Sometimes, the Beginning is the best place to Continue

I’ve been taking an online course on CSS that starts from the basics.

My original ‘course’ in CSS was on the job training as we converted a site from tables to CSS divs somewhere in the summer of 2000.

A lot has changed in the world of web programming since the dot-com boom when I was doing it professionally (well, as professionally as any of us were, I suppose), and while I still make web things, from WordPress plugins and themes to even dabbling in React.js and Svelte, it’s not my profession anymore. This means that while I’m dipping my toes back in everyone in a while—scraping through Google searches to find the answers to my questions—I’m not active enough in the space to catch up by working.

That was how I learned these things, programming Perl, then PHP, adding JavaScript to have mouse-overs. Tables for layout, and I’m going to admit here, in public, that there are days I wish we went back to tables for layout. I learned CSS ‘real-time’ as we updated the site from tables, hard coded styles and background images to a more fluid CSS layout over the summer.

The thing is this: sometimes the best way to learn is to start from the beginning. Sure, I know everything in the first couple lessons, but it wasn’t long before something new came out. A new term, a new phrase, a new best practice.

I know CSS. But I learned it then and patch-worked myself through updates and improvements throughout these years. I knew CSS, and even though I still use it often, the foundation is based on the lessons learned, right and wrong, all those years ago. At some point… at this point, the best way to continue learning is to start over.

Because it is not just specs and code that has changed over the years, but vocabulary, best practices, formatting and naming conventions (not that we had naming conventions in 1999).

This makes a basic course a refresher and a new foundation to build on from here. Don’t be afraid or prideful to take a step back and go over the basics once again.

On Open Source and Syncing

I’ve been wanting to dip my toes into the open source world for a long time. I certainly have used open source projects for a long time. I was an active supporter of NeoOffice, the OpenOffice.org port for Mac, helping to write documentation, and answering support questions. It was fun.

This time I am the one writing the code. This is my first project, but from the looks of my hard drive this won’t be my last.

Introducing sync.applescript

Makes it sound like something spectacular, no? This one is for you Mac users who want to have files backed up / synced onto a thumb drive. It is designed to be run from the destination location and sync files found elsewhere.

So, for example, I keep a copy on a thumb drive. I plug in the drive, run the application and it updates folders on the drive to match the folders on my computer—updating the changed files and deleting the deleted files.

It is a one-way sync, updating directory with any changes in directory, filling a backup role, rather than a true sync.

It uses AppleScript to run a command line utility call rsync to do so.

I’ve set it up on GitHub for anyone who wants it.

https://github.com/jakeosx/sync-applescript

How Do I use that?

Go to the GitHub page, download the AppleScript file, put it in the directory you want your files to be copied to (so I put mine on the thumb drive). Read the README. It has all the answers you want!

Basically, you add in the path to the folders you want to copy, and tell it if your drive is FAT32/exFAT or no.

Seriously, I spent a lot of time on that README, and it should have all the answers!

It is also released under the GPL3, so feel free to copy, use, pass it around, modify as you wish as per that license!

WARNING

NEVER TEST SHIT YOU FIND ON THE INTERNET ON LIVE DATA! Try this out with a copied folder to make sure you get it. It isn’t set up to delete anything on the origin folder, but will on your synced folder. Play with a few files and see how it works before you set it up for real.

BACK UP YOUR SHIT. ALL OF IT. And yes, that is the intent of this program, but still.

TiddlyWiki Home Page

For the past few years I’ve been using TiddlyWiki as my home page for my browser. The purpose to to be a hybrid bookmarking/note taking place for things I want to remember.

Let me tell you, it continues to be one of the best decisions I have made.

Let’s give an example. Just two days ago I decided to learn about aliases for macOS (they are a unix/linux tool) so I could more easily work with the scripts that make LampLight.

I found some links, and did some readings, and tried things out. Boom it works.

So I take those links and I save them–which isn’t much different than you’d do with bookmarking, right? BUT I also pulled out some of the information, so I had both there, accessible. So instead of just links in a folder, my alias tiddler looks like this:

Alias Commands

alias PHRASE=’the command you want it to run’

use ; for multi-line commands.

Bash Profile

to add the alias commands to your home directory in the file:

.bash_profile

http://www.linfo.org/alias.html
https://jonsuh.com/blog/bash-command-line-shortcuts/
https://coolestguidesontheplanet.com/make-an-alias-in-bash-shell-in-os-x-terminal/

Now, when I need that information, not only do I still have the links, as I would with bookmarks, but I’ve got a note that probably answers my questions.

Sure, not every entry is that organized. But they all have the option to be, which is a great feature.

I have notes for everything from nerdy linux scripts to food recipes, lists of books to buy, and a collection of hundreds of images for potential covers. I have a page for bills, with links to every place I have to log into and make payments.

So, do you go down those research paths? Find interesting links on social media? A little tool like this, your own personal wiki, could help you find those things later.