I finally got my MacBook Pro for work a couple weeks ago and found out how much I actually depend on using ctrl-left and ctrl-right while in bash to move back and forth between words. Yes, I should probably set bash to be in vi mode, but emacs mode is how I learned so why change?
On my MBP that combination does not work. I have no idea what combination it defaults to, but since I constantly bounce between linux machines and this laptop it should be exactly what I’m used to. Thanks to Labrat’s blog post Making BASH’s ctrl-left arrow work on OSX I know now to go to Terminals’s preferences to change this. Once in Settings go to the Settings panel (yes, you read that right) and select the Keyboard tab. The first two entries for Key/Action mappings are for “control cursor left” and “control cursor right”. Double click on each and change the entries to \033b and \033f respectively (hold Esc down for \033).
Edit: I forgot about Spaces which likes “^ Arrow Keys” for switching between spaces. I had to remember to change this to avoid conflicts.
Dropbox is a great utility to have handy, especially since it’s multi-platform and I don’t have to think about it. However, I primarily use a Linux laptop which isn’t always Internet-connected or at least not immediately when I login. This confuses Dropbox significantly since the client cannot find the servers and doesn’t retry. But this is nothing a little shell magic can’t fix.
The client starts up based on ~/.config/autostart/dropbox.desktop, which calls dropbox start -i. Based on this NetworkManagerWifiWorkaround tip, replace the Command in Startup Applications with the following and dropbox will wait until your system successfully can ping www.google.com:
bash -c 'while ! ping -q -w5 -c1 www.google.com; do sleep 5s; done; dropbox start -i'
That’s great, except after some time (I believe a restart of dropbox) the command will revert back. So once you have the right command in ~/.config/autostart/dropbox.desktop open up a terminal and run this command:
sudo chattr +i ~/.config/autostart/dropbox.desktop
So now dropbox will wait for you to be connected, and won’t overwrite your change. If you still don’t use Dropbox check out their tour and then signup with my referral link to get an additional 250MB of space.
We had our first meeting of the Mid-Hudson Drupal Users Group yesterday. With about 7 people for the first meetup, we had a good mix of people who have never used it and some who make Drupal sites for a living. I’m very happy we finally met and excited for future meetups.
We talked about quite a few things, mainly on what we should talk about in the future. Here is some brain dumping from the session.
- We should meet monthly. Weekday evenings seem to work out best, especially with nice summer days coming up.
- Something that worked well and we will continue for future meetings is going around the room so each person can share their favorite module. This month’s list included:
- We should have a main topic of discussion for someone to present on. If we cannot get a projector from the library either Sean or Ben could probably wrangle up a projector for the night. Possible future topics include:
- Payment Gateways
- CiviCRM
- Ubercart
- Scaling and Caching
- Mobile design
- Organic Groups
- Taxonomy
- Possible things the group might do:
- Mentoring
- Peer Review (ex, “I need to display this data which includes x,y,z so I used modules k,q and d. What do you think?”)
- Homework Assignments
- Helpful blogs and video podcasts to pay attention to:
I think we’re off to a good start. We have some networking going and have already shared useful information. The next meetup will feature Vonn presenting on Taxonomy, which will most likely take place Wednesday, June 8th at 6:00pm. Vonn is lining up the Charwat Meeting Room at Adriance Memorial Library again. Pay attention to twitter feeds and the Hudson Valley, NY group at g.d.o to make sure you catch all the details.
You’ve all heard me promote the O’Reilly Media Wish list sweepstakes. Go read the rules but the basics are you generate a wish list of O’Reilly titles including books, ebooks and videos that total up to $500, and then you get an entry for the random selection. Slimming down a wish list to $500 is very much the hard part, but here is my selection.
(Disclaimer: All prices are O’Reilly prices with no discounts)
That’s right, a total of $499.29. I’m sure it’s possible to get closer to the $500 limit, but my goal was books I want and I will read. I’m happy with this list. Go read the rules an get your own entry in and best of luck.
If you somehow missed the fact that it’s November 1 or this past weekend was Halloween, November is here. So what? There are plenty of things going on in November in case you need more than all the new comics, games, TV, movies, etc.
Movember: You’ve spent all of October thinking about breast cancer awareness, which is great but now you need something else. Enter Movember, a month of moustache growing to bring aware to men’s health concers. No, this is not just a silly gimmic, this actually does raise money and awareness. Head over to www.movember.com to find out more, register, and check out various moustache styles to choose from.
NaBloPoMo: Yes, I’ve blogged about it before but it is time once more for National Blog Posting Month. I could have sworn this was an annual thing that took place in November but it appears to have branched out to now have themes for each month, November being “there is no theme” month. If posting regularly is something you are interested in go register and you might win prizes.
NaNoWriMo: National November Writing Month, the predecessor to NaBloPoMo. Yes I’m promoting another reason to have people write this month. NaNoWriMo gives people a goal of writing a 50,000 word book over the course of the month. But check out their site as it is also a fundraiser for young writers, but be patient as they don’t seem to be handling load well after having a Lifehacker post on them.
Edit: I did not see this until the second day of the month, but Linux Journal is running a daily giveaway each day of the month in celebration of the 200th issue. No purchase is necessary so head over to http://www.linuxjournal.com/giveaway for your chance to enter for a variety of things you can win.
