Thinking Out Loud, aka The Broad Gaze
Thoughts on the social impacts of communication policy and educational technology.
I use OS X’s colored labels and smart folders to keep track of articles to read and things to do. Using the menus can be kind of a pain, and surprisingly, Quicksilver doesn’t have the ability to label built in.
These Applescripts can be used to quickly label an item in the Finder. Simply select the item, invoke Quicksilver, and type the name of the label. Don’t forget to have QS index the directory where you keep the scripts (mine are in ~/Library/scripts).
Enjoy!
It’s kind of sad, but sometimes open source projects slow way down. It happend to Thunderbird (I switched to Leopard Mail, which came out around the same time that TB’s primary architects left the project), and now it appears to have happened to my favorite newsreader: Gregarius.
Offline reading has always made Google Reader awfully attractive, but the one Gregarius feature I couldn’t live without was a slider to shorten posts to a consistent length. This made it easy to skim the beginning of an article without too much scrolling.
Thus, we have my first UserStyle: Googe Reader Shrink Expanded View
If you haven’t been turned on to user styles in Firefox yet, download the Stylish add-on and check out this Lifehacker post filled with useful styles.
Edit: Somehow the sync isn’t starting, so I’ll need to figure out what the trouble is and update this post. Any ideas?
Edit 2: It would seem using rsync to back up is no longer covered under the terms of service for BlueHost users. I actually haven’t been doing my backups this way for some time, and would highly recommend using a service like Dropbox instead (especially since it has a nice web interface and syncs between multiple computers). I’ll leave this post up for users of other hosting providers.
I’d call myself more of a tinker-er than a programmer, but I thought I’d open a new chapter in my blogging repertoire: sharing tech solutions I’ve come up with. I’m a dissertator, which means I need frequent off-site backups, and a BlueHost user, which means I have a convenient place to upload to.
This post taught me everything I needed to know to get rsync working with Bluehost (the instructions are for Dreamhost, but you get the idea). Be sure to check out the part for running a backup without logging in. Up until recently, I’ve used the terminal to periodically run a backup–yet there’s always room for improvement.
I dig Growl, and thought it would be great to schedule backups for every-other hour, and to have notification of when (or if) it completed successfully. I never quite worked out the completing successfully part, but the attached AppleScript is a start. It checks for a network connection (be sure to enter the IP address of your host), and sends a growl when the backup starts (just be sure to wait a bit for the backup to complete). Here is some advice on scheduling via iCal.
I realize this (admittedly unedited) post didn’t quite live up to my reputation as a decent technical writer. I’d be happy to answer questions or take suggestions in comments.
rsync
(AppleScript download)
The Chronicle recently published a good column about blogging being “a hazard to a budding academic career.” The author agrees with me–blogging is an activity that helps you understand the new media landscape, as well as that of your students. He offers the following advice:
Be relevant. Rather than try to beat our brave new world, join it. … Embracing technology connects you not only to your students, but also to a world of better research through time-saving and exhaustive online databases.
He tempers this by offering more good advice to be honest, but never negative or slanderous. I hope this is advice I’ve lived up to, but that if not somebody would call me on it!
It can be tough to hear that blogging might be a strike against a job candidate. I only hope that an active, reflective understanding of how blogging might fit in our media landscape will be seen as an advantage.