AstronomyPictureOfTheDay 1.0

What’s new? I have been using an Automator workflow inspired by an article by Andy Ihnatko to download the latest image from the Astronomy Picture of the Day site and set it as my desktop background. It also adds a copy to my screen saver images folder. Some of the pictures are pretty, and some are inspiring. Check it out, if you are interested.

code hosting

I spent some time over the weekend building a rough tool with django to host my code projects. It is only at http://www.doughellmann.com, though that domain may not be available in your DNS cache, yet. I’m happy with the schema for the results, but will probably tweak the colors and layout for a while.

Email Archives, redux

Now that I have the site in order, I have posted a copy of my mail archive script in an easier-to-use format.

Proctor 1.0

I’ve moved Proctor development from sourceforge to my own server and released version 1.0. We have been using proctor successfully for several years now at work, and it makes automating our nightly tests very easy. The build is automatic, the software is installed automatically, and then proctor runs the test suite. All 3000+ tests take several hours to run, mostly because they aren’t all strictly “unit” tests.

code hosting tool

I am looking for a tool to build out a site to host my code projects. None of these projects are large enough to warrant anything like the features provided by SourceForge. I don’t think my requirements are very strict, but I haven’t been able to find anything to do what I want (sort of a sourceforge-lite): I must be able to host the projects under a domain I control myself.

ATM for Books

The idea of a machine that can print a copy of every book ever written makes me think I need to build some more shelves.

Desktop Manager

I love using Desktop Manager for Mac OS X because it lets me separate my tools into separate workspaces. I have a separate desktop for communication (email and IM), local development (editors and terminals), remote development (vnc), and miscelaneous (temporary windows or apps like iTunes). With a simple keystroke I can rotate between the different desktops, even using dual monitors. Unfortunately, it looks like the recent update to OS X broke the ability to move a window between desktops.

VirtueDesktops

Wow, VirtueDesktops has come a long way since the last time I used it. I’ve made the switch from the older Desktop Manager, and aside from not having the desktop pager available in the menu bar I am having no trouble adjusting. Moving windows between desktops works as advertised.