Nicer ways to view UNIX man pages

There is a wealth of information available in the UNIX manual pages, but it feels a little silly to be reading text out of a terminal window, especially since I paid so much money for all this fancy font rendering technology. Here are some alternatives: To view a man page in Xcode’s documentation window, simply …

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November 29, 2009 – 9:38 pm | By Benjamin | Posted in Nerdery | Comments (1)

Don’t printf when you can tcpdump

Instead of using print statements to debug network communication, use tcpdump and get a complete and accurate picture of what’s on the wire.

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November 10, 2009 – 6:04 pm | By Benjamin | Posted in Nerdery | Tagged | Comments Off

Introducing MetroCost

After writing my last post, I realized that I had never formally announced MetroCost on this blog. Well, now is as good a time as any, because until the end of the week I’m giving it away for free! MetroCost is an app for iPhone or iPod touch that helps you track your public transit …

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October 28, 2009 – 10:32 pm | By Benjamin | Posted in MetroCost | Comments Off

Which App Store?

I nodded my head when Marco Arment (Tumblr) posited there were two App Stores, but Steven Frank (Panic) has identified their origins: The iPhone/iPod Touch, being available for both Mac and Windows, has a single source of software in the app store. That Mac AND Windows thing is key. The app store is not just …

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October 20, 2009 – 5:01 pm | By Benjamin | Posted in Commentary | Tagged | Comments (2)