Grateful and a little lucky

I’ve been away from blogging for quite some time. It’s not been by choice really, it has more to do with an unfortunate server crash.

A few months ago my site, rationaLogic, went down as a result of an unrecoverable error on the box my VPS was housed on. The backups were unrecoverable and there was no getting the box back up and running. As a result I was forced to purchase new hosting and effectively start over. I had been putting off starting my website again until I could get my personal site finished. I assumed I had lost all of my posts from the other blog since the backups were apparently corrupted as well.

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Surfing the Google Wave: Preparation

So standing on the beach, looking out over the expanse, the Wave is rather ominous. Given the fact that I’ve never used App Engine I’m a little timid about getting into that just yet. Chances are I’m going to be learning a lot in the near future. Chances are, this is going to interfere and confuse my learning of Flex for some time. I am, however, determined. This is new, the Developer Preview had me psyched, and I think there is a great deal of potential in this. I’ll document what I learn in the hopes that it will help someone else.

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Terminal Notes

Bandwidth Throttling
command : description : syntax
cd : change directory : cd Desktop
ls : list : ls

Show/Hide hidden files in Finder:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles [TRUE/FALSE]

Change file format of screenshots

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type [png/jpg/pdf]

PNG is the default, you can set it to what you like. You’ll have to log out and back in for the changes to take effect.

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Overzealous Posting

I, like many folks, do a lot of reading online. I have a limited number of places I frequent, but one of them is delicious. I love how it tends to show me the things I find interesting. Which is something I would expect it to do I suppose, or I wouldn’t be there. Never the less, occasionally, there’s a link to what I consider and overzealous post. You know the ones I’m talking about. Something like “150 OS X plugins to make your life easier” or “65 resume tweaks to land that job”. I really appreciate that these folks have taken the time to gather all this valuable information together for us, I really do. But there needs to be a filter in there somewhere. I used to click on them, if the subject seemed interesting, but after a few times of getting 1/5 of the way down the page and thinking “OK, that’s about enough.”, I stopped even clicking the link. I didn’t take the time to look for any research into the topic, but I assume I’m not the only person who feels this way. There has to be some amount of traffic lost based on giving those roaming the interwebs too much information.

Maybe I’m the only one. Hell, I don’t know. Like I said, I didn’t research it myself, I just thought it needed to be stated. If for nothing more than to make myself feel better.

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URL Variables, Your Files and You

So, recently, a question was asked:

“Can you put the tracking code on the PDF links?”

This question came at work. Our client links to PDFs for various things. Mostly coupons. They have at least one means of tracking built into the site. The only method of tracking is built into each page. So you can basically track where you came from once you land.

Basically, there is nothing in the PDFs that could take advantage of any of the tracking variables. If I were to simply answer the question, Yes, you can put tracking information on the links. Chances are, it wouldn’t hurt anything. Will it help? Probably not. Unless there’s some dynamic aspect to the PDF it won’t do anything at all. But if it makes you feel comfortable. It is doubtful that you’ll track anything though.

If there is any question, however, just ask a nearby nerd.

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