Easter Monday 2012

On Easter Monday we celebrate the equivalent of the Easter Bunny and Eggs thing in the region where I live.

We call it "Mona's day", the mona being a typical cake we prepare for the occasion. Here there's a picture of this year's.

Git on Dropbox

The idea had been running round in my mind for some time. I move from one computer to the other all the time. Usually up to four different machines in the same day. I can never know or be sure of where I'm gonna be when I need to make a commit to one of the five git repositories I work with.

Ideally I should have all my information centralised in just one single place. This makes it easier to work with certain types of files, but it also makes it easier to have security issues and/or risk of data loss (even if you backup on a regular basis you are never ready for a hard disk crash or any other undesirable occurrence).

So as you can guess I used to have several clones of the repositories and I had to pull several times to keep them up-to-date. Not very handy :-(

I read that some people used their Dropbox folder to have git repositories. And well, as you can imagine I just had to try it... :-)

So far I have just moved my blog's git: chals.branchable.com I made a commit from my laptop and now I'm writing this post and about to commit from my desktop. If it works fine, I'll move all the other repos.

Fingers crossed...and push! :-P

Fortune

The fortune plugin inserts a fortune cookie into the post:
 

Blast medicine anyway!  We've learned to tie into every organ in the
human body but one.  The brain!  The brain is what life is all about.
        -- McCoy, "The Menagerie", stardate 3012.4

Branchable 2

In a previous post I showed you why I love Branchable so much. There you could see how using a web browser and some minimal markup (i.e. markdown) you could easily create great posts.

The truth is that I really love Branchable ever since I discovered it. But one of its real powers lies in the fact that it uses git as VCS. This means that you can edit your files locally with your favourite text editor (nano, vim , gedit...) type what you want and then simply commit your changes to the repository. You do not need to use your mouse at all. As you type, you can add the markdown features that you prefer as in the examples below:

Using asterisks ( * ) you put words in italics like this

Using number signs (#) you can emphasize text like # this

this

And many many more. Check this out:

(: - P) turns into

Well if I'm not wrong I promised to show you a bit how it works. I'll take some screenshots.

This is how you add images:

( [ [ !img branchable.png align=center size=400x500 alt=branchable_nano ] ])

This is how you create a tag:

( [ [ !tag screenshots ] ] )

And when you are ready you simply follow the drill:

 $ git add .

 $ git -a -m "Showing how cool branchable is."

 $ git push

And there you are! Enjoy!

IRC Bouncer 2

If I tell you that I have changed my irc bouncer service but however I haven't changed my server you might well think that I'm going nuts. Well, while the latter might still hold very true, I have to tell you that I have been a user of EliteBNC for a couple of months now since they opened for business.

I was very happy with GeekBouncer but since the guys decided to split partnership I decided to stick with the server I had previously been assigned to. It is very stable and reliable so the choice was very easy to make.

EliteBNC's service is excellent, the user support is great and the guys there are awesome. What else can I say?

If you are interested, please take a look at their website:

http://www.elitebnc.net

or join #EliteBNC on Infinity-IRC

Enjoy!

Syntax highlight: nano vs. vim

Syntax highlight is of course configurable so that you can use the colours you prefer or like the most. In both nano and vim you have to activate it, otherwise you do not have syntax highlight straight away like you have in other editors such as gedit.

It is not my intention right now to explain how syntax highlight is activated in any of those text editors. I'm just publishing here a screenshot that shows why working with colours enabled is better. On the GUI I always use gedit. On the CLI I use both vim and nano but I think that nano is both easier to use and nicer. This is the syntax highlight I get for po files. I definitely prefer nano's colours.

This will be the screenshot of the week.

Spongeboblish

For all SpongeBob Squarepants fans out there:

My drinking glass