sim.plified.com

It's been almost a year since I switched to using a Mac from a PC.  Since then there have been a number of other converts.  Our entire household now uses Mac computers and I know other people who are switching as well.  I wanted to list out some of the software that I've found helpful over the past year.  Note that this is mostly from the perspective of a web devleoper

• Transmit – Great FTP clients that even supports S3 – http://www.panic.com/transmit/
• Sequel Pro – Must have manager for anyone who deals with mySQL – http://www.sequelpro.com/
• Time Out – Prevents eye fatigue by prompting you to take breaks – http://www.dejal.com/timeout/
• Text Wrangler – Good text editor – http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/
• Apple developer tools – Install these from the disk that comes with your Mac.  The program I use the most is FileMerge
• Growl – notification software – http://growl.info/
• Adium – IM client – I love how it can be tucked away off screen – http://adium.im/
• Hyperdock – I use this to manage my windows – allows them to be made full size or part size by dragging them around the screen – http://hyperdock.bahoom.com/
• USB Overdrive – http://www.usboverdrive.com/USBOverdrive/News.html - a necessity for running my Evoluent Vertical Mouse – http://www.evoluent.com/
• Typinator – a shortcut text expander program – http://www.ergonis.com/products/typinator/
• Alfred – quick launcher application – http://www.alfredapp.com/
• Clean Archiver - take the junk out of the standard mac compression – http://www.sopht.jp/en/cleanarchiver/
• Jing – great for quick screen casts – http://www.techsmith.com/jing/
• Jumpcut – clipboard app that keeps a record of your latest clipboard cuts – http://jumpcut.sourceforge.net/
• iStats Menus – allows you to keep an eye on our processor and memory – http://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/

There are a lot of other programs that I use that are more well known, but these form the foundation of smaller apps that make computing on the mac even easier.

[ Leave a Comment ]

My wife was reading an article in the NY Times about a man who was rushing into marriage because he need to get onto his girlfriends health insurance before his ran out.

My reaction: Is health insurance the new social glue? How many times have you heard that someone is doing something, staying at a job, even staying in a relationship because of the healthcare benefits? I suspect most everyone has heard someone say something along those lines.

I don't think there is any doubt that this "benefit" is providing a certain amount of glue. Something that I've never thought of thus far is: with the prospects of a nationalized healthcare system, what would become of that glue. My guess is it would lose it's stickiness.

I'm definitely not out to make a political statement on this one, my thinking here is purely philosophical. I'm not out to say it's better or worse without the current glue, but rather: how sad is it that this is one of the core things that's holding our society together is health insurance. Not love, not family, not a sense of duty, but health insurance.

Your thoughts? Comment.

[ Leave a Comment ]

I installed the Minimalist Gmail plugin (thanks to Life Hacker). The great part about this extension is that it allows you to populate the Google links list with your own custom links.

If you're one of the many user chagrined by Google's recent removal of the reader link in the Gmail header, this is a quick and easy way to get it back. Supposedly they are bringing it back, but until then enjoy the extension.

[ Leave a Comment ]

Tracking 404 pages is a part of being a web master. I was using a service called Link Patch, but they recently shut down. Why this never occurred to me before I don't know, but I thought, why not just track 404s as an Event in Google analytics. I tried it and it worked like a charm.

Here is the code I placed on my 404 page:

<script type="text/javascript">
	// log 404 in google analytics
	_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Error', '404', '<?php echo $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']; ?>']);
</script>

This will place the url for the page in the events menu under the "Error" category

What I love about this approach is that:

• Groups multiple errors together to help me track trends
• Allows me to filter and get reports across date ranges
• Get reports emailed to me on a weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly basis

I think this is going to be a great shift. I just sorry I didn't set it up earlier!

[ Leave a Comment ]

When I pondered my conversion to Mac, one of the biggest issues for me was the ability to operate two large computer monitors side by side.  As a developer this is a huge issue for me, so you can imagine my dismay when after going to the Apple store and talking to “genius” they simply turned around and Googled my question (something I had obviously done many times before).  After looking around I did discover that there was a device that would do what I was looking for. 

This tutorial applies strictly to Mac Book pros (Mine was new in Sept of 2011 and is running 10.6.5).  If you’re using a desktop mac or another mac book I can’t promise similar results but here’s what I did.

The Device

The device that allows you to go dual and even triple screen on your mac book is the Matrox DualHead2Go DP Edition.  Some of the other device versions will work, but they won’t give you the resolutions you want to run 24” inch monitors.  If you want to go big on you monitors you’re going to need to use the DP (display port) edition.

The Adapters

Because I was operating DVI monitors I needed three different adapters!  2 DP to DVI adapters to connect the unit to the monitors and 1 Mini DP to DP adapter to connect the Mac to the Matrox unit.  I definitely didn’t appreciate all the extra costs of the adapters, but I was a man on a mission so I did it anyways.

Mini DP to DP Adapter

The Software

The software Matrox PowerDesk allows you to tell the OS what monitor (laptop or “dual screen”) should be the primary.

Little Annoyance, but Working Great!

One of the primary annoyances is that it treats the dual monitor setup form the device as a single monitor, so you can see that the task bar is completely stretched out across the top.  This really doesn’t cause too much pain except when I need to get to the file menu and I’m using the left monitor.

On the other hand the great part about this is you can stack a ton of stuff in your application bar at the bottom – fill it up as it will stretch all the way across the bottom if it needs to. 

Lots of cords need to be plugged in when you “dock” your mac, but nothing too overwhelming there.

Other Tips

You’ll need a USB hub.  The Matrox unit takes up the mini display port AND A USB port for power. 

Overall

Overall I’m very pleased with the results.  I work primarily off the two main monitors, but I can put secondary applications like script logs and skype on the less dominant lap top monitor.  If you are a developer you’ll definitely benefit from this arrangement.  Also, if you like my desk, check out this post.. I made it myself.

[ Leave a Comment ]

I’m currently working on a project where I wanted to use DOMPDF to export html from magento.  With some help from some folks who got DOMPDF to work with Zend I was able to get it working with Magneto.

Step 1

Copy the dompdf folder to the lib directory of your magento install.

Step 2

Edit app/Mage.php to include the following code

include_once 'dompdf/dompdf_config.inc.php';
spl_autoload_register('DOMPDF_autoload');

This goes around line 52 inside the else statement right after

 include_once "Varien/Autoload.php";

Step 3

Use the code.  Here’s an example of what I  am doing inside on of my custom contollers

public function printAction(){

        if ($quote = $this->_iniQuote()) {

            $html = $this->getLayout()->createBlock('crm/quotes_print')->toHtml();

            $dompdf = new DOMPDF();
            $dompdf->load_html($html);
            $dompdf->render();
            $dompdf->stream("sample.pdf");

         }

    }

Basically that’s it.  Pretty straight forward and seems to work like a charm.

NOTE:  This was done using DOMPDF 0.6.0 beta1 and Magneto 1.4.0.1

[ Leave a Comment ]

We by no means have a lot of children by historical standards, but according to our current culture standards the reactions we get are quite the opposite. One of my little jokes when people remark about how many children we have, I say that I'm just making up for all the people who are not having children. Well it turns out that my joke is really no joke at all. Here's a short video on a stable population.

[ Leave a Comment ]

Just a few minutes ago I was visiting a site looking for Canadian proxy addresses so I could test my country specific detection script. The moment I opened the proxy page my mouse started flying all over my screen. I thought my computer had been infected with some sort of screen sharing virus and immediately set to work at shutting down the computer.

Just then my wife walked up and saw the look on my face. I told her what happened and she had an idea. She went downstairs and came back up to report: my six year old was playing with my bluetooth mouse

Kind of coincidence of timing! But I'm glad my computer can't be hijacked just by opening a web page

Moral of the story: Keep track of your bluetooth mouse!

[ Leave a Comment ]

I hope this attempted transition to MAC doesn’t end in tragedy, but it looks like its heading that way fast…

• MS Excel 2008 maxes processor
• Cannot drag and drop files into Dreamweaver file manger
• Lack of any “finder” based SVN client (e.g. such as tortoise SVN)
• Lack of blogging software that holds a candle to MS Live Writer (come on! this is a Microsoft product)
• MAC Skype client doesn’t support multi video
• Have to pay for a lot of programs I got via open source before.

Yes there are some things I like, but I’m afraid that this list is only going to continue to grow. 

[ Leave a Comment ]

Looks like it’s official, I’m converting over to Mac.  After working in the field of web development for over 5 years now, I think it’s time to make the switch and see how things work out.  I’m looking for software recommendations for the following:

• SSH
• SSH private key handling
• SFTP
• S3 access program
• Zip file manager
• HTTP watch program (like fiddler)
• Auto Hot Key
• Best integration program for running windows only programs
• IDE programs

Looking forward to recommendations on these and anything else you want to toss my way.

[ Leave a Comment ]