Today I Learned

A Hashrocket project

We're Hiring!
Ready to join Hashrocket? Find Openings here and apply today.

197 posts about #workflow

List cli xcodebuild archives in Xcode's organizer

When using a Makefile to build Xcode applications, itā€™s nice to have the archives listed in the Organizer window, for easy distribution. This can be accomplished with the -archivePath flag, using a specific directory:

BOB_THE_BUILD_DIR="~/Library/Developer/Xcode/Archives/$(date +%Y-%m-%d)"
ARCHIVE_PATH="$BOB_THE_BUILD_DIR/MyApp-$(date|md5).xcarchive"

xcodebuild -scheme MyApp -workspace "MyApp.xcworkspace" archive -configuration release -archivePath "$ARCHIVE_PATH"

How using fzf in new places rocks

Thanks to joshbranchaud and gabrielreis for these:

Fuzzy git checkout (alias in git config):

[alias]
    fco = !git branch | fzf +m | awk '{print $1}' | xargs git checkout

Then just use git fco and get an interactive fzf session to look through the available branches!

Fuzzy rails routes:

rails routes | fzf

Fuzzy search your routes without needing to run rails routes multiple times!

About cool ways to use file marks

File marks in vim are just marks made with [A-Z]. They have the delightful property that they persist (via .viminfo) across sessions without needing a session (depending on your settings). Iā€™ve known about them for a while, but I wasnā€™t sure if there was really a way that I could come up with the use them. So I went out looking and found something that I like!

`T -> project todo file
`V -> .vimrc

Iā€™ll probably come up with some other ideas based on the invariant files that I frequently visit, but these two are definitely going into my rotation. Iā€™m also thinking that at least one more should be added: 

`L -> TIL file (ABT - always be TILin)

cReddit where credit is due

About nvim SHADA (Shared Data) file and Sessions

Ever stop your vim and get really depressed that you just lost your buffers? Cause Iā€™ve done it twice today. The relevant details about sessions:

   The following command creates a session file:

    :mksession vimbook.vim

Later if you want to restore this session, you can use this command:

    :source vimbook.vim

If you want to start Vim and restore a specific session, you can use the
following command:

    vim -S vimbook.vim

This tells Vim to read a specific file on startup.  The 'S' stands for
session (actually, you can source any Vim script with -S, thus it might as
well stand for "source").

Your sessionoptions needs to include buffers. The SHADA file is like adding steroids. You can keep marks, register contents, and command line history.

Relevant documentation

šŸšÆ Prevent development logs from bloating on macOS

I rarely need to refer to development.log or test.log when working on rails applications, but yet I end up keeping weeks or even years of records [gigabytes]. Iā€™m used to working with logrotate, and I wanted to find a similar solution that was preinstalled with macOS. macOS comes preinstalled with a program called newsyslog that can keep file sizes in check. I just created a new file at /etc/newsyslog.d/rails.conf which limits all railā€™s log files to just 10MB

# /etc/newsyslog.d/rails.conf
# logfilename                                                   [owner:group]      mode count size(KB)     when  flags [/pid_file] [sig_num]
/Users/<username>/dev/<rails projects>/*/log/*.log              <username>:staff   644  0     10000         *     G
# Mono repos
/Users/<username>/dev/<rails projects>/*/*/log/*.log            <username>:staff   644  0     10000         *     G
# Deeper mono repos
/Users/<username>/dev/<rails projects>/*/*/*/log/*.log          <username>:staff   644  0     10000         *     G

You can also perform a dryrun of the config for testing:

sudo newsyslog -v -n -f /etc/newsyslog.d/rails.conf

Clean Paste šŸ§¼

When you copy text from the internet, a bunch of formatting and HTML gets copied, too. Copy a linkā€™s text and paste it into Mac Notes, and thereā€™s some of the text formatting of the website, plus the link.

I almost never want this extra stuff, so I use an alternate paste dubbed the ā€˜Clean Paste.ā€™ On MacOS, instead of CMD + V, try CMD + OPTION + SHIFT + V. Youā€™ll get just the text, minus all the extras.

Note: I learned this via the newsletter Recomendo, which I (pause for effect) recommend. Itā€™s so helpful me and Iā€™ve looked it up so many times, that Iā€™m re-sharing it here.

Automate Applescript via Accessibility Description

While automating a few tasks I do frequently it became apparent that many apps do not title their UI elements. This makes it more of a trial and error process to figure out which button is where.

This leads to script that is not very descriptive:

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "zoom.us"
        click button 3 of window 0
    end tell
end tell

Iā€™ve always wanted to reference elements by their label or utilize accessibility attributes if they are available but could never figure out how.

I finally have!

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "zoom.us"
        click (first button where its accessibility description = "Copy Invite Link") of window 0
    end tell
end tell

This is obviously a bit more verbose but infinitly more descriptive when looking back at what a script is doing.

My future self is already thanking me.

Tmux not starting after an upgrade

Recently upgraded my version of Tmux and after could no longer start a session. After banging my head on tmuxā€™s config files it turned out that sessions that were currently in play were the problem.

So if you find yourself in this situationā€¦ make sure to stop all sessions and most likely youā€™ll have Tmux working again.

An easy way to kill everything would be tmux kill-server.

10x Your Playback Rate

Consuming pre-recorded conference talks, video tutorials, and podcasts at accelerated speeds is possible and addictive. Each week I send a newsletter containing at least one recent conference talk Iā€™ve watched, and I wouldnā€™t be able to do this without the following hack:

Most videos players (YouTube, Vimeo, QuickTime) let you increase the playback rate, but often these controls are hard to find or have an arbitrary ceiling like 2x. If thereā€™s a video element in the DOM, I like to bump up the rate in the DevTools console like this:

document.querySelector('video').playbackRate = 3

ā€˜3ā€™ equals three-times the normal speed, and that seems to be my limit for the moment.

playbackRate MDN docs

Inline MD codeblock with double backticks

A pair of single backticks signify an inline code block in Markdown. But if you need to put a backtick in that code block the backtick ends the codeblock!

Another way to signify an inline codeblock is with double backticks, two backticks in sequence on either side of the codeblock.

When using double backticks for a codeblock, a single backtick within the codeblock will be interpreted as just that, not the end of the codeblock.

Firefox Profiles for Work and Home šŸ‘¤

Iā€™m managing two Firefoxes on my laptop: one for work and one for after work. A feature that supports this well is Firefox profiles. Visit them in Firefox by typing about:profiles into the browser bar.

These work like Chrome Peopleā€” separate sessions, histories, bookmarks, etc. I have styled the two browsers a little differently so I can quickly tell them apart.

I used to use Incognito/Private Windows for this setup, but those arenā€™t great for long-running browser sessions, because when you close or crash the browser, anything youā€™ve done in that browser is gone. Profiles give me the isolation I need with some persistence, too.

Perform on Zoom šŸŽø

Planning to use Zoom for something other than a meeting, like a reading or musical performance, that would benefit from room noise and a softer audio experience? If so, read on!

Zoom has several default audio features in place to make your business calls sound great. We donā€™t want those features in place in a performance setting. Jettison them by enabling ā€˜original soundā€™ under advanced audio settings:

image

All you need to do from here is turn on your best (quality and/or position) microphone option. For me, thatā€™s my display audio.

h/t Suzanne Erin

Toggle Dark Reader šŸŒ“

I really love the Dark Reader Browser plugin (h/t Chris Erin). It turns most websites into a dark mode that is really easy on my eyes. However, some sites just donā€™t look right in dark mode. Luckily, the plugin can be toggled on and off with ALT + SHIFT + D on Firefox and Chrome. I use it a couple of times a day on websites I encounter on the internet.

Bonus: Hereā€™s an example of this plugin in action, that is very meta.

image

Dark Reader

How to fight the dragon

Tonight I learned how to fight the dragon in #Minecraft.

Preparation

Nice to have:

  • armor with protection
  • bow with power
  • sword with sharpening
  • stength/health/regen potions
  • pumpkin head
  • snowballs

Must have:

  • golden apple, speed potion,
  • pickaxe, bow, arrows, sword & shield, armor
  • stack of dirt/cobblestone, buckets of water, ladders

I proceeded to The End. I picked a fight with a dragon and its pesky posse of ender men (pumpkin head helps). I learned to:

  • dodge the purple dragon breath
  • dodge or block dragon dives with the sheild

  • destroy crystals

    • with bow or snowballs for shorter towers
    • for taller towers, dump water at tower base, climb with ladder, then break crystal and fall into water
  • with a sword strike dragonā€™s feet when it sits on the pillar of bedrock
  • use looted ender pearls to teleport dodge

In The End, I died.

VSCode Select All Matches

Iā€™ve been using VSCode for a while, and really love the shortcut CMD+Shift+D: if you have something selected, it will find and select the next match.

Imgur

Today I accidentally pressed CMD+Shift+L, and serendipitously found out that it ā€œSelects All Occurrences of Find Match.ā€ Now I can remove those pesky quotations marks in this Ruby hash all at once! As written, the hash keys will be turned into symbols anyway, so the quote marks are noise.

Imgur

Hat tip šŸŽ©to Licecap for straightforward recording of gifs on any platform.

Turn on coordinates in Minecraft Realm

In a Minecraft Realm the option to turn on the coordinate system is not available without turning on cheats. That is not good because then youā€™ll lose achievements.

Many tutorials recommend downloading the realm locally, flipping the switch for coordinates, and then uploading that copy of your world back to the realm. Turns out that some server commands will work in the Realmā€¦ coordinates being one of them!

Enter this into your chat window to enable coordinates:

/gamerule showcoordinates true

You can, of course, turn them back off via: 

/gamerule showcoordinates false

Mac Notes Default Text Size šŸ”Ž

I use Mac Notes a lot during pairing and brainstorming. It works, and itā€™s right there on the Mac!

One issue Iā€™ve had is that the default text size on Mac Notes is unreadably small on a big monitor or iMac. I always end up creating a note, then bumping the text size with CMD-SHIFT ..

Of course, thereā€™s a better way. Set the default font size in preferences.

image

Slack Hot-Keys Rock

Do you like slack? Chances are it doesnā€™t really matter whether you do or donā€™t. Itā€™s a matter of course at this point that you will probably work with it. Because thatā€™s the case, you should at least strive to be as aware of neat features as possible!

To that end, you should check out the built-in hot-key help using:

MacOS: Command + / Linux/Windows: Ctrl + /

Iā€™m particularly fond of the ā€œNavigationā€ and ā€œChannels & Direct Messagesā€!

How to redirect standard error

2> Allows us to redirect standard error.

Taking advantage of rmā€™s ability to not delete files recursively can come in handy, especially when writing clean up scripts, but it can be noisy when you donā€™t care.

Give this file structure:

~/
  tmpfile1.txt
  tmpfile2.txt
  tmpfile3.txt
  tmpfile4.txt
  do-not-delete/
    secrets.yml

I may want to delete all the files, but not touch the directories (to keep file removal simple)

$ rm *
rm: cannot remove 'do-not-delete': Is a directory

$ ls
~/
  do-not-delete/
    secrets.yml

Because the directory error message comes over stderr, we can simply redirect it to /dev/null to ignore it:

rm * 2> /dev/null

Linking to a PayPal Transaction Page ā›“

This is a follow up to PayPal Transaction Pages arenā€™t Linkable. We figured out a way to build this feature!

When you process a PayPal transaction with the SDK (i.e. as a seller), you get a token that could be considered a transaction ID. It is something like a primary key on an object that is the parent to several other transactions: the sellerā€™s transaction, any currency conversions, etc.

With this ID in hand, you can link to the sellerā€™s dashboard and see a summary of this parent transaction. Itā€™s not a documented feature, so the link could be broken at any time.

Thanks for sticking with me, PayPal support.

PayPal Transaction Pages aren't Linkable ā›“

I spent some time this week trying to create a link directly to a PayPal Merchant transaction show page. This is the page youā€™d see as a merchant when somebody has paid you via PayPal.

These pages use the transactionā€™s ID as a lookup, so Iā€™d need the know that ID in order to dynamically create the link. After some Googling, reading GitHub issues, and finally the source code of my PayPal SDK of choice, Iā€™d like to report: PayPal does not expose this ID in the normal course of business.

To quote my PayPal caseworker:

ā€œWhile there are ways of retrieving the Transaction IDā€¦ you will not be able to link directly to the PayPal transaction details page, for security. The only way that your buyers can view the transaction details page is by accessing PayPal themselves, logging in with their credentials, and navigating to the Activity.ā€

I hope this spares another developer from the same rabbit-hole I just emerged from. Sometimes things with technology donā€™t work. šŸ¤·ā€ā™€ļø

Edit: we figured it out!

Capitalize Hashtags for #a11y

At RubyConf 2019, I learned that social media hashtags are more easily read by screen readers if they are capitalized. So #rubyconf is more accessible when written as #RubyConf, because the screen reader can more easily make sense of the word breaks. Keep this in mind when posting and designing marketing campaigns.

I saw #rubyfriends and #rubyconf migrate to #RubyFriends and #RubyConf at the conference in realtime as this idea spread.

more info

h/t Coraline Ada Ehmke

Tmux Attach Sessions with Working Directory

Your Tmux working directory is the root directory of the session. You can figure out what it is by opening a new window or pane in your session. The directory you start in is your working directory.

Sometimes itā€™s not the best directory for the type of project youā€™re developing. For instance, it could be set to the root directory of an umbrella app, when youā€™re working exclusively in one of the subdirectories.

Reset it with the -c flag:

$ tmux attach-session -t my_session -c ~/my_project

Convert .mov to .gif with ffmpeg

Sometimes putting a gif in a pull request is really helpful for reviewers. If youā€™ve recorded a movie on an iOS simulator with xcrun simctl or just QuickTime, itā€™s very simple to convert them to animated .gifs

Example:

ffmpeg -i screen_recording.mov \
       -s 415x925 \
       -pix_fmt rgb24 \
       -r 10 \
       -f gif \
       screen_recording.gif

Now it would be nice to have a function that could extract the video dimensions automatically šŸ¤” mdls šŸ¤Æ

1 function gif-mov() {
2   movie=$1
3   height=$(mdls -name kMDItemPixelHeight ${movie} | grep -o '[0-9]\+')
4   width=$(mdls -name kMDItemPixelWidth ${movie} | grep -o '[0-9]\+')
5   dimensions="${width}x${height}"
6   ffmpeg -i ${movie} -s ${dimensions} -pix_fmt rgb24 -r 10 -f gif ${movie}.gif
7 }

Usage:

$ gif-mov ~/Desktop/cool-screen-recording.mov

Mechanical Keyboard DIP Switches

Iā€™ve owned a WASD keyboard for a while but totally forgot about the DIP switches on the bottom. Whatā€™s a DIP switch? From Wikipedia:

A DIP switch is a manual electric switch that is packaged with others in a group in a standard dual in-line package (DIP). The term may refer to each individual switch, or to the unit as a whole. This type of switch is designed to be used on a printed circuit board along with other electronic components and is commonly used to customize the behavior of an electronic device for specific situations.

DIP switch

On a WASD V2 87-key, these switches let you enable Mac mode (switch command and option), swap caps lock with CTRL, activate function commands, and more. These can be set in the OS or via different applications, but setting them at the hardware level is very convenient.

DIP Switch

Change Mechanical Keyboard Keycaps Faster āŒØļø

I change the keys on my mechanical keyboards often. Sometimes Iā€™m upgrading from stock, or trying an experiment, or just pursuing a look. Itā€™s a reality of being really into keyboards.

Something Iā€™ve learned along the way: removing all your old caps at once is a bad idea. When you do this, you have to figure out where every key goes. Some keycaps have a code on the underside telling you the row it belongs to, most do not. I end up pulling up my Mac virtual keyboard, or looking at another keyboard, to sort it out.

A better techique: take the new keys and line them up in the correct order for each row. Some keycaps ship in separate rows, making this easy. If thatā€™s the case, slide each row out of its shrinkwrap like a sleeve of Thin Mints.

Then, change one row at a time. Remove all the keycaps in one row, and then put all the new ones in place. This is fast, foolproof, and if you get interrupted in between rows, you still have a functioning keyboard.

image

Disable CodeSandbox Auto-Formatting

CodeSandbox autoformats your code on save by default, which I find very valuable. Sometimes, when debugging an issue or experimenting with a code style, I donā€™t actually want autoformatting to occur.

This can be disabled under ā€˜Preferencesā€™ -> ā€˜Settingsā€™ -> ā€˜User Settingsā€™ -> ā€˜Format On Saveā€™. Make sure to turn it back on when youā€™re done experimenting.

image

Proposing new time on Google Calendar invitations

Today I learned that we can respond to an invitation using google calendar proposing a new time. Check this out:

First when we open an invitation on gmail I can hit the link more options:

image

This will open the event on google calendar. Then we can expand more options with the caret down and hit Propose a new time.

image

Finally choose a time and send it back to the event owner. And thatā€™s how they will receive our request to change the event time:

image

Pivotal Tracker Advanced Search by Owner

On a big project, Pivotal Tracker contains a wealth of data. Letā€™s use it!

Today I filtered all the stories assigned to my teammate with the owner keyword:

owner, owned_by
owner: ā€œObi Wan Kenobiā€
Search using the full name, initials, the username, user id or part of the userā€™s name.

This filtered out hundreds of stories, leaving the four in progress that I care about.

Hereā€™s the official advanced search guide. Try a new keyword today!

https://www.pivotaltracker.com/help/articles/advanced_search/

Research Software Alternatives

Today I discovered AlternativeTo, which provides ā€˜crowdsourced software recommendationsā€™. Itā€™s available here:

https://alternativeto.net/

With this resource you can find alternatives to websites, tools, operating systems, and more, and learn about each alternative you find.

For reference, I checked out the results for open source alternatives to Ruby. The list includes no-brainers like Python, JavaScript, and Java, but also Go, C, and Lua. If I were a CTO who didnā€™t know Ruby and needed to quickly understand its position in the ecosystem, this would be a pretty useful starting point.

image