sudo Resets PATH Environment Variable

After setting the proper path for your user account, you can use the -E switch to have sudo preserve the user environment.

From the man page:

-E  The -E (preserve environment) option will override the env_reset option in sudoers(5)).  It is only available when either the matching command has the SETENV tag or the setenv option is set in sudoers(5).

To whit:

$ sudo -s -E

Twitter Lists aren't replacements for RSS Readers

Robert Scoble recently posted a piece called "Why I don't use Google Reader anymore". And his primary argument is that since he gets all his updates through Twitter, he no longer has a use for an RSS reader. The problem with that argument is that he trying to compare of two different update methods as analogous.

Twitter updates are serialized. They come in order and one after another. As such, you have to read through the stream to get your updates. If you miss a post, you have to scroll down through the stream to read it.

RSS readers provide information in parallel. They poll for updates from multiple sources and provide that information in parallel. You can skip to whichever feed you want to read, and go on from there. You don't have to scroll through your entire feed list to see a single article.

How-to Create a CentOS Bootable USB drive

What you need:

• USB Drive (at least 4GB)
• CentOS CD Images 1 through 6 and LiveCD Image (Mirrors)
• Windows XP (Unfortunately. I'm running mine in VirtualBox)
• Fedora LiveUSB Creator (There's a linux version, but I didn't have my linux virtual machine up yet)

Unzip the liveusb-creator to a folder, and run it. Click on Browse and select the LiveCD image you downloaded. Select the target device, usually E: drive.

Click Create Live USB and go to lunch. Took about over an hour for me on VirtualBox.

Once that's done, copy the CD images over to the USB drive. They barely fit on a 4GB drive, so I'd recommend 8GB if possible.

The Best Camera is the one that's with you

Chase Jarvis recently unveiled a new photo taking ecosystem consisting of an iPhone App, a website and a book. I'll let him explain the details:



The Best Camera App (iTunes Link)
The Website (bestc.am)
The Book "The Best Camera Is The One That's With You" (Amazon Link)
My profile on bestc.am

How to track your Blogger stats with Google Analytics

via infektia.net

Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Blogspot Integration?

After going through the integration options offered by all 4, here's what I've come up with so far:

Post to Facebook
- nothing else
- there are options to share this updates with Tumblr and Twitter, but I like using the Photo and Link update options and I don't like how they're displayed on Tumblr/Twitter.

Post to Tumblr
- goes to Twitter (doesn't get posted on Facebook)

Post to Blogspot
- goes to Facebook (notes section)
- goes to Twitter

Post to Twitter

- goes to Facebook

- goes to sidebar on Blogspot (-->)

- goes to Tumblr

So far, Twitter's winning as my preferred method of updating.

Snow Leopard Made Me Love My Laptop Again

Jason Kottke recently wrote about "The Apple upgrade problem", wherein he posits that the problem with upgrading is that the new system runs pretty much like the old system.

"Meet the new boss; same as the old boss" - The Who

I'd say it's a matter of perspective. If you upgrade your hardware relatively often, then you're basically getting incremental advances over the previous technology. If you're like me, on the other hand, and you have a Macbook Pro that was built in early 2007, then Snow Leopard feels like a breath of fresh air.

Until recently, I much preferred using my iMac (late 2008) because it felt snappier. With Snow Leopard, I've taken to carrying my laptop around the house again.

So while it looks pretty much the same as it did under Leopard, I'm definitely using Snow Leopard a whole lot more.

On a side note, if anyone would like to loan me $2500 for a new unibody MBP, I would definitely appreciate it.

Snow Leopard Minor Annoyances

Snow Leopard was released on Friday, and I decided to dedicate my weekend to trying it out. All-in-all, it's much snappier than Leopard, especially regarding boot times and disk mounting/unmounting, but it does have a few minor annoyances.

⌘-tab and Mouse Wheel
If you hit ⌘-tab and then let go of tab while holding down ⌘, you can scroll through the list of open applications with your mouse wheel. In Tiger, scrolling down would select the application to the right and scrolling up would select the application to the left. This was reversed in Leopard, and I remember taking a few days to acclimatize. And now, Snow Leopard has changed it back to the way it was in Tiger. A minor annoyance, but something to get used to again.

Exposé
I haven't decided whether I like the new style of Exposé yet. In Leopard, the windows were arranged with their relative sizes easily discernible and in a manner that mirrored their spatial positions.

Snow Leopard, on on the other hand, displays them in a grid structure. If that weren't enough, if you use Exposé on just the windows for a specific application, the windows in the background disappear and a dimmed version of the desktop is displayed in the background.

But the worst change, is the highlight method. In Leopard, when you mouseover a window in Exposé, you would get a transparent color overlay. In Snow Leopard, you get a color outline with blurred edges and a width of about 10 pixels. Subtle? No.

The other annoyance is the following: When you select one of the windows in an open application and then trigger Exposé for that application, all the application windows would come to the foreground. In Snow Leopard, this is no longer the case, although I'm holding out for this to be changed in an update.

UMBL?

I've been debating for years on whether or not to start a blog. I've got 133 RSS feeds in NetNewsWire that I read daily, and it's something I've always wanted to do. However, I've been stuck in the mindset of getting everything perfect before starting. But today, I decided to just take the plunge.


I'm not sure what format I'm going to use (gruber style linked list or full-on essay style a la Roughly Drafted), but for now, I'm just going to keep writing.


Hopefully, a voice that I like emerges and this will grow into something siginificant. Then again, I may just be shouting at the wall in some out-of-the-way corner of the internet. But, I guess, that's therapeutic too.

New Media Douchebags

If you've ever worked in IT, read this. Seriously, bynkii is the man.

http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2009/08/its_that_time_of_year.html