Logbook

Thermostat

There are no good thermostats available out there. At least by
my standards. Nest looks cool (nest.com) but it’s expensive, scarce, and overkill.

The perfect thermostat for me (I live in Eastern Canada) would have 3 settings: Off, 15°C, and 20°C. Not sure if it’s a single dial with those 3 options, or a dial with the 2 temperatures and a discrete on/off switch on the side. My preference would be a single 2 position dial that’s also a push button.

I just want to set it low when the room won’t be used for an extended period (e.g. at night or when we’re away) and high otherwise. When it’s warm out I’ll turn it off.

I don’t want to be able to fine tune the temperature, program a schedule, have it connect to the internet, or do motion sensing. 100% manual and “dumb”.

Make that thermostat and I’ll buy 5.

Prevent Chrome from closing tabs with Command-W

I’m experimenting with running Google Chrome as my default browser, full screen in Mac OS X Lion. I use a couple of different windows to separate tasks, like mail, project management and general web surfing. Getting annoyed with accidental tab and window closing (closing the last tab closes the window) I searched for an extension to prevent it, with no luck.

My hackish solution was to remap the Command-W close window command to Option-Command-W so it’s not so automatic to close tabs by accident or habit.

System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Application Shortcuts:

Click the plus sign (+) to add an application shortcut, select Google Chrome, enter Close Window as the Menu Title and enter your new mapping. Done. No more accidental keyboard shortcut induced window/tab closures.

Now I just have to click the “x” in the tab title area when I really want it closed.

Idea: Projected Scoreboard

Problem:

Your rink/arena/court has a small budget and an aging scoreboard. It’s going to cost upwards of $10,000 to replace it.

Solution:

A projector connected to a small-form PC running a custom Linux setup – it recovers from power failures and other issues automatically. Maybe a small UPS for short power failures.

The PC connects to your arena’s wifi (or runs it’s own wireless network). It has a web server running a single web application that displays a scoreboard, with protected access to manage the scoreboard.

Any device on the same network with a modern web browser could connect to the web server to view the scoreboard and sign in to manage it. For example, the timekeeper could have a laptop, tablet or smart-phone and control the scoreboard.

The scoreboard display would be crisp and clear, with customizable styles and colours. Could connect to the PA system for horn and other audio. Could be used to display banner or video ads during intermissions. Internet-connected units could publish scores on webpages via a widget or API.

Need a no-hassle installation, equipment that runs a long time without issues, and a simple and intuitive interface for setup, sign in and management.

Hurdles:

1. Humidity, temperature, and dust in the arena could be a problem for the equipment.
2. Will the projection be visible enough in well lit arenas? How many lumens do we need? Do we need a screen or just a white wall?
3. Protecting the ceiling-mounted equipment from pucks/balls/etc.
4. Installation position, projection area, bulb life, screen burn.

Costs:

• Projector: $500-$2500
• PC: $200

Steps:

1. Test a projector in an arena.
2. Source and cost equipment.

Textmate, Rails, Bundler and vendor/bundle

I use Textmate for working on Rails projects and recently started vendoring the app’s gems into vendor/bundle. As a result Textmate got slower when searching and the Go To File command (Command-T) brought up dozens of extra files from the vendored gems.

To exclude those gems Textmate allows you to add a pattern to Folder References (Preferences > Advanced > Folder References) like so:

!.*/(\.[^/]*|vendor/bundle|CVS|...

If you’d prefer to do it on a per-project basis you can open your project and select the root directory, then click the “i” icon in the drawer to bring up the Folder Information dialog. There’s a Folder Pattern item there that will let you make changes specific to that project.

I’m pretty sure I had to quit and re-open Textmate after making the update.

Pow web server and static templates

I run the Pow web server (http://pow.cx/) for local development of Ruby web apps. But I also like to prototype sites as static html templates early on in development. Fortunately Pow can handle this as it will serve up html (etc.) from a site’s /public directory.

So create your Pow site as usual but be sure to put the static html in a /public subdirectory, e.g.:

  mkdir -p ~/Sites/prototypename/public
  cd ~/.pow
  ln -s ~/Sites/prototypename

Now you can access your site via http://prototypename.dev/ and it will serve up your ~/Sites/prototypename/public/index.html file.