with 'software' tag
my mac essentials
whenever i see somebody’s list of essential mac applications, i am always a little surprised at how little overlap it has for me. now that i’ve mostly switched over the new macbook pro, here’s the list of applications that i have installed:
- acorn ($50): this is a nifty little image editing application. in the last few days, i have been using it to mock up shelving layouts for the store.
- bzr (free): this is the distributed version control system of choice at mysql these days.
- busysync: it would be nice to keep my google calender and ical in sync. after giving spanning sync a try for a bit, i am giving this a try as an alternative.
- delivery status: this dashboard widget is great for tracking the way-too-many packages that i get from amazon and other places.
- google notifier (no cost): now that i have switched almost entirely to using gmail, this is useful to let me know when i have new mail.
- linkinus ($20): i use this irc client for accessing the company chat server to connect with my mysql coworkers.
- menucalendarclock for ical (no cost or $20 for more features): i like this replacement for the date/time display in the upper-right of the menu bar, which drops down a full calendar, including upcoming ical events.
- myob accountedge ($300): this is for doing the books for the store and gallery.
- mysql (free): i have the standard mysql server package installed for testing.
- twitteriffic (ad-supported or $15): this is a not-too-obtrusive way of participating in twitter nonsense.
- virtualbox (free): i used parallels on my last machine, but i figured i would give sun’s own virtualization technology a spin. i use it to run a windows xp image for development using the microsoft toolchain and for accessing sun’s vpn.
- xcode (no cost): i don’t really use xcode itself, just many of the unix development tools that come along with it.
of the bundled software, i regularly use address book, ical, iphoto, itunes, mail (for my sun/mysql email), preview, safari, and terminal. and i use time machine, but i hope i don’t have to regularly use it.
must be something in the air
evan henshaw-plath coins the term coupleware — sites built for two, and brings up wesabe, the financial site i also had in mind when i wrote about services built for two.
how i work
dave rosenberg has been doing a series of “how i work” interviews and asked for more submissions. here is mine.
what is your role? i believe my title is still maintenance engineer, but i’m now actually a proper server developer at mysql. right now i’m doing some falcon-related work, but i hope to get back to working on pluggable authentication and authorization soon.
what is your computer setup? my desktop is a mac mini (powerpc), hooked up to a 20" apple cinema display. my development box, which runs headless and i just access with ssh, is an amd64 running ubuntu. i also have a 12" powerbook that i use when on the road (which isn’t often). my plan is to replace the mac mini and powerbook with a new macbook pro at some point down the line. this site also runs off a colo server.
what desktop software applications do you use daily? when i am working, i’m always running safari, terminal, itunes (plus synergy classic), colloquy (irc client), and the stickies application. i also have antirsi running to remind me to take breaks. i use mutt, running on my colo server, for all of my email.
what websites do you visit every day? i have my own rss aggregator that i use for reading various news feeds, and it has a blo.gs-based sidebar that lets me know when the various weblogs i am interested in get updated. i read planet apache, planet php, planet perl, planet mysql, and planet intertwingly regularly.
what mobile device or cell phone do you use? i have a motorola razr, and i sync my address book over bluetooth. i recently started using bluephoneelite, which lets me send sms from my computer, and also pops up caller information when i get a call on my cell.
do you use im? i went back to using ichat after dabbling with adium, but now that my fiancée celia is working from my couch, i haven’t even had a need to keep ichat running.
do you use a voip phone? every once in a while i’ll fire up sjphone to use the company’s internal voip network, and i’ll fire up skype once in a while.
do you have a personal organization/time management theory? not really. i use the stickies application to keep track of what i’ve done this week, and my short to-do list for work. my incoming email gets sorted into three folders: personal, work, and the mysql mailing lists (i’m subscribed to all of them). i try to keep the personal and work inbox to under thirty messages (generally successfully — they currently have nine and ten, respecitively), and i flush out the mailing list inbox regularly. we have a couple of monthly calendars on the fridge to keep track of upcoming events.
anything else? the whole cult of “gettings things done” creeps me out.
producing open source software by karl fogel (hardcopy) looks to be a very good book about the human side of producing open-source software.
don’t give up the fight
antirsi is a nice little application that sits in the mac os x dock and bothers you every so often to take short typing breaks and longer get-away-from-the-computer breaks. i’ve never had serious wrist problems, and i don’t really expect to have any since i am not much of a crank-code-out sort of programmer. i started using it to remind me to get up and give my back a break.
colloquy is a very slick open-source irc client for mac os x. after just a day of use, i think i may be ready to ditch snak.
one really slick feature is per-channel text encodings. so i can peek in the #russian channel on the internal irc server and see it in the right character set, even if i can’t read it.
mercurial is yet another version control system sparked by the no-more-free-bitkeeper kerfuffle.
the best part of matthew thomas’s review of usability problems with ubuntu is the punchline.
kragen sitaker wrote a great explanation of the meaning of “enterprise software”.
nobody tell ted turner
the examples from this paper about colorization using optimization (via wes felter) are really impressive. just dab some color on a black-and-white picture, feed it (and the original b&w image) through this process, and get colorized pictures out the other end. i wonder how long this will take to find its way into photoshop and the like.
the video clips are even more impressive.
