My current setup (2019 edition) original
After tweeting out a screenshot, it often get questions around which editor, font or color scheme I'm using. Instead of replying to those questions individually I've decided to just write down the settings and apps that I'm using.
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Small Wins
Some words of wisdom by David Hemphill
Don't be upset you didn't finish the big feature early in the week. Be glad you figured out what you need to do to finish it in the next few days.
Read more [davidhemphill.com]
The fear of missing out in web development
Mohammed Said wrote some thoughts on FOMO that resonate with me.
It's a constant pressure on me, and I can imagine how hard it can be on people newly joining the career. In my early days it wasn't that bad, things weren't moving that fast, but nowadays it's crazy.
Read more [themsaid.com]
Add a prefix to your Chrome tabs
Pro-tip: set custom prefixes for your local, staging and production environments using the Tab ReTitle Chrome extension ?
— Alex (@AlexVanderbist) July 15, 2019
Never accidentally debug the wrong tab again! https://t.co/hRfaKesKwL pic.twitter.com/DU1llvdpQd
Read more [twitter.com]
Keep the MacOS desktop empty
? Desktop always a mess? This little script tells macOS to not render desktop icons at all, so ~/Desktop is just another folder and your wallpaper is always unobstructed. pic.twitter.com/GjsmbrZ4c4
— Adam Wathan (@adamwathan) July 15, 2019
Read more [twitter.com]
Bash/Shell Autocompletion for Composer
Bram Van Damme explains how you can get autocompletion for most composer commands.
Read more [www.bram.us]
Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens
Personally, when I want to work on something I just turn off all notification on my Mac.
Probably reached for the phone. Turned off the alarm. Glanced at the time. Scrolled through the Slack notifications. Went through the emails. You will likely continue doing it throughout the day, approximately 2,617 more times, according to some studies. We all do it, and despite all the virtues of digital minimalism, completely giving up those habits is extreme and, arguably, unnecessary. Yet we live in a culture obsessed with productivity and these harmless distractions are wreaking havoc on it.
Read more [blog.nuclino.com]
Don’t forget to be selfish every now and then
A short and sweet article by my colleague Seb.
I was always adding features because I’d expect other people to expect them. It’s a trap! You’re not making people happier by guessing what they might need. You’re not doing anyone a disservice by building things for yourself.
Read more [sebastiandedeyne.com]
We’re optimizing ourselves to death
Zander Nethercutt provides some great insights in the mechanisms in play that can lead to burnout.
When we see long weekends and think “work before play,” when we see Friday nights and think “sleep before clubs,” when we see escalators as accelerators and not opportunities to “just take a second,” we’re nothing more than hyperrational prisoners making a decision that would be inaccurately characterized as a dilemma because the answer is obvious.
Read more [medium.com]
Configuring PhpStorms code generation original
I've been using PhpStorm for quite some time now, but never took the effort to fix a few minor annoyances I had with it. Getting rid of the default comment for new PHP files First up, when creating a new PHP file or class you PhpStorm will add this comment block like this by default: /** * Created…
Unslacking Tideways Company
Benjamin Eberlei wrote a post on why and how he got rid of Slack in his company.
We have moved away from Slack at Tideways over the last three months, because I found Slack is already annoying, even with just a four person team (plus the occasional freelancer). For me, it disrupts deep work phases and knowledge lost in the depth of chat history.
Read more [beberlei.de]
My current setup (2018 edition) original
After tweeting out a screenshot, it often get questions around which editor, font or color scheme I'm using. Instead of replying to those questions individually I've decided to just write down the settings and apps that I'm using. IDE I mainly program PHP. Mostly I develop in PhpStorm. Here's a…
OCR in your terminal
?shell tip?
— Travis Northcutt (@tnorthcutt) September 6, 2018
brew install tesseract
alias ocr='screencapture -i ~/tmp/screenshot.png && tesseract ~/tmp/screenshot.png stdout | pbcopy && rm -f ~/tmp/screenshot.png'
Then, run `ocr` in your terminal, select text in an image, and...
✨it's copied to your clipboard ✨ pic.twitter.com/KEsiDasu8l
Read more [twitter.com]
Replacing standard CLI tools with better ones
Remy Sharp, a well known JavaScript developer, published a cool list of standard CLI tools replacements.
I'm not sure many web developers can get away without visiting the command line. As for me, I've been using the command line since 1997, first at university when I felt both super cool l33t-hacker and simultaneously utterly out of my depth. Over the years my command line habits have improved and I often search for smarter tools for the jobs I commonly do. With that said, here's my current list of improved CLI tools.
Read more [remysharp.com]
Doing less original
Last week I stumbled upon this article titled "GitLabbers share how to recognize burnout". It list these points to recognize burnout: You're constantly tired You no longer enjoy things Your job performance suffers Your relationships are strained (You have a hard time remembering…
Why is everybody wearing headphones?
Andreas Creten, co-founder of madewithlove, wrote a good blogpost about a few aspects of their company culture.
There are three requirements for making good products: developers with the right skills, decent product management and ideal working conditions. The reason why so many of us wear headphones has to do with the latter. As a software developer, the last thing you want is distraction: colleagues talking to each other, the sound of a coffee machine, a printer and so on. Distraction prevents you from getting “in the zone”, a state of mind in which you deliver your best work.
https://medium.com/we-are-madewithlove/why-is-everybody-wearing-headphones-522a61de27ca
Take the power back
iA writer is a great app to write text without any distractions (I'm not paid to say this ?). On their website the developers wrote an inspirational article that urges you to not only consume content, but also to create it.
You may have heard that the best way to deal with the “information overload” is to switch off your devices. To take a break from the Internet. Go for a run. Roll out the Yoga mat. Read a book. Talk to your friends. Switching off is good advice. But eventually, you’ll be back. How about changing? Changing from passive, to active. From scroll to search, from react to rethink, from like and retweet to write and link.
https://ia.net/topics/take-the-power-back/
I’m taking a break from cron.weekly
In the beginning of the year people tend to compile lists with everything they want to achieve in the next 365 days. But sometimes, instead of wanting to learn or start something new, it's also good to leave an old thing behind.
A little over 2 years ago I started a weekly newsletter for Linux & open source users, called cron.weekly. Today, I'm sending the last issue in what is probably going to be a pretty long time. I need a break.
Here's why.
tl;dr: I've got a wife, 2 kids, a (more than) full time job, 2 other side projects and a Netflix subscription. For now, cron.weekly doesn't fit in that list anymore.
https://ma.ttias.be/im-taking-break-cron-weekly/
There's really no shame in calling it quits on some things to make place for fresh activities. The last couple of months I've seen some people close to me stop doing things they were once passionate about, but didn't fully enjoy anymore. And in each case it turned out for the better.
