Today's quick post is about why Vim plugin writers should generally use "no remap" versions of keyboard mappings.
Check out this StackOverflow post for a great overview of how mapping works. Basically, using :map a b will map presses of key a to whatever b currently does. However, using :noremap a b will translate presses of key a to whatever b did by default.
I came up with a quick hack today that I think is useful, so wanted to share it while it was fresh in my mind.
I have a fairly long list of ideas for blog posts, which I refer to when considering what to write next. My typical workflow has been to run through them and see which one I think is the best or that I feel the most strongly about at the moment, and then start writing about it. However, in practice, I run through the list and at some point either give up or lose enough focus that I stop wanting to write.
This post will show you how I will save roughly $1400 over the next two years by buying a new unlocked phone and getting a prepaid phone plan instead of a standard contract.
I put my last phone through the washing machine (and dryer), and while it still somehow works, it ain't pretty. It now can serve as an ugly alarm clock or workout MP3 player.
So, I was in the market for a new phone.
New phones under contract are not often expensive to obtain, but the costs add up over time due to high monthly subscription fees. According to one article, the total cost of ownership (TCO) of a brand new iPhone 5s with mobile hotspot is roughly $2200 - $2700. That is $1225 a year on average. This does not count the new accessories Apple will probably make you buy to connect it to your computer or charge it. :)
Realizing this, I set about finding a cheaper option.
The last I had heard of prepaid phone plans (PPP) was when I was in college and you used it for either a throwaway number, calling abroad, or you didn't have good enough credit to pay for a "real" plan. Probably a misinformed bias on my part.
When I looked into them again, a few things appealed to me:
It's Tuesday at 3 PM. I have a few hours of good work left, but get stuck on something pretty basic. Without thinking, I flit around on the internet for a little while doing fruitless research or goof off or grab a snack, and then return to the problem at hand ten minutes later. I then proceed to fix it in two minutes.
Did it really take me twelve minutes to fix it, or could I have fixed it more quickly by taking the right approach?
I find being able to unblock myself important because I work fairly independently. Bouncing ideas off of others is useful, but perhaps no one else is not around or it would be pretty distracting to bother them. Obviously, it's important not to overlook coworkers or experts who might know the answer to the question I'm having. These strategies also help others become unblocked.
(Most of the examples and fixes here apply to software development, but they could also apply to business strategy or other domains. I had a subset of this post in The 20% Difference post, but I thought there were more strategies than I outlined there.
I got married in April of this year. I'd like to share the tech we used to make planning and communicating a little easier. Then I will get all mushy at the end.
Setting up any large social event takes a bit of planning. We were initially pretty overwhelmed by the amount of things that needed to be done (invitations, ceremony planning, cake tastings, music coordination, and the list goes on and on.) It felt like every time we talked with someone else, there was another thing to consider, and we figuratively chased our tails a lot. What's more, remembering key deadlines and keeping ourselves on track and motivated was pretty important.
So I thought to myself, "what tools do I know that can help with this?" We need some sort of tool to see what needs to be done and to keep us organized. Pivotal Tracker came to mind, but seemed a bit too geeky and software-specific.
Then I thought of Trello. That seemed lightweight enough, and would provide us with a good dashboard of what needed to be worked on. So step one was to take our list of tasks that started to pile up and put them into Trello.
The next step was figuring out what sorts of columns to do. After some experimenting, we went with the following, from left to right:
When a new task came to our attention, we tried to slot it based on the other tasks or when it really needed to be done by. For example, getting a dinner tasting needed to precede deciding which dinner options to choose. Then all tasks hopefully flowed from their month to "this week" or "done". When a given month was over, we could see what tasks still were not complete and to move them to the subsequent month.