Sing the praises! It's that time of year again! Short sleeves!
Maybe I'm getting old, but this winter felt especially long and hard. Yes, we had extra snow. There was something else. Oh, I remember. Having two monsters couped up the whole winter. Enough to test the most patient of people.
I would like to thank the following saving graces:
- The zoo - we have a family membership and will for the foreseeable future
- The gym
- My office space heater
- Giant bags of Dunkin Donuts coffee - every morning! hothot as Nora would say.
- Smartwool Socks
- Our 20 year old snowblower - you made it another year
Winter, I will check you on the other side of fall. I'll be the tall grizzled guy with the warm socks.
No SQL databases are all the rage lately. Been experimenting with Cassandra myself and became very interested in the theories and ideas behind this class of databases. Oh, more infomation you say?
- Brewer's CAP theorom - just read it.
- Amazon's Dynamo which is one of the first widely publicized instances of a no sql databse being used in a large production environment.
- NoSql Landscape (part 1) - a good summary of the current landscape. Lots of projects making lots of headway. It sure is fun to watch.
It might hurt your brain, but it's good for what ails ya.
This was definitely one of those "ah-ha!" moments in my programming journey.
Take a read of Implementing "weightless threads" with Python generators
Some ideas are so simple they're hard. I think this is one of those cases.
Don't look now, but there has been a new release of Python Mode for emacs. I just happened to look by chance. First time in years and it appears as if it just came out! Loaded it up and - bam! Didn't really notice any difference. I guess that is a good thing.
So if you're the one person I know that develops Python and uses emacs make sure to update your stuff.
Since it has already been hilarious to look back at the things I thought were cool in the past, I wanted to write up something about all the tools I find most useful today.
LaunchBar
What is LaunchBar? It's kind of like trying to describe how the Internet works. It's both simple and complex at the same time, yet all encompassing. Launchbar is an app launcher - simple. And then their blurb:
LaunchBar is a smart and powerful, keyboard driven productivity utility that lets you access and control every aspect of your digital life.
After the development of Quicksilver stagnated and I could no longer get it working (something having to do with perl and macports) I found LaunchBar. After a few weeks of retraining my fingers it is definitely something that I can't do without. The built-in help is excellent, but there are so many features that I can only seem to add about one a month to my repertoire. Very much like learning new vocabulary or any new key combination in Emacs.
Textmate
This text editor is second to none. Except maybe Emacs which I'm using to type this. I constantly alternate between Emacs and Textmate depending on the task at hand. Textmate has incredible bundles (modes) for almost all programming languages including many of the popular Javascript libraries.
A new version has not been released in years and a development seems to have stalled out. Though, considering Emacs hasn't changed significantly in 300 years there is really nothing to complain about. Textmate still works great!
Acorn
When I was looking for something a little more light weight than Photoshop yet powerful enough to do some fancy image editing I found Acorn. Some great built-in filters for some fancy effects. Simply a great little graphics editor for the price. This is one of those programs I don't use very often, but when I need it - I need it.
Omnigraffle
I can honestly say Omnigraffle is an indispensable tool in my arsenal of graphic design utilities. Actually, it is about the only one I use these days. I've done everything: logos, birth announcements, business cards, letterhead, web page mock ups, fancy pdf editing. It is so cool I find it hard to describe. Kind of like Visio meets Photoshop - except usable by normal humans. It tends to do the right thing most of the time. Impressive.