The more I use Unix (and/or Linux), the more I love it. I just wish I could find more excuses to use it.
If you’re interested in useful tips for Unix, check out the Arabeque blog. He’s got an excellent series on using Unix as an IDE.
The signs never worked. Instead, they just annoyed and angered people. Some people even threw more paper towels on the floor because they didn’t like the condescending way they were being instructed.
There was no chance the signs would ever work. The people who threw paper towels on the floor knew that it was “wrong”. Maybe their desire to avoid touching the doorknob was stronger than their desire to do the “right” thing every time. Or maybe they just didn’t give a damn about making the bathroom slightly worse for someone else to make it slightly better for themselves. Either way, a sign’s not going to solve the problem, because the problem isn’t that they didn’t know the right thing to do. They knew what they were doing, and for whatever reason, they didn’t care.
via Right versus pragmatic – Marco.org.
Great post by Marco (creator of Instapaper) on why he thinks the film industry are handling piracy the wrong way. I’m not saying I entirely agree with him, but I do like the way he puts it across.
Since October, Google’s GKBO appears to have been systematically accessing Mocality’s database and attempting to sell their competing product to our business owners. They have been telling untruths about their relationship with us, and about our business practices, in order to do so. As of January 11th, nearly 30% of our database has apparently been contacted.
Via http://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-thinking/
Google are having a rough time keeping to their Don’t Be Evil motto:
It’s a long read, but I found it interesting. The sort of sting they performed on Google is the type I’d expect Google to do to others.
I find applications that have column mode extremely useful (eg. UltraEdit).
It wasn’t until I was looking over someone’s shoulder whilst they were working that I realised Putty has a column mode (albeit read only), and it’s elegantly implemented.
It’s really quite simple. Barely worthy of the bullet points in fact:
I’ve only recently discovered it, so excuse my list of 1, but I find it useful when selecting a list of file names from an ‘ls –l’ command:
Note: I tried to get a screenshot of it in action. Unfortunately it doesn’t capture the fact you’ve highlighted certain text. So please use your imagination and pretend the items in the blue box above have been highlighted/selected.
Helpfully, it trims the trailing spaces when you then go to insert the clipboard contents into another application.
Of course, there are other ways to achieve this (eg. ls –1 will return just the filenames).
Still, it’s a handy trick to know.
Andy Carvin insists that the introduction on his Google Plus profile – “I tweet revolutions” – is a joke, but nevertheless that’s what he’s famous for. Armed with TweetDeck – the power Twitter user’s app of choice – and a thoroughly curated group of reliable, enthusiastic and well-informed Twitter users, the social media strategist for US public service radio broadcaster NPR has become known for his mastery of aggregated and verified real-time news through Twitter. And that’s no mean feat on a platform still dismissed by many as a gimmick that trivialises information into uselessly short sound bites.
via Andy Carvin: the man who tweets revolutions | Media | The Guardian.
Whenever I mention to someone that I’ve started to follow breaking news on Twitter as well as the rolling news channels, I recommend they at least follow this chap if they want to do the same.
The article above focusses on the Arab Spring, but I’ve followed him for the London Riots and the Japan Earthquake also.
This is very common request recently – How to import CSV file into SQL Server? How to load CSV file into SQL Server Database Table? How to load comma delimited file into SQL Server? Let us see the solution in quick steps.
The paragraph above has clearly been search engine optimised. They don’t even try to hide it. They’re one step short of repeating those lines as white on white text at the bottom of the page.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2ANnpHnUrc
I wonder if Apple’s products would be as successful if it had this chap doing the WWDC keynote rather than Steve Jobs? Well worth a minute and a half of your time.
Around a week ago I wrote about ifttt.com. Before I go any further, the idea of the web service is as follows…
When a certain action takes place (eg. you star a Google Reader item, you send an email to ifttt.com, you save a link to Delicious), it triggers a subsequent action (posts a new tweet, adds a link to Facebook, subscribes to a feed in Google Reader). If this then that. The ifttt.com blog has a good introduction to the concept and their nicely named WTF page explains how it works.
Even in it’s early days (it’s still private beta) ifttt.com has a surprising number of services you can use as the ‘this’ and ‘that’. However, something I’d find really useful – and keeping in the spirit of the APIs it’s built on – is the ability to specify a custom web hook as a ‘that’.
The interface would enable you to choose from the list of data/variables that can be extracted from the ‘this’, and have it call a remote script passing those details using an HTTP Post. What the remote script chooses to do with that call is completely up to its creator – just as long as it replies with a valid HTTP response.
To me this seems like a relatively simple way to offer a great deal of control to those who can program the remote script, and creates many more possible use cases.
If This Then That, http://ifttt.com, is a new (currently in limited Beta) task based service that allows you to fully customise your tasks based on channels (think Twitter, Evernote, YouTube, email, Flickr, text message), triggers (if “this” happens) and actions (then do “that”).
via if this then that | craigt44 tech blog.
I was going to write a relatively extensive post regarding if this then that, but “craigt44″ has done a great job explaining it along with some inspiration on how to use it.
To compliment that post, here are the 3 ways I’m currently using it:
if I send ifttt an email, tagged #grs from <my email address> then add subscription to my Google Reader
I’ve been desperate for this for a while now. I’m forever seeing sites I’d like to subscribe to in Reader whilst using my iPhone, and have wanted to just fire off an email with it’s URL and have the subscription take place (so no need to copy the URL, go to the Reader web site, tap add subscription, paste and tap ok). ifttt will extract the URL from the body of the email (which is handy as most iOS apps when you send a link using email automatically includes the URL in the body) and then subscribe to it, placing it in a predifined folder.
if I send ifttt an email, tagged #fbl from <my email address> then create a link on my Facebook feed
I believe Facebook have a way to email in a status update, but I’m not aware of a way to do it for links. This one will extract the URL from the body along with any comments I wish to include with the link. ifttt and Facebook take care of the rest.
if I send ifttt an email, tagged #share from <my email address> then add a new bookmark to my delicious account
I currently have two Delicious accounts. One is links for future references (which I’ve now had for donkeys of years) and the other has been created especially for sharing links with friends. I want to be logged in at all times with my reference account rather than the sharing one, and so it’s made sharing a pain. Being able to email links to the sharing one has made life much easier.
ifttt is currently invite only. I have 5 available (at the time of writing), if you’d like one tweet me @greggannicott.
I’ve recently been using a different podcast player on my iPhone to Apple’s “iPod” app, called Instacast.
I’ve tried a few podcast players on the iPhone, but nothing until now has come close to matching the built-in software (which itself isn’t anything special – it’s just solid).
Instacast (made by Vemedio) feels like a polished product (the other apps’ I’ve tried did not).
Here are what I consider to be the pros and cons of this app, followed by a few feature requests that would for me take this far beyond anything Apple has done to date.
This isn’t a complete feature list, it’s a list of the features I appreciate.
At the moment I’m a very happy Instacast user, and I think it has great potential. It’ll be interesting to see if Apple have anything to announce at WWDC 2011 this Monday that might bring me back.