Meine pinboard.in-Links vom 25. Juli bis zum 20. August:

• Baïkal - is a lightweight CalDAV + CardDAV server. Baïkal offers ubiquitous and synchronized access to your calendars and address books over CalDAV and CardDAV. Baïkal implements the current IETF recommendation drafts of these industry standards for centralized calendar and address book collections.
• autoenv - Magic per-project shell environments. Very pretentious. If a directory contains a .env file, it will automatically be executed when you cd into it.
• upton - is a framework for easy web-scraping with a useful debug mode that doesn’t hammer your target’s servers. It does the repetitive parts of writing scrapers, so you only have to write the unique parts for each site.
• Forge - Slightly Magic - is an implementation of Magic the Gathering that lets you play against a computer AI opponent using most of the rules of a real game. You can construct decks for you and the computer to play with, currently about 13050 (and counting) cards are available.
• vimus - An MPD client with vim-like key bindings, written in Haskell
• Docsplit - is a command-line utility and Ruby library for splitting apart documents into their component parts: searchable UTF-8 plain text via OCR if necessary, page images or thumbnails in any format, PDFs, single pages, and document metadata (title, author, number of pages…)
• Glui - The simplest way to capture, annotate and share screenshots on OS X.
• Shuttle - A simple SSH shortcut menubar app for OS X.
• mon - mon is a super-simple monitoring program. mon spawned from the needlessly complex frustration that tools like monit provide, with their awkward DSLs and setup. mon is written in C, uses less than 400kb of memory, and is incredibly simple to set up.
• CryPing - is a a free and simple to use network connectivity test tool. It is a command line utility that extends the functionality of the traditional ping command to include the ability to ping individual specific ports. With CryPing you can ping a TCP-IP port. The ability to ping HTTP, SMTP, POP3 or NNTP services. CryPing provides a simple command line way to check that an http web server (HTTP), outgoing email server (SMTP), incoming email server (POP3) or news-server (NNTP) is responding. You can even view the response headers if you wish. This is for when pinging the port just isn’t enough.

So, I am in the middle of ripping and encoding all my DVDs to h.264 files living in iTunes. 200 DVDs and some files which were lying around in various formats. This leads to around a Terabyte of additional data on my Mac mini.

Crashplan, my offsite backup solution of choice, did not cope too well with this¹. It kept displaying Unable to connect to backup destination for days on end. Turns out, it needed a bit more RAM to keep up with the new piles of data.

To get things going again, first stop the crashplan daemon:

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sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.crashplan.engine.plist

Next, take your favorite editor and point it with sudo to edit /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.crashplan.engine.plist. This XML-file is responsible for some parameters of the crashplan daemon. Look for the line:

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<string>Xmx512m</string>

and change it to:

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<string>Xmx1024m</string>

You just doubled the ammount of RAM Crashplan can use.

Save and close the file and restart the crashplan daemon with:

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sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.crashplan.engine.plist

Crashplan should now manage to pump your data to your safe offsite backup destination.

(via: After Hours Projects)

Meine pinboard.in-Links vom 18. Juni bis zum 17. Juli:

• tv.js - A Smart TV application to stream movies using BitTorrent. (Yes it actually streams them in order even though it’s BitTorrent). Tv.js used iTunes’ API to find movies, isoHunt to search torrents and BitTorrent to downloading/stream movies. It runs as a server which can run on a Raspberry Pi and the UI can be controlled from a smartphone (no need of keyboard or mouse).
• 7Min - A web-based timer for the ‘Scientific 7-Minute Workout’.
• Inadyn - is a free DDNS client. It makes is possible to have a fixed Internet hostname registered to a dynamic IP address.
• Swish - adds support for SFTP to Windows Explorer so you can access your files on another computer securely via SSH.
• homebrew-cask - a friendly homebrew-style CLI workflow for the administration of Mac applications distributed as binaries
• Dashing - is a Sinatra based framework that lets you build beautiful dashboards.
• Clipper - is an OS X “launch agent” that runs in the background providing a service that exposes the local clipboard to tmux sessions and other processes running both locally and remotely.
• Dokku - is a mini-Heroku powered by Docker written in less than 100 lines of Bash. Once it’s set up on a host, you can push Heroku-compatible applications to it via Git. They’ll build using Heroku buildpacks and then run in isolated containers. The end result is your own, single-host version of Heroku.
• Nikkou - adds additional methods to Nokogiri to make extracting commonly-used data from HTML and XML easier. It lets you transform HTML into structured data very quickly, and it integrates nicely with Mechanize.
• CrunchBang - is a Debian GNU/Linux based distribution offering a great blend of speed, style and substance. Using the nimble Openbox window manager, it is highly customisable and provides a modern, full-featured GNU/Linux system without sacrificing performance.

Das ist eine wirklich putzige kleine Katze. Sie scheint sehr misstrauisch zu sein. Und etwas ängstlich.

Das waren meine Gedanken, als ich Manu das erste mal sah. Sie befand sich zu diesem Zeitpunkt ganz hinten unter einer Couch. Quasi bereits in der Wand. So, wie nur Katzen es können. Die Couch stand in der verlassenen Wohnung eines Onkels von Kathi, er konnte die Katze wegen gesundheitlicher Probleme nicht länger behalten und so kam sie im Januar 2009 zu uns.

Und sie blieb. In den nächsten Jahren glaubten Besucher oftmals nicht, dass wir unsere Wohnung tatsächlich mit einer Katze teilten. Sie versteckte sich stets beim ersten Anzeichen von fremden Zweibeinern und blieb verschwunden, bis der Besuch wieder gegangen war.

Unvergessen auch die Episode, in der wir sie aus Versehen mit der alten Couch auf den Sperrmüll getragen haben. Die Katze ließ sich, erstaunlich widerstandslos, aus dem Garten der Nachbarn wieder in die Wohnung tragen…

In den letzten zwei Wochen war Manu aber auch dann oft versteckt, wenn nur wir daheim waren. Sie fraß auch weniger und ihr rechtes Auge triefte. Am vorletzten Freitag haben wir sie daher, unter erheblicher Gegenwehr, zum Tierarzt gebracht. Der Tierarzt Besuch war ja auch schon immer so ein Highlight….

Diagnostiziert wurde, nach den üblichen Vorsichtsmaßnahmen seitens aller anwesenden Menschen, eine Entzündung im Maul. Zwei Zähne mussten gezogen werden. Um abzuklären, ob es sich eventuell auch um etwas schlimmeres handeln könnte, wurde eine Biopsie genommen. Die Chancen für Krebs wurden auf ca. fifty-fifty eingeschätzt. Manchmal hat man ja Glück, manchmal hat man ja Pech. Die Katze durfte wieder nach Hause und über das Wochenende schien sie sich auch zunächst besser zu fühlen. Dennoch fing das Auge am Sonntag wieder an zu triefen.

Manu hatte leider richtig Pech. Am Dienstag erhielt ich die telefonische Nachricht, dass Manu an einem bösartigen, weit fortgeschrittenen Karzinom in ihrem Rachen leidet. Eine Therapie ist nicht möglich, eine Einschläferung der einzige Weg, dem Tier Leid zu ersparen.

Am Mittwoch morgen um viertel nach zehn hat Manu das letzte mal die Augen geschlossen.

Manu Katze
* 2005 ✝ 19.06.2013

Mach’s gut Manu, und danke für den Fisch.

Meine pinboard.in-Links vom 28. Mai bis zum 18. Juni:

• ocra - (One-Click Ruby Application) builds Windows executables from Ruby source code. The executable is a self-extracting, self-running executable that contains the Ruby interpreter, your source code and any additionally needed ruby libraries or DLL.
• Antwort - offers responsive layouts for Email that both fits and adapts to client widths. Don’t underwhelm desktop users with single column layouts that work for mobile. Antwort offers columns on desktop that automatically become rows on mobile.
• Pagoda - Zen like blog editor for your Jekyll blog, heavily inspired by Svbtle and Obvtse.
• crouton - is a set of scripts based around debootstrap that bundle up into an easy-to-use, Chromium OS-centric Ubuntu chroot generator. It should work for Debian as well (you can specify a different mirror and release), but “Chromium OS Debian Chroot Environment” doesn’t acronymize as well.
• Levinux - (download ~18 MB) is a tiny virtual Linux server that runs from USB or Dropbox with a double-click (no install) from the desktop of a Mac, Windows or Linux PC-making it the perfect learning environment, and a great way to run & keep your code safe for life! Think of it as an introduction to old-skool “short stack” development-more relevant now then ever as Linux/Unix gets embedded into everything.
• Plot - a scientific 2D plotting program for Mac OS X. Plot is designed for everyday plotting, it is easy to use, it creates high quality plots, it allows easy and powerful manipulations and calculations of data and it is free.
• Pingendo - is a desktop app to author HTML and CSS for designer and developers.
• OpenEmu - is an open source project to bring game emulation to OS X as a first class citizen, leveraging modern OS X technologies such as Cocoa, Core Animation and Quartz, and 3rd party libraries like Sparkle for auto-updating. Open Emu is based on a modular architecture, allowing for game-engine plugins, this means Open Emu can support a host of different emulation engines and back-ends while retaining a familiar OS X native front-end.
• CocoaDialog - is an OS X application that allows the use of common GUI controls such as file selectors, text input, progress bars, yes/no confirmations and more with a command-line application. It requires no knowledge of Cocoa, and is ideal for use in shell and Perl scripts (or Ruby, or Python, or… etc).
• a2z - Simple Ruby DSL for searching & retrieving items from the Amazon Product Advertising API

Es gibt sie auf jeder handelsüblichen Tastatur unter der Sonne: Die Caps Lock Taste ⇪ – Eine Geißel der modernen Menschheit.

Im besten Falle wird sie einfach gar nicht benutzt, im schlimmsten zum augenzerfetztenden RUMSCHREIEN in Großbuchstaben. Die Sinnhaftigkeit dieses links außen in der Homerow der Tastatur sitzenden Reliktes aus den Zeiten mechanischer Schreibmaschinen ist also mit zweifelhaft noch sehr geschönt beschrieben. Ein geradezu schreiender¹ Euphemismus.

Glücklicherweise lässt sich unter so gut wie jedem OS Abhilfe schaffen. Es existieren auch Initiativen wie CapsOff, die fordern, die Taste grundsätzlich durch eine ⌃-Taste zu ersetzen. Es gibt sogar Leute, die einfach einen Schraubendreher bemühen und die Taste physikalisch entfernen.

Kann man ja auch alles machen.

Hier steht allerdings nun, wie ich die Schreitaste in ein so dermaßen sinnvolles Werkzeug verwandelt habe, dass Computer ohne dieses Feature für mich beizeiten kaputt erscheinen.

Serious geekery ahead. Click for more…

Meine pinboard.in-Links vom 02. Mai bis zum 17. Mai:

• pysprinklers - the PySprinklers project is a homebrew intelligent sprinkler system designed to conserve water by not running the sprinklers if it had rained.
• musicForProgramming(); - A series of mixes intended for listening while programming to aid concentration and increase productivity (also compatible with other activities).
• stringer - A [work-in-progress] self-hosted, anti-social RSS reader. Stringer has no external dependencies, no social recommendations/sharing, and no fancy machine learning algorithms. But it does have keyboard shortcuts (hit ? from within the app) and was made with love! When BIG_FREE_READER shuts down, your instance of Stringer will still be kicking.
• ToDoFlow - provides an API for interacting with todo lists in plain text files with taskpaperlike format with powerful query syntax. It provides functions to modify lists and to convert them to markdown, html and XML used in Alfred2 workflow.
• fasd - (pronounced similar to “fast”) is a command-line productivity booster. Fasd offers quick access to files and directories for POSIX shells. It is inspired by tools like autojump, z and v. Fasd keeps track of files and directories you have accessed, so that you can quickly reference them in the command line.
• pro - is a command to wrangle your git repositories. It includes features like instantly cd’ing to your git repos and getting a status overview, and running an arbitrary command in every git repo.
• entr - The Event Notify Test Runner is a general-purpose UNIX utility intended to make rapid feedback and automated testing natural and completely ordinary.
• VisualAck - is like grep (or ack), except faster and with UI. For Mac.
• Palua - quickly switch the mode of your Function Keys on any Mac keyboard by Hotkey or based on active Application.
• Light Table - is a new interactive IDE that lets you modify running programs and embed anything from websites to games. It provides the real time feedback we need to not only answer questions about our code, but to understand how our programs really work.

Oft, sehr oft, ist Excel das Mitel der Wahl um Daten aus verschiedenen Quellen zusammen zu fassen. Häufig, sehr häufig, kann man das auch auf der Shell mit einer Reihe von ein- oder zweizeiligen Scripten erledigen. Und öfter, immer öfter, ist man mit ein paar relativ unbekannten Befehlen¹ deutlich schneller als mit dem GUI-Monster, das Excel nun mal ist. Und wann immer man so etwas automatisieren möchte, sind Scripte² wirklich das, was man benutzen möchte.

Hier sei exemplarisch das zusammenführen von zwei einfachen Textdateien mittels paste und die Numerierung der Zeilen des Ergebnisses mit nl gezeigt:

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3
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5
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7
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9
10
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12
13
14
15
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 ~ >  cat a.txt
foo
bar
fnord

 ~ >  cat b.txt
blue
red
green

 ~ >  paste a.txt b.txt > c.txt

 ~ >  nl c.txt
     1  foo     blue
     2  bar     red
     3  fnord   green

Irre, oder?

Das ganze funktioniert natürlich auch mit CSV-Dateien die wesentlich größer sind als diese kleinen Beispiele³…

(via: Gareth)

Meine pinboard.in-Links vom 14. April bis zum 29. April:

• Notepad2 - a fast and light-weight Notepad-like text editor with syntax highlighting. This program can be run out of the box without installation, and does not touch your system’s registry.
• BitTorrent Sync - is a simple tool that applies p2p protocol for direct live folder sync with maximum security, network speed and storage capacity. It has native versions for Mac, Windows and Linux, as well as native NAS integration.
• Contextinator - lets you divide your web browsing sessions into projects and manage all of their related information. A project is a collection of browser tabs opened in the same window, series of filters in existing applications (Gmail, Evernote, Dropbox, etc.), bookmarks, people and tasks.
• Bash $PS1 Generator - This tool will help you generate a custom colorful bash prompt for Unix-like operating systems, including Linux and Mac OS X.
• moreutils - is a growing collection of the unix tools that nobody thought to write long ago when unix was young.
• Liquid prompt - is a smart prompt for the “Bourne-Again” Unix shell (bash) and for Zsh. The basic idea of the liquid prompt is to nicely display useful informations on the shell prompt, only when they are needed. It adds carefuly chosen colors to draw your attention on what differs from the normal context. Thus, you will notice what changes, when it changes, because you do not become accommodated to informations that are always displayed in the same way.
• shelr.tv - allows you to record something interesting from your terminal and share it to your followers. It is almost the same thing as YouTube but for plain text shellcasts. You can copy and paste everything you see.
• Maid - keeps files from sitting around too long, untouched. Many of the downloads and temporary files you collect can easily be categorized and handled appropriately by rules you define. Let the maid in your computer take care of the easy stuff, so you can spend more of your time on what matters.Think of it like the email filters you might already have, but for files. Worried about things happening that you don’t expect? Maid doesn’t overwrite files and actions are logged so you can tell what happened. Maid is inspired by the Mac OS X shareware program Hazel. Think of Maid as “Hazel for hackers”. Your rules are defined in Ruby, so simple rules are easy and difficult rules are possible. This also makes Maid a great general-purpose advanced file renaming tool.
• wemux - enhances tmux to make multi-user terminal multiplexing both easier and more powerful. It allows users to host a wemux server and have clients join in either Mirror, Pair or Rouge Mode. It features multi-server support as well as user listing and notifications when users attach/detach.
• jrnl - is a simple journal application for your command line. Journals are stored as human readable plain text files - you can put them into a Dropbox folder for instant syncing and you can be assured that your journal will still be readable in 2050, when all your fancy iPad journal applications will long be forgotten. jrnl also plays nice with the fabulous DayOne and can read and write directly from and to DayOne Journals. Optionally, your journal can be encrypted using the 256-bit AES.

Heute vor drei Jahren haben Kathi und ich geheiratet.

Ich wünsche der besten Ehefrau der Welt und mir eine wundervolle lederne Hochzeit¹ und freue mich auf das nächste Jahr im aufregenden Hafen der Ehe.