web « James A McDonough

February 9, 2010

How do I text thee? Let me count the ways.

Filed under: computer, web — James A McDonough @ 8:35 pm

I was looking at text editors on my mac laptop the other day and decided that I had quite a few. Here’s a bit of a rundown – probably incomplete, I found a few that I didn’t know I had, so it stands to reason that there may be more. I stress, this isn’t the result of trying to obtain every text editor that there is. There must be hundreds.

IDEs: Eclipse, MySQL tools/workbench, do I count Navicat Lite? Netbeans, Python/IDLE, XCode

Basic text editors: gedit, jedit, MacVim, Stickies?, Taco HTML editor, TextEdit, TextWrangler

Word processing: Pages, OpenOffice, what happened to Abiword? I’m sure I used to have Abiword. Word I got rid of in an anti-Microsoft gesture that a school teacher can’t really afford.

Other odd editors: Can I count Finale Notepad? OmniOutliner, TeX, TeXShop, AppleScript Editor

Command-line: pico + nano (both appear to be the same), ed (how do you even quit ed? -type q and enter – fair enough), vi (actually vim on the command line – also a bit hard to get out of when you have no idea what you are doing), emacs (quit with control-x then control-c : Son of a bitch! Who came up with that?).

In fact, if I keep looking through usr/bin I’ll probably keep finding them. BTW, a big hello to the mac application showHiddenFiles which I’ve been using to see things like usr/bin.

Please excuse my ignorance if I’ve listed applications that you wouldn’t consider text editors, or if I’ve missed a few. If I launch Windows via VMWare Fusion I guess I get a few more choices – NotePad and Word, notably.

What do I actually use?

For HTML I like Taco HTML editor. It didn’t cost me anything and it has a few features that I use. I used to use TextEdit, and could pretty easily go back to it.

For Java I’ve been using TextEdit and, lately, TextWrangler. The IDEs are just too confusing for me, so far. I suppose I should really be using jedit but it’s just all wrong on a mac.

I tend to use java/javac from the command line but like to edit in a more mac-like environment. It’s rather sad, but I tend to navigate around the filesystem in the Finder and then type cd then drag locations from the finder into the Terminal. I’d like to be a Unix geek but a good GUI just uses more of your brain’s goodness.

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January 3, 2010

Atheist Ireland …

Filed under: culture, web — James A McDonough @ 9:51 pm

Communion wafer

… are deliberately courting prosecution under new anti-blasphemy laws by publishing 25 irreligious quotations. Link here.
My favorite:
22. PZ Myers, on his desecration of a Roman Catholic communion host, 2008: “You would not believe how many people are writing to me, insisting that these horrible little crackers (they look like flattened bits of styrofoam) are literally pieces of their god, and that this omnipotent being who created the universe can actually be seriously harmed by some third-rate liberal intellectual at a third-rate university… However, inspired by an old woodcut of Jews stabbing the host, I thought of a simple, quick thing to do: I pierced it with a rusty nail (I hope Jesus’s tetanus shots are up to date). And then I simply threw it in the trash, followed by the classic, decorative items of trash cans everywhere, old coffeegrounds and a banana peel.”

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January 2, 2010

Playing with themes

Filed under: web — James A McDonough @ 11:49 am

I’ve been playing with themes. I’m using a modified version of the theme at the bottom of the page for the moment. I got rid of shadows from headings and a huge “No comments” in the headings by variously editing the stylesheet and commenting out some stuff in the index.php file. I also increased the contrast between the text and the background (which was grey). While it’s a terrible hack job and I could never have written the original files, I feel a little bit proud that I could at least work out what to alter.

I’ve also had a few permissions issues with the site that I was able to sort out.

All in all, a satisfying morning – or a waste of time, depending how you look at these things.

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December 31, 2009

Website progress

Filed under: web — James A McDonough @ 5:41 pm

As you can see I’ve got the website a little more finished. Spurious and horrible use of an image on the front of the blog. Just got to find where in the folder the background image is and rename it so it doesn’t load. CSS stylesheet for the main site starting to get there. A few images up. More text than there was a little while ago. It’s New Year’s Eve, so I’m off to the Outrim oval to play some rock and roll with my son Sean and my old mate Gavin. Maybe I’ll tell you how it went tomorrow.

Cheers.

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December 30, 2009

New Blog

Filed under: computer, web — James A McDonough @ 2:10 am

Hello World -

I’m hopefully posting on a WordPress blog on my new website. The last site that I was running has lapsed and I thought that it would be a good exercise to build a new one as I am enrolled in an IT degree and I will likely want a testbed for a few ideas. In particular I have been playing with MySQL a little and it seemed like a good idea to get my head around installing WordPress. I had been using FlatPress exactly because it didn’t involve running a database on the server but now that I’m a student of IT I shouldn’t be so unadventurous. I must say, though, I found FlatPress a breeze to use and it was saving me about seven US dollars a year because my host (NearlyFree) charges 2c a day for MySQL.

I expect that I will continue to use this blog as a public diary, especially posting any music related activities, but not neglecting to share the trivia that I doubt anybody really wants to hear.

Cheers.

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