My keyboard is quite important to me. I spend a lot of time using it. I even use Vim with arrow keys disabled (using hjkl instead).

I bought a dasKeyboard at the end of February and have had nothing but issues with it ever since I received it. The following is a timeline of my experience so far with dasKeyboard, to be used as a warning for anyone considering purchasing one of these keyboards.

On February 26th, 2013, I purchased a dasKeyboard from Amazon. (I purchased through Amazon rather than dasKeyboard because I have Prime)

The keyboard arrived the following Thursday (February 28th, 2013).

On March 7th 2013, the following keys stopped working completely: 8ik,. I immediately went to Amazon and reported the issue, and requested that a replacement be sent out. Amazon sent one out immediately and gave me all necessary paperwork to send the old one back to them free of charge. Shit happens.

On March 11th, 2013, the replacement dasKeyboard arrived. And there was much rejoicing.

On March 22nd, 2013, the replacement dasKeyboard dies. No keys work at all. Tested on two machines. All the indicator lights stay on steady while it’s plugged in. No keys work at all.

I’ve put in a support ticket to dasKeyboard, as I’m sure this could be just a coincidence.

As of writing this, I haven’t heard back from them either on twitter or via email support. I’ll likely just return the keyboard to Amazon for a refund.

In other news, turns out there is a Micro Center in the Denver Tech Center. I just went and picked up a CM Storm QuickFire keyboard with Cherry MX Blues. Here’s to hoping I have better luck with this keyboard.

I start new projects all the time. Generally, they are for no reason other than the fun of it.

I also try to hold myself to open sourcing them if I’m not planning on using them in the future. They are great code samples, and interest can always bring you back to that project.

One of these projects, Dysnomia, is a 3d Voxel (Volumetric Pixel) editor, that I made. It’s not very polished, but it does a decent job of what it’s supposed to do. It’s built in Java, with LWJGL (OpenGL), and implements concepts such as 3d Picking (Color Picking) and “planes” (i.e. A GUI / HUD plane vs 3d Space).

If you are interested, it’s now available over at my GitHub.

If you have any questions or need some help getting it running, let me know on twitter: @sgricci

I’m a command line junkie. I spend most of the day in command-line based tools (vim, git, mysql, etc.). I rarely ever use anything with a gui besides a browser.

I love using sprint.ly, it’s an awesome tool for agile development. Sadly it doesn’t have a command line tool, and no one has created one yet. When I’m hacking away on a personal project and I want to keep a rolling todo list, I use todo.pl (which uses the hiveminder API for a backend.) Sadly, the default todo.pl script (which can be installed via CPAN btw) is pretty terse. I add a task, and I want to immediately perform some additional task to it, such as adding tags, etc. So I’ve patched my todo.pl to display the task ID after adding it, here’s what I changed.

Open todo.pl (you can find it using whereis todo.pl) and locate the response_ok line for the sub add_task (line 357 on mine), change that line to this:

     result_ok($result, "Created task: #".$result->{_content}->{record_locator});

Note: You’ll need root to edit this file if it’s installed globally

Now, it’ll respond with Created Task: #XXXX, much more useful for me.

–s

I’ve been reading more than ever recently. I decided I’d share a few of my favorite books from recent reading over the holidays. Mostly sci-fi and dystopia ahead, be warned.

Ready Player One

This book is one of the rare ones. It really struck a chord with me, and I couldn’t put it down. I consumed it over the course of a work day.

The book revolves around an immersive MMORPG called Oasis. The eccentric creator of this gaming world hides a series of puzzles in the game, which is revealed after he has died. The story follows the hunt for this set of puzzles and an all out war to be the first to reach the last puzzle.

As with most good books, there is also a love interest, and DeLoreans that achieve light speed.

Rating: 5/5

Ender’s Game

This book.. was amazing. It’s actually part of a quintet, but I feel the first book ends in such a way, it is optional whether you read the other 3. (I haven’t)

This book is futuristic, with population-density issues, and a “big brother”/overwatcher feel to it. The ending is amazing, and it’s another book that I really couldn’t put down and recommended to a few friends immediately after finishing the last page.

This book revolves around Ender, who at the beginning of the book is a young gifted boy, a third child. Third being a rather big deal, as special permission from the government is required, due to population control laws. Ender and his two siblings are geniuses. There is also a seemingly never-ending war against what is reffered to as the “bugs”, an alien race that desires to exterminate the human race. This book takes place a decade of so after the second war with the bugs.

Rating: 5/5

Wool #1-5

Wool has been talked about quite a bit. It’s a self-published phenomenon.

The series is actually 5 short stories. They all tend to revolve around different aspects of a place called “The Silo”. The Silo is an underground living quarters that has been the home of the current inhabitants, or their ancestors for as long as anyone can remember.

At the time I read the book, the first story (an easy 50 or so pages) was free on amazon. Remember, the first hit is always free.

A few of the stories seem to draw it out quite a bit. In the second book, the mayor and deputy go from the top of the silo, down around 130 flights to award someone the honor and office of being the silo sheriff. That book specifically seemed to be overly descriptive. Oh, they go back up as well.

Overall, I liked the story in full, even if it seemed a bit scatter-brained at times.

There are 2 other books (6,7), but they are prequels to the Wool saga, and the fifth book leaves it at a good place. I’m not specifically interested in how it all began, as it’s generically described in the books.

• Rating: 3/5*

Having a bit of a problem getting yourself to step away from the desk?

When I first started working from home full-time, I had this problem as well. I was overly communicative via email, IM, etc. It turns out most people will notice this, but people don’t notice if you reply in a normal amount of time. It’s expected behavior.

For lunch, I realized it takes me a whole 8 minutes to make a sandwich, glass of water and consume it. Your results are probably similar. I started using a timer to specify how long I was going to stay away from my computer. When it was lunch time, I’d set my timer for an hour. During this time, I would not touch my computer, or check e-mail on my phone. It was tough for the first few weeks, training my brain this way.

After I got over the hump, it was magical. I usually don’t use the timer any more, but I still stay away from my desk for at least an hour during the day. I eat lunch, I read on my kindle, I hang outside with my dogs and catch up on twitter, facebook, etc.

By the way, the non-Kindle Fire Kindles don’t have e-mail. That’s a feature. Disconnect more, it’s good for you.

-s

Here are two ways to change your hostname in Mac OS X.

The first, open a new terminal and type this:

    sudo hostname <new hostname>

Note: You will be asked for your password, because you are performing this command as root

The second, go to System Preferences -> Sharing -> Computer Name.

The first option will be more immediate.

Slowly becoming my favorite, my Useful Unix Command of the moment is: fc

fc allows you to open the last run command in an editor. By default, it will open with the editor set up in $EDITOR (vim for me).

If you have ever had to type a really long command out, and missed something, or wanted to run it for several more files, fc is very useful as it opens in Vim ($EDITOR) and then, upon closing, will run the command again.

This command works on most Linux systems, Unix systems and on Mac OS X. Give it a try.

I figured I’d share this one:

To remove the MacVim top toolbar, set this in your .vimrc file:

    set guioptions-=T

And never have to close that toolbar again.