rapid habits ❧

I just published Save to nvALT, a Chrome extension for saving pages to nvALT, a note taking app for Mac OS X. Pages are saved as clean Markdown, without any fluff. Like Readability or Instapaper.

Download Save to nvALT from the Chrome Web Store.

How do I use Save to nvALT?

Click the Save to nvALT buttom in the Chrome toolbar to save the current page to nvALT.

Alternatively, you can select some text, right click and "Save note with selected text."

What's nvALT?

nvALT is a simple and fast note taking application. It's an updated version of Notational Velocity.

Save to nvALT is non-intrusive

Save to nvALT is designed to be as non-intrusive as possible. Unlike most Chrome extensions, it requires no special permissions to run:

This is made possible by a new Chrome extension setting that keeps Save to nvALT disabled until you click its button.

Open Source

Save to nvALT is open source and license under the MIT license. You can view the source code on GitHub.

Credits

Based on the original extension by David Halter

Icon design by Chris Griffith

Favicon design by nvALT authors

Page content extraction logic by node-read

I wrote this in response to a friend who was asking if it's worth learning Git.

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: Yeeeeeeees.

Actual answer: Good tools enable good development practices. Continuous integration encourages thorough testing. Change management encourages planning. Git encourages iterative development and experimentation. You commit when you're ready, not when the build is fixed, QA is ready to test, or any of the myriad reasons that block us day to day from pushing changes back to the central repo. Branching is so easy, you don't even have to wonder if it's worth creating a branch for some one off crazy experiment. You just do it, and move on if it doesn't work out. Momentum builds when you shorten the feedback loop between your programming instinct and the compiler, Git is critical to that.

Unix permits non-root users to delete files that they do not own including files owned by the super-user, aka root. You can create a file, change its ownership to root and delete it.

$ touch foo $ chmod 600 foo # make the file only read-writable by owner $ sudo chown root:0 foo # change ownership of file to root $ ls -l foo -rw------- 1 root root 0 2011-01-24 12:18 foo $ rm foo $ ls -l foo ls: cannot access foo: No such file or directory

Obviously there's a catch, you can only delete files in directories that you have write access to. In fact, write permission to the parent directory, and only write permission to parent directory, controls which files you may or may not delete. So, you can also create a file, remove write permissions to the parent directory, and you will be unable to delete the file you created and still own.

$ mkdir test $ touch test/foo $ chmod -w test $ rm test/foo rm: test/foo: Permission denied

Blame inodes

Metadata for a Unix file is stored in the file inode. The inode contains useful info such as ownership, access timestamps and pointers to the actual disk blocks that contain the file contents. What the inode does not contain is information about file name or parent directory.

Wacky anti-spam idea: detect usernames or passwords that belong to the same low-entropy PRNG sequence.

Omitting semicolons in JavaScript is OK for the most part except for when it isn't:

If you choose to omit semicolons where possible, my advice is to insert them immediately before the opening parenthesis or square bracket in any statement that begins with one of those tokens, or any which begins with one of the arithmetic operator tokens /, +, or - if you should happen to write such a statement.

You, master JavaScript coder, might have committed this elaborate rule to memory. But do you expect everyone who reads, or modifies, your code to be aware of it and apply it meticulously?

Style conventions exist to ensure that logically wrong code also looks visually wrong. If you've adopted a coding style that requires you type ;(d + e).print() instead of (d + e).print(), you've accomplished the exact opposite. And for what?

Netflix just announced that they are spinning off their DVD-rental-by-mail service under a new brand Qwikster while the streaming service retains the Netflix name. Many commentators have duly noted Netflix's boldness in leaving its cash cow behind and looking to the future, a true example of a company facing up to the Innovator's Dilemma.

However, this latest change serves a purpose beyond merely signaling Netflix's future direction to customers and investors. Namely, Netflix is setting itself up to offer premium pricing options for its streaming product. The company has already been burnt by customer confusion stemming from its most recent pricing changes. Netflix knows it needs to clearly delineate the two product offerings to be able to say "pay another $10 a month to watch all Fox shows" without customers wondering they will still be able to rent Family Guy Season 3 DVDs by mail.