Dru’s Blog

coming back online…

You would think that after using Unix for this long (over 20 years), I would have finally kept my ‘dotfiles’ in order. Not so. I just kept copying or re-writing them as I moved from machine to machine.

No more. After seeing people on github demonstrating how to get their dotfiles house in order, it seemed like the right time. This was an easier choice now than ever before because git has become as prevalent as ‘ls’. It is so fast and flexible. So I took the plunge.

I took a look at a bunch of blogs about this (probably more than I needed to). The two I seriously looked at are here: the ‘ryanb’ dotfiles technique and the ‘rtomayko’ dotfiles. Both were simple. Other people on the net had these extra tools built to handle the problem. Others kept their entire home dir in version control… as in all their music and photos! I respect their work, but this puts quite a bit of stress on the rcs system.

I used the ‘ryanb’ approach. Essentially, you do a git pull on a new machine, run a ‘rake install’ so the files properly setup symlinks. Done.

I used it today and I was pleased to have all my aliases and editor tweaks working on my new machine. I will never go back.

"Fear the Boom and Bust" a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem

Pure Genius – shout out to the M A B

Hey, just in case you didn’t see the news… this article sums it up the best:

Video ad network BrightRoll turns profit, outreaches Hulu, closes $10M third round

If you made a mistake, and you want to change your short name (aka unix login name) on Mac OS X, there is a handy knowledge base article from apple that gives you the howto.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1428

tip to jwz, awesome Admiral Ackbar reference.

Ayn Rand once wrote… “when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed.”

For quite some time, certain old friends or relatives were just not present on the internet. They never developed the skills to use the internet. Or they didn’t feel that they needed the internet to stay connected to their friends or relatives. They might get an email address and clumsily send out a chain letter to everyone they know on occassion. Still, they never really ‘got it’.

Even with services that I was a part of like Four11, eGroups, or Plaxo… you would receive letters from users thanking the service for connecting them with some old lost connection. Again, it just wasn’t something that widespread. There was always that big hole in your timeline that was pre-internet.

As of yesterday, I have now received Facebook connection requests from people that I haven’t heard from in 30+ years. I’m talking old friends of friends, people from Elementary school, non-internet savvy relatives, or people I thought were dead. On no other social network have I seen this kind of penetration.

Facebook has won. Wow.