David Acevedo's Blog

Markdown for those that don't know is a type of file encoding (extension .md) that can be easily converted to HTML. To use Markdown, you just need a text editor but some programs make using it easier by showing you the rendered output in HTML. For Windows there is the excellent Markdown Pad which is a great example of a small light program that does what it does best. And for Mac, I suggest Textmate but there are others like Mou . I haven't found a great one for Linux but once you get the hang of Markdown you don't need a specialized text editor for it, any will do. For the iphone/ipad I suggest NOCS , which I got for free on a sale and is great. # Why is Markdown so awesome? # 1. It can be rendered easily into HTML, but also LaTex, and PDF. But that's a given right. - It makes writing HTML easy. Especially lists. It makes it so easy I use it for writing my TODO list. I love that after you establish  the first number every dash get's converted to the next num...

Opera Opera was for the longest time my favorite browser. It had tabbed browsing when that was just an idea in the back of a Firefox developer and it had a great hiding ability in the PC which made it great for work, Ctrl+H (they changed it afterwards) and it minimized to a task-bar icon, perfect for that unexpected visit to your workstation and even better, as my job was visually intensive but I could listen to whatever, it has a voice reader built-in on Windows XP. Unfortunately, Opera has more or less dropped from my the list of browsers I use with one exception: It's my default feed reader and IRC chat client . I also use it on my Mac laptop because it allows private tabs (as opposed to the whole browser) saving screen-real-estate. Sadly on the PC it has gone from main browser to occasional special use, which is a bit sad considering Opera pioneered a huge amount of the technologies used in other browsers like: tabbed browsing, keyword searches, persistent tabs, bu...

I'll post a picture with the shirt once I get it.

Typing accents on a PC is a complicated Alt + three numbered code affair. One feels like a sorcerer casting a spell. "I summon thee accented é! I press the weird magical key Alt, and with 0191 get the flipped question mark!" For a bilingual person this meant that writing on the computer was a start-and-stop process. With Mac's it a whole lot easier, just Alt + e and the letter you wanted for accents and alt + ? for the question mark. No need to leave the keyboard for the number pad and no need to remember arcane number combinations or have a paper cheat sheet next to the keyboard, as I've seen in virtually every secretaries computer in Puerto Rico. Linux has a interesting approach to foreign language characters: using a compose key . You hit this key which I typically map to Caps Lock and ' and the letter you want and voilá you get the accent. Kinda makes sense: single quotation mark is an accent, double gets you the ümalaut , works pretty well. Except for the ñ...

I'm doing Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial  book this weekend and I wanted to get the notifications right. Took me a while to get it to work. Since this is a fresh install of Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot I'm running into a few issues. I'm running ruby 1.9.2 using rvm since Ubuntu only included 1.9.1. I'm also using the Gnome 3 Shell as I prefer it to Unity. 1) The first issue was that the execjs gem that is installed by default by Rails 3.1 requires the Spider Monkey Javascript engine to be installed in Ubuntu. ( sudo apt-get install libmozjs185 libmozjs185-dev or use Synaptic and search for "spidermonkey" which is what I did ). Or you can comment it out of your Gemfile as it doesn't seem to affect anything in the tutorial. 2) The second issue was that I wanted the nice Growl-like notifications for autotest . The instructions on the automate everything website got me there but don't install the gem 'redgreen' it's buggy. Here is ...

I've just re-installed my Ubuntu Linux partition and I'm loving the Gnome 3 Shell (way better than Unity) but that will be a later post. This post is about command line utilities that I install right away on my Ubuntu box. You'll notice something right away about them. 1. htop -- System Monitor Htop is the more easy on the eyes version of top. A incredible valuable utility is like a system monitor for the command line. Perfect for figuring out what process crashed your X-session, and killing that process. 2. mc (aka midnight commander) -- File Manager Midnight commander is a file manager that is aware of the mouse, so you can navigate the file structure. It's the easiest way to manage files from the command line or see how a folder structure is laid out. 3. jed -- Text Editor In the Unix world there are two kinds of people: vi people and emacs people. These are the two main text editors for the terminal from the days of old. Vi now vim (vi - improved) i...

I have a Logitech trackball which I love. I bought it when my wrists started hurting after hours of long Photoshop sessions. The switch to the trackball fixed all that. It allows me to hold my hand in the perfect position and it's great for most browsing with one exception: It lacks a middle-click wheel. This presents a bigger problem than it seems, as design seems to be removing the scroll bars at the edges of windows in favor of small slits. So to get around this you can emulate a scroll wheel or use the middle click to activate a scroll motion on various programs. Logitech has a utility that sets this up in Windows but in Ubuntu you have a better (if more hard-work required) option. The Ubuntu option is better because unlike in Windows you can emulate the wheel with the track-ball by holding down a button. This is the option I like to use. In Ubuntu you write a configuration file to set up the trackball to work the way you want it. I have to re-create this...

I'm not much for Horror Novels and while I've read lots of Stephen King I've more or less avoided all his scary books. I never saw the point of it. I had however read one of his horror novellas: The Mist which I completely enjoyed.  When I was in Japan, nursing a broken collarbone that kept me indoors for months, I entertained myself playing with the Play Station. I had a couple of games two of which proved to be amazing ones. One was Castlevania: Symphony of the Night , which had a lot of nostalgia Gothic flavor and the other one was Silent Hill . Playing Silent Hill was an altogether new experience for me. This game did it right, it felt like you were playing a horror novel or a good horror movie. Before actually reading the Mist, I had heard a radio play done in 3-D audio which was utterly fantastic (and better than the decent movie Frank Darabont did a few years back). Silent Hill felt like you were there. Surrounded by the mists, that rolled off the sea in the littl...

When I first saw Linux in a dorm at MIT in 1995, I knew it was important. I wanted desperately to have an extra computer to put it on and learn it. Like most students I used my University's Unix main-frame for email to which I connected remotely from various computer cluster or labs across campus. Unix was completely different from windows or Mac OS, command line driven and was where the internet was. Back in those PC days the internet ran almost exclusively on Unix, if you wanted email, you had to use it. Linux was an Operating System that allowed you to run a Unix shell clone on your personal computer instead of a huge mainframe or through a terminal. It was both great because it was completely configurable and free, but also a nightmare. You had to know a lot to really use it, and essentially needed an extra computer for it. Around that time the internet moved away from Unix and into the web, and browsers. Netscape and Internet Explorer became the prime ways of interacting w...

I've played a few really great indie games recently and would like to share a bit about them. None of these games are brand-new and all are available in both Mac and PC versions. 1. Aquaria Aquaria is a gem of a game for those that loved the original metriod games. In Aquaria you play a young mermaid creature that decides to explore her world beyond her home waters. In doing that you guide her through many adventures that reveal a bit about her world. The game is visually beautiful and the game mechanics, though simple, are very nice. You can play the whole game with a mouse if you wish though gamepads are supported too. In the game you access special abilities by singing different songs. It is a neat concept.  The game was made by an indie outfit of mainly two people out of Canada. But it feels much more than that. It's very big like an underwater version of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, with multiple treasures to collect and many secrets to uncover. It is available for ...

Back in the nineties Apple made some key mistakes: 1. It refused to sell computers over catalogs, even thought it had one (Dell and Gateway took off with this) 2. It messed up the licensing of its operating system and 3. Having a better graphics platform than many PCs of the time it actively discouraged the use of the Mac for gaming. Now finally gaming is coming of age on the Mac. This year has seen the release of Valve's steam platform for the Mac. Which not only brings Valve's very popular games like Team Fortress 2 (TF2) but also allows cross platform purchasing. If you buy a game like Braid that is available for both Mac and PC you only need to buy it once and you can use it on both Operating Systems (OS).  Arguably the beginning of this period was the smart move by Bioware to release it's popular MMORPG World of Warcraft (WOW) as a Mac and PC release. Now the Mac has become a great gaming platform for most casual and occasional gaming. And Apple has learned it's le...