Essential Gnome Shell Extensions For Laggards

[](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Terminal-dec- vt100.jpg) My ideal workstation __Image by ClickPick, used under the ____ Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. __ Gnome 3 introduced a lot of fundamental changes to how you interact with your computer. I don’t want to hopelessly cling to the past, bemoaning the loss of my Lisp based window manager and yearning for the days when I could debate the merits of pure applets vs notification area icons, so I’ve moved on to gnome-shell. »

My .gitconfig - 2011 Edition

It’s been just shy of five years since I first blogged about my .gitconfig file, so I figured now would be a good time to revisit it. If you’re not already aware, you can set git configuration values in a .gitconfig file in your home directory, and have them apply to all git repositories you work on. This is particularly useful for aliases and to set your email address. My current .gitconfig: [user] name = James Bowes email = $EMAIL_ADDRESS [alias] ci = commit -a co = checkout st = status praise = blame br = branch diffstat = diff --stat cat = !cat @ ds = diff --stat lol = log --graph --decorate --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit lola = log --graph --decorate --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit --all [apply] whitespace = warn [diff] rename = copy renamelimit = 600 [pager] color = true [color] branch = auto diff = auto interactive =auto status = auto [push] default = upstream [github] user = jbowes token = $GITHUB_TOKEN I cribbed _lol _and lola from Adrian. »

Installing ruby gems in your home directory

I found it hard to find good instructions for installing ruby gems as a non- root user without installing the gem package locally as well. Here’s what I figured out; hopefully this will save someone else some time in the future: Make a directory for gem installation: $> mkdir ~/.gems Set up your .gemrc for gem install-time configuration: $> cat << EOF > ~/.gemrc gemhome: $HOME/gems gempath: - $HOME/gems - /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8 EOF Set up some environment variables for run-time: $> cat << EOF >> ~/.bashrc export GEM_HOME=$HOME/gems export GEM_PATH=$HOME/gems:/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/ export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/gems/bin EOF Source your bashrc and you’re all set. »

Giving back to git

It must be obvious from previous posts that I love git. Tonight I sent a patch to the mailing list. It’s small and simple; it lets you save options for cvsimport in your config file, rather than supplying them each time you run it. Hopefully it will be of use to others. »