Homebew is convenient package manager for the OS X. Once you install Homebrew on your Mac, you can then easily intall and uninstall tools, libraries, and applications through the brew command. The brew command accepts an install and unistall option, as well as list option that prints all currently installed applications.
You can install an application through a brew formula. There is a plathora of homebrew formulae.
The following homebrew formulae are the ones that I’ve found most useful as a software developer.
Every programmer should be well versed with Bash, from finding files to schedule tasks. The following are some of the most common Bash commands that I use on a weekly basis.
grep -i aBc <FILE>
Grep ignore case
grep –color abc <FILE>
Color highlight matching pattern
grep -v ABC <FILE>
Ignore any lines that include ABC
grep abc $(find . -mtime 0 -type f)
Grep recently modified files
grep “abc xyz” <FILE> | grep “02/03/19 09”
Find all lines that contain “abc xyz” and then find the remaining lines that contain the following timestamp
ps -ef | grep java
Find Java processes
history | grep git
Find all commands in the history that contain the word git
history -cw
Clear history
wc -l <FILE>
Number of lines in file
ls -1 | wc -l
Count the number of files in the current directory
ls -lh
Show the size unit of the file, such as K for kilobyte, M for megabyte, etc
ln -s <SOURCE_FILE> <LINK_FILE>
Create a symbolic file link reference to <SOURCE_FILE>
df -P <FILE>
Find free disk space and if it’s mounted
du -hs
Find disk usage for each file in current directory
cat /dev/null > <FILE>
Clear/wipe file
zip -r <FILE>
Zip all contents in current directory into the specified zip file
zip -er <FILE> <DIRECTORY>
Zip and encrypt all contents in given directory into the specified zip file
zip -d <FILE> “file.txt”
Remove file file.txt from the specified zip file
unzip -l <FILE>
List contents of given zip file
diff -rq <DIRECTORY_ONE> <DIRECTORY_TWO>
Recursively diff two directory structures
crontab -l
List cron rules for current user
crontab -e
Open crontab for editing
at -f <COMMAND> -t 201906160701
Schedule a command or batch file to run at the specified time
atq
List current scheduled tasks
atrm
Remove a scheudle task
uuidgen
Create a 128-bit UUID
date | md5
Use md5 on a date to generate a UUID based on a hash
$RANDOM
Create a random number between 0 and 32k
tcpdump -ni eth0 -vvv -s0 -w capture.pcap
Listen to eth0 interface in verbose mode and write out to file
tcpdump -ni eth0 port 1812 or port 1813 -vvv -s0 -w capture.pcap
Listen to eth0 interface for only ports 1812 and 1813
It feels like every year we rely more on online services, from Google, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and others. Each of these online services stores a lot of your personal data, not just meta data, but actual data like contacts, posts, photos, chats. Data is more than just personal and private, it is often our work and livelihood.
Unfortunately, to drive user engagement on their own platforms, these services don’t make it easy to interoperate with others, in essence locking you in. Much the personal and private data that we pour into these services is locked into the one service you posted, uploaded, or commented on.
It is a good idea to export all your personal and private data you consider valuable, at least once a year, from any online platform or services. Be sure to backup this data accordingly, using both physical and cloud backup solutions.
For example, with Google Takeout you can export your Blogger posts and pages, GMail email and contacts, Drive documents, YouTube videos and comments, and much more.
Google Takeout
I don’t backup my data off of Google because they would lose it, but because it has been documented a number of times that Google can suspend any account, even for what would be considered normal behavior and usage by the account holder. In the case of services like Twitter and Instagram, there are cases that accounts have been hijacked by hackers or even former friends. Additionally, these services can be bought up by other companies and can change their terms of service in a way that impacts your data and work, like when Flickr got acquired by SmugMug in 2018.
Laptops are designed to travel with. We taken home, to the coffee shop, to the library, when we travel, everywhere. It is not uncommon to misplace your power adapter when travel, or equally as bad forget it at home after you left for a trip. And of course, the cable used by the power adapter does wear and tear and would need to be replaced. I must have been about 3 years when I last needed to replace the power adapter to a MacBook Pro. I remember the sticker shock when I picked up a replacement power adapter and found it cost $69, but I needed it so I paid the Apple tax and bought it. Recently I had left behind at the office the power adapter for current MacBook Pro, 2016 model. I haven’t been in the office since and I needed charge my laptop. Luckily, so I thought, I have an Apple Store two blocks away from home. This time around, the full cost of a power adapter was $79, but Thunderbolt cable or batteries not included, I needed to shell out an additional $39 for a 0.8M USB-C cable.
Apple Store Receipt for MBP Power Adapter
This is truly Apple’s genius. To take a technology, like electricity, that was invented over a hundred years ago. A commodity technology that is found in products priced at $10 and below, like power cords. Change the connectors in such a way that others can’t legally copy your design. Break a product down to their essential components, the actual power adapter from the cable. Charge as much as possible for each component that is sold as a product.
If you have an existing WordPress blog that you’ve used for years and have built up some Google juice but now are required to relocate to a different domain, you way want to redirect all the inbound links for the old domain to your new domain. If you still have access to the old existing domain, you can easily redirect all the inbound links to the new domain using the following .htaccess script.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*old-domain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://new-domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Replace old-domain and new-domain with the correct domain names. If you WordPress blog was located in old-domain.com/wordpress then drop this in the wordpress directory that contains your WordPress installation. Of course, this only works for as long as you have access to the old-domain. Also, be sure to use the same permalink settings in the new WordPress insulation as in the previous so that the redirection maps the blogs posts correctly.
A lot has changed since I last listed my top WordPress plugins. Over the years I’ve been blogging and helping others set up their blogs, I’ve settled on the few must have WordPress plugins that are essential for any new blog.
Jetpack by WordPress
The company behind WordPress, Automattic, have compiled a collection of useful tools that is realized as the Jatpack by WordPress plugin. It’s really a plugin suite. Jetpack includes WordPress statistics right in your dashboard, social sharing widgets, WP.me short/tiny links, and other useful tools. In addition to all these features, Automattic is constantly added more add-ons and tools for this plugin.
Google Analytics
Even though it’s not been updated in a while, I still use Google Analytics so that I can track my sites’ visitors on Google Analytics. Even though the Jetpack by WordPress offers analytics, I’ve find Google Analytics to be more detailed in how it tracks visitors.
Google Sitemap Generator
Any plugin that helps search engines crawl your blog belongs in your toolbox. The Google Sitemap Generator does just that. This plugin creates a search engine friendly site map pointing out the most recent content on your site.
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
I’ve been using Yet Another Related Posts Plugin for years. I can’t even begin to describe how this plugin works, simple put it magically detects similar blog posts on your site and creates additional links to them in the footer section of your post. This is a great plugin that helps your readers discover other similar posts on your site.
WPtouch
Now that more and more of your visitors are coming to your site using their mobile devices, such as the iPhone or Android phones, you may want to use a plugin like WPtouch. WPtouch creates a mobile device friendly version of your site.
