So last night, and this morning, I did a complete, from-scratch build out on this iMac. I’ve been building up a list of the software I need to get a base level of functionality on a new OS X box. They are ordered largely in the order in which I installed them — which is why QuickSilver is first; it’s far too painful to work on a box without QS installed. I’ll post more about WHY these apps are so important to me if anyone is interested.

• QuickSilver
• Google Notifier
• Firefox
• Firefox Extensions:
  • BugMeNot
  • BookMark Duplicate Detector
  • Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer
  • TMobile (USA) Minutes Used
  • Greasemonkey
  • GMailSecure
• Yojimbo
• TextMate
• Twitterific
• OmniOutliner Pro
• OmniGraffle Pro
• OmniFocus
• VPNTracker
• Microsoft Office 2004
  • Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection Client
  • Excel
  • Word
  • Powerpoint
  • Not Media Player or Entourage
• Adium
• Growl
• SSHKeychain
• Now Up To Date & Contact
• MouseLocator
• Microsoft Intellipoint Mouse Driver for the Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer 4.0 (My favorite mouse.)
• wClock
• AppleJack
• TextExpander
• Delivery Status Widget
• DashboardStarter Dashboard Kickstart
• StopIt (Dashboard Timer App)
• Shuffle Saver
• Flash Player

Text editing is TextMate. I was trying to use vim, because it’s one editor I can use both on my OS X desktop and SSH’d across the network to linux boxes. I will continue to use vim remotely — though I may look at emacs as well. But for local editing, it’s TextMate for sure. Its functionality when dealing with large source code files and trees with many different files is impressive — I can see myself working significantly more efficiently with TextMate.

I’m used to working on the command-line with Subversion, but TextMate integrates with it, so I can commit changes by hotkey, etc.

And Python is rapidly becoming my system administration language of choice. All of this seems to fit together really well.

I found a different binary at Martin Ott’s site. I have no idea why his site isn’t linked from Subversion’s, but his binary is 1.4.3, the latest.

Simply run the installer in his package, and it will do ALMOST all that’s needed. However, you still won’t be able to run svn from the command-line, because the package installs it in /usr/local/bin, and that path isn’t in Apple’s default.

For those new to the terminal, the path variable is a list of directories where OS X should look for applications. This applies only to the command line. For instance, if you type “ls” on the command line, it will look for the “ls” program in each directory listed in the path. Since it finds it in /bin, it will run ls. The path is why running “ls” is the same as running “/bin/ls”.

To find out what your path is currently, enter the following command: “echo $PATH”

(Capitalization does matter.)

To add /usr/bin/local to your path, copy and paste the following line into your terminal:

echo “export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin” >> ~/.profile

This will not affect the shell you’re running now, so type “exit” to leave the shell. Then hit CMD-N to get a new terminal, and type “svn”

You should get a message telling you to type “svn help” for more information. Success, svn is installed and configured properly.

I’ve been looking at the long list of technologies I need to master for work. (And quickly!) I’ve also been looking at the even longer list of technologies I’m interested in and would like to study in depth.

Clearly, I can’t do it all. Not immediately, at least. (And certainly not at the same time.) I need to be selective about what subjects I choose to tackle. But I also need to maximize my chances of being able to tackle these subjects.

As far as I can tell, that boils down to two main areas where I need work:

1) Time Management
2) Life Management

This was all brought about, by the way, by an excellent article I read by Steve Friedl about the process he went through penetration-testing a web app using SQL injection. Great article, but reading Steve’s site really brought home some areas where I need to update my skills.

Time Management

In poker, there’s the concept of “plugging leaks in your game.” Poker is a game of percentages, of making the best decisions possible given incomplete information, stress, and a variety of complicating factors. You can play well (even be a winning player) but have certain situations where you habitually don’t make the optimum choice. Maybe you don’t recognize the value of a certain pair of cards. Or you are easily bluffed when you’re short on chips. In any case, it’s a leak that, if plugged, can increase your overall win rate, sometimes significantly.

I feel I’m generally very productive, but I need to plug my leaks. I use NetNewsWire to keep up on a variety of tech news sites — and I’ll have to keep doing that, because knowing what’s coming (or what’s here right now) is vital to my current job performance and to my career in general. But I also have a number of non-tech-related feeds in NNW. Things like Slate.com. Warren Ellis. Others. I keep them segregated in an “Entertainment” folder, and don’t read them during work hours. But I want to maximize the return on effort I get while sitting at my computer — so I can use my non-computer time for things like hiking with K., my girlfriend. So all the non-workish feeds go. That’s a start.

I’ll have to work on disciplining my appetite for tech feeds, as well. Cutting out the less-vital ones, and making a list of the longer articles to read later, instead of reading an article on SQL Injection when I could be doing work with more of an immediate payoff.

In general, I’ll just have to be aware of how I’m spending my time.

Life Management

In terms of optimizing my life, I need to eat better, sleep better, and exercise more. Spend more time with my friends, as well. (Although right now much of my non-work time is spent with K. — I need to make an effort to keep my other relationships well fed as well.)

Right now I eat well on weekends with K., but my weekday diet is strictly bachelor-squalor — cheeseburgers, burritos, and sandwiches. (I’ll be sad if I have to give up Bay Cities Deli.) If I can make time to pick up some vegetables-in-a-bag before work, and perhaps some chicken or fish, I’ll be able to have nutritious lunches and dinners at work. (I’ll be sad again if I give up my bagel-and-cream-cheese breakfasts. Not sure what I’ll do there.)

I’ll need to get to sleep a little earlier too. I get home from work usually between 8:30 and 9:30 PM — and it often takes me a while to run down before I’m tired enough to sleep. I think exercise will help with that, though.

I love taking hikes when I get home from work (I live in the Santa Monica Mountains, and there’s lovely parks for hiking within walking distance of my house.) but I’m not crazy about hiking at night. I’ve done it, and it’s quite calm and peaceful — but sometimes a bit creepy, too. And even though I stick to fairly well-maintained trails, there is a slightly greater chance of losing my footing and breaking something, with nobody likely to come by until morning. And if I’m getting home from work at 9:30, there’s just no way I’m going for an hour’s hike.

So that leaves mornings. (Just hiking on weekends isn’t going to do much for my overall energy level. You need exercise 3-5 times a week for that.) I get up at 7:30 normally. Tonight I’ll set the alarm for 6:30, and get a short hike in before breakfast. If I can keep that up every morning (or at least most mornings) I’ll be in good shape for the rest of things I’m trying to do.

It’s a pretty ambitious plan I’ve set out for myself here. I’ll keep you posted on how I do. It took me almost two months to read a 5-page document on procrastination. Don’t hold your breath. But do cross your fingers for me.
UPDATE: I wrote this last night but didn’t post it until this morning. In the meantime, I went for an hour hike in my neighborhood — on a trail straight up a hill for 40 minutes, then 20 minutes back down to home. My calves are sore but I feel great! I’ll post more about my hikes and my general progress with the non-technical aspects of this plan.

Somehow I found that funny. I just printed it out. We’ll see.

(Turns out it WAS from Lifehacker.)

The UI is great and very easy to navigate. It’s a young program and it’s got some issues (for some reason ads on pages often show up as separate pages and it doesn’t handle PDF files or other download links well) but it still seems like a winner. It gives the promise of never bookmarking again — just search your archived web history. I haven’t purchased a copy yet, but I’m evaluating it — and will likely decide to purchase a full version. I’ll keep you posted.

About the biggest problem I have with it is that it doesn’t support getting history from NetNewsWire — which is where I spend most of my web time. Still, it’s a minor peeve — pre-BrowseBack, I had to open pages I wanted to save in Firefox to bookmark them — so opening them in Firefox so BrowseBack will capture them doesn’t seem a huge problem. I’ve e-mailed them about NetNewsWire support, and they’ve added it to the list — we’ll see how long it takes to get it in there.

Props to Rob for the heads-up on BrowseBack.

UPDATE: (May 22, 2006) I had two full-on system freezes (no kernel panic, no error messages, just unresponsiveness in all apps) since installing BrowseBack. I did a 36-hour loop of Apple Hardware Test on my system, and it found no problems. (Of course, that doesn’t prove ANYTHING — but it tends to indicate my system hardware is OK.) Since stopping BrowseBack from autoloading at boot, I haven’t had a crash. I’ll keep testing, and perhaps re-enable BrowseBack to see if the crashes come back, but I’m considerably less enthused about Browseback at this point.

UPDATE: (May 23, 2006) BrowseBack support responded:

Many thanks for forwarding your logs.

The browseback crash log appears to be within rebuilding the database, which would point either to a corrupt database file, or possibly a case within the browseback documents that browseback is not expecting on database rebuild.

Please try the following: open the browseback folder that is located in your Documents folder, and trash these two files:

data_store
history_index_data

Relaunch browseback. Then, select Rebuild Database from the File menu. Does it fare better at all, or still crash?

We’ll see if it makes a difference. I have BrowseBack set to launch at startup again.

FINAL UPDATE: Just too unstable. I like the IDEA of BrowseBack — but it just crashes my system too much, which is obviously unacceptable. I’m using Yojimbo now, which does not automatically capture pages — I have to click a bookmarklet to bring things into Yojimbo. That’s an extra step, but probably reduces the signal-to-noise ratio in my archive. And it doesn’t crash my system.

• Terminal –> Window Settings –> Shell –> Close Only if the Shell Exited Cleanly
• Terminal –> Window Settings –> Emulation –> Visual Bell
• Terminal –> Window Settings –> Buffer –> Unlimited Scrollback
• Terminal –> Window Settings –> Display –>
  Cursor Style: Block + Blink
• Terminal –> Window Settings –> Display –> Anti-Aliasing
• Terminal –> Window Settings –> Display –>Lucida Sans Typewriter Regular 14
• Terminal –> Window Settings –> Color –>
  Black on Light Yellow
• Terminal –> Window Settings –> Window –> 111 Columns by 69 Rows
• Terminal –> Window Settings –> Window –> Title –> Should be empty
• Terminal –> Window Settings –> Window –> Only things checked should be Active Process Name, Command Key
• Terminal –> Preferences –> Declare terminal type ($TERM) as: xterm