Well Managed Scripts better than Platforms
One of the most misunderstood things in computing is the need and power of scripts. Most IT shops seek out platforms, tools and technologies to perform business functions, when a bunch of well architected and documented scripts is all that is really needed.
script /noun/
An automated series of instructions carried out in a specific order written in an interpreted computer language
Over the years, I have seen many organizations go out and buy very expensive platforms and hardware, and hire very expensive staff, without even once looking at the alternative, well managed scripts. As a result, they have had to deal with high costs and slow turnaround times when things change (as they inevitably do). In several of these cases, I would have recommended them to get a good scripting programmer, and let that programmer create a series of well managed scripts, leading to cheaper and quicker implementations and more responsiveness to business change.
No competition in Carrier space
If you are looking for more proof that there is no real competition in the US mobile carrier space, check out BGR’s iPhone: Data caps, upgrade fees blamed on iPhone by AT&T, Verizon by Brad Reed:
AT&T reported a 45% margin in Q2 2012 and Verizon reported a record-high 49% margin.
Challenge: Name one competitive industry with such high margins and such terrible service?
Mischief Managed: Update Tools, Learn New
Mischief Managed is a series of posts on tasks and technologies I use to maintain my computing environment. It’s part of what I do between projects. Try it out.
Most of us do not update our operating systems or toolkits while a project is ongoing. It increases the time to produce the product, adds risk that things will stop working, it’s just not worth doing. But once the project is over, it’s time to update the tools and study new ones.
Mischief Managed: Archiving
Mischief Managed is a series of posts on tasks and technologies I use to maintain my computing environment. It’s part of what I do between projects. Try it out.
When a project or engagement is completed, support is over, and you’re on to the next thing (or taking a break), it’s best to move these files and tasks out of your current folders and into archive folders.
Here are some of the things I do:
Mischief Managed: Google 2-Factor Authentication
Mischief Managed is a series of posts on tasks and technologies I use to maintain my computing environment. It’s part of what I do between projects. Try it out.
I’ve been planning on doing this for ages, but no excuses, you should too.
And then this happened. Last week, Mat Honan got hacked hard (see Yes, I was hacked. Hard.). Someone gained access to his Apple ID, reset his other accounts and nuked all his computers. You should read his experience, resecure your accounts and start backing up too. Aside: Ignore the comments, the haters simply embarrass themselves.
Mischief Managed: Clean Inbox
Mischief Managed is a series of posts on tasks and technologies I use to maintain my computing environment. It’s part of what I do between projects. Try it out.
My Inbox has gotten out of control, several thousand emails reside in the combined inbox in Mail.app and I have not filed or archived any for weeks.
The last time I cleaned it up, it took me hours because I had to drag and drop each email into the right folder, and half the time I had to scroll to find the right folder. There has to be a better way.
New Site Font
I love Octopress, but I have never been happy with the default fonts. The default PT Sans and PT Serif fonts are very, very nice, but not awesome. I did like the X and Y height, the clarity, the ease of reading, but the letterspacing on the serif font was too tight and it started to look jaggy.
This week, Adobe released Source Sans Pro, their first free and open font, and I think it’s great for a technical blog-style web site. The letterforms are large, well spaced, and just perfect for screen reading, as the font was designed for user interfaces.
Change is Good - New Applications replacing Old Ones
There is some amazing independent software out there for the Mac. And I use a lot of it. I realized today, while fixing a problem on my wife’s laptop, that I have pretty much replaced many older products with new ones on my computer over the last year or so, yet she still uses all the old stuff.
Change is good for me. I love using new products that improve my productivity, work better or look better. I love trying new products to see if they can replace the ones I am currently using.
Moom Corners
Another quick trick, this time for Moom. When doing Ruby on Rails programming, I like my terminal at the bottom-right of the screen, my text editor at the bottom-left, the browser top-right and BBEdit (for taking notes) at the top-left. When blogging, I like the terminal in the same place, but I want Byword at the top-left. I got tired of dragging windows everywhere, so I set up keyboard shortcuts usimg Moom to place windows in the corners.
Setting up BBEdit for Markdown
Two advanced settings are needed to make BBEdit treat all new documents as Markdown format, and to save with the correct file extension. They are:
defaults write com.barebones.bbedit PreferredFilenameExtension_Markdown -string "markdown"
defaults write com.barebones.bbedit DefaultLanguageNameForNewDocuments Markdown
If you use TextWrangler, replace the “bbedit” in the above with “textwrangler”. But I’d recommend purchasing BBEdit instead.