Jun 27

I love finding new productivity gems like this that shave minutes off daily mundane tasks. My partner just introduced me to the concept of fast user switching to flip back and forth between users on my Mac and I can’t believe I didn’t know about this feature until now. Here’s the specific situation and why this technique is so great:

Situation: Right now the JumpBoxes we release require manual testing (ie. we have not yet built up a set of automated tests we can run against them). So each time we release a new round of applications, we need to manually extract them to our desktop and fire them up under VMware or Parallels and make sure they work properly.

Problem: The downloads themselves are relatively small (~130MB) but extracted, they consume 2.8GB of disk space. This in itself is not a problem as I only test one at a time but all our laptops run the Mirra backup client which archives every bit of data in our home directories to a backup server. We needed a way to exclude the JumpBox test applications from getting picked up by the Mirra. There may be a way to do it from within the Mirra client itself but even that scenario has issues as the tests are truly sandboxed in an environment where they can’t overwrite something important. We came up with the notion of creating a separate user and running them in that context. The only trouble with that is you lose your daily environment so things you rely upon like your IM, Skype, Music, browser prefs, etc. just aren’t there plus you don’t have access to the files in your home directory.

Solution: Fast user switching allows you to flip instantly between users and continue running whatever processes you initiated under the other account in the background. It treats it almost like you have a KVM to two different computers yet the performance hit is negligible (ie. not like running another computer, for me it was only the extra RAM required by the JumpBox).

Available RAM before user switching:
pre-userSwitching.png
Available RAM after user switching running 256MB RAM JumpBox in other user’s account:
post-userSwitching.png

So this scenario is the best of both worlds because you can sandbox your test environment under a test user, turn on the JumpBox, get the IP and then flip back to your normal environment to do all your testing.

This is how you enable this capability under OSX:

Open your System Prefs and choose Accounts
Picture-1.png

Make sure you’ve unlocked it to make changes then choose Login Options
Picture-2.png

Check the option to enable it
Picture-3.png

Now your username will appear in the upper-right of your screen and you can easily flip back and forth

Picture-4.png

Thank you Apple for making this stuff work the way it should.

Jun 20

dive flag.jpgThe bubbles cascading past your mask at that depth sound like glass beads clinking together. My friend and I just got back from San Carlos Mexico where we just completed our open water scuba certifications. I posted pics and two videos. The night dive and swimming with sea lions were the two highlights for me. A couple things that would have been good to know in hindsight for anyone who’s considering doing it:

  • Contrary to what the study book says, decongestants are apparently no longer contra-indicated before diving. I didn’t have ear troubles but my buddy had problems clearing the first day and she took a decongestant the second day and had zero trouble after that.
  • They make water-tight plastic cases for most digital cameras that let you take your existing digital camera underwater to great depths (~130ft). I have the Canon SD 550 and I could get one of these and take it under water. The disposable underwater cameras you buy at the drug store take fair pics but are only rated to about 30ft, can’t do video and after you pay developing charges end up costing about $30. If you plan to dive a lot, you don’t need to buy a fancy underwater camera- just one of those cases for your digital camera.
  • A hammock would be money the boat. SCUBA is an extremely mellow experience underwater and then you come back up and it’s equally relaxing hanging out on the boat in between dives. The only thing that would have made the boat time even better would be to get one of those cheap nylon hammocks and string it up. Granted, it totally depends on the boat and the size of the group but this is something that would have made an awesome addition.
  • If you’re in AZ and thinking about learning to dive, I highly recommend the good folks at Ocean Planet SCUBA– they were extremely knowledgeable in the water and fun people to hang out with on the surface.

    Jun 12

    I had a terrible time trying to get a high-quality movie produced from a simple screen capture yesterday. After much googling it seemed there was no consensus on how to produce a quality screencast using iMovie. I solicited the advice of the helpful Refresh Phx people and after some tinkering found the export settings that produce an acceptable result. I captured the screen video using a neat little app called iShowU (which is like a shareware Camtasia for the Mac). I then brought the clips into iMovie. The first attempt at exporting produced this which was unacceptable quality. The key to getting the quality result involved these things:

  • Make sure you start the new project as HDV 720p
  • When you’re ready to publish choose File > Export > Quicktime > Expert Settings
  • ExpertSettings.png

  • Choose Options and set the size to match the original resolution of the captured video and adjust quality using the following:
  • UseTheseForScreencasts.png

    The final result ended up like which is not perfect but looks WAY better than the default output.

    Jun 08

    We had the chance Tuesday night to demo the Trac JumpBox we just released to a small crowd at Refresh Phoenix. It was a decent showing with about forty people and six demos from local AZ companies that were all doing interesting things. The Trac JumpBox was well-received and a few developers who had set it up previously remarked that it would indeed save them days of tedious work. Erica Lucci did a fantastic summary of the demos and a few others have posted their thoughts. Thanks to Acme Photography for permission to republish the photo below. AZ is still relatively fragmented with pockets of smart people creating innovations in isolation. It’s great to see groups like Refresh bringing together the people that are working on interesting projects. The next demo night is scheduled for October. If you’re in the Phoenix Metro area and have something neat to show off, get in touch with Erica.

    RefreshJumpBoxDemo.png

    Jun 05

    trac_logo.pngWe just released the Trac/SVN Development JumpBox. This is a virtual appliance that integrates the popular SVN source control system with Trac for documentation and issue tracking. We’re excited about this JumpBox because it’s the first one that takes a massively complicated install (a process which can take the experienced developer two days) and reduces it to a 30sec task.

  • If you don’t know what source control is or why you should use it, read this.
  • If you know what source control is but don’t know why you should use Subversion, read this.
  • If you use Subversion currently but don’t see why you should integrate Trac,
  • And if you already use Trac/SVN and don’t understand why you should use JumpBox to skip setup, read this and then read this.
  • As with all JumpBoxes, you can use it perpetually for free if you don’t mind having our navigation and don’t need access to the premium features. During the remainder of the release candidate phase (approx 3wks) you can still unlock the premium features and get shell access and automated backups without paying. With today’s other releases of Drupal and Dokuwiki this brings the total to 9 Open Source applications currently available. If you’re in Phoenix, we’ll be at Refresh Phoenix tonight demo’ing the Trac JumpBox. We’ll be shipping production releases of all applications July 1st. Get ’em while you’re still able to unlock them for free!

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    Jun 04

    plum.jpgI was just thinking plums are completely under-rated. I just had one and it was delicious. But when was the last time you heard of a dessert with a plum in the name? Think about it:

  • Strawberries get shortcake
  • Bananas get splits
  • Blueberries get muffins
  • Lemons get meringe
  • Apples get fritters (whatever those are)
  • Cherries get pie and to be on top of a lot of other desserts
  • Peaches get cobbler
  • Oranges get juice
  • Even limes get keylime pie (i would never think to make a pie with limes)
  • The list goes on but plums get zero. They’re like the ostracized fruit of the produce section. If anyone has connections at a supermarket we should seriously try to hook plums up with some affirmative action. Or at least lobby to get them featured on the Iron Chef or something – I bet those guys could make a kickass pie with plums if we just gave ’em a chance. Buy a plum next time you shop and throw it on some ice cream, you will be amazed.

    What other fruit do you know of that’s neglected?

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