./bash_profile fun

As I get used to my new career and get used to being in shell a lot more than I used to in my past careers, I've been looking at some additions to ~./bash_profile to make my life easier.  Here's what I've found so far,

http://natelandau.com/my-mac-osx-bash_profile/

Which then led me to find

http://alias.sh/

alias ALL THE THINGS USEFUL!

I'm Han Su Kim, This is how I work

Inspired by the Lifehacker This is How I Work series here's a few essential utilities I must have in OS X, the first few things I have to install.  Generally because I'm frugal (okay I'm cheap), if I can do something for free and the paid options don't add features that I "need", I'm always going to go with the free option.  If the free option is going to be a PITA and spam the crap out of me, well that's what having an email account exclusively for spam to be sent to right?

Chrome and Firefox for 2nd and 3rd browsers.  Dropbox, Google Drive, and SkyDrive because one can never have enough free cloud storage.  I used to be a big fan of SugarSync right up until they decided to get rid of the free tier.  I have a Spider Oak account but can't think of anything to store there for now.  Backups are handled through a NAS at home with Time Machine for now.  I may look at CrashPlan again but last time I used it, it failed to backup something that was crucial, and I haven't looked at it since.

ShiftIt

For the most part, I'm a die hard OS X guy.  I don't think it's better than other OSes, it's just better for me.  That being said, Windows window management (har har) is miles ahead of Finder, and to fill the gap, I use ShiftIt.  FOSS and easy to use and my needs aren't great, I just want to sometimes put two windows side by side and this does the trick much easier than me dragging and resizing things every time.

Multibrowser

This hasn't been updated in 3+ years so I hope that it doesn't break one day because it's the only way I can use multiple browsers on the same machine and stay sane.  I like using Chrome say for my personal browsing, Firefox for work browsing, Safari for all other, and thus when I click on a link, I need more options than open in the default browser for OS X.

iTerm2

Split panes.  Paste history.  Ultimate configurability.  Really there's no reason why this shouldn't be the first thing to install right after installing OS X.  

TextMate

TextEdit is not a text editor, it's a lazy word processor (default save to RTF?).  TextWrangler is fine and dandy, but once TextMate went open source, I jumped on the bandwagon and haven't looked back.  There are those who say that I should look at vim/MacVim more and it probably do me some good to be better at vi anyway.  Some say I should buy Sublime.  I'm sure Sublime is awesome, I just don't want to pay for the features that are cool but I think I can live without (for now).  If TextMate does change from GPL to something else, then I'll reconsider what's out there.  

Homebrew

This is probably for many OS X geeks one of the first things to run.  I was a die hard MacPorts guy for years exactly for the reasons why homebrew people don't like it, because everything was self contained on the root level including all the dependencies.  Everything lived in it's own world.  Although that makes consistent deployment easier for masses of people who need certain version of tool X, the time lost because everything had to be installed even if it already existed has made me believe in homebrew more.  Do people still use fink?

Simplenote

I go back and form between Simplenote and Evernote and right now Simplenote is my choice because I just want something, well, simple to store snippets of text for whatever reason.  It also appeals to me that I can use other clients Notational Velocity or nvALT but for now the

FIrst!

Allow me to re-introduce myself ... (thanks Jay-Z)

I'm Han.  I've been a live long tech geek, Mac OS nerd but OS agnostic (the best OS is the dumbest question in the world, the answer is whatever environment gets you the results you want), and recently took on a role as a DevOps Engineer, something of a new career path from my pervious more traditional internal IT work in the past.

The DevOps movement has inspired me to learn more about how I can do my day to day job, support technology so that others can the results they want, better.  Doing things by hand (aka the old school sys admin) does not scale, and it hasn't for a long time.  Developing processes that minimize human fat fingers and giving easy to use tools so others can help themselves does scale.

Two reasons for this blog.  One, to document my new career path, things I come across that I find interesting that I can look back on and see progress on how far I've grown.  Two, to make myself write more, share knowledge more, and be a part of a new community of those who share similar beliefs.

In the beginning this blog is going to seem really simple to most who already do this.  I hope to share some insights from a newbie who really is just trying to learn and apply the best practices out there, some of the stuff is going to come across as just plain dumb, or obvious to a lot of other people.  I'm okay with that.  I hope to give someone else who used to be "old school" a new way to look at old problems and solutions.

Thanks for taking a look, my goal is to be active, comment away, share with me things that are cool and interesting, and I'll do the same.