07 Dec 2008, Posted by Jo Hund in Software, Tools, 0 Comments

strftime cheat sheet

I have used strftime a lot lately on one of my projects. I could not find a user friendly reference for strftime, so I wrote one. Here is my user friendly strftime cheat sheet in PDF format:

strftime reference

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06 Dec 2008, Posted by Jo Hund in Note to self, Tools, 12 Comments

Tablet pressure support on OS X for X11, Gimp, and Inkscape

Here is what I had to do to enable tablet pressure support for the X11 based Gimp and Inkscape applications on OS X Leopard:

My setup:

• OS X Leopard: 10.5.5 on Intel
• X11: XQuartz 2.3.2 RC2
• Inkscape: 0.46 (Mac binary)
• Gimp: 2.6.3 (Mac binary)
• Tablet: Wacom Graphire ET from around 2003

Key points are:

• get at least the 2.3.2 version of XQuartz. 2.3.1 will not work!
• In Gimp/Edit/Preferences/Input Devices: Click on “Configure extended input devices…”, set device ‘pen’ to ’screen’.
• In Inkscape/File/Input Devices …: Set device ‘pen’ to ’screen’.
• You might have to restart your apps

Nice. Now we have pressure support on OS X for these two great apps. The Inkscape calligraphy tool is very nice. Makes my handwriting look nicer than on paper.

17 Oct 2008, Posted by Jo Hund in Tools, 0 Comments

OpenOffice.org 3.0 for Mac – a big deal

it’s been officially released for a few days now and I think it is a big deal. OpenOffice.org 3.0 is a big step forward:

OpenOffice.org 3.0 spreadsheet application

• Native Aqua – means it looks as beautiful as we expect from an OS X app. That has a big impact on my productivity. I enjoy working with beautiful tools. It also means that I don’t need X11. Less hassle and faster startup
• PDF import – wow, I can now edit PDFs. Very useful when I receive contracts as PDF and have to return them signed: Open contract, insert signature image, save PDF, email back. Sleek. And no need to spend a dollar on PDF editing tools.
• Better compatibility with MS Office formats

10 Aug 2008, Posted by Jo Hund in Ruby/Rails, Tools, 0 Comments

OpenSource project: Quentin Time Tracker

Being a contract software developer, tracking my time is extremely important for my business: I need to write invoices with task break downs, I want to get better at estimating, and I am just curious about what I spend my time on.

So I filled this need by writing my own Rails time tracker: meet Quentin. I cleaned it up a bit and just published it as an MIT-licensed open source project on github.

Quentin dashboard

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06 Aug 2008, Posted by Jo Hund in Software, Tools, 2 Comments

Better TextMate search: Ack in project

Yesterday Trevor mentioned the Ack TextMate bundle he developed to provide better “Search in project”. I installed it and was instantly sold:

• search is much faster using ack
• the results list pops up instantly with the first hits, and then it just keeps growing as you start reviewing the results
• it has an option to show context around the results (see screenshot below)
• you can customize the search behavior on a per user or per project basis using a .ackrc file
• it has an option to follow symlinks. Useful for me because I symlink rails into vendor for my apps. Normally I don’t want to include the rails source in my project search
• search is limited to currently selected file/folder and its children. Useful for scoping searches.

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31 Jul 2008, Posted by Jo Hund in Tools, 0 Comments

Finally: Free Virtualization for OS X

Just found this free and open software to do virtualization on OS X: VirtualBox by Sun. It does what Parallels and VMWare Fusion do, only it’s free. Macworld has a 5 minute video showing how to install and use VMs in VirtualBox with examples for Windows XP and OpenSolaris.

11 Dec 2007, Posted by Jo Hund in Tools, 1 Comments

Biggest boost in productivity: 4GB of RAM

The biggest boost in productivity I have experienced since adding a second display has been putting too much RAM into my computers. I think what makes the difference is that I never have to wait for the computer. Just the way it should be with a good tool.

Switching programs, searching for text in files, viewing thousands of photos — everything is instantly. And the cost is almost negligible: $25USD per GB of RAM at Other World Computing.