Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category

Recursive Word Count in Terminal

Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007

I’ve recently wondered about how to recursively count the number of lines within a series of files within a directory hierarchy. The command that I came up with is:
wc -l `find . -name \*.java -print`
The output is very readable, since it prints both the filename and the number of lines.
Enjoy!

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Condolencies to the Big Nerd Ranch

Saturday, December 23rd, 2006

I was sorry to hear about the recent events at the Big Nerd Ranch. Just prior to their excellent Cocoa course all of the equipment was stolenĀ and the classroom was burnt down. Well done to Emily and Jaye for getting things organized so quickly. I hope that you guys are back on track soon!

Adding files to Subversion

Tuesday, November 21st, 2006

I picked up this tip when I was beginning to work with Ruby on Rails and Subversion. I added the following alias to my .profile file

alias svnaddall=’svn status | grep “^\?” | awk “{print \$2}” | xargs svn add’


This command takes all files in the present directory and flags them to be added in the next commit. This saves adding each of the files one-by-one. You don’t just have to use the command for Rails either- use it for everything. I do!

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Text selection on OS X kicks ass!

Saturday, November 18th, 2006

I’ve just found out about a really neat trick at creativebits. If you hold the option key and drag you can select a freeform area of text. Cool!

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Cool Backgrounds

Tuesday, November 14th, 2006

I’ve just come across some cool background images courtesy of Adam Betts. I like a nice plain background, and this hits the spot for me!

Big Nerd Ranch Review

Thursday, August 31st, 2006

Now that I’m back from the Big Nerd Ranch I thought I’d write my own review, as it was the reviews of others that had finally persuaded me to book my place.

The instructor for the course is Aaron Hillegass, author of the highly regarded introductory text on Cocoa programming. The book forms the majority of the course materials, and quite rightly so. It is both well written and easy to follow. In addition to the book another 6 as yet unpublished chapters are used, covering concepts like advanced objective-c, a better understanding of bindings and CoreData.

I’ve been to many courses, but none have been so intensive. There is a lot to cover, but each concept is introduced with a short lecture, followed by activities with enough depth to challenge those that work quickly and those that like to work a little slower or apply the concept to something slightly different.

After a days hard work most students returned to the classroom to play around with what had been covered that day, or work on personal projects. During this time Aaron was available to iron out any wrinkles or help solve any bugs that cropped up.

The real value of the course can only be seen afterwards. I am delighted with how my personal projects have been developing since I returned from the course.

I went as a privateer, and had some initial reservations about the high cost of the course, although these reservations are now a distant memory! So if you have an interest in Cocoa programming or a need to program in Cocoa then book yourself a place on the course today (and if you can get your company to pay for it then all the better!).

New iMac Ordered

Wednesday, June 28th, 2006

I finally stumped up the cash for a new Intel mac. I went for the 20″ model as I thought the extra screen size would come in handy. I ordered it with a gig of RAM in one Dimm and ordered more from Crucial. I threw in a Aperture too. I’d been meaning to pick up a copy for a while but couldn’t bear the thought of it running on my G4 powerBook. I’ll post a review as soon as I’ve had a chance to play.

Now the all important question- Do I install Windows or not?

Hello, World!

Tuesday, June 27th, 2006

It seems like everyone is jumping on the blogging bandwagon so I thought it was about time that I inflicted my personal opinions upon the world. So stick around as I put the world to rights and endeavor to stand on my soapbox for as long as people may listen.