Miles. Blog.

"Sometimes the next thing does less, and is better for it — not in every way, but overall. If we..."

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 19:10:54 -0800

“Sometimes the next thing does less, and is better for it — not in every way, but overall. If we never let go of old technology, we’d be buried in complexity and crushed by outdated crap.”

- John Gruber

The House of the Lord

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 18:25:33 -0700

The House of the Lord

The new Mac App Store. (Comes with software update 10.6.6)

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 20:36:23 -0800

The new Mac App Store. (Comes with software update 10.6.6)

"In this final season, I’ve realized that we LOST watchers are uncomfortably similar to Ben Linus. We..."

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:19:35 -0700

“In this final season, I’ve realized that we LOST watchers are uncomfortably similar to Ben Linus. We blindly follow the show, our Jacob, with good faith that one day, everything we’ve gone through will all make sense. We’re confused, and maybe a little hurt when we don’t understand for weeks, or even years, at a time. We curse the final moments before 10:00pm, episode coming to a close, every tiny moment of clarity bested by a bigger and badder question. Yet, patiently, we stand by for our payment, an amazing finale, the major “AHA!” moment, pieces falling generously into place. Ben Linus waits, too. Granted, none of us has (hopefully) poisoned our communities with a toxic gas, but dammit, we’re going to freaking stab someone if we don’t get our answers.”

- Melanie via
815 Sentences About Lost

"Extensive experience with non-Oracle databases, especially Oracle."

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 22:48:14 -0800

“Extensive experience with non-Oracle databases, especially Oracle.”

- Database Analyst Job Application

Downed tree does some damage to a truck outside my lab window.

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:47:40 -0800

Downed tree does some damage to a truck outside my lab window.

Apple Event January 27.

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:03:22 -0800

Apple Event January 27.

"It’s weird to say your life needs more friction. But I think mine does. Distractions are so easy to..."

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 12:54:10 -0800

“It’s weird to say your life needs more friction. But I think mine does. Distractions are so easy to get to, there’s almost no good reason not to partake. Unless I count the one big reason: we all have big, important, useful work we could be doing.”

- De-optimizing by Frank Chimero

Marco Arment on Alex Payne’s, “Don’t Be A Hero”

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:57:00 -0800

Marco Arment on Alex Payne’s, “Don’t Be A Hero”

Why I Believe Printers Were Sent From Hell To Make Us Miserable

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:55:00 -0800

Why I Believe Printers Were Sent From Hell To Make Us Miserable

Footnotes: there’s some good stuff down there.

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:19:00 -0800

Footnotes: there’s some good stuff down there.

And I thought Utah high school prom invites were creative.

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 09:51:20 -0800

And I thought Utah high school prom invites were creative.

Command-line Journaling

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 23:47:39 -0800

I wrote in my journal 338 days over the course of last year. Not bad, considering that my previous record was about 5 days in a year. What made the difference? Trying to make the act of journal writing as painless as possible.

I created a simple command-line program and made this my ritual:

Run jr
Write in the file it creates
Save the file

That’s it.

#!/bin/bash
# Journal by Miles Pomeroy
# v1.0 2010-01-06
#
##Setup##
# Change $DIR to the directory you want to store your journal entries in.
# Adjust $CMD to call your editor of choice.
# Adjust $EXT to your file extension of choice.
#
##Usage##
# Run the script, `jr`, and it will create a file in the directory you 
# choose with today's date. Then it will open that file in your editor.
# If you provide a date, `jr 2009-10-21`, it will open that file from 
# from your journal. If it doesn't exist it was ask if you want to create
# it.
#

## Variables 

DIR="/Users/pants/Documents/journal/" # directory to place files
#DIR="/Users/macglab/LabData/Miles/labbook/" # for my work computer
#DIR="test/" # test directory

CMD='mate -l 1000' # use TextMate as editor
#CMD='vim +' # use vim

EXT='.md' # file extension

## Functions

# make the file with the date
makeIt ()
{
    echo -e "\n"$pretty_date"\n-----\n" >> $filename
}

## Code

if [ -z $1 ] # if there is no argument
then
    short_date=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d") # date format for filename
    pretty_date=$(date +"%A, %B %e, %Y") # date format for header
    filename=$DIR$short_date$EXT

    if [ -f $filename ] # if file already exists
    then # open it
        $CMD $filename
    else # make it and open it
        makeIt
        $CMD $filename
    fi
else # there is an argument
    if [[ $1 =~ .*-.*-.* ]] # basic validation of date format
    then
        short_date=$1
        pretty_date=$(date -j -f "%Y-%m-%d" $1 "+%A, %B %e, %Y")
        filename=$DIR$short_date$EXT

        if [ -f $filename ] # if file already exists
        then # open it
            $CMD $filename
        else # ask to make it
            echo "Entry does not exist."
            echo "Do you want to create an entry for $1? (Y|n)"
            read input

            if [[ $input != "n" ]] # yes they want it created, default
            then # make it and open it
                makeIt
                $CMD $filename
            fi
        fi
    else # wrong date format
        echo "Format the date thus: YYYY-MM-DD"
        exit 1
    fi
fi

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