Happy New Year!
2007 was great. Ruby on Rails I think really came into its own last year. Cocoa got a big boost with Leopard and I’m still uncovering new APIs. Eclipse is still going strong. By the way, I happen to run the Eclipse-Mac Google Group, which is still going along. I should probably hand that over to someone who can publicize it and nurture it more. I’ve been trying to simplify my life recently and also try to get focused on my true goals. So instead of resolutions, I’m trying to write out specific goals.
Here’s to an even better 2008!
Reports of my demise have been grossly exaggerated
Long time no blog, eh?
Let’s see - what’s been going on in my life? I’ve been keeping busy. Ruby on Rails has been good to me and still having a lot of fun developing with it. But I’ve also been dealing with a bunch of house/car maintenance issues recently.
I’ve been spending a lot of time with my wife and kids. We saw some the Perseid meteor shower recently on a trip to the Shenandoah mountains. That was pretty amazing - like going to a planetarium. We get so much light pollution in the city but out there you can see all the stars. It was even better since it was a new moon (as in you couldn’t see the moon at all.) My wife said it was the first time she saw the Milky Way. I guess it must have been my first time too.
Well stay tuned. I just started writing in my Moleskine notebook again and for some reason that always sparks my creativity which inevitably leads to blogging. Something about high quality pen on high quality paper. I just got a nice pocket grid one. I mean who knew growing up that you could one day get a leather-bound book of graph paper?
I’ve also been doing a really really slimmed down version of GTD (Getting Things Done.) I call it “making lists and crossing them out”. Maybe my life is really simple, but it seems to work for me. And it frees up time for doing things like blogging.
Creating a branch in Subversion from a specific older revision
Branches in Subversion are quite easy and really lightweight. I think the technical term for this is “cheap copy”, which doesn’t quite do it for me. I mean, I’d rather call it an elegant and efficient copy, but I didn’t create my own version control system.
To create a branch of your source base in Subversion, you usually just execute (if you’re using the file-based version and the repository is in /Users/yourName/svn):
svn copy file:///Users/yourName/svn/yourProject/trunk file:///Users/yourName/yourProject/branches/yourProject-1.0
Note that you need to have the branches directory added and committed to your repository. It won’t automatically add this for you.
This does it for working from the head of the trunk. But what if you wanted to branch from an older revision? It turns out to be quite easy:
svn copy -r specificRevisionNumber file:///Users/yourName/svn/yourProject/trunk file:///Users/yourName/yourProject/branches/yourProject-1.0
Changes I’ve made to help heal my carpal tunnel problem
Vik asked about my carpal tunnel problem:
Just curious if you’re going to make any changes now. As in, mouse to touchpad/trackball, some special keyboard, some software aimed at CTS sufferers, etc. I’ve been forcing myself to use the touchpad more (less mouse) because I’m concerned about CTS, after having using computers heavily for about 14 yrs.
Yes, obviously, if it’s broke, then fix it. And my hands were REALLY broken. I would come home from work and they would be swollen, my palm would be throbbing and my forearm would be in a sort of spasm. It got so bad, I actually LOOKED FORWARD to meetings (so I could rest my hands). Hehehe my doctor said that you know its bad when it gets to that point.
So first off, go see a doctor if you feel pain. Or maybe even beforehand, to head off anything that is lurking under the covers but hasn’t manifested itself yet. I really like Dr Perron. I’ve seen a few doctors about this and they usually didn’t know much about it or seemed to be set on surgery. I don’t know about you, but I like my ligaments to be intact whenever possible.
Secondly, you have to really question your work habits / setup. Here’s what I’ve implemented:
- I take breaks about once an hour for just a few minutes. I used to just sit for hours on end, coding away, hands on keyboard and mouse. At first I used a program called TimeOut on the Mac to help, but now I just am in the habit of doing this.
- During my break, I get up and walk around a bit to get my circulation going. I also do some specific wrist stretches to help regain the range of motion and flexibility in my hands.
- I use a single button Apple Mouse with my LEFT hand. I’m right handed and I think the two biggest actions that damaged my hand were using the scroll wheel and right clicking. Sounds crazy, but my pointer and middle fingers on my right hand are the ones that still act up.
- I bought another Pil-O-Splint so that I sleep with one on each hand. It helps ensure that your wrist stays straight during the night.
- I try to make sure that my hands stay warm, so I’m usually wearing a sweatshirt or fleece or jacket. The heat helps heal your hands.
- In the evening, I take a hot shower or apply a heat pad/hot water bottle to my shoulders. Again, its the heat that helps.
Hope this helps people out there who rely on their hands.
I’m feeling MUCH better
I’m back! Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers. My hands are feeling great. I’d say about 70%. So I’m not going to be arm wrestling Sylvester Stallone anytime soon. But I am able to type and program and do all the everyday things that I used to do.
It turns out that I had carpal tunnel AND ulnar tunnel. The strange thing was that this occurred because I was TOO good at what I do. All that typing, especially at high typing speed, results in a lot of code in a short amount of time. And for all the budding programmers out there, I’d still recommend learning how to type as fast as possible. The downside is that I basically trained my fingers to be really strong and quick, but only in this small range of motion, which is about the depth of a key press.
The solution? Well, if you live in the Northern Virginia/DC, I’d recommend booking an appointment with Dr. Perron of Reston Chiropractic. He uses some pretty advanced techniques that are unlike any chiropractor I’ve ever heard of. It’s called the Activator Method and here’s how it can relieve repetitive stress / carpal tunnel syndrome. There’s other doctors around the world that use the same method.
Sidelined with some hand problems
Sorry if I haven’t replied to your email and that I haven’t posted too much in the past two weeks. I’ve been having some problems with my hands and wrists. Probably just due to overuse, so I’ve been cutting back recently to give my hands a rest.
But while I’m here, how about a quick braindump?
Video iPods - awesome. I think they’re going to be huge especially this Christmas. I hope that the TV and movie selection will expand greatly. This might be the thing that pushes me to finally digitize my home movies. It’s one thing to show people your kid’s picture, but imagine showing them a little short movie clip of your kid.
Ward Cunningham joins Eclipse Foundation - Welcome back! We’ve missed the father of the wiki. Which reminds me… I wonder if I should update my page on WikiWikiWeb.
No Fluff Just Stuff - Reston, VA is just a week away. I think there are less than 25 seats left. It was great last year and I’ll be there again this year.
Google finally groks RSS
3. Google groks RSS: Instead of just being satisfied with hosting blogs via Blogger, Google realizes the true potential of blogs: as another way to spread its targeted advertising. Google offers Google RSS(tm), which puts targeted Google ads in RSS feeds as well as offering an updated-every-nanosecond search of all RSS, RDF, and Atom feed on the planet.
I made that prediction on January 1st of this year and today it came true. Google unveiled Adsense for Feeds a few months back. However, I haven’t really seen that many people take advantage of it. I myself have Adsense ads on my blog, but not in my feeds. It is in beta, but isn’t like 80% of Google in beta?
Today they unveiled their Google Blog Search. I think Technorati will be competitive, but I think they’ll need to focus more on the value-added features than just plain search. Then again, since Google only indexes the feed contents, while Technorati actually uses the link URL to index the actual web page that the feed entry points to, Technorati should allow for more complete indexing as Niall points out.
I think indexing the feed does put pressure on people to include their entire post in the feed. I myself prefer when sites do this, because I can basically read a ton of stuff within NetNewsWire quickly.
Note for bloggers who don’t find their blog in the search (from the Help):
If your blog publishes a site feed in any format and automatically pings an updating service (such as Weblogs.com), we should be able to find and list it. Also, we will soon be providing a form that you can use to manually add your blog to our index, in case we haven’t picked it up automatically. Stay tuned for more information on this.
Podcasting is good, but…
…it really is kind of inefficient. I wonder if there is any sort of speech-to-text web service which can turn podcasts into regular blog entries for when you just want to read.
I mean, its nice when you want to listen to something in the car or walking around, but if you’re actually at your computer, I’d rather just read. I’m pretty sure I can read much faster than I listen. Plus, it’s a lot harder to save a snippet of audio than it is to cut and paste a snippet of a blog entry.
Help Hurricane Katrina survivors
Today my family and I held a yard sale to raise money to help the Hurricane Katrina survivors. Watching the news coverage has really broken our hearts and we’ve been praying for them.
Turnout at the yard sale was probably the sparsest I’ve ever had out of all the yard sales we’ve conducted. I guess next time, I won’t have one on Labor Day weekend, but you can’t choose when disasters happen. We only made $76, but every little bit helps. Also we’re planning to make a bigger donation separately.
If you’re confused about where to make a donation, here’s an interesting site I found from the American Institute of Philanthropy that rates charities that are involved in providing relief to the hurricane survivors.
Any good online book forums out there?
So I’m reading Freakonomics, which is an addictive read and exposes the real world as to how it actually works, with actual data, not just theories. But I’d like to discuss it with others and there doesn’t seem to be any good places to have an discussion about a random book online. I’m looking for something like the IMDB message boards, but even easier.
Anyone know a place I can go to discuss books online?