Charlie Griefer

A little less than a year ago I made the switch to OS X and treated myself to a Macbook Pro. Just recently, I started working with the TextMate IDE on a current contract.

My first impression was less than stellar. Visually, TextMate is pretty spartan. Applications on OS X are supposed to be pretty (see Coda). TextMate is most decidedly not pretty. But as I'm starting to learn, she's got an amazing personality.

Sometimes it's the little things that hook you in. For the longest time, I put off learning jQuery. Didn't see the need. I'm pretty comfortable with JavaScript, and couldn't justify investing the time to learn a new way to write what I already knew how to write. Then I learned about .toggle(). I was sold. I hopped into bed with jQuery and I've not looked back.

Today, I was introduced to TextMate's equivalent of .toggle(). It may seem trivial, but it got me hooked, and hungry to learn more.

A few months back, I started using Mozy for off-site backups of my important files and folders. Back then, I stumbled across a way to back up hidden files and folders (such as the apache folder on OS X).

A friend noticed that I had this set up, and asked how to do it, as Mozy, by default, will only allow you to browse to public files and folders when choosing backup sets. I had completely forgotten how I did it, and spent a few minutes googling before finding the answer.

I'm doing a fresh install of OS X today, and as I'm setting up Mozy again, I just spent another few minutes trying to figure out how to back up hidden files and folders. So, in an effort to save me (and hopefully you) some time in the future... here's how it's done.

To show hidden files, run the following command from the Terminal application: defaults write com.mozy.Config "BDSShowHiddenFilesKey" -bool YES (taken from http://support.mozy.com/docs/en-user-home-mac/guide/tasks/mac_hidden_files.html).

Not new, but one of those things where every time I think about it and want to show it to somebody, I have to hunt it down. For my convenience, and your pleasure, I present you with "Software Engineering Explained"

I have a confession to make. I don't know what "Agile Programming" is. At least, I didn't before reading "Becoming Agile ... in an imperfect world" by Greg Smith and Ahmed Sidky (In the interest of full disclosure, I was fortunate enough to receive an advance copy from the publisher).

I'd heard the term before, but I didn't really know what it meant to be an Agile programmer. What comprises Agile? Is it an abstract concept or are there explicit steps to take in order to "get there". How do you know when you're "there"? More importantly, is it worth investing the time to become Agile?

I got as far as page 4 before two of my questions were already addressed (What components comprise Agile development, and how do I know that I've achieved Agile development?). I took that to be a good sign. A sign that the authors know who their audience is, and will do their best to deliver the answers that their readers are looking for.

I'm a big fan of Mozilla's Firefox browser for web development. It's got a number of tools that I just couldn't imagine doing without. ColorZilla, Web Developer Toolbar, and of course, Firebug (just to name a few).

But as time went on, I found that Firefox could be a memory hog. I had a handful of plugins installed, but not many. And no themes. But on more than one occasion, I'd see Firefox's memory consumption start to increase dramatically.

Enter Google's Chrome. Ironically, in spite of the name, there was very little chrome to be seen. It was a nice, lightweight browser that I eventually transitioned to for day-to-day browsing. Development continued in Firefox, but I really enjoyed Chrome as a lightweight alternative for browsing.

Last week, I made the switch from PC/Windows to a Macbook Pro (blog entry on thoughts of a PC guy making the transition to OS X to follow eventually). Unfortunately, Chrome isn't available (yet?) for OS X. Well, back to Firefox as my "full time" browser.

Day 2 with Chrome, and I'm still liking it quite a bit.

No, it doesn't necessarily "rule" (as stated by T. Fleming in the comments on yesterday's post), but it's off to a very decent start.

It doesn't "rule" yet, because it's been available to the public for all of a day. It's in its infancy. It won't compete with Firefox until such time that plugins are available (but I understand that's on the roadmap). There are some options that are lacking, or not at all available (or so hard to find that I'm under the impression that they're not at all available). How can i tell chrome to check for newer versions of the page with each page request? Don't think I can. I'd also like a more robust means of organizing my bookmarks. Oh, and I did manage to crash it earlier today. Not even sure what happened... it just... crashed.

In spite of these "issues", I still like the browser. Just like the Google Talk client when it was first introduced (anyone remember... no file transfer options, no voice chat options...), it seems to be laser focused on doing what it's meant to do. Browse web sites. I'm fairly confident that the additional "bells and whistles" will follow.

The blogosphere and Twitter are both ablaze today with talk of Google's foray into the browser market with Chrome. My first impressions, and some accompanying screenshots...

Up until it was actually available, I'd not been following the story too much, so I hadn't seen screenshots or read about any specific features. My first impression upon loading it up was, "wow... there's... no chrome". I haven't messed around yet with configuration options, but there's no status bar. No toolbar. It's literally just an address bar (which seems to also serve as an integrated search bar), and tabs. It's minimalistic in its look, as is standard with most things Google, but I like it. It's uncluttered, but I'm not sure the general public will see it as such. The plain design that I see as a plus could easily be seen as... well, plain.

Which raises an interesting point. I'm not sure what market Google is after. Are they trying to be a mainstream browser and compete directly with IE and Firefox? I don't know that I see that happening. But given some of the features that they've implemented, I definitely see them competing for the affections of techie geeks.

A couple of weeks ago I started looking at Transfer. I found myself wishing that I hadn't missed out on Mark Mandel's presentation to the Inland Empire ColdFusion User Group that he had given a couple of months ago. Heck I would have been thrilled to see any presentation on Transfer right then and there.

In an all-too-rare moment of clarity, I remembered that Charlie Arehart has a compendium of links to recorded Breeze/Connect presentations, including six on Transfer and, as of this writing, 231(!) on various other topics. Very nice.

I've been aware that this existed for quite some time, but I guess I took it for granted until I actually found myself needing it. I meant to post something back then, not only to thank Charlie but also to mention the UGTV page in case there might be a few folks out there who were unaware.

Fast forward to today. Somebody on the BACFUG mailing list asked a question about code generation. I pointed out two resources that I thought may be of use (one being Peter Farrell's Rooibos Generator, the other being Brian Rinaldi's Illudium PU-36 Code Generator).