon Kindle 3rd Gen 3G (amazon)
Verizon 4G LTE Hotspot (like MiFi, Samsung SCH-L11, blog)
Apple Earphones w Remote Mic (apple.com)
Mini stuff In the top pocket:
- Victorinox Swiss Army Classic in Silver Alox (amazon)
- Atmel Minimus AVR USB Dev (site)
- Super Talent 8 GB Pico Key (amazon)
- Circuit Board Business Card Holder (amazon)
- SCM Microsystems SCR3500 SmartFold Smart Card Reader (amazon)
- 6 inch USB A to Micro-B cable (amazon)
- 6 inch USB A to Mini-B cable (amazon)
- Square Credit Card Reader (site)
- Personal Moo Cards (blog)
- CableJive iStubz Sync/Charge Cable for iPod and iPhone (amazon)
- Targus ACH63US Super Mini USB 2.0 4-Port Hub (amazon)
- Cards (credit, loyalty, etc) taken from slim wallet (blog) and held together with a clip
- Small Black Plastic Hair Comb
- Backup keys to cars, home, office
- My favorite type of pen, Pentel R.S.V.P. Ballpoint Pen, 0.7mm Fine Tip, Black Ink BK90 (amazon)

Travel Bag

Stays in the car most the time. Pull it out for coffee shops or traveling.

Contents…

Microsoft Wireless Mobile Mouse 4000 (amazon)
Apple 60W MagSafe Power Adapter (apple.com)
NuGiant Plugless USB Charger (amazon)
iPhone Charger (apple.com, too many knockoffs on amazon)
6-foot lamp extension cord (amazon, fantastic for airports, coffee shops, and hotel rooms)
6-foot iPhone Cable (amazon)
32-GB SanDisk Cruzer USB Key (amazon)
Kindle Charger (mainly used to power WiFi hotspot)
Spare Apple Earphones w Remote Mic (apple.com) in little baggie to keep clean
MacBook DisplayPort to VGA and HDMI adapters (apple.com, amazon)

What do you carry?

So what are your favorite gadgets and gizmos? Recommend anything I’m missing? Got a post about your modern day go-kit? Please do share…

Tags: gizmos, lifehack, lifestyle

2 Comments

Log Off Instead of Restart

Published on July 16, 2012

About 90% of the time I’d normally reboot Windows, just a quick log off then log back in is sufficient, and much quicker. When logging off, Windows closes all user running processes, even ones that appear to have hung or can’t be closed via Task Manager. When logging back in, Windows applies user profile settings and even machine wide updates for the user (such as new system environment variables).

Opportunities to log off/on instead of rebooting:

If the computer is feeling sluggish
Installing a new app that asks you to ‘reboot’
Force close an app that’s locked up (that even Task Manager can’t close)
Changing a system environment variable

I used to reboot every few days, now almost never do, instead using log off and back on. Even with a stellar solid state drive, just a quick log off and back in is faster. The Windows 7 driver level does a really good job of activating drivers without a reboot, so usually when an installer says you need to reboot, it’s actually trying to set something that gets activated when a user logs in, like a running a new start up app, service, or environment variable. If the computer is feeling ‘bloated’ from too many apps running, instead of rebooting, try a quick log out and in.

Just thought it worth sharing since those little minutes saved each day add up fast.

Tags: techtip, windows

2 Comments

Clipboard Change Directory in PowerShell

Published on July 10, 2012

powershell2xa4 Change directories much in PowerShell? Here’s a handy quick command to change directory to what’s in the clipboard. I use a command “ccd” for Clipboard Change Directory to change directory to what’s in the clipboard. Usually I’ll copy a file or directory path from Windows Explorer, then just ccd to change to its directory.

function Get-Clipboard {
  $command = {
    add-type -an system.windows.forms
    [System.Windows.Forms.Clipboard]::GetText()
  }
  powershell -sta -noprofile -command $command
}

function Set-DirectoryViaClipboard {
  $dir = get-clipboard
  $dir = $dir.Trim("`"")
  if ([System.IO.Directory]::Exists($dir)) { cd $dir }
  else  {
    $dir = [System.IO.Path]::GetDirectoryName($dir)
    if ([System.IO.Directory]::Exists($dir)) { cd $dir }
  }
}

set-alias ccd Set-DirectoryViaClipboard

Download: http://coad.net/blog/resources/clipboardPSScript.7z

To get this into your normal shell environment, edit your startup $profile file: notepad $profile then either (1) put those lines above in the file or (2) put that into a .ps1 file, say clipboard.ps1, and add the line . [filepath] where [filepath] is the location of the clipboard.ps1 file. Then restart your shell.

p.s. It’s also nice to have the PowerShell environment open in the directory in the clipboard. Just put “ccd” at the end of your $profile startup file.

See it in action and how to configure via this video:

thanks to @coridrew for the quick ‘hey you should blog this’ motivation

Tags: powershell

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PC XT games were boring! – How did you get started in computers and programming?

Published on June 1, 2012

I like hearing stories about how people got into computers and programming. Perhaps if I blog my story, you’ll share yours. — Thanks to @scottha for his getting started on computers post and inspiring this post.

My Dad was constantly working on creating new electronics gizmos as a side job. He had a classic IBM PC XT he’s use to program his microcontrollers. Well one day when I was about 6 yrs old he upgraded to a 286 and put the XT in the common room. I was curious and poked around at the games on it like Castle Adventure, Sopwith, Paratrooper, Bouncing Babies, and Digger. The games just didn’t hold my interest so our local librarian handed me a really simple Learn BASIC book and I was hooked.

Writing apps was awesome! While friends were playing games or making little apps with graphics I was more interested in disk I/O and databases. From there moved on to using QuickBASIC (Microsoft’s ‘professional basic’) and eventually Visual Basic for DOS (VBDOS, yes, it existed). My early days involved writing and selling some shareware apps, entering assembly from PC magazines to create new DOS utilities, running a RemoteAccess BBS, creating ASCII graphics w TheDraw, and I won a TX state programming competition and wrote serial port interface apps for my Dad’s electronics.

In the end I think it was just the un-engaging nature (at least for me) of those first DOS games that sparked the interest in doing more with the computer. To this day I try new games every few months, but rarely do they hold more than a few hours interest before I turn back to coding. (p.s. there were some later exceptions, a few games that got me hooked, Startflight 2 being the first, gosh I loved that game)

Thanks to Dad for giving me the hand me downs, keeping me updated with better IDEs, and engaging me on his projects. And thanks to our dear librarian for handing me an awesome book on programming.

What’s your story?

Tags: aboutme, programming

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