Ryan Tomayko

man.cx —

This is probably the nicest manpage site I’ve come across:

I haven’t heard of it. They imported 98,660 manpages from all available Debian packages plus some from other sources. The type is clean. URLs are short and sweet. Manual sections are presented in a nice TOC on the left. They have some other novel features like comments on each manpage.

I planned to do something very similar. I even registered mancutter.org. A great number of manpages are distributed under a liberal license. I wanted to throw up a nice and simple site and then ship a tool anyone could run to bomb roff up to the server for all manpages on a machine. You should be able to gather all Linux and BSD manpages fairly quickly with such a system. Or, you could push up a specific set of manpages so project maintainers could publish directly to the site. I might still but man.cx is a huge chunk of what I was looking for.

man what —

Chris Wanstrath makes the case for UNIX man pages and tours through a bunch of tools for creating, finding, and reading them.

HANDY ONE-LINERS FOR RUBY —

Nice list of Ruby one-liners when working at the shell. e.g., emulating nl(1):

# number each line of a file (left justified).
    $  ruby -ne 'printf("%-6s%s", $., $_)' < file.txt
# number each line of a file (right justified).
    $  ruby -ne 'printf("%6s%s", $., $_)' < file.txt
# number each line of a file, only print non-blank lines
    $  ruby -e 'while gets; end; puts $.' < file.txt

Unlike some other things, the -p and -e switches are something I’ve always been glad ruby adopted from perl.

ASCII Table - The Pronunciation Guide —

ASCII punctuation characters and their various pronunciations. e.g., the entry for Exclamation point (!) lists:

exclamation (mark), (ex)clam, excl, wow, hey, boing, bang, shout, yell, shriek, pling, factorial, ball-bat, smash, cuss, store, potion (NetHack), not (UNIX) ©, dammit (UNIX)

That last one has a footnote: “as in ‘quit, dammit!’ while exiting vi and hoping one hasn’t clobbered a file too badly.”

Things UNIX can do atomically —

Insanely useful when you’re trying to avoid thread and process synchronization primitives — mutexes, flock, etc. — in concurrent code, which should basically be always. Rack::Cache’s file stores use some of these techniques to allow multiple backends to work against the same filesystem without file locks or a separate central writing process.

Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby —

I’ll admit, I’ve been holding out, hoping that _why’s disappearance was just a big misunderstanding. But at this point, I don’t think he could come back even if it were a big misunderstanding. Here’s a mirror (thanks mislav + GitHub Pages) of the Poignant Guide – the canonical reference for how to be. It’s our GOF; our SICP. I don’t think I’ve ever been so in awe of a piece of technical literature. Now it just makes me sad.

message threading —

Jamie Zawinski (1997): “In this document, I describe what is, in my humble but correct opinion, the best known algorithm for threading messages (that is, grouping messages together in parent/child relationships based on which messages are replies to which others.) This is the threading algorithm that was used in Netscape Mail and News 2.0 and 3.0, and in Grendel.”

Philosphy: You're not your fucking khakis —

“As I see it, we are all piles of slowly decaying meat, wrapped in the skins and hairs of other creatures, wearing colorful vestments made of skillfully woven plants, staring at what is essentially a pile of oil, metal, and sand all day. We spend most of our waking lives gathering piles of paper that we use to buy more dead animals, woven plants, and varying sized piles of wood, sand, oil, and metal. At night, we sleep in carefully crafted piles of these materials heated by barrels of decayed animals and plants and dream about having even larger stacks of paper with which we can use to impress other piles of sentient meat.”

Sinatra: 29 Links and Resources For A Quicker, Easier Way to Build Webapps —

Peter Cooper: “Lots of awesome articles about Sinatra, Sinatra apps, and various links and resources have cropped up over the past few months. The remainder of this post links to the best we’ve found – most of which you should find useful as you start to explore Sinatra in detail.”

alan.dean's REST Bookmarks on Delicious —

Alan Dean has bookmarked over 100 REST related articles in the past two days (and 757 all time). For comparison, I’ve been bookmarking REST related articles since July 2004 and have a total of 107 bookmarks. It appears that Dean is shooting for a comprehensive list of every resource related to REST ever posted on the web.

Web Development for the iPhone —

“You can specify CSS based on viewport orientation which you determine via javascript and update the orient attribute of the body element. Target the browser with body[orient=‘landscape’] or body[orient=‘portrait’]”

Ruby's $LOADED_FEATURES (Array of stuff that's been required) —

Not sure how I’ve never stumbled on this before. You can remove items from the list to cause require to reload a file.

Google Doctype —

What Mark Pilgrim has been working on at Google for the past year or so: an encyclopedia of web development.

Git Magic —

All manners of good stuff here.

Git HOWTO Index —

There are some great tips for owning your local workflow in here.

Git for Computer Scientists —

Okay, I’ve read about five of these articles purporting to explain Git’s internal conceptual framework. This was the first that really made things click in any significant way.

BashPitfalls —

Most of these are relevant to POSIX sh(1). This one gets me every time: echo <<EOF :)

20 Year Archive on Google Groups —

I’m apparently the last person on the internet to see this. The rise of internet culture as recorded on Usenet. It’s beautiful, really.

Git User's Manual —

Finally: “this manual is designed to be readable by someone with basic UNIX command-line skills, but no previous knowledge of git.”

In Unix, what do some obscurely named commands stand for? —

Dennis Ritchie: “There was a facility that would execute a bunch of commands stored in a file; it was called runcom for ‘run commands’, and the file began to be called ‘a runcom’. rc in Unix is a fossil from that usage.”

Working Productively in Bash’s vi Command Line Editing Mode (with Cheat Sheet) —

“I am going to introduce you to bash’s vi editing mode and give out a detailed cheat sheet with the default keyboard mappings for this mode.”

PostgreSQL 8.3 Cheat Sheet —

Wonderful PostgreSQL cheat sheet with PDF and HTML versions.

The Federalist Papers —

An online edition of the Federalist Papers which is pleasant to look at and provides paragraph-level permalinking. Each paper is marked up in the hAtom microformat with an elastic layout (stays beautiful with bigger/smaller font size).

ManPageView —

Vim add-in for viewing manpages, perldoc (both system and embedded), help, info, and php files. Maybe I’ll finally be able to read all that GNU info doc I keep hearing about in the GNU coreutils man pages.

Configuring Apache httpd —

Starting with absolutely no configuration file. This is why I’ve prefered lighttpd, because I can put together a separate config in about five minutes. httpd’s sprawling default config has always scared the crap out of me.

Good Shell Coding Practices - Handling Command Line Arguments —

Very nice look at different methods (good and bad) for handling the command line in sh scripts.

Unison File Synchronizer - User Manual and Reference Guide —

I’m gonna give this a try for managing home directories now that I’ve convinced myself that version control is the wrong solution. I moved my homes from CVS to SVN a couple years ago and just tried going with bzr but VCS just isn’t right here.

Ruby on Rails Security Guide —

Comprehensive look at common Rails security concerns with links out to in-depth articles.

HTML Entity Character Lookup —

Oh wow. I’ve been trying to find a single page that has every unicode character on it with its hex counterpart but this is pretty fantastic.

sog’s (Unconventional) Highway Etiquette [redmonk.com] —

Beautifully done, sir. This should be required reading before anyone is allowed to hit an onramp.

README.EXT —

“This document explains how to make extension libraries for Ruby.”

Using mutt on OS X [linsec.ca] —

This is pretty darn close to my configuration but I used the mutt-devel port… Oh, and my ~/.procmailrc is pretty insane also :)

getopt and getopts —

A complete look at the little used utilities for processing arguments in scripts.

HTTP/1.1 (DELETE, GET, HEAD, PUT, POST) —

Nice activity diagram describing the resolution of response status codes given various request methods and headers. Full res GIF, JPEG, PNG, and SVG.

What's New in Prototype 1.5? [xml.com] —

Nice review of new features.

53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without —

Very nice list of CSS techniques.

Prototype Javascript Framework —

Documentation, finally!

gotAPI.com —

The best attempt I’ve seen at splicing multiple API references together. This uses the external documentation but provides indexing and browsing features.

UNIX productivity tips —

Best UNIX productivity article I’ve read in a long while.

How to Write Articles and Essays Quickly and Expertly —

Surprisingly insightful.

The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web —

This site is really starting to come along now. The latest addition on how to manage vertical spacing in intervals is something I’ve been wondering about for a while now.

How to pull an all-nighter —

Fairly acurate prescription…

Getting started with extension development - MozillaZine Knowledge Base —

dangerous waters…

Grammer and Writing Tip Archive —

Can’t find enough of these…

anti-telemarketing EGBG counterscript —

Awesome!

Shell Tips and Tricks —

… and not just the usual suspects either.

VI reference —

Nice and compact…

Javascript Event compatibility tables —

Nice list of DOM events and the varying support of different browsers.

CSS: Specificity Wars Diagram —

CSS specifity chart based on Sith power levels — to good to be true.

Curing Float Drops and Wraps —

I run into these problems on a daily basis…

Guide to Grammar and Writing —

always useful…

Journalism and weblogs, part 327 —

Word. Authority has been set on its head. There’s been no better time in history to be an ornery bastard. :)

Core JavaScript 1.5 Reference —

Mozilla’s JavaScript Reference..

Ruby Standard Library Documentation

Ruby Class and Library Reference

Using Bash's History Effectively —

Need to move away from history | grep -i

Learn the Difference Between AFFECT and EFFECT —

I’m sure I always get these wrong and likely always will.

Index of /~twl/conferences/pycon2005 —

Very organized and thorough notes from PyCon.

Data Structures and Algorithms with Object-Oriented Design Patterns in Python —

Nice.

Lucid Dreaming FAQ —

I tried to do this for two months straight in college but it never worked..

What's Special About This Number?

Top Posting Is Evil —

Stop it, I’m serious.

Python whitespace FAQ, or, Python is not Fortran 77

Vonage Third Party Call Control —

Vonage hacking..

How To Write Unmaintainable Code —

“In the interests of creating employment opportunities in the Java programming field, I am passing on these tips from the masters on how to write code that is so difficult to maintain, that the people who come after you will take years to make even the si

Subversion quick start —

Quick guide to loading a new project into subversion.

Subversion for CVS Users —

Title says it all..

My Experiences With Subversion —

Nice look at moving to subversion. Go into migrating from CVS, subversion idioms, gotchas, etc.

Version Control with Subversion —

Entire subversion book on one page.

Social Security For Dummies —

Understand how Social Security works and why Bush is saying there’s a “crisis”.

Death and Taxes —

A visual look at where your tax dollars go. (hint: DEFENSE DEFENSE DEFENSE)

Web Application Component Toolkit - Template View —

Excellent look at various HTML and XML templating methodologies..

Python Idioms and Efficiency Suggestions —

excellent list of python Idioms

Python Tutorials, more than 100, sorted by topic and category —

nuf' said.

A Crash Course in Python —

Nice intro to Python HTML-based slides. This covers a ton of info in a very small space.

Practical Common Lisp —

Looks like a lot of real-world stuff in here and is also very recent.

GNU make Manual —

All on one page :)

Official Rules for Calling Shotgun —

A guide to calling shotgun.

ZODB/ZEO Programming Guide —

I think I’m going to give ZODB a try with my blogging system.

Fun With PrimeNumbers —

Different methods of finding primes. Quantum machinary not required.

XHTML 1.0 —

The recommendation..

Full CSS Property Compatibility Chart —

red/green/yellow for specific css attribute support in major browsers.

Google Help Central —

perfect..

How do you whistle with your fingers in your mouth really loudly (or at all)? —

note: trying to learn this at work seems to annoy people.

Lots of Random Facts —

“Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intraveinously” — good to know!

A Tao of Regular Expressions

Rixstep —

“A repository of every keyboard secret in OS X.”

Guide to Lock Picking

Quixote Programming Overview

WDG HTML 4.0 Element Reference —

One of the nicer reference sheets for HTML 4.0.

Using inline frames (iframe elements) to embed documents into HTML documents —

Everything that you can possibly know about iframes.

Python __special_attributes__ —

Beware! Danger lies ahead…

Obsessively detailed map of Springfield —

Map Homer’s daily route from home to moes, to work, to moes, and then back home.

Markdown Syntax Documentation —

Syntax Reference for the Markdown text markup grammer.

Magical Macintosh Key Sequences —

Collection of poorly documented OS X key-sequences.

Python Built-in Functions —

List of built in functions (i.e. non-module) in Python.

Web Colors: html color names, hexidecimal values, hex codes —

Color name chart with hex codes and overlays.

GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual —

Goddam this is more shit than could ever possibly fit in my brain.

Jetspeed 1.5 API —

Jetspeed 1 Enterprise Portal 1.5 API

J2SE 1.4.2 —

Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition, v 1.4.2 API Specification

Emacs reference card —

Single page printable version available.

TAL/TALES & METAL Reference Guide —

SimpleTAL reference.

Python Programming FAQ —

Frequently asked questions on the Python programming language. I didn’t see “Why does Python rock so hard?”

Python 2.3 Quick Reference —

80% of what you need to find when coding in Python.