We all know that the need for external resources while doing our development is a pain. We all want the utopia of taking our laptops and sitting somewhere nice (forest, meadow, glacier, …) while developing Carpal tunnel syndrome. So let’s get a step closer to this image while doing our web thing. For this we need to build a completely self-sufficient development environment on our machine. It’s actually a lot easier than it sounds.
Web development environment
July 12, 2010 by Zoran10 ways to stay awake (without the drugs)
July 2, 2010 by MerlinThe deadline is near. It doesn’t matter if it’s a website development, an exam, a marketing strategy or a science paper – you’re too tired to sit and type anymore. Coffee’s gone and it had no effect at all. You’re afraid that taking something stronger could get you see more colors than there is in the color spectrum. If you need to squeeze few more hours, here’s what you can try.
Streamlining your admin duties with Fabric
June 25, 2010 by ZoranWe’ve all been there at one point or another. You need to do some complex but repetitive task for the x-th time (where x tends to be a very high number indeed). And since I am a firm believer that everything I need to do more than about 2 times I have to do it with a click, or key-press, or some other similar simple feat of manual dexterity I will discuss some one of the solutions to this problem.
Are you failing enough?
June 19, 2010 by Merlin
If not, maybe you should. In this day when everything is visible and privacy is lacking, everyone tries to look as successful as possible. Failure and mistakes are viewed as negative things that should be avoided at all times. But is that the right approach?There are two ways you can look successful: you can really be good at something or you can avoid mistakes. And here lies the problem. You can’t be good at something without a learning period in which you WILL make mistakes.
Pimp my widget: Object Oriented school
June 12, 2010 by ZoranIn my previous post we looked into equipping or WP blog with widgets to give it a new look and hopefully make it a little more pleasing to the eye. Today we are going to take a step further… hopefully. Since object orientation is the best thing that happened since the wheel (or so I hear ;)) we should try to tap into some of that godly nectar and ambrosia. So, we will be giving our RSS widget introduced in my last post an OO makeover.
HTML5 template
June 4, 2010 by MerlinWith all that HTML5 buzz lately everyone wants to try it out. So if you’re one to shoot first and ask questions later, here is one simple template.
Widget-up my blog
May 28, 2010 by ZoranLet’s talk widgets. More specifically WordPress sidebar widgets. So why should you care about this particular type of widget. Let’s start from the beginning…
Copy/paste to and from the system clipboard in Vim
May 17, 2010 by MerlinUsers accustomed to CTRL+C/V keyboard shortcuts may find themselves reaching for the mouse when using gVim or Vim in a terminal because aforementioned commands do not work by default. So, how to do it?
Short answer would be to select a text in a Visual or Select mode, type "+y and you have the selected text in a system clipboard. If you need to paste, position your cursor where you want it and type "+p. "+ is just a register, so you can use different yank/put commands with it like "+6yy or "+gP.
Long answer would be … well, long. Vim uses registers "+ and "* to communicate with other applications. How it does that depends on the operating system Vim runs on.
The essence of being a programmer
May 14, 2010 by ZoranA few days ago I came upon an interesting little bit of writing in a book called Assembly Language Step-by-Step: Programming with Linux by Jeff Duntemann. What interested me is that the author, in a few short sentences, nails the idea of what being a programmer really means. So here’s the quote for your (and mine) pleasure:
Being a programmer is one thing above all else: it is understanding how things work. Learning to be a programmer, furthermore, is almost entirely a process of learning how things work.
I guess now we know why curiosity maybe killed the cat, but it certainly made it a better programmer in the process.
Short usability overview of a Nokia N900
May 7, 2010 by MerlinOn March 15th Tardigrade had won on the Maemo Challenge that was being held on first Mobile Monday in Croatia. The winning application was Ginkg-o-minder (concept name) and the reward was N900 device to build and test the application on. There are many reviews of N900 spanning from a few to a dozen pages long containing all the technical details you can imagine. I will not talk about that, but will give you some usability information. Here is my opinion after playing with it for a while.
