Archive for the 'Ian' Category

The Case of the New Job

Published on December 26, 2009 in Developing and Ian. Closed Tags: , .

I have a relatively new job with a marketing start-up. I develop the websites they sell.

I love Wordpress, I an I have been using it here for.. well, ever. When it came time to consider producing websites quickly, guess what I chose?

I have a formal education, but nothing, and I mean nothing, in the world of programming, online or off, beats doing. I have experience with php, so hacking on Wordpress was not that big a deal. The only real hurdle was that I really only ever have hacked on themes I have used. Basically The Codex and I are getting really cozy.

My whole point is this; keep mucking around with things, even if you think you know enough.

Merry Chrismahannakwanizkka

Published on December 26, 2009 in Ian. Closed Tags: .

I know I haven’t been around all that much lately, but I have a reason, I mean excuse. I am working full time and I have not felt like writing anything when I get home.

I didn’t say it was a good reason. Anyway..

Merry Christmas all!.

The Case of My Desktop, Again.

Published on November 7, 2009 in Ian. Closed

Once again, I have fiddled with my desktop. Here it is.

Fullscreen
Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Note that at the moment I am running one screen. Rest assured I will change things again.

The Case of GeekTools

Published on October 23, 2009 in Ian. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

A buddy of mine downloaded and installed GeekTools a couple of days back. I have installed/uninstalled several times for various screwings around. Once Dave installed it, I got to thinking, and Googleing, ‘What can (should) be done with this marvelous tool’. As it happened I also subscribed to Lifehacker (finally) the same day. I also got an email with link to some rather sexy desktop layouts.

But I am getting ahead of myself, a little bit.

I have been working a contract on site (that is to say at my client offices as opposed to mine) and as such I am on my Macbook (Mid 2006). It is a Core Duo 2.0ghz model sporting 2 gigs of ram. If you know your Mac well enough, you are likely to realize this is nice enough laptop, but those numbers right there aren’t getting any bigger. (All I have left is to buy a huge SATA2 harddrive, and it is upgraded as much as possible.) This go me thinking about area where I might be able to trim the fat (reduce my memory overhead, and possible CPU load) especially since once in a while I have to open Photoshop, or Fireworks. (Poor Macbook takes it like a champ, though.)

There are some things I like to have always available; my calendar, my to-do list, some system stats (CPU load, memory usage, and CPU temp, mostly so I know when I need to give my poor overworked Mac a break), Twitter, and my current iTunes track info. This is where GeekTools comes in.

From Lifehacker I discoverd, and installed a shell script called todo.sh and something called Remind. Todo is a command-line-interface to do list. it is quite elegant and simple. Remind is reminder program, that you can out put onto a calendar. Between those two I have all the functionality of iCal, locally anyway. (It s unlikely I will stop using iCal, as I put in it my school, work, and various other schedules so I can propagate my info out to my family, and iPhone.

Next up I needed to get rid of Twitterriffic. There is nothing wrong with it, but it takes up valuable resources, so I found a shell script that pulled from an rss feed. Guess what rss feed I have it polling. (Finding the right Twitter feed was a PITA, but once I did, all was right in the world.)

From there I went on to my system info; Uptime, CPU usage, and RAM usage. All I did there was played with uptime and top (both just run from the shell) and fed the output to awk, changing the formatting, until I got the look I wanted. (Top will disseminate a whole lot of info, but is useful to know, but for this, thank god there is awk.)

Finally there was the matter of iTunes info. GeekTools can handle Applescript as well. So through it I grab the info, format it, and output it all in script. GeekTools just calls the script.

And my current background is a free wallpaper clock from Vladstudio. He is a Russian(?) artist with a great eye.

Macbook Desktop
Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

I like it.

The Case of My Desktop

Published on September 4, 2009 in Ian. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

So a buddy of mine posted his desktop. Well I have decided to do the same.

But first, a little about my system. My desktop is a 24″ iMac (Late 2008, if you care) with a 22″ Westinghouse monitor that is directly to the left. (Yes it is plugged in, and is a second monitor, even.) I am kind of a desktop elitist. There are certain things I want in a desktop image, things like Simplicity, The Stuff on the Right, Imagination, and Striking. Now in this particular iteration of my desktop, I broke one of my own rules. The main screen is all in the center. Shame on me. On to the images..

My main monitor..

Fullscreen
Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

My secondary monitor..

iMac - Secondary
Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Notice the Penny Arcade theme? (If you read PA, you’ll understand, If you know who PA are, but don’t follow, go, start, you won’t be sorry.) If have no idea who PA is, I am sorry. Believe me when I tell you your life is less for it.

If you look closely, you will see in my menu bar (from left to right), Dropbox, Quicksilver, iScrobbler, Adium, Time machine, Scripts Menu, iStat Menus, and Spotlight.

Adium is in my Dock AND my menu bar, only because if you remove the icon with the .plist hack, you get rid of the menu as well (the File, Edit, View, etc., which includes the Options, and we can’t have that, now can we.).

I also use Twitterrific to keep up with Twitter. I like it a lot, a whole lot. If you Twitter, (Tweet?) look into it.