Well this is far beyond cool but highly functional, a Quake like terminal implementation of Terminal.app that is a HotKey away from within any application. A friend turned me on to this after it showed up on the Monday morning Apple links post from arstechnica.com. Although I have never thought of this idea, it seems to have been a popular request for quite some time and after a public request, the author of QuickSilver stepped up to the challenge and coded this little goodie using the application enhancer method called SIMBL which was created by Mike Solomon, the creator of the PithHelmet plugin for Safari.

Tim Toady tells us that (There Is More Than One Way To Do It) and I am sure this is not the first and not likely the last blog post you will ever see that tells you the best way to install RAILS on OS X. Some people would just rather than go the simple path but I implore you, do it this way. Gaining the experience of compiling your own software will help you down the road when it comes time for doing more advanced things, especially deploying your RAILS app. When you are done, you will have a rock solid deployment environment for RAILS that will include:

I will be the first to admit that I am really just learning how to tap into the power of my shell environment and to be honest, I've spent way to many hours reading man pages and figuring out how to do some really neat things that help my automate my workflow and system administration. Mostly these are just basic tasks like my Simple MySQL Backup and Deleting Invisible Resource Files scripts. But in all seriousness, when you get right down to using a UNIX-based operating system, you cannot escape using the shell environment. This is a good thing, its your friend, and getting your feet wet sooner than later is a good idea.

Or, how to be the biggest network geek you can in only 1 square foot of space. Starting last year after reading Ward Mundy's How-To Bonanza, I knew I needed to use the Mac Mini as the core hardware component for my home network. Mostly because it looks good and small form fits easily on my desk. Good as that might be, the Mac Minis do have drawbacks and, if you're serious about your hosting choices, these do have to be overcome; this is what my post is all about.

About a year ago a fellow co-worker of mine was raving that I should learn VIM from the command line interface (CLI) so that I could use it for all my text editing needs. My co-worker at the time was (and probably still is) the Systems Administrator and Lead Application Developer for a company that sold cheap discount software. During my tenure there I served as the Marketing Manager and as such, many of my projects to completely overhaul their search engine and online marketing strategies called for aligning their internal tools and processes. While doing said technical revamps and specification writing, I guess I was exposed as more of a geek than your typical marketer. Hence the recommendation to go further down the rabbit hole. DISCLAIMER: before I go any further -- I would like to say, yes, that link up there is a shameless plug and is meant only to help in the organic search strategies for PlanetCDROM.com. OK, I feel better.