If you’ve been following me on twitter, you’ve already been tipped off that I recently got an older MacBook Pro. Since it came with Mac OS installed, I decided I would give it a fair, 30-day trial before I move it to Linux. I’m about 3 weeks in, and I’m logging my thoughts publicly so you can hopefully see benefit.

What I’m NOT comparing

In a word: speed. This was a significant hardware upgrade from my last computer, so I’m not going to say anything how everything is so much faster, smoother blah blah because it would’ve been anyway and that’s not useful to you or anyone. Also, virtualization: I know that I can get X or Y if I just use VirtualBox. I’m going to ignore that here for simplicity.

Tools

Before I make stupid lists, I should note that I was working on an Ubuntu Karmic Koala, so I had all of the pre-packaged nice-ities that come with that.

Now, in no order whatsoever:

• Dock – Mac has a built-in dock, Linux has AWN and Gnome-Do Docky. IMO, Linux wins barely because you have more options for customization.
• Terminal – Both systems have a built-in terminal. I’m a bash user and that came with both. One part where Linux shines is that a lot more tools build themselves to be launched by the Terminal by default. For example, try typing “which firefox” in the Mac terminal. Nope.

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The days of the traditional web where we have to “go” somewhere to do something are ending. Ubiquity is a Mozilla Labs project that is a bit like a command-line for the web. It is powerful because it allows you to use a bunch of common web-tools without leaving the pages you actually care to visit.

One really cool thing about Ubiquity is that you don’t have to type “add-to-calendar blah blah”. If you type “add”, Ubiquity will figure out what you want so you just have to type: “add beer with David Walsh at 9pm” and it will figure it out. If you have text selected, just type “this” and it will insert the selected text into that part of the command.

Get started with Ubiquity

While using Firefox, download the Ubiquity Firefox extension. Once you have it, you can install extra commands by clicking any of the command links above. You can summon Ubiquity with Ctrl-Space by default, but this is easily changed. That’s all!
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A year ago, my good friend Casey Watson suggested that I try using a personal wiki to keep track of my programming knowledge. This turned out to be great advice, so I’ll be sharing how I use one and how to start your own.

Why would a personal wiki make you productive?

In a phrase: to keep a your web of knowledge accessible from one place. You need a place to put your meeting agenda, important project/server links, and even a to-do or waiting-for list. Not only can you store a lot, you can tag it, search it and otherwise customize the crap out of Tiddlywiki.

You are not going to be able to remember everything you need, keeping links and information in email folders just doesn’t cut it. You can easily keep track of your meeting notes, DB schema diagrams, bug lists, blah blah blah… Continue reading →