I recently started using Sublime Text 2 as my code editor of choice (testing the waters to see if it’s better than TextMate), but one thing I really missed was being able to open projects from the command line. Most of my work starts out with a version control update followed immediately by mate whatever.

This behavior is surprisingly easy to implement for Sublime Text 2:

1. Open up the file ~/.bash_profile
2. Add a line that says alias subl='open -a Sublime\ Text\ 2.app'

You can change the subl alias to whatever works best for you. Now you can type subl ~/svn/projectname/ and Sublime will open up with your project already loaded.

I’m continually overwhelmed by how many things I want to learn or do at any given time. A lot of it is work-related (learn Python, hone existing skillset), but there are of course other things like taking up rock climbing and losing weight.

With all of these things buzzing around in my head it’s difficult to figure out where to start. When I overthink what I should be doing nothing at all gets done. I think the trick is going to be picking something and just starting. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I made a post a while ago about my first (and hopefully only) direct run-in with the consequences of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. (see The DMCA rears its head)

Well, there has been a new and annoying development for this situation. I uploaded a video to my account which was really only intended for family. In my experience YouTube typically gives you the option of “public” or “private” so you can control who can see said video; this time I noticed there was a third option called “Unlisted”, which was grayed out for some reason. After some investigation it turns out that a user is not allowed to use this option if they have any “copyright strikes” on their account. Sure enough, the copyright claim leveled against me by the folks representing Van Morrison now evidently affects which YouTube features I am allowed to use.

“No problem,” I thought. “I’ll just see how I go about removing this strike from my account and be on my way.” Come to find out, the strike is permanent. So there you go, upload a video of some street performers, have your account and all of its uploaded content, not to mention a long history of favorites and subscriptions permanently tainted by the circus that is copyright law.

I’m not entirely sure how, but it appears this domain was recently compromised. Google was nice enough to notify me and I think I’ve taken care of the issue. New and far more secure passwords have been set on all accounts, so I will keep my fingers crossed that it doesn’t happen again.

When the headphone jack on my iPhone stopped allowing plugs to click into place I figured there was some tiny piece of metal that had either broken off or gotten stuck somewhere down inside the hole. After putting off a visit to one of the Apple Retail stores in the area I finally made an appointment for Monday evening so that I could swing by on my way home from work. Imagine how silly I felt when the employee (or “Genius”, if you prefer) shone his tiny LED keychain flashlight down into the opening only to declare, “there’s a big piece of lint in there!”

It all began to make sense. The first time I noticed there was a problem was in the pitch black of the bedroom after not being able to fall asleep. Thinking I’d listen to a podcast or two while laying in bed, I grabbed the phone from the headboard and pushed the headphones into place. Or at least I made the attempt. There must have been a piece of pocket lint just inside the headphone jack which was promptly shoved further in and compacted by my fumbling nocturnal efforts.

After removing the lint we had to test that everything was working properly. Since I didn’t have any headphones with me the Genius pulled out his own personal pair to test with and double-tapped the home button to play the most recent audio file. He gave a very abrupt “Uh… it’s working.” and stopped playing the file. It was only later that I found out that the file that had started playing was an old episode of The Dawn and Drew Show podcast, the intro to which sounds like this. I can only imagine what that poor guy was thinking.

Lesson learned: always shine a light into a problematic hole and assess the situation.

In other news, I can’t wait for this kind of weather to return:

Taken while driving back to St. Louis on I-70 E.

I think it may be time to transition this site from a personal blog to more of a professional representation. The blog served as a convenient way to communicate with friends and family over the years, but there are many other services that have since taken up the task (Twitter, Facebook). I can’t make any promises about when I’ll get around to it, but I plan on getting the ball rolling before too long.

Jill and I need to decide by the end of the month whether we want to stay in our current apartment for another year or move someplace else. Two things we’d really like to change about our current living situation is having another bedroom (so we can each have our own space) and having a washer and dryer in the unit. We’ll be looking around in the next couple of weeks to see if we can find anything matching that criteria within our price range.

On a related note, I find myself turning down apartment choices based on what kind of Internet service they are able to get. I’d really like to stick with AT&T’s U-verse, so the hunt continues.

With the exception of XP I’ve never been one to stick with a single operating system for long. Sometimes I dual- or even triple-boot to mix things up, other times I experiment with a Linux distro or a beta version of Windows (as I am currently).

I’m feeling the itch again, this time because the various little beta bugs and incompatibilities of Windows 7 are starting to get to me; while most software seems to function well under this operating system, a small amount of them that I use on a regular basis (ex: TightVNC) don’t seem to run as well as they did on XP. As a result I’m seriously considering switching things up again (and the fact that Windows 7 isn’t due until late 2009 doesn’t help), but for some reason find myself being drawn to a Linux install once more.

I like the nerd-factor of running Linux, and I’m definitely more comfortable with it now than I ever was in the past. Most likely the fascination will last all of a week at which point I will probably drag myself back to XP once more… We’ll see how things develop.

Wow, hi. It’s been a while. I almost forgot I had a blog! I blame Twitter, which also explains why this post is so short.

I felt like drawing on the whiteboard late on evening. Jill had been reading the Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer, so I grabbed the copy from her desk and sketched the stylized title in dry erase marker. Behold:

I haven’t read the books, but I think Matt wants me to.