Spring Cleaning

Inspired by Chris Bowler’s post.

Generic Stuff

  • Run Software Update
  • Open the App Store and download purchased apps
  • Set various file types to Open With desired apps
    • all video files with VLC

Required Apps and Their Preferences

Safari Extensions

Miscellaneous

Software Development

09/09/2012  Leave a comment

My Mac Development Environment

Note: This is still incomplete. The environment detailed below only supports basic C/C++, Obj-C, and Java development. Will update this post in the future to include a complete web development environment.

This is how I setup my Mac for software work, so it is not for everyone. I’m mainly writing this so that it’ll be easier for me to re-setup my environment next time if need to.

First of all let’s change the login shell to my preferred zsh.

Because of how Xcode 4.3 has been repackaged for the App Store and now keeps compilers and other development tools bundled into it as a standalone app, setting up a development environment on a Mac became a much more troublesome process for developers.

First we need to acquire the compilers, and there’s two ways we can go about this:

  1. Download and install the **Command Line Tools for Xcode **which can be found through Preferences > Downloads > Components in Xcode 4.3 (and probably onwards).
  2. Download and install the standalone package. Use this method if you don’t ever plan on developing Mac/iOS applications.

After that, install Homebrew, a package manager for OS X for future installation of UNIX packages. Run brew doctor first to make sure that everything’s fine. For some reason when I first installed Homebrew it tells me that my Xcode is corrected with the wrong path, so yeah, thank goodness for the check. Next run brew update to make sure that your version of Homebrew is really up to date.

Git should now come with XCode’s command line tools. Next just make sure that the SSH keys are properly set up.

Install MacVim. I use the molokai colour scheme.

Finally, get my settings files from here.

23/05/2012  2 Comments

Why Do I Write?

I mainly write because I want a way to keep track of my growth as a software developer over time. When I hit a roadblock when coding, or when I come across something interesting, I’ll research them up and document them here in this blog, and I hope that those of you who come across this blog may benefit from it, or at the very least, be entertained. I will also occasionally write about the business/political side of software, the tools I favour, or about the tech industry in general.

Other than that I’ll also occasionally write about life, economics, movies, or just anything else that strikes my fancy. I also write about photography (though I mainly just post my works) here on my photoblog.

All in all I wish to improve my writing skills, as I believe that writing is one of the most important skills all software developers should possess.

I welcome email or comment feedbacks on my blog posts, as long as they are on topic, as I firmly believe that blogs should be a platform for two-way communication.

13/02/2012  Leave a comment