Tool Sharpening: May 11, 2014
Sunday, 11 May, 2014 — development improvement
For some background on what’s going on here, see the first tool sharpening post
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve made the following adjustments to my developer environment + closely related computing set-up:
- Created an initial MiddleMan template to make aggregating my tool sharpening changes easier. I expect this will make it easier to prep tool sharpening blog posts on a regular basis I can go back and review.
- Tuned my work email rule filtering so most automated/generated messages bypass my in box to their final destination
- I then use two Smart Folders, one called “New” and the other “Recent” to see unread messages and recent messages regardless of read status
- Added an OmniFocus perspective called “Recent Additions” based on a Merlin Mann suggestion on a past Back to Work episode. I keep my iPad with me and update OmniFocus during my team’s daily standup and this perspective is a good help to find and further process entries I make when I get back to my desk
- Added Solarized theme for BBEdit
- Built a BBEdit text filter in Ruby that takes a column of numbers and adds them
- Created an initial BBEdit Package for the text filter and posted it to GitHub.
- Installed Editor Actions for BBEdit
- Created an “Exploration” BBEdit project so I have a workspace for one-off investigations
- Created an “Exploration” Tmuxinator profile so I have a workspace for one-off investigations
- I also made a lot of OmniFocus entries regarding additional BBEdit text filters, shell environment improvements and Text Expander shortcuts to add
Looking over the list, I’m pretty happy. I’m still integrating a few of these changes as habit. A few of these items may not end-up sticking. The key improvement I’d like from here is improving my consistency. The schedule of my work day has shifted around some, so it’s not quite as feasible to pull an desired improvement off the stack for implementation. To that end, I am going to attempt to pull an improvement to implement at the end of the day when everything is winding down. That way, I’m quite likely to have a small accomplishment to bridge into the next work day with.