2007-08-28
I think I've tried just about every web browser available for the Mac. The included Safari 2 didn't feel quite right, Firefox was too slow and a memory hog, Flock, Shiira and some others just didn't really fit what I was looking for. Camino was nice and light, and better integrated with the Mac than Firefox, but I was missing a good search box and it felt a little too limited in features. Now I'm using the Safari 3 beta and couldn't be happier. There are lots of little things that just feel "right" and it fits with the Mac OS nicely. After downloading an application you are warned that it contains an app, and if you approve the DMG file is mounted so you can run or install the app. But, the one thing that seems simple, but I've felt missing in browsers for a while is the tab management. On Linux I used Epiphany which has supported rearranging tabs for a while, and Firefox now supports it, but Safari gets one more thing right: dragging tabs between windows. So far I haven't seen another browser do this, but in Safari you can drag a tab up or down to detach it from the current window and either drag it to a different window, or out into a new window. It's not a feature I use constantly, but I do really like being able to keep my tabs organized in a logical manner instead of having a random assortment of tabs all open in the same window. Thanks Apple for getting this right.
2007-08-05
To make the output of the "svn diff" command more readable here's a small script to pipe the output to the Pygments library to colorize the command line output:
#!/bin/bash svn diff "$@" | pygmentize -ldiff
Categories: Tech
2007-05-02
For April 1st ThinkGeek presented us with this wonderful device:
However, this product was created by another industrial design company that has a lot of extremely creative products, such as this phone with rotation aware clock display:
Unfortunately many of their products are only produced in small runs, so availability is limited. However, it's worth browsing their industrial design catalog to see some of the cool ideas.
Categories: Tech
2007-05-01
A week ago I started my new job at YouTube. Most people here use Macs so I got a nice shiny new MacBook Pro to work on. I've been using Linux (Debian and Ubuntu) almost exclusively for about 4 years now and Windows before that, so I've been quickly getting up to speed on using my new Mac.
One of my first major annoyances was that some form controls weren't keyboard navigable. Filling out web forms was frustrating since hitting Tab would skip past drop-down fields, and when dialogs popped up and I didn't want to respond with the default button I had to switch over to the mouse instead of just tabbing to the right one.
Fortunately I found these instructions on changing this behavior. Now I can use the keyboard to quickly navigate these inputs.
More on my Mac switch to come.
2007-02-28
Here are the materials from my PyCon Trac presentation:
The modified rst2s5 script requires Pygments for coloring the example code.
2007-02-27
2007-02-03
I've built an Ubuntu Edgy package for Germanium. It may work on Dapper, or Debian versions, but I haven't tested it on any of those yet. I think the dependencies should be covered, but if you find any problems you can open a ticket.
- Download:
- germanium_0.2.0-0ubuntu1_all.deb
2007-02-02
Germanium 0.2.0 features better GNOME integration including mime handling for .emp files and a GConf schema, keyboard shortcuts, as well as album art display, and optionally saving album art with the tracks.
- Download:
- emusic-gnome-0.2.0.tar.gz
Darcs:
darcs get --tag=0.2.0 http://projects.matt-good.net/darcs/emusic-gnome/
2006-10-16
Trac has been nominated in the Linux User Awards for "Best Linux/OSS Developer Tool". Launchpad and Mono are the other nominations in this category, so we're among some pretty big competition. The Trac community has grown tremendously in the past year, so it's nice to see that it's so highly regarded.
2006-10-13
Indiana University conducted a study of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" comparing the amount of actual content in their coverage of the 2004 elections in comparison to "real" news shows. Regular watchers of The Daily Show will not be surprised to find that there was no significant difference in the amount of political content offered by the humor show.
The Daily Show has quite often ridiculed the rediculous topics covered by "real" new programs such as those on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. These shows are no less padded with "entertainment" than The Daily Show, though they lack the witty satire offered by Jon Stewart and his team of writers.
So, don't feel guilty about relying on The Daily Show to stay informed. You not only get a good source of news, but some good laughs as well.
Read the press release from Indiana University
Categories: Politics, Entertainment
