A bash script to update macports system & installed ports, and the same for ruby gems.

This is a really good way of doing CI testing, as when you break your spec tests you'll get notified about it by Growl, and whatever image you chose (be it Bob the builder, Mr T, or whoever scares you ;).

I stepped through this process recently and hit on some snags so thought I'd list a process here. I'm on Leopard 10.5.5 using the Apple Ruby install.

In homage to one of my favourite viral videos ever:

For the love of anything you hold sacred, vote!

This is just a quick note on how to get NTFS with read & write access installed on Leopard, and also a neat trick called SSHFS which lets you mount a remote filesystem which you have ssh access to, as if it were a samba share or similar.

This makes it trivial to send files to work, uni, etc, using a provided ssh remote login.

I can't emphasise enough how useful it is to learn keyboard shortcuts, at very least for cursor navigation coupled with shift selection, if you are doing a lot of typing. My driving reason for using them is RSI evasion, but they are also just pretty damn cool to use.

I'm a recent TextMate convert, and as I pick up tricks I'll share them here. This isn't going to be a complete reference, rather it'll be things I find useful.

The body of Cardinal Newman not in his grave.

Over the summer I was working with another company doing some build system work, which involved a lot of shell scripting (it was more to do with integration than make).

I’ve not got to the stage where I use Ruby on a daily basis for everything yet, which is where I used to be with Java (which was horrible for it!). Currently the weapon of choice is bash scripting, alas, I don’t have my handy O’Reilly book to reference anymore and I’m starting to forget things. Man pages and Google go a long way, but the reason I got the book in the first place was to save time!

Anyway, here’s what I’m using to update all my textmate bundles, which are a mixture of svn and git repos. Usual disclaimer: Y.M.M.V., don’t use it to baby-sit your kids while they play in traffic, etc. An obvious flaw with it is if git or svn fails you won’t get any feedback about it, and if the svn message changes it’ll stop working!

#!/bin/bash
cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/TextMate/Bundles/

export LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8

for f in ./*; do 
    cd "$f" #enter bundle dir
    echo "Updating $f" 
    git pull &> /dev/null \
        || svnres=$(svn update) \
        && [[ $svnres  = "Skipped '.'" ]] \
        && echo "*** Failed to update $f (is it a local setting not a repo?)" 
    cd .. #return to bundles dir
done

Feel free to comment / improve / re-implement in Ruby.

Especially with the astounding events in the US during this political season, I like to read The Huffington Post. This morning I came along links to the “Big News” pages, an aggregate of stories about specific subjects. Look at the photos, then the captions. Now try to count the number of mistakes:

I mean, I know that there is indeed a relationship between the photo & the caption, but this is ridiculous.