Category: Hardware

  • Going Mac – Part 4

    Set up from scratch

    It’s silly how many settings aren’t sync’d to one’s Apple account.

    MacOS install

    TBF, this part would be more difficult to arrange since you’d have to log in.

    • Select Language and Location
    • Select WiFi
    • Enable Location
    • Allow Screen Time
    • Disable Siri
    • Allow FileVault
    • Setup Touch ID (add other index finger later)
    • Skip Apple Pay
    • Light / Dark / Auto mode

    MacOS settings

    • Control Centre, Clock Options, Show Seconds
    • Trackpad settings
      • Secondary click
        • Two Fingers
      • Enable Tap to click
      • More Gestures
        • Disable Notification Centre, Mission Control, Launchpad, Show Desktop

    • Empty the Dock
    • Turn on Dock Hiding

    • create ~/code directory

    • Replace Finder Sidebar items with folders in iCloud
    • Finder Settings
      • Advanced
        • Show all filename extensions
        • Keep folders on top
    • Cmd+Shift+. to show hidden files

    Installs

    JetBrains

    • Run JetBrains Toolbox, login, install
      • Open JB product
        • Do not import settings
        • Disable AI Assistant
        • Settings Sync
          • Fetch settings, restart
        • GitHub CoPilot
          • Sign in

    GitKraken

    • Sign in with email

    Appearance

    • Change Wallpaper

    Alfred

    • Disable Spotlight shortcut
      • System Settings, Keyboard, Shortcuts, Spotlight
    • Set Alfred shortcut
    • Import Alfred Prefs
      • and workflows
      • and snippets (e.g. emoji)
    • Enable clipboard history
      • and Advanced, Diacritic and …
  • Going Mac – Part 3

    So it seems I’m not going back. I still use a Windows machine for the family PC, but here I am on another MacBook Pro for work.

    Install Brew with this

    /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

    Then save the following as a Brew bundle file, `Brewfile`

    tap "homebrew/bundle"
    tap "homebrew/cask-fonts"
    brew "n"
    brew "powerlevel10k"
    brew "zsh-autosuggestions"
    brew "zsh-syntax-highlighting"
    cask "alfred"
    cask "font-fira-code"
    cask "gitkraken"
    cask "hyper"
    cask "jetbrains-toolbox"
    cask "notunes"
    cask "rectangle"
    cask "whatsapp"

    and run brew bundle.

    Install Oh My Zsh with

    sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

    Aliases to add to the end of ~/.zshrc:

    alias ls="eza"
    alias l="eza -la"
    alias c="clear"
    alias cat="bat"

  • Going Mac – Part 2

    In a follow up to my previous posts, I’m updating my list of brew installs, and have discovered the bundle subcommand.

    Here’s my Brewfile:

    tap "homebrew/bundle"
    tap "homebrew/cask"
    tap "homebrew/cask-fonts"
    tap "homebrew/cask-versions"
    tap "homebrew/core"
    tap "homebrew/services"
    brew "btop"
    brew "freetype"
    brew "figlet"
    brew "httpie"
    brew "ncdu"
    brew "the_silver_searcher"
    brew "tldr"
    brew "unar"
    cask "alfred"
    cask "amazon-music"
    cask "firefox"
    cask "font-fira-code-nerd-font"
    cask "fontgoggles"
    cask "gitkraken"
    cask "http-toolkit"
    cask "hyper"
    cask "jetbrains-toolbox"
    cask "notunes"
    cask "postman"
    cask "proxyman"
    cask "rectangle"
    cask "rocket"
    cask "slack"
    cask "the-unarchiver"
    cask "whatsapp"
  • Going Mac – Part 1

    Part of documenting my transition to web dev on Mac is to record what needs to be set up  & configured. Should things ever go awry, this post could be a shortcut to getting back to a work-ready state.

     

    Apps etc installed

    The following needed to be installed manually.

    The following were installed via the commands in the next section.

     

    Other tasks

    Show hidden files. Apparently this needs the command line!

     

    Commands run

    /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
    
    brew update
    brew upgrade
    
    brew tap homebrew/dupes 
    brew tap homebrew/versions 
    brew tap homebrew/homebrew-php 
    brew tap caskroom/fonts 
    brew tap caskroom/cask 
    brew install node
    npm install --global gulp-cli 
    
    brew unlink php70
    brew install php71
    
    brew install git-flow-avh
    brew cask install font-fira-code
    brew cask install iterm2
    brew cask install gimp
    
    sudo xcodebuild -license

     

    Other changes

     

    References

    https://developerjack.com/blog/2016/08/26/Installing-PHP71-with-homebrew/

     

  • Going Mac – Part 0

    I’ll soon be starting a new job,  still in web development (as I have been for disturbingly more than a decade), though this time it’ll be in-house and for a huge company.

    I’ve been persuaded to go over to what I’ve long considered the dark side; Apple.

    I still don’t believe I’ll ever pay for Apple products with my own money, but it’s becoming clear that Windows really isn’t keeping up with the ease of development on MacOS, and my future employer will be the one stumping up the cash so what’s to lose?

    This is to be the 0th in a series of posts on my conversion, or will that be “enlightenment”? 0th not 1st because I’ve not started yet – I’m just beginning to look at what tools I’ll likely be using.

    Where I spend most of my work days at the moment is in the excellent JetBrains PHPStorm and I’m very pleased to see that I will be able to stick with it. The other software I use is the also excellent FileZilla and the frankly pretty ropey SourceTree. I will likely ditch both and finally get round to instead using the built-in functionality of PHPStorm, and, of course, modern deployment methods.

    I’m a fan of the command line, but it’s always been in *nix (mostly Debian on web servers and Raspberry Pis), so I’m hoping that the move to Apple will mean I can actually do all the modern web dev things instead of spending so much time persuading Windows to let me.

    So far, I’ve used all the contemporary techniques (proper MVC development, proper git usage like branching and pull-requests, npm, gulp, Sass), but never all in one project, and I’m really looking forward to it.

  • 10/GUI


    10gui.com

    This is as much an HCI concept as it is about the GUI.

    I think a multitouch pad would be great.
    5 fingers, i.e. one hand, would be plenty though, and having one hand remaining on the keyboard allows for faster resumption of typing long text.

    My HTPC keyboard already has a simple multi-touch action, two finger to scroll, and I’m sure moving up to five fingers would be perfectly achievable by most users. In fact, in the video above there were only s few times when you’d have to use more than two or three fingers.

    I think this is all fantastically interesting, and discussing the subject with people who won’t just shoot down the unknown/unfamiliar will lead to some great things.

    I wish I could be more involved with this area of research and development.