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Senior Web Engineer. Open web / music. Remote DJ. Tall Dutch guy. #3million

micro.blog/sander

svandragt

mixcloud.com/cloudseer

 

The amount of attention breaking distractions encountered using modern devices is frankly baffling and user hostile. From selecting a show on a streaming service and instead seeing a preview of a different one to the weird autocorrects on modern iPhones. When you initiate an action the computer is not meant to surprise you!

 

if I want to update homebrew I would have updated homebrew. Just update it in the background.

 

SecondLife is reinvesting in events

Improvements to the Events pages are in the works for 2020, too. You’ll soon see more functionality and a new look, such as the ability to set an alert on an event you want to attend, to follow your favorite event hosts, to share your event calendar with friends, and to see the latest event developments in a news feed. 

https://community.secondlife.com/blogs/entry/3016-the-return-of-last-names-and-changes-to-marketplac...

 

Making Recents more useful

Clean Recents list

So if you open Recents in the sidebar it's likely it's full of files you have no idea you recently opened. It's most likely that you didn't. We can make Recents more useful by restricting the last opened date, and make using it more convenient. This is how:

  1. Open Finder, then Recents in the sidebar.
  2. From the cog menu, select Show Search Criteria, add a criteria via the plus button.
  3. Change the filter name to Last Opened Date within last 14 days and press Save.
  4. Name it My Recents, and enable Add to sidebar.
  5. From the sidebar, drag the smart search into the dock next to the Trash.
  6. Optionally remove the recents icon from the sidebar. You can restore the item via Finder > Preferencers > Sidebar by dragging it back in.

As a bonus tip, update  the icon for the smart search (just like any other folder and app) as follows:

  1. Open /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/ and search for "Recents" to find the current Recents icon, or choose an alternative.

  2. Right click on the My Recents icon in the sidebar and choose Get Info.

  3. Drag the preferred icon from the folder into the icon slot in the top left of the Get Info window.

This changes the icon in the window title, but I haven't found out how to change it in the sidebar.

 

Turns out for webdev you don't need full Xcode, trash it and install the stanalone developer tools via `xcode-select --install`. Just as well as the App Store has been redownloading Xcode all day yesterday.

 

2019 and I still love to add `fortune` to my shell profile.

 

If you or your company have a contact form on a website, please send a test email today to confirm that someone reads them! Many times I hear nothing back, particular from small business.

 

"remote working is..."

 

It's all gone pythong.

 

Working with Two SSH keys

If you're working with two SSH keys (work / personal) then the following setup is quite elegant. It assumes all repositories are work related, unless they're hosted under your own user:

Host *
 AddKeysToAgent yes
 UseKeychain yes
 StrictHostKeyChecking no
 User git
 IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_corporate

# personal account
Host github.com-MYUSERNAME
  HostName github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

 

Howto setup Python in Pop!_OS 19.10 or Ubuntu

A new OS, another two hours wasted. Pop!_OS 19.10 comes with Python3.7rc5, which is nice but my project requires 3.6 just now. As you know we've gone through this before, but this time we can setup multiple python version support.

Let's setup pyenv, pip, pipenv and then install another python version.

# Setup pip.
curl
https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py | python

# Pip can setup pipenv.
pip install pipenv --user

# Manage multiple python versions through pyenv.
# @see https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv/wiki/Common-build-problems

sudo apt-get install -y make build-essential libssl-dev zlib1g-dev libbz2-dev \ libreadline-dev libsqlite3-dev wget curl llvm libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev \ xz-utils tk-dev libffi-dev liblzma-dev python-openssl git
curl https://pyenv.run | bash

Follow the instructions to add pyenv to the path. Now we can do stuff like:

# install another python version.
pyenv install 3.6.9

# OR let pipenv do it.
cd ~/dev/myproject
pipenv install --dev

Leave a comment if you have any issues, as this was written retrospectively.

 

Web developers, consider how visitors may want to share your page with others, so don’t cover up items on your handy shopping list page with a Consent Prompt when saved as a PDF.

 

Does universal clipboard for work anyone? https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/apple/how-copy-paste-between-mac-iphone-3659951/ Copy a URL in Firefox on mac, doesn't paste in IOS. I guess the app must support it?

Update: it turns out that Handoff on my MacBook wasn't working until I signed out and in to iCloud. (Full diagnostic instructions can be found at https://www.idownloadblog.com/2016/03/15/troubleshooting-continuity-ios-mac/.) This then broke my Calendar until I forced quit it, and deleted the iCal preference as per https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8559377.

 

Informed reasoning

I'm starting to realise how often I say good / great / well without being explicit about what I think is positive about something. Trying to replace ‘that is a good idea’ which only communicates my positive assessment with the explicit thing I appreciate so people can make their own assessment based on their values. Maybe this thought helps someone else!

 

What do the macOS menu bar, a clever css filter I came across today, and a great iOS accessibility feature have in common? Grayscale makes for a quiet user experience.

 

Just got an upgrade prompt for Reeder 4. What an app, it’s my favourite RSS reader. Much improved and I love how I can unsubscribe now and reorganise my feeds. Everyone make sure your feeds aren’t breaking! https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/reeder-4/id1449412357

 

When business talks about accessibility, they talk about a legal issue. Developers talk about accessibility as a usability issue. This hurts users! Please raise it as universal usability.

 

Can’t believe the firewall is still off by default in 2019!

 

Outlanders is a fun game but it reminds me that I like the free form mode of settlers best.

 

NPM global installation permission issues on macOS

I had trouble installing global npm packages, which failed due to permission errors. I don't want to use sudo as this will lead to problems later, and I don't want to set the global installation directory to a local directory, as that means other users don't have access to the packages.

As recommended by the NodeJS documentation this is best fixed by installing node via a version manager.

First, remove node which I incorrectly installed with homebrew:

brew uninstall node

Then install nvm as per the official instructions. In my case this also failed as this is a new system that doesn't have a .bash_profile yet. Hower as I wanted to install the zsh shell, I installed oh-my-zsh as per the instructions on their site.

Once zsh was installed (or you've created a .bash_profile using touch ~/.bash_profile, you can install node in a correct manner as follows:

nvm install node

Happy yak-shaving!