Archive for the 'Computers' Category

Multiple email identities with Mail.app

Posted by Tom on January 18th, 2011

I’ve been wanting to send email from different addresses through the same email account (specifically, Gmail). It’s trivial to do if using multiple accounts or servers, but Gmail allows users to send mail through a single account using different from addresses, and as I perpetually have a plethora of addresses, I wanted to too. This [...]

VIM, TextMate and SublimeText

Posted by Tom on September 23rd, 2010

In the past few days I’ve come across posts of several programmers switching back to VIM (in most cases, specifically to MacVim). As some have pointed out, this seems predominantly in the Ruby community, which tends to be fad-driven. I’ve thought about giving VIM a shot. But I won’t end up doing it. The trouble [...]

WindowShade X and Parallels

Posted by Tom on September 23rd, 2010

WindowShade X I complained just over a year ago that Unsanity’s WindowShade X, a utility that provides better minimization options than just shoving more stuff in my dock did not yet have a working release for Snow Leopard. As it turns out, Unsanity released it seven month later (this past April, 2010)—hey guys, an email [...]

Teaching C#

Posted by Tom on May 28th, 2010

I’m teaching beginning programming using C# to university business students (CIS) in the upcoming Fall semester. It’ll be doubly fun, as I’ve never used C# until about a month ago. Sure, I’ve used plenty of other languages, but for some reason, never anything from .NET. (Partly it’s because I’ve used a Mac as my primary [...]

Turbo-charging the color picker

Posted by Tom on May 28th, 2010

It’s probably old hat to anyone doing design for a living, but I found a couple of new color tools for OS X that are making my web design work easier. I use TextMate for coding, and wasn’t thinking about the CSS bundle item that brings up OS X’s default color picker (Command-Shift-C; the TextMate [...]

Federal judge ignores rights of individual

Posted by Tom on September 25th, 2009

Via Gruber, who posts following a TechDirt article. A federal judge denies an individual of property (contents of an email account) without notification, with no opportunity for appeal (the person is not a party to the matter), and with no cause to suspect wrongdoing. Saith Gruber, who dubs U.S. District Court Judge James Ware “Jackass [...]

Books worth their weight in gold

Posted by Tom on September 21st, 2009

For years, I’ve kept a personal (and unfortunately, unwritten) list of books I think every manager, programmer, and [insert category here] should read. A book every programmer should read The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master. Every programmer I hired was required to read this book. It’s a great resource for people managing programmers too. [...]

On power users

Posted by Tom on September 17th, 2009

As I was driving in to school this morning, I had a mini-revalation on the difference between power-users and “regular” users. This thought may have been spawned by a research paper used in one of my classes [1], where power users became the de facto trainers during the implementation of an ERP system. Maybe this [...]

Apps broken in Snow Leopard

Posted by Tom on September 11th, 2009

I recently updated to OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard. I’m liking it—most things feel a little bit snappier. I also prefer the tweaks to editing events in iCal (which didn’t go far enough; 10.4 was better), and the changes to Exposé. However, several apps (or “hacks,” if you prefer) broke with the update: WindowShadeX, a [...]