One trick I found helpful was to hotkey a folder for quick access to my most used directories on my computer. If you have the power pack, it’s quite simple. Open up your Alfred preferences and go to the Global Hotkeys panel. Add a new hotkey and instead of selecting an app or a file, just select a folder for the “action” and set your hotkey.

Now, using that hotkey will open a finder window for that directory; it’s that simple. I currently use CMD + ` to open my Dropbox folder and CMD + ALT + ` to open my mounted file server.

We have a name for the kind of person who collects a detailed, permanent dossier on everyone they interact with, with the intent of using it to manipulate others for personal advantage - we call that person a sociopath. And both Google and Facebook have gone deep into stalker territory with their attempts to track our every action.

The original feed http://markupboy.com/rss should continue to work and all of the old urls for that feed should be redirecting to it. There is also an new alternate feed at feeds.feedburner.com/markupboy that will be the new canonical feed going forward.

You can view the project over on github or download the plugin from devot:ee.

Installation

Place the nearby plugin folder in your ExpressionEngine installation’s third_party folder (system/expressionengine/third_party by default).

Since Nearby makes user of the GeoNames API, a GeoNames user account will be required to use more than the demo mode provided. You can sign up for one at www.geonames.org/login

Once your account is created and activated, you will need to log in to the GeoNames site, click your username in the top right of the page to bring up the user control panel and then click the “Click here to enable” link under the title “Free Web Services” to enable API usage on your account.

Once your account is fully enabled, you can pass your username to the plugin via the “username” parameter or set your username in your config.php file with the code:

$config['nearby_username'] = "YOUR USERNAME";

Usage

{exp:nearby}

Parameters:

• zip (required) - the zipcode you’d like to search on
• limit - limit the number of results returned
• radius - distance in miles to search surrounding the desired zipcode
• username - your GeoNames username

Single Variables:

• {zip} - zipcode of result
• {placename} - plain text descriptor of result
• {latitude} - latitude of result, in decimal
• {longitude} - longitude of result, in decimal
• {distance} - the result’s distance from the searched zipcode

{/exp:nearby}

Why formulation? Because I’ve started to dislike the term “boilerplate”, and formulation had a nice ring to it.

Front-End Formulation is based around the SCSS syntax of SASS and Compass for assisting in CSS development, Jammit for JavaScript packaging, and (optionally) HAML for writing markup.

Getting started is as easy as running bundle install to install all necessary gems (see the Gemfile to see what is actually included). Once that’s finished, run guard to begin watching the directory for changes to files handled by compass, jammit, or haml.

By allowing for a more flexible work schedule, you create an atmosphere where employees can be excited about their work. Ultimately it should lead to more hours of work, with those hours being even more productive. Working weekends blur into working nights into working weekdays, since none of the work feels like work.

A great post from Zach Holman on operating hours at GitHub. For me, I know that even though I’m in the office at 8:30 or 9 in the morning, on most days I don’t actually start being truly productive until after lunch.

Enter AppleScript. After a bit of digging, I found that you can script the connecting and disconnecting of a given VPN. Grab the name of the VPN service you’d like to easily toggle and open up AppleScript editor and paste in this script:

tell application "System Events"
    tell current location of network preferences
        set VPNservice to service "VPN SERVICE" -- name of the VPN service
        set isConnected to connected of current configuration of VPNservice
        if isConnected then
            disconnect VPNservice
        else
            connect VPNservice
        end if
    end tell
end tell

You’ll want to change “VPN SERVICE” to the name of your VPN connection from network preferences (retaining the quotes). Running this will switch the states of your VPN from connect to not. That in and of itself isn’t terribly interesting but if you have a app that can handle system-wide hotkeys (like Quicksilver, Alfred, or Keyboard Maestro) you can bind this script to run at the press of a button (for me, it’s just Cmd + F12).

That’s right, the only way to get video to the Thunderbolt Display is by using a Thunderbolt enabled Mac (or theoretically a Thunderbolt enabled PC). For Mac users that means only 2011 MacBook Pro, Air, iMac or Mac mini models will work with the Thunderbolt Display.

Which means that if I were to buy a Mac Pro from the apple store right now, I’d have to go somewhere else to buy a display. That’s the most un-Apple-like thing I’ve seen Apple do in a long time.