Daddy Status Page
A common problem for my wife and daughter since I started working from home more and more was knowing when I was on a conference call. My office has a glass door and the hallway behind it leads upstairs and to the master bedroom, so my family — understandably — likes to know if they’ll be on camera or not when they walk past. It’s also handy for them to know when they can ask me a question verbally rather than having to send me a text message from the room next door. Read more...
Archiving my Website with Workflow & Hazel
I really enjoy automating things using Workflow, Hazel, shell scripts, or just about anything else. Last night I got the idea that it would be cool to have a graphical archive of each post to my website as it appeared the day it was posted. Over time I’ll have a visual history of how my website has changed and, who knows, might make a little coffee table book or something. Read more...
Mermaid CLI via Whalebrew
As I noted in my quick review, I love Whalebrew. Whalebrew has allowed me to use several tools I was too afraid of before in my day-to-day workflow. The biggest of these tools is Mermaid. I’ve been using Mermaid for years to make quick and simple Gantt charts and other diagrams. Up to now, however, my workflow has involved saving my Mermaid file in a text document and copying and pasting the text into the online Mermaid generator when I need a new image. Read more...
Review: Whalebrew
It seems that each and every day there is a cool command line tool to try out to help automate or generally improve some part of my day-to-day. The problem with many of these tools, however, is that they require all sorts of dependencies (Ruby, Python, Node.js) each of which have their own package managers and sub-dependencies. Homebrew solves this for many things, but they are pretty picky about what they allow in, so more often than not, I’m left trying to decide if I risk messing up my machine by installing a web of dependencies or skip giving the tool a try. Read more...
Booting a PowerBook 1400 from Compact Flash
The PowerBook 1400 is the last PowerBook to have a real keyboard and is wellknown for having one of — if not the best — keyboards Apple ever put into a notebook. Several years ago, I bought a PowerBook 1400c off eBay as my grandmother’s first computer. She used it lightly for a few years to surf the Internet on dial-up AOL, but since 2003 or so, the PowerBook has been sitting in a box unused. Read more...
Collect for a Server Migration
Almighty Father who is the source of all life, give thy servants an extra measure of thy grace that we, directing the intellect and energy thou hast gifted mankind, might so order our minds as to successfully configure and migrate the systems we steward to the service of thy Holy Catholic Church and to the glory thy Son, Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Spirit reign as one God, now and forever. Read more...
Réformd Éngliss Alfubet
Réformd Éngliss utimpts tú províd an ézé sistim for ríténg Éngliss egzaktlé az it soundz. Natiraalé, Éngliss haz mané dílekts and it iz naat praktikl tú províd á pirfektlé funetik sistim. Réformd Éngliss orðaagrafé intindz to giv Éngliss a simplifíd ríténg sistim in the sám ván az uþir jirmanik lángwicez. Bélow aar þu jiniraal soundz mád bí éc letir or letir kaambinássun in Réformd Éngliss orðaagrafé. Mor détáld rulz aar províded, but — in jiniraal — just rít lík ú spék. Read more...
Sublime Notes on iOS via Editorial
Switching to plain-text notes using the Sublime Note package was a huge boon to my daily productivity. Not only was Sublime Text more stable than the previous alternatives, it used less memory, was easier to search thanks to Alfred/Spotlight, and — when paired with Dropbox — synched quickly across all of my devices. My only problem was my inability to easily edit notes on my iPad. Yes, I could take my MacBook Air with me from meeting to meeting, but thanks to my Microsoft Universal Keyboard I was now too spoiled by my small and light iPad mini + keyboard setup. Read more...
Sublime Notes Template Snippet
Several months ago I followed the lead of my friend Jon Boulineau and switched from Evernote/Simplenote/OneNote for my note taking needs, to Sublime Text using the Sublime Note package. Sublime Text uses significantly less system resources than the alternatives and is incredibly stable at all times. Further, when synched via Dropbox, all of my super-small, plain-text note files are instantly available on all of my devices — mobile and otherwise. Read more...
Alfred 3 Firefox URL Copy
I’ve been an Alfred user for many years, but until I moved to LifeWay, I’d never had the opportunity to use a Macintosh — and thus Alfred — as part of my daily work. For me, Alfred was always about quick launching applications, doing quick calculations, and checking the spelling and definition of words. Thanks to my daily use at LifeWay and the guidance of the Mac Power Users, I’ve upped my Alfred game significantly over the last several months. Read more...
God's Self Revelation
As the only source of life and being, God is in a constant state of giving to his creation. Because he wills it, humanity, the earth, and the cosmos are. In this very abstract sense, all things “visible and invisible” are a revelation of the God who creates and sustains them. The enterally triune God, however, is not chiefly a god of the abstract. He is a god of the particular. Read more...
The Doctrine of Sin
Apart from his will and his life-giving breath, nothing outside of God can exist. God made all of creation and wills its existence, movement, and life. Into this creation, God placed a special creature, human beings. Humans were made in God’s own image and outside of receiving his breath of life were uniquely equipped to reflect God’s life-giving back towards creation and the Creator himself. Humans, unlike other creatures, could have relationship with God. Read more...
Career Growth Through Upward Empathy
It’s been three and a half years since I closed Sublime Text and entered the world of Outlook and PowerPoint. In a lot of ways management has been what I thought it would be. There are poltics. There are constant temptations to compromise for my benefit over the developers on my teams. There are boring budgeting and strategy meetings. There are e-mails. So. Many. E-mails. Overall, however, management has, for me, been exactly what I set out for it to be at the beginning. Read more...
Linux Fileshare for Classic Macintoshes
A while back I got the idea in my head that I needed a fileshare for my classic Macintoshes. The move to HTTPS in recent years has left ancient browsers out in the cold for hitting classic software repositories like Macintosh Garden which meant I needed to either suffer the pain of heavy browsing in Classilla on my iMac G4 or download files on a modern machine that the Macs could get access to. Read more...
No Regrets: Travel outside the Alltag
Since August I have been volunteering as the chaplain intern at a retirement community and nursing home in the Middle Tennessee area. Over the months, I’ve spoken and prayed with many people as they’ve reflected on and — sometimes — mourned their journey through time. Over and over again — often through tears — I’ve witnessed people who regretted allowing the Alltag1 of life stand in the way of their experiencing God’s creation in its fullness. Read more...
