Code Intuition

• 2012-06-08

  Git aliases for quickly showing the last few commits

  Some handy aliases for peeking at the last 1–5 commits:

  for i in 1 2 3 4 5; do \
      git config --global alias.l${i} "log -${i} --oneline"; \
  done
  

  For example:

  $ git l1
  4aec29b Remove is_forecast from view-campaign screen
  $ git l5
  4aec29b Remove is_forecast from view-campaign screen
  16eea8c Make campaign title and customer mandatory
  ca464c5 Reformat text fields on view campaign screen
  de979b5 Fix status/is_forecast field display
  e6e4b7d Issue 10825: Fix "pipeline for" select list
  

• 2012-06-01

  Finally, a TextMate theme that works for XML

  IR_Themes.tmbundle.zip

  The problem

  I regularly fiddle with the following: fonts, colours, sizes, tools, utilities; and more, ad infinitum. Sometimes a change is as good as a holiday for me. A new theme, new settings, a new app—whatever—will reinvigorate me with a burst of productive energy. (However mostly I just procrastinate.)

  I have a problem with most TextMate themes. And the reason it’s a problem for me is that I spend a lot of my time looking at XML, rather than a programming language. I’d love to spend more time programming, but this is what I’ve got to deal with.

  The problem with most TextMate themes is that when it comes to XML, the entire document ends up being rendered in, like, two colours:

  

  Mac Classic

  

  Railscasts

  I’ve been making do with Mac Classic for some time. It’s balance of colours makes reading XML at least bearable, though it’s still very difficult to scan. The reason? In most themes, all element and attribute names, including namespaces, are coloured the same. So basically you end up with four colours: background, foreground (elements, attributes, etc.), strings and comments. And a given XML file usually has so much of the foreground and string colour that it’s difficult to tell things apart.

  The solution

  Todd Werth created a theme called IR_Black (fittingly, announced in a post entitled The last TextMate theme you’ll ever need). I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now, and it’s really growing on me. Here’s a few of reasons why:

  • XML namespaces, strings, element and attribute names are all highlighted using different colours (!).
  • The colour palette is very attractive and easy on the eyes.
  • Comes in a white version (IR_White) if you can’t stomach black themes.

  

  IR_Black

  

  IR_White

  On my antiglare MacBook Pro display, to my eyes the black was a just bit too deep and the orange a bit too vibrant, so I’ve made a couple of changes to soften the overall effect. The resulting TextMate 2 bundle, with both the white and black themes, can be downloaded here: IR_Themes. (For TextMate 1.x users, you can install the themes by right-clicking on the .tmbundle, selecting Show Package Contents, and navigating to the Themes directory and double-clicking on the .tmtheme files.)

  Thanks Todd for a great theme, which hopefully will be the last I’ll ever need.

• 2012-05-11

  Changes to sharplet.me

  Big thanks to Shawn Blanc: recently, as part of his membership drive, I was awarded with a free year’s subscription to a Typekit Portfolio plan. I’m very grateful.

  So to celebrate, I’ve made some adjustments to the site’s theme: besides some other minor tweaks, the main typeface is now Proxima Nova. Enjoy.

• 2012-04-23

  

• 2011-10-18

  On GitHub: An init script for Tomcat

  I cobbled this together while setting up our new application server at work. It’s an init script to start Tomcat at startup, and to control it using the standard “service NAME start|stop|whatever” on Linux. Hope you find it helpful (here’s a link).

  From the README:

  Description

  This is an init script for Apache Tomcat, tested for use on Amazon Linux AMI, and should work on CentOS and other RPM based systems such as Red Hat.

  Besides configuration changes, the main change I’ve made from the source script was to use catalina.sh start and catalina.sh stop instead of startup.sh and shutdown.sh, respectively. I also set the CATALINA_PID variable so that catalina.sh would correctly create the PID file, and service tomcat status would correctly report whether tomcat is running. (Previously would get errors such as “tomcat dead but subsys locked”).

  Installation

  To install the script as-is, assuming you have Tomcat v6.0.33 installed at /usr/local/apache-tomcat-6.0.33 and the java executable located at /usr:

  1. Copy the tomcat script to /etc/init.d
  2. Run sudo chkconfig --add /etc/init.d/tomcat
  3. Run sudo service tomcat start

• 2011-09-09

  Set soft wrap based on file type in TextMate

  I mainly work with two different kinds of files: XML and Markdown. Both tend to have long lines, however I prefer Markdown to be soft-wrapped to the page guide and XML to have soft wrapping turned off, as long lines of XML attributes can be difficult to understand.

  Based on this email in the TextMate archives I found a way to set the soft wrapping preference on a per-scope basis using Preferences Items.

  1. Create a new bundle called “Soft Wrapping Preferences”.

  2. Create a new preferences item containing the text

     {   softWrap = 0; }
     

     and name it “Soft Wrapping Off”.

  3. In the “Scope Selector:” field enter scopes where you want soft wrapping turned off by default (if you have more than one, they should be separated by commas).

     

  4. Create a second preferences item containing the text

     {   softWrap = 1; }
     

     and name it “Soft Wrapping On”.

  5. In the “Scope Selector:” field enter scopes where you want soft wrapping turned on by default (if you have more than one, they should be separated by commas).

     

  You can download the TextMate bundle here.

• 2011-08-01

  Fundamental design differences

  Here is the first advertised feature for Pages on the Mac App Store:

  Simple interface that lets you launch and start typing in seconds

  Similarly, for Word:

  Add impressive formatting effects—such as gradient fills and reflections—directly to the text in your document. You can now apply many of the same effects to text and shapes that you might already use for pictures, charts, and SmartArt graphics.

  The proof is in the pudding (the image directly after that description):

  

  My example is a little contrived, but I think it gives a glimpse at the differing values between the two pieces of software. It’s actually much easier to just write in Pages. It’s actually much easier to create something typographically horrific in Word.

• 2011-07-30

  Task: Move codeintuition.net to blog.codeintuition.net

  Check.

• 2011-07-10

  

  Socks

• 2011-06-30

  Emailing actions to OmniFocus while away from your Mac

  Unfortunately my Mac isn’t my main work computer, nor is it on all day with Mail running, and so I don’t find the OmniFocus mail rule very effective. This does the trick for me though, posted in the OmniFocus forums in Dec 2010:

  One of the most-requested features for the iOS editions of OmniFocus is a way to process information from other apps into OmniFocus action items. (Email, for example.)

  One option is to use applications that support the Send to OmniFocus feature, but what if you’re using an app that doesn’t support it, like the built-in Mail app on your iPhone?

  […]

  Starting today, if you can turn the information into an email, you can add it to your OmniFocus inbox. Send an email from your PC, then tap a link on your iPhone to add that email to your database.

  Say you have a something you want to process later that can’t be saved to Instapaper — a video, for example. Send an email to send-to-omnifocus@omnigroup.com with the title of the action as the subject line and the URL as the body. They’ll send you back an email with a link. Tap the link on your iPhone or iPad (or your Mac when you get home) and a new action will be created with the body of the email as a note.