Fragments

Fragments are super brief notes for my own use. I'd hoped that Twitter would be a convenient place to store tiny notes, but its not searchable enough. This page should allow for quick browsing and searching for things I know I knew or saw in the past.

May

A super blog post about how to write secure code.

26 May 2022
security
startup

An article in Outside Magazine about the health benefits of sunshine.

23 May 2022
health

A handy site with lots of tmux info, including how to open a pop-up window to fzf another session.

09 May 2022
tmux

April

A blog post with some new command line tools.

13 April 2022
linux
cli
12 April 2022
social-media
tech
history

A blog post explaining some useful keyboard shortcuts.

A blog post explaining how to make caps lock be escape when pressed alone, and ctrl when pressed with another key.

05 April 2022
macos
keyboard

March

A personal blog with some notes on books that look interesting. I’d like to try reading these over the summer.

24 March 2022
reading
books

A HN article about a personal website that has been made in the style of a Pokemon game. Super cool.

13 March 2022
web

A site about career paths after reaching “Senior Software Engineer”. Apparently you have two main branches, either engineering management, or staff engineer.

The site references several good books about the engineering management career path. I should come back to this.

archive

13 March 2022
tech
career
todo

A data driven article comparing equity and salaries broken down by geography, investment stage and number of founders.

01 March 2022
startups
entrepreneur

February

28 February 2022
reading
education

Reactance would be a good name for a church.

Also, the Streisand Effect.

10 February 2022
psychology

A list of sites that help children learn to code.

09 February 2022
children
learning

January

An excellent article about the state of web3 and NFTs.

08 January 2022
web3
crypto
nft

December

Corey Zue is an indie maker who made Pegasus (Django boilerplate SaaS) and a wedding place-cards product.

This is a link to his open startup metrics page.

Also check out this similar post which has similar links for solo SaaS founders.

24 December 2021
entrepreneur
saas
maker
founder

A blog post about monetizing SaaS products.

  • Split test
  • Pricing
  • Email cadence
14 December 2021
saas
side-project
business

An article about linux security.

This is kind of similar to this post.

08 December 2021
security
linux

An article suggesting best practices for adding JSON output to CLI apps, and mentioning why JSON output is a good idea.

  • Do Make a Schema
  • Do Flatten the Structure
  • Do Output JSON Lines for Streaming Output
  • Do Use Predictable Key Names
  • Do Pretty Print with Two Spaces or Don’t Format at All
  • Don’t Use Special Characters in Key Names
  • Don’t Allow Duplicate Keys
  • Don’t Use Very Large Numbers
06 December 2021
cli

I’ve been trying to replace ALE with CoC. It didn’t work. Maybe I have unusually high fixing expectations, but ALE is more capable and easier to setup. So I’ll be using CoC and ALE together, which feels messy.

Formatting

  1. pip install pep8 autopep8
  2. <leader>fs

  3. <leader>a - a list of all the wrong things

  4. vif - select inside function
  5. vam - select method

  6. <leader>ac - see a box with options to fix imports or ignore file

03 December 2021
vim

fd is a replacement for find with more intuitive defaults.

  • Case-insensitive.
  • Ignores hidden directories and files.
  • Ignores patterns in .gitignore.

Commands

  • fd PATTERN
  • not find -iname '*PATTERN*'
  • fd --help

repo

03 December 2021
fd
cli
  • List of sessions: <prefix> s
  • Last session: <prefix> Z
  • Rename session: <prefix> $
  • Rename window: <prefix> ,

  • Previous session: <prefix> (

For last session I used the following key bind:

bind Z switch-client -l
03 December 2021
tmux
cli

November

An article explaining how a web-dev shop built a multi-tenant web application using Django and python.

Also:

25 November 2021
python
django
webapp
  • 3 copies, 2 types of media, 1 copy off-site
  • Have 1 primary backup and 2 duplicates, in additional to the original data.
  • NAS, USB drive, Cloud storage, Server, Glacier, etc

For example, your laptop could be backed up to a NAS, a server, and glacier storage. Or 2 NAS and 1 archival cloud storage.

25 November 2021
archive
data

wip

  • Have a simple, crisp mission statement that expresses your raison d’etre.
  • Socialize estimates of task difficulty repeatedly;
  • Do whatever it takes to make sure that manager churn does not result in unfair career outcomes for ICs

source

24 November 2021
facebook
management

Reverse proxy server

  • A reverse proxy is a server.
  • It sits in front of other servers and forwards client requests to them.
  • Is a middleman or broker on behalf of origin servers.

Usually used to:

  • Increase security (keeping the IP addresses of origin servers private makes DDoS attacks much harder).
  • Optimize performance (caching).
  • Increase reliability (load balancing).

The client thinks that the reverse proxy is the end-point server.

Normal proxies

  • Also called a web or forwarding (normal) proxy.
  • Sits between client machines and hosts.
  • Is a middleman on behalf of the clients.

The server thinks that the client is the proxy.

Source: cloudflare

22 November 2021
networks
  • If you can ssh into the server then Unison should work.
  • Install the same version on the client and on the server.

To sync the contents of dir b into dir a:

unison -batch -color true <dir-a> ssh://<user>@a<host>/<dir-b>

Setup

  1. Download the binary file with wget
  2. chmod +x <file>
  3. copy the executable somewhere on your path like /usr/local/bin
  4. unison -doc tutorial > remote method > remote shell method
  5. use a filewatcher to sync on change, or use cron to sync every n minutes

You can also use unison to sync files on the same computer.

References

gist

Background

Recently I needed to work on a codebase that was on a remote machine whilst still using my local workflow and developer tools.

Vim’s built in scp:// functionality isn’t versatile enough - i wanted to use fzf.vim to search for text across the code base. This led me to rsync, sshfs, and eventually unison.

17 November 2021
syncronization
linux
macos
infrastructure

Chisoku

Being content with what you already have. You don’t need more stuff, or new stuff, just because it exists. You’re being marketed at, or marked.

Do you need it or do you want it? Need is finite, want is infinite.

Wabi Sabi

Beauty in imperfection. As things begin to wear, they develop some character that can make them nicer than something that is fresh. It’s the opposite of new shiny thing syndrome.

Mitate

An object has more than one purpose. Repurposing, inventing, adapting, etc is interesting and a mini achievement that can be celebrated.

Source.

14 November 2021
money
finance
japan

In case you want to reset your virtualenv:

pip freeze | xargs pip uninstall -y
09 November 2021
python

An introductory article with examples from Smashing Magazine that introduces and explains what alpine.js is and how it is different to jQuery and vue.js.

09 November 2021
javascript
front-end
ui

source and exec are both built-ins.

source evaluates or runs the content of a file. For example, if you source ~/.zshrc you apply the content of the file to the currently running Zsh process. You can source and valid Zsh code.

exec replaces the current shell process with another process. Your terminal (tty) session is running a shell. Replace it with another shell without launching another tty. It could be the same shell with different settings or flags.

The tty (teletypewriter) command prints the name of the terminal you’re using.

09 November 2021
zsh
shell

Chezmoi is a dotfiles manager.

  • chezmoi diff - see the difference between the current state of your local dotfiles compared against the checked-in versions.
  • cm aa - to update chezmoi with all your local changes.
alias -g aa="status | cut -c 4- | xargs -I % -p sh -c 'chezmoi add ~/%'"
05 November 2021
dotfiles
tools
productivity
developer

In zsh you can suspend a command whilst typing it.

This clears the current line, lets you run another command, and then when it finishes the original unfinished text is put back.

This is useful if whilst typing a command you realise you need to run another command first, like:

  • ls to check the name for an argument.
  • creating a location before moving something into that location.
  • checking man or tldr for a command flag.

Zsh has built-in functions push-line and push-input.

blog post and also this SO answer

zsh widgets zsh documentation

05 November 2021
zsh

Yesterday the YouTube algorithm suggested a video by Daily Stoic.

04 November 2021
philosophy

I’m really enjoying math explainers lately, on YouTube there’s 3blue1brown and Veritsasium, and for text I’ve enjoyed a couple of Matt Ferraro’s blog posts.

Check out What is the inverse of a vector? and Poisson’s Equation is the Most Powerful Tool not yet in your Toolbox.

This is a great explanation of the geometric reasoning for the solution to quadratics and cubics, which then goes on to introduce imaginary numbers.

04 November 2021
math

Interesting article about writing down a list of manual steps for tasks that can’t be automated. A do-nothing script can take some of the toil out of a manual slog.

Even though the script doesn’t do anything other than display text on a screen (the instructions to complete the task) it’s still helpful, because:

  • All the steps and information required are collected together.
  • It lowers the activation energy required to do something fiddly.
  • Each step is part of a function, and the function can be updated with automation code if automation becomes possible.
  • It’s more difficult to lose your place in the process, or get the order of steps wrong.

It doesn’t reduce manual effort. It does reduce toil.

03 November 2021
programming

October

  • A blog post about SaaS metrics
  • A tool for calculating metrics
19 October 2021
saas
entrepreneurship

Jack Daniels’ book about running has a training plan that seems to be highly regarded.

training

  • LT1 - 75% of maximum heart rate. ~145BPM maybe (for running).
  • LT2 - Average heart rate for a maximum sustained effort for 1 hour.

Zone 1

  • Trains your body to use fat stores as energy.
  • Increases your oxidative capacity.
  • Trains slow-twitch muscle fibres.
  • You can speak a full sentence without taking a breath.

Zone 3

  • Trains your body to use carbohydrates as energy.
  • Trains your glycolytic system.
  • Increases your ability to mitigate lactic acid.
  • Trains fast-twitch muscle fibres.
  • You can barely speak in this zone.

Training

  • Zone 2 is not a good place to train, it’s middle of the road and not an efficient use of time or effort.
  • 80% of training should be in zone 1.
  • We have much more energy stored as fat than we do as carbs.
19 October 2021
running
training
exercise
  1. Seth’s blog - Background and context
  2. small business website
    • Process
    • Testing
14 October 2021
entrepreneurship
saas

Brutal loneliness.

wikipedia

14 October 2021
pop
  • 7 days/week
  • 25 km/day
  • Start easy. Last 50% begin to move through the field.
  • 40% - 50% of entrants DNF
  • 90% of the course is runnable
  • 50km: 6:10 min/km (Diez Vista 50km)
  • 50km: 7:25 - 8:00 min/km (Beaver Flat 50 JP)
  • 160km: 10:35 min/km (JP)
  • 150km: 6:30 - 8:00 min/km (UTMB CD)
  • training: 6:10 is slow enough to stay fresh. 5:10-5:30 is fast.
01 October 2021
courtney-dauwalter
running
150km
jeff-pelletier

September

Script to output colors in a buffer:

:so $VIMRUNTIME/syntax/colortest.vim

SO question with reference image.

29 September 2021
vim

A project to demonstrate an offline, fast, point-of-sale device to allow merchants and customers to make fast cheap transactions on the lightning network.

Also lnbits

28 September 2021
lightning
bitcoin
crypto

This article is a fairly practical introduction to the GNU make tool.

It’s not the article I was looking for though, so I might swap it out if I find a better one.

28 September 2021
automation
build-system

A blog post with a checklist of steps to take and questions to ask when investigating a performance issue on a Linux server.

27 September 2021
linux
security

An article from the Farnham Street blog.

22 September 2021
humanity
culture
web
gcloud config set account [email protected]
gcloud auth list 
22 September 2021
google-cloud-platform
cli

Google Pub/Sub has client libraries in all the usual languages. You can also construct the API calls yourself. This is a link to the API documentation.

If I were to use a JavaScript beacon to push a message to a topic, my web analytics engine (a collection of cloud functions) could subscribe to the topic.

This would have the advantage that if the site were flooded with traffic and the maximum number of function instances wasn’t enough to handle all the events, then none of the page views (or other events) would be lost because Pub/Sub guarantees delivery and would keep trying to deliver the message for up to 7 days.

Using the beacon to trigger the cloud functions directly wouldn’t work at scale, because once the maximum number of instances are being triggered as frequently as the function takes to run, the endpoint would become unresponsive. There is no caching layer.

However, the site isn’t being flooded with traffic, and I have better things to do than fix stuff that isn’t broken.

20 September 2021
google-cloud-platform
message-systems

Documentation explaining how to set CORS and TTL for a storage bucket.

Create a JSON file with something like this:

[{
  "origin": ["..."],
  "method": ["GET", "PUT"],
  "responseHeader": ["Content-Type"],
  "maxAgeSeconds": 300
}]
gsutil cors set cors.json gs://johnmathews.is
gsutil cors get gs://johnmathews.is | jq
20 September 2021
google-cloud-platform
storage
cloud
caching

A twitter thread showing how a business started creating handwritten notes to customers using a plotter, and how they scaled up and further automated the process.

It would be cool to create something like this for western Europe. Handwrytten.com seems to be the main commercial implementation of this idea in NA. Competitors.

I still think it would be fun to make a simple photo printing service. Share a photo in a WhatsApp message and its printed and delivered.

20 September 2021
automation
hardware
marketing
raspberry-pi

A ledger (what’s a ledger? It’s a webpage) from the “Center For Humane Technology” showing some of the dangers of social media.

The “Do unto others” section is outstanding. It describes the views of some tech company leaders, including how they limit usage of devices and social media for themselves and their kids.

16 September 2021
technology
mobile
social-media

A question on Stack Overflow asking for great visual proofs of mathematical ideas

  • trigonometry, angles
  • Fourier transforms
  • right angle triangles
  • the area of a circle

archive

11 September 2021
math

An essay in the FT: “Twenty years later, the political and psychological consequences of the attack have become more intelligible”

archive

10 September 2021
history
essay

An article about why doctors want less treatment for terminal illnesses than their patients.

archive

09 September 2021
humanity
death

If youth is wasted on the young, then life is wasted on the living.

08 September 2021
aphorism

This article about how people become slaves is very uncomfortable reading.

It puts a very different perspective on my life, ambitions and perceived risks.

08 September 2021
humanity

Google Cloud Platform have introduced a “minimum instances” features in the Cloud Functions product.

If you have a function using 128MB of memory (the smallest option), it will cost a minimum €0.061 per day (€1.86 per month) to run 1 minimum instance.

08 September 2021
google-cloud-platform
serverless

sudo nmap -sP 192.168.1.1/24 | grep "Nmap"

Thanks to Jeff Geerling (again) I found this nifty command to see what devices are connected on a local network.

Found in this article about setting up a pi-hole.

04 September 2021
networking
cli

August

A clear article solving most of my problems around understanding why I’m incurring charges on Google Cloud Platform (Gcloud, GCP) when I’m clearly within their free usage limits.

The deployment costs section in this page is also useful.

27 August 2021
google-cloud-platform

Your relationships will come to define your life more than anything else.

A blog post about someone who read their dad’s journal after he died. Its about regret, grief, and struggles against internal contradictions. Its about the tangible consequences of intangible relationships.

The comments are also significant.

26 August 2021
humanity

Miller is like awk, sed, cut, join, and sort for data formats such as CSV, TSV, tabular JSON and positionally-indexed.

Try this if you’re operating on JSON of CSV data, and you want to use column names instead of column numbers.

25 August 2021
cli
tools

Blog post showing how you can set git variables depending on where you are in a directory tree.

It hinges on conditional includes.

24 August 2021
vcs
git

Organizations which design systems … are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations - Melvin Conway

In reverse:

If the architecture of the system and the architecture of the organization are at odds, the architecture of the organization wins - Ruth Malan

16 August 2021
organisations

A blog post about how someone compromised a group of web apps.

It lists a series of technologies and techniques that the author uses as they progress their investigation.

These would make a useful list of things to know in order to build safe web-apps and not repeat the mistakes of the unfortunate target company.

06 August 2021
penetration-testing
hacking
web-apps
credentials

The toughness of elite ultra-runners is very underrated.

Just one of the problems Sabrina Stanley encountered would be enough to justify dropping out.

archive

06 August 2021
hard-rock
running
sport

Part 1 of an incredible interview and tour of starbase with Elon Musk

archive

04 August 2021
elon-musk
starbase
engineering
  • I live and work near Amsterdam
  • My manager is in Berlin
  • A stakeholder is in Boston
  • Another stakeholder is in India
  • Another stakeholder is in Ireland

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

02 August 2021
remote
engineering

Being very good at one particular thing can make it easy to be bad at normal things:

02 August 2021
sport
competition
comparmentalization
psychology

A repo of curious syntax features.

02 August 2021
python
programming

July

Without psychological safety, respect, and trust, none of the following is possible”

The best ways to work are collaborative. Negotiation is not collaboration. Isolated individuals making heroic efforts are never as effective as collaborative groups. We get the best results when customers, business people, and developers literally work together.”

Blog post

26 July 2021
engineering
teams
organisations

Checkout the branch where you want the file to by copied to, then:

git checkout <other-branch> <relative-file-path or directory>
  • Use a commit hash to pull files from any commit
  • Multiple files and directories can be specified
  • Overwrites the file

SO

more discussion

14 July 2021
git

Zwischenzugs blog post arguing that to achieve a significant change in an organisation you need need to:

  1. Get funding.
  2. Persuade the finance department to give you money.
  3. Understand what they value.
  4. Understand their cash flows.
  5. Understand how and why customers or clients part with their money.
  6. Understand business constraints (legal, reg, operating).

The five whys approach to problem solving

Consider a deeper structural cause of cultural problems in change management: how money flows through the organisation.”

If you want to transform IT in an enterprise, start with finance. If you can crack that, you’ve a chance to succeed with sec and controls functions. If you don’t know why it’s important to start with finance, you’ll definitely fail “

14 July 2021
engineering
organisations
business
corporations

Hilarious article from UI Collecitve showing the results of a competition to design the worst possible volume control interface. 😂 😂 😂

14 July 2021
ui

Yesterday my daughter asked me to write a page in her Freundebuch.

12 July 2021
family

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.

The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.

This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

- C. S. Lewis

12 July 2021
oppression
consent

Blog post about how to make it easier to upgrade a cryptographic or hashing library.

Django encodes passwords for database storage like this:

<algorithm>$<iterations>$<salt>$<hash>

Interestingly, Giovanni Collazo emphasises that we should design systems for change, which initially seems pretty close to contradicting YAGNI, but the answer lies in the context.

10 July 2021
hashing
versioning

Lessons of a startup engineer is a great blog post from Todd Wolfson. So great that I might write notes on it like I would a book.

archive

10 July 2021
startup
engineering

A great article introducing and showing the relevance of Poisson’s Equation.

06 July 2021
math

His works in English and Latin.

06 July 2021
theology
history

June

30 June 2021
art
painting
photography

I have learnt that failure is my greatest teacher”

- Georges St-Pierre

29 June 2021
meta
advice

Contains too much conjecture at the start, but becomes more substantial.

At high levels of competition the difference between “good” and “great” is partly determined by how much pain you are willing to experience.

There are great benefits from training in a secondary discipline.

  • Anderson Silva is a ballet dancer.
  • Conor McGregor does “movement training”.
  • Israel Adesanya dances competitively.
  • Georges St-Pierre practices gymnastics.

archive

29 June 2021
sport
meta
training
23 June 2021
django
saas
startups
python

Alfie Solomons - Where the light comes in. Scenes showing the character of Alfie Solomons from Peaky Blinders.

movie

22 June 2021
movie
youtube
peaky-blinders
humanity

Rabbits, fluid convection, the Mandelbrot set and lots of others things too. Also known as bifurcation theory.

The video shows how the Feigenbaum Constant is defined. It’s a fundamental constant I hadn’t come across before - 4.6692..

archive

17 June 2021
math
chaos

article

An Apple onion router. The routing uses two hops; Apple provides the first, and independent third parties (not yet specified) provide the second.”

In one move, Apple has taken onion routing from a specialized tool for hackers to something that will be in daily use.”

16 June 2021
apple
onion
vpn
icloud

rich module python -m rich for a demo

Cool Python module to handle terminal output with debugging and logging features. It can even record stack trace errors to html.

16 June 2021
python
console
shell

An amateur practices until they can play it correctly, a professional practices until they can’t play it incorrectly.

16 June 2021
proverb
  • Invoked with s followed by 2 chars.
  • S goes backwards.
  • F, f, T, and t are enabled to work across lines.
  • Jump back with <C-O>
  • ; or , to go to next/previous highlighted text.
  • 5sxy searches for the next instance of xy within 5 lines.
  • 3dzqt delete up to the third instance of qt.

repo

15 June 2021
vim
plugin

A basic statement that is assumed to be true. E.g: “A straight line can be drawn between any two points”

archive

12 June 2021
math

wikipedia

Hedgehogs know one big thing, Foxes know many things.

A classification system or mental model for writers and thinkers.

12 June 2021
meta
classification
thinking
12 June 2021
pair-programming
vim
tmux
ssh

A lobster diver was swallowed by a humpback whale. Then it spit him out. Humpback whales don’t have teeth, and have reduced forward vision when they open their mouths to feed.

article
archive

12 June 2021
whale

Key commands

  • git lfs install (also uninstall)
  • git lfs track "**/*.mp4"
  • git lfs ls-files
  • git lfs status

track just updates the .gitattributes file.

Commit the .gitattributes file with the tracking configuration before committing the large files.

status or ls-files should show the large files in question before you push the commit that starts tracking the large files.

11 June 2021
git
lfs
github-pages

Blog post demonstrating how to split a .bashrc file into “submodules” and keep it maintainable.

BASHRC_D=~/.config/bashrc.d
[[ -r ${BASHRC_D}/bootstrap ]] && . ${BASHRC_D}/bootstrap
for file in ${BASHRC_D}/*.sh; do
  [[ -r $file ]] && . $file
done
unset file
11 June 2021
bash
shell
zsh

The exhausted moments after running for almost 60 hours through impassable terrain:

movie

10 June 2021
movie
running
barkley
youtube

An essay called A project of ones own by Paul Graham.

  • being pushed into a task vs being pulled
  • skating vs walking
08 June 2021
paul-graham
meta
learning
school

May

Something should happen within 100ms of the users input in order to maintain a feeling of responsiveness.

If something happens within 50ms of the trigger event, it will feel almost instant.

Also, checkout hyperfine for performance benchmarking.

Lots of useful tips in the original blog post.

28 May 2021
shell
  • [s or ]s → go to next/previous bad word
  • z= → list of suggestions
  • zg → add word to good word list
  • zug → remove word from good word list
  • zw → add word to bad word list
  • zuw → remove word from bad word list
27 May 2021
vim
grep -inr --include package.json \
    'shortcut": {' . -A 3
  • It’s the --include flag that does the important part.
  • -i → case insensitive
  • -n → print line number
  • -r → recursive from starting page
  • . → start in current directory
  • -A 3 → print the 3 lines below the found line
18 May 2021
grep
linux

:map → show a list of the current keyboard mappings for normal, visual, select and operator pending modes.

:map! → show a list of the current keyboard mappings for insert and command-line mode

Top put all the mappings into a convenient text file:

:redir! > vim_maps.txt
:map
:map!
:redir END

source another source

18 May 2021
vim

This blog post arrives at the conclusion that the only way to take good paper notes is to organise them chronologically, and only summarise the content once the notebook is full.

Keep it simple, trust your intuitions.

simplerobustreliable

Also, it links to zettelkasten.de/the-archive

18 May 2021
zettelkasten
notes
knowledge-system

Without training, they lacked knowledge. Without knowledge, they lacked confidence. Without confidence, they lacked victory.”

- Julius Caesar

14 May 2021
quote
caesar
wisdom

I know about ImprovMX, which used to be great because you could do a lot for free, but now you only get 1 domain for free.

ForwardEmail are 3 times cheaper than ImprovMX, and I have 2 domains forwarding email. It’s not particularly private, but I can send and recieve from a domain, for free.

14 May 2021
email

A snippet detailing how to use nested auto commands to apply custom modifications when a colorscheme is loaded. Perhaps this will stop me :e-ing so frequently.

13 May 2021
vim

A useful collection of gists by Romain Lafourcade

A gist about netrw.

13 May 2021
vim
netrw

See where an option was set in vim using the following command:

:verbose set textwidth?

12 May 2021
vim
  • ???? → 4 chars
  • * → any number of chars
  • [:upper:][A-Z] same for [:lower:] and [:digit:]
  • [:alpha:][a-zA-Z]
  • [:alnum:][a-zA-Z0-9]

  • ls -l [a-d] → part of a range

  • ^ and $ works like in regex
  • la a*.{doc,docx}OR
  • ls a*.(doc|docx)OR
10 May 2021
linux

Create a custom command and function to create a new file in vim.

command! -nargs=1 Ms call s:NewFile(<q-args>)`

function! s:NewFile(fp)
  echom a:fp
  execute "e " . "~/foo/bar/" . a:fp . ".ext"
endfunction

Useful help:

  • :h %:h → filename modifiers
  • :h expand() → expand wildcards, including filename modifiers

question on SO

05 May 2021
vim
  • target function arguments
  • more types of object
  • consistent searching/jumping if you’re not inside the thing you’re targeting
  • jump forward or backward
  • look for the nth occurrence
  • select white space around/inside object

Github
Article about a plugin

05 May 2021
vim
  • <C-h> - same as backspace
  • <C-w> - delete previous word
  • <C-u> - delete everything before cursor (on same row)
  • <C-d> or <C-t> - (un)indent a row
  • <C-e> - delete next word (create a mapping in vimrc)
05 May 2021
vim

If you want to alias a bunch of arguments for a command, use global aliases:

alias -g foo="some complicated options"

grep some complicated options

becomes: grep foo

https://www.thorsten-hans.com/5-types-of-zsh-aliases/

05 May 2021
alias
linux

It’s annoying when you delete something and overwrite your yanked text.

Use numbered registers! "0 to "9

"0 contains the most recent yank. "1 contains the most recent deleted text

"0p - paste the most recent yank, even if you deleted something after yanking it

05 May 2021
vim
linux
text

Chezmoi is a great tool for managing dotfiles. This is a shortcut to update the source state based on local changes.

chezmoi status | cut -c 4- | xargs -I % -p sh -c 'chezmoi add ~/%'

Github

05 May 2021
dotfiles
alias

“It enhances your memory and makes you more creative. It makes you look more attractive. It keeps you slim and lowers food cravings. It protects you from cancer and dementia. It wards off colds and the flu. It lowers your risk of heart attacks and stroke, not to mention diabetes. You’ll even feel happier, less depressed, and less anxious.”

Why We Sleep by Dr. Matt Walker

04 May 2021
sleep
lifestyle

How to write robust bash scripts:

Bash Strict Mode

04 May 2021
bash
linux

An often recommended blog post by Kaleigh Moore about writing a good about page.

04 May 2021
writing

/etc (etsy) → “etcetera” or “editable text config” → a place to put config files.

Originally, the root directory had /boot for booting, /dev for devices… One dir for each type of thing. But this put config in many places. so etc/ became convention

02 May 2021
linux
filesystem

April

Blog post about browser/Web-app security, including:

  • CSRF
  • CORS
  • HTTP Security Headers
30 April 2021
xss
cors
http

From an Interview:

I don’t want to claim that programming is an art, because it really is mostly just about ‘good engineering’. I’m a big believer in Thomas Edison’s ‘one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration’ mantra. It’s almost all about the little details and the everyday grunt-work.

But there is that occasional ‘inspiration’ part, that ‘good taste’ thing that is about more than just solving some problem - solving it cleanly and nicely and yes, even beautifully.

29 April 2021
linux
interview
linus

A RPC is when an executable causes a procedure (subroutine) to execute on another computer, It’s coded as if it were a normal (local) subroutine. You don’t explicitly code the details for the remote interaction. You write the same code whether the subroutine is local or remote.

29 April 2021
rpc
linux

Just found a really useful blog

Interesting discussion about the difference between builtins and executables,

Nice examples of using fzf to improve workflows.

29 April 2021
linux
shell
fzf
workflow
zsh
bash
builtin

lsblk is a command to get info about connected devices.

Used when attaching drives.

28 April 2021
unix
cli

A console based file manager with vi key bindings.

Install it with brew install ranger

Launch it with ranger

28 April 2021
ranger
unix
vim
tools

This is a great article about using regular expressions in Vim:

marcelfischer.eu/blog/2019/checkbox-regex/

28 April 2021
vim
regex

where <executable>

See a list of all builtin commands man where

25 April 2021
unix
macos
cli
bash

Make aliased files the real file

for f in $(find . -type l -maxdepth 1);
    do cp --remove-destination $(readlink $f) $f;
done;
20 April 2021
macos
linux
cli
bash

swap-window -s 3 -t 1

19 April 2021
tmux
macos
linux
cli

Save (write) a (read only) Vim file with sudo when you opened it without sudo-ing:

:w !sudo tee % > /dev/null

17 April 2021
vim
macos
linux

Broot is a tool that shows the contents of a directory on one screen, even its got lots of files or sub-directories.

13 April 2021
broot
macos
cli

I added keyboard navigation to my blog and it works really well. Now I find myself trying to use the same shortcuts on other sites.

12 April 2021
blog
jam
jquery

I should see if I can use GitHub actions to generate html from markdown and run some shell and python scripts.

10 April 2021
github
blog

It’s more socially acceptable to make mistakes and errors of omission than commission.

10 April 2021
meta
thinking
advice

There is a similar tool, with a list of other similar tools here

07 April 2021
cli
unix
macos

An example of a safe, good, robust bash file skeleton.

06 April 2021
bash

I was running a binary in Debian that was complaining about an environment variable not existing. I moved the binary into a $PATH directory and logged in as a sudo user. Why did this solve the problem?

05 April 2021
debian
binary
path

As a hacker, or creator, or whatever the best label is, I always want to create something (usually code) and have it finished.

But a strange creativity and productivity boost comes from dabbling, dipping in and out.

I think that if the technical challenges aren’t too hard, then the main criteria for success is creativity.

Creativity needs time away from the project, and sleep, to bubble up and let ideas grow.

Ultimately, the most successful path is usually the most interesting, because success has more consequences than failure. “Interesting” requires elements of novelty and surprise, and without creativity these elements can’t flourish. 3/n

Dabbling results in more creativity than 6+ hours of strenuous work, and is more likely to give you satisfying results.

01 April 2021
meta
thinking
advice

bar << foo bar will stop reading input when it reached “foo”.

bar <<< "foo" foo is all the input. bar wont run interactively.

bar < <(foo:list) process subscription. Kind of like piping in the output of multiple commands.

Stack Overflow

01 April 2021
bash
syntax

March

console.info(`${JSON.stringify(foo, null, 2)}`);
31 March 2021
typescript
json
syntax

analystsnow.com looks like a really useful business.

30 March 2021
entrepreneur
saas

Frantic distraction via productive procrastination is exhausting, and useful.

30 March 2021
meta
thinking

<C-w>x - swap buffers, but keep arrangement the same

<C-w>H - make the current split cover the left of the screen.

J, K, L covers the bottom, top, right of the screen

29 March 2021
vim

A guide about writing plugins for Pelican.

Thanks @geographeur

29 March 2021
pelican
plugin
guide

I tried to read and write the same file in a pipeline, and got caught out by a race condition (why is the file empty?!). Do this instead:

some_script < file > smscrpt.$$ \
&& mv smscrpt.$$ file || rm smscrpt.$$

|| removes the temporary file if it errors.

$$ is the process ID and ensures that you always have a unique temporary file name.

24 March 2021
shell
pipe
syntax
bash

jj - A stream editor
jq - A json processor
python -m json.tool

I like jq for pretty printing JSON output, jj for making JSON pretty or condensed.

This was really useful when optimizing the search index for this blog.

24 March 2021
json
docker run -d ...
docker logs -f <ID>
docker run -it ...
docker run -itd
docker container attach <ID>
<C-p><C-q> -> detach from container interactively

stack overflow

17 March 2021
docker

Probably it’s one you just curl-ed

curl -sSfL https://example.com/install.sh | sh -s
11 March 2021
bash
syntax
shell

Split long strings (or command outputs) onto multiple lines Find and replace a particular char (maybe :) with a \n.

... | tr ':' '\n'

... | sed 's/:/\n/g'
10 March 2021
bash
linux
  1. Without noticing, create a .gitignore file with a single * in it.
  2. Spend a day trying to understand why ripgrep has stopped working for only 1 project.
  3. 😭😭😭
10 March 2021
ripgrep
fail

Teaching my kids about money and work is having an effect.

Yesterday, my daughter made a painting for me and asked my to buy it using pretend money.

05 March 2021
parenting
kids
money
teaching
sudo groupadd docker -> make the group 
sudo gpasswd -a $USER docker -> add $USER to the docker group
newgrp docker -> activate the changes
05 March 2021
sudo
docker
linux

If you’re cat-ing a file and the bash prompt doesn’t start on a new line (cos the file you displayed using cat doesn’t end with a new line char) the following will fix it:

cat <filename> ; echo

05 March 2021
cat
linux
bash
shell
adduser -m <username>
usermod -aG sudo <username>

CentOS:

adduser -m <username>
passwd <username>
usermod -aG wheel <username>

(wheel is a usergroup with sudo permissions)

04 March 2021
sudo
linux
user
admin

df -h

Show disk space

du -hs .

See how big the current dir is

03 March 2021
linux
du
df
shell
cli

Cloning large repos, or repos with large files in them, doesn’t work with git clone ... you need to use git lfs clone ...

So why is git lfs clone deprecated? What’s the replacement?

03 March 2021
git
git-lfs

Use nohup to keep a curl process running even when the terminal (tty?) session autocloses at 3am.

02 March 2021
linux
cli

You can group shells into groups:

  1. ksh - korn shell and zshell
  2. sh - bourne shell and bash (the bourne again shell)

Because

  • zsh isn’t a superset of bash.
  • bash is a superset of the bourne shell.
02 March 2021
zsh
bash
bsh
linux
cli

November

Two nights ago, I dreamt I was experimenting with Emacs..

27 November 2020
emacs
dream