sammy.snickerpi

Let's not make this harder than it has to be

Yup, tumblr was too simple. Good thing there are other options. Redirect your blogrolls, RSS feeds, and comments about how annoying this is to:

benreinhardt.wordpress.com

Wordpress it is. I am working on making it look like this one did, and am about halfway there. Someday I might even buy the domain sammysnickerpi.com, but until that time, replace ‘tumblr’ with ‘wordpress’ and we will all get on with life.

My Dock

The following is a free presentation made possible by viewers like you me. It is also a Mac hint, so continue on at your own risk/leisure.

Last night I was vexed with my Dock. I had it hidden on the bottom center of my screen like usual, trying to maximize screen space, but it kept on popping up and down, so I might as well have had it always up. Nothing was broken, but I just didn’t like how it worked, at this particular time it was most particularly annoying.

I never use my dock. I type. Cmd-Tab for all your application switching needs. Expose for window navigation, and Spotlight for launching, finding, and everything else. So I did a search to find if you could make the Dock go away. While that was not possible, I did find a Terminal script that hid the Dock in the upper center, underneath the menu bar. So, on the off chance I need to find something that is in my Dock, like a minimized window, (which there isn’t a hotkey to get back), I can go to it. It avoids the accidental Dock “summons” because it is harder to invoke the Dock, you have to hold your mouse in just the right spot.

Ok, enough of the typing, here is a short screen cast I took of how it works. Too bad for some reason I have to link to it. Apparently Tumblr won’t let you embed a video within a text post. Something to look into. A look at how it works

To make the Dock (almost) disappear, I use this sequence of command line incantations (write these in a Terminal or iTerm window):

defaults write com.apple.dock launchanim -bool no
defaults write com.apple.dock magnification -bool no
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide -bool yes
defaults write com.apple.dock orientation -string top
defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string end
defaults write com.apple.dock tilesize -int 16

killall Dock

(note: most of these commands can be changed in the dock system preferences, like autohide and tilesize, etc, but others are helpful)

Weekend

This weekend we went to… ya know what? Collin said it already. Thanks Collin.

Comments

Comments

I figured out a way to put comments on my blog. That was cool, because for one thing, I wanted comments, and for another, I got to figure out how to use javascript a little.

To all you who commented before, I rearranged how the comments are laid out, and somewhere in there your much appreciated input was lost in the shuffle. If you would like, you can repost your comments here here here here anywhere! Keep your hands and arms inside the carpet, weeeee’re outta here!

On the Air

Day 2 of sammy.snickerpi and still going strong: I am up to a post a day now. Impressive.

You may have noticed the simplicity of my blog. I am using Tumblr as my host. One of the reasons is the ease with which I can add videos, pictures, snippets, and quick thoughts, which is exactly what I want. More like a powerful version of Twitter. This guy says it all in length.

I may move to something different in the future if Tumblr turns out to be too simple, but that remains to be seen. I do want to learn how to use HTML and learn more about the web in general, so this could just be an entry stage type of thing.

[Generic First Post]

I promise…

…to only post when I want;

…to never start a post with “So I am sorry I haven’t posted in a while…”;

…to use grammar correctly;

…to never use this many …’s again;

…to keep my posts short and interesting, unless I need one to be long and boring;

…to enjoy this. (While I sincerely hope you do too, dear friends and family, that is only in my power only so far. Refer to above promise.)

I suppose while I am at it, I should briefly explain the title. Sammy Snickerpi was and is a fictional boy that my dad used in the stories he told my brother and me when we were at the age when getting tucked in for bed was a part of going to bed. Sammy’s life sometimes had a moral, was sometimes entertaining, and his stories never came as often as I would have liked. A lot like my blog.

Signed,

Ben