off by one for 2007 March

Sat Mar 03 19:59:02 PST 56 Hour Challenge Results... :

So, I made it almost to 56 hours, but the last night I had some homework done and I had to stay up. I probably completed the 52-hour challenge. I felt great though! You should all try it. You'll thank me.

Anyway, some other cool things you might like to know.

If you're on Debian/Ubuntu, and you want some RAD tab completion power, just source /etc/bash_completion in your login scripts. Yow! Now you can tab-complete package names with apt-get! And much, much more.

Another hot tip I just learned, is the -f switch for ssh, which is really handy for tunneling X11 apps over ssh. From the manpage: "Requests ssh to go to background just before command execution. ... This implies -n. The recommended way to start X11 programs at a remote site is with something like ssh -f host xterm." What you get when you try this, is the login prompt, then the program loads, and you get your terminal back... which you can then close! ... but since ssh is backgrounded, the tunneled app stays open! PROFIT!

Sat Mar 03 23:10:03 PST Boston and Tom Waits:

Boston's eponymous first release and Tom Waits' Small Change were both released in 1976. In fact, Small Change was being recorded when I was born. Coincidence? I think not.

Sun Mar 04 14:05:14 PST hot vim tip sandwich (au jus):

vim has a cool "delete-from-here-to" feature. In command mode, put your cursor where you want to start deleting. Then, type 'd/n', where n is a regex describing where you want to stop deleting. vim should show you where you are deleting to, either by highlighting, or by moving the cursor. When you're pleased with your regex, hit enter. Bam!

Mon Mar 05 16:30:48 PST gnome-terminal:

control-'-' and control-'+' increase and decrease the font size in the active window. Pretty cool!

I'm one of those people who thinks that it should probably be control-'=' so that I don't have to do control-shift-'='... but maybe that's just me. It seems a little pedantic to make people press shift.

Sat Mar 10 10:37:12 PST .ssh/config:

Set ssh defaults for different hosts.

(3) Sat Mar 10 13:55:10 PST online grammar checker:

Are you writing a Context-Free Grammar and you want to see if it works? Want to try a few test cases but don't have time to work the derivations by hand? Did you think this kind of technology only existed in the future? You were wrong.

Sun Mar 11 01:49:34 PST speaking of boston...:

We were just another band out of Boston / on the road tryin' to make ends meet / playin' out of bars sleepin' in our cars / and we practiced right on out in the street

though we didn't have much money / we barely made enough to survive / but when we got up on stage and got ready to play / people came alive

RIP Brad Delp.

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