MacOS Upgrade : The beginning

As I intended and mentioned here - I have started upgrade to macOS Monterey. I had already taken backup. (I don’t expect the entire data to be lost, but still ..) Just before I clicked the upgrade button - I created a list of software I need to re-install after the upgrade. I also went ahead and deleted apps left-right and center from the Applications folder. Nice (and not so nice) stroll down the memory lane.

→ Zed Editor ∞

My colleague told me about this new editor written in rust yesterday. The feaure page mentioned vim-mode, so I was OK to try it.

It seems collaboration is their USP - I don’t see using that feature personally anytime soon.

So what about rest of the features ?

My first impression is that it can be light alternative to VSCode. It has similar UI structure, default keymap as VScode. It supports few languages Out of the box, Ruby being one of them, so I may try it at work as well.

Coming back to vim-mode - the reason for which I even was ready to try it. It was not easy to enable it. I had expected to find it under keymap.

But vim-mode is restricted to modal editing, so one needs to enable it via settings.json (similar to VScode) and set "vim-mode": true there. Other things - not related to modal editing, but I have come to rely upon - like : commands to save (:w), or :1 to jump to the beginning of the file, do not work.¹

Opening new file wasn’t intuitive. It closed the existing file. There is no New tab either.

But after adding the folder to the project and opening anotehr file from the same project, opened it in separate tab. 😌

In conclusion :

1. Good attempt to provide VScode alternative. Because it is a native app, it will be faster than Electron app
2. This is not meant to be terminal app anyway. So for modal editing in terminal, I will stick to helix

After Factory Resetting the Phone

(Read part 1 here) After the initial setup, I installed the apps that I use the most. I had taken backup of my Google Authenticator codes via a QR code, which I sent to myself. I was able to scan it back from my Desktop Telegram app and all was well. Restoring Microsoft Authenticator - also used for work - was not so easy. I couldn’t open an IT helpdesk ticket without logging into the Service Portal, which required me to be authenticated via MS Authenticator 😄

What is a micropost ?

You know what makes it so easy for many people to just dump their thoughts into a silo like Twitter instead of writing a post on their own site? You don’t have to come up with a title for your post. Source This site has two types of posts. The normal ones with title and tags. Other are microposts I wrote about them here micropost is simply an entry without a title (and tags)

Resetting Phone : Part 1

My Android phone started acting weird few months ago. Some apps started crashing. I started seeing .. app keeps closing 😞 Then Google Play services wouldn’t connect - even when phone was connected to the internet. I found out that uninstalling the updates (for Google Play) gets it working. But since phone was connected to the internet, it would “auto update” and would break again. It started getting worse last few days.

VSpaceCode

I have written earlier that I’ve started using VSCode occasionally for work. Finding files and find-in-files is much better and faster. But I do miss modal editing. That is where VSpaceCode comes in. VSpaceCode is Spacemacs like keybindings for Visual Studio Code I had come across VSpaceCode almost two years ago I was using VSCodium at that time (hoping it is faster than VSCode - it isn’t - on my old machine) and could not install VSpaceCode.

NANO Minemacs

In my earlier post I had mentioned that I might try combining NANO emacs features with Minemacs - which is my current Emacs setup. NANO emacs README has instructions for manual install which is what I ended up doing. There is a separate repo just for the NANO theme, but somehow it did not work for me. Instead, cloning the NANO emacs repo, and adding “just enough"™️ configuration to Minemacs worked for me.

→ The Arc Browser ∞

Finally, got the access to the Arc browser.

Quick overview of what it is.

It is build on top of Chromium browser engine. But adds difference experience altogether. Benefit of using Chromium is that most of the extensions that work with Google Chrome already work. In fact, one installs the extensions from Google Chrome webstore itself 😄

Most awesome feature that made me want to try it is that it will Auto-close inactive tabs after 12 hours (default - can be increased to 24 hours, 7 or 30 days)

They have and publicize the keyboard shortcuts. All browsers have keyboard shortcuts, but other the usual ones to open and close new window/tab, I hardly use any.

I also tried Notes that can be shared with anyone. I’m unlikely to use the share functionality. But the Easel - which allows drawing (and sharing) - seems interesting.

The concept of Little Arc is interesting. It is a smaller (hence Little) floating browser window.

They also have split view which I’m yet to explore. Seems useful when using bigger monitor.

If you want to try it yourself, here is an invite link

Gitlab WebIDE

This week I’m travelling for work, and hence carrying only my work laptop. So far all my microblog entries were written from my personal laptop I have option to clone the repo on my work machine, or not publish anything for this entire week (it is not like I publish every day, still ..) I prefer not to clone my perosnal repo on work machine, and missing publishing also something I don’t want.