dustypomerleau

An introduction to alternative keyboard layouts

This is a post to satisfy your curiosity about alternative keyboard layouts, why some people use them, and whether they're for you. It is intended to discuss the topic in broad terms, but I will share my personal preferences towards the end. Due to time constraints and my own limited knowledge, I will focus on layouts optimized for the English language (ANSI variants, with an occasional nod to ISO).

First off, it's important to understand how much debate there is about how we got here: I will not even attempt to settle the issue of who invented the 'first' typewriter layout, because the modern device had many predecessors going back centuries. The usual legend of typewriter evolution holds that American Christopher Latham Sholes debuted the typewriter in 1868 with a 2-row layout that was (nearly) alphabetical. A horizontal stagger between the rows made room for the lever arms attached to each key:

 3 5 7 9 N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
2 4 6 8 . A B C D E

lornajane

Keyboard-only Mac Cheatsheet

Hi, I'm Lorna and I don't use a mouse. I have had RSI issues since a bad workstation setup at work in 2006. I've tried a number of extra hardware modifications but what works best for me is to use the keyboard and only the keyboard, so I'm in a good position and never reaching for anything else (except my coffee cup!). I rather unwisely took a job which required me to use a mac (I've been a linux user until now and also had the ability to choose my tools carefully) so here is my cheatsheet of the apps, tricks and keyboard shortcuts I'm using, mostly for my own reference. Since keyboard-only use is also great for productivity, you may also find some of these ideas useful, in which case at least something good has come of this :)

Apps List

There's more detail on a few of these apps but here is a quick overview of the tools I've installed and found helpful

Tool	Link	Comments

brandondurham

/**
 * Using Operator Mono in Atom
 * 
 * 1. Open up Atom Preferences.
 * 2. Click the “Open Config Folder” button.
 * 3. In the new window’s tree view on the left you should see a file called “styles.less”. Open that up.
 * 4. Copy and paste the CSS below into that file. As long as you have Operator Mono SSm installed you should be golden!
 * 5. Tweak away.
 *
 * Theme from the screenshot (http://cdn.typography.com/assets/images/blog/operator_ide2.png):

wvengen

Finding a Ruby memory leak using a time analysis

When developing a program in Ruby, you may sometimes encounter a memory leak. For a while now, Ruby has a facility to gather information about what objects are laying around: ObjectSpace.

There are several approaches one can take to debug a leak. This discusses a time-based approach, where a full memory dump is generated every, say, 5 minutes, during a time that the memory leak is showing up. Afterwards, one can look at all the objects, and find out which ones are staying around, causing the

sekati

# xcode-build-bump.sh
# @desc Auto-increment the build number every time the project is run. 
# @usage
# 1. Select: your Target in Xcode
# 2. Select: Build Phases Tab
# 3. Select: Add Build Phase -> Add Run Script
# 4. Paste code below in to new "Run Script" section
# 5. Drag the "Run Script" below "Link Binaries With Libraries"
# 6. Insure that your starting build number is set to a whole integer and not a float (e.g. 1, not 1.0)

robfletcher

apply plugin: 'groovy'

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
    // vertxHome must be defined in gradle.properties
    flatDir { dirs "${vertxHome}/lib/jars" }
}

dependencies {
    groovy 'org.codehaus.groovy:groovy:1.8.6'