I’ve been keeping my Documents directory in Subversion (SVN) for a while now, and have found the ability to roll-back changes and view document history on any document I have to be a huge benefit to my workflow. Additionally, being able to keep different workstations in sync by using the SVN service has been a huge lifesaver.

Not only can I tell you what I worked on, and on what days, I can tell you when things were added/moved/archived and give myself a nice timeline of events that I can use to see what exactly I’ve accomplished over the last week/month/year.

So I’ve been re-organizing my bits lately, and am pulling an OS X Server fileserver out of “production” and have replaced it with an Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ with 2TB of storage online. I’m using their expandable RAID-X service, so I can bump this unit out past 3TB when I need to. This means I was going to lose my always-on multi-purpose server, however, so I was thinking about moving my SVN setup to my colo (that is currently serving you this webpage), but rsync.net (whom I love and recommend whole-heartedly for offsite backup/fileservice) have recently started supporting SVN (via ssh(1)) making it a real no-brainer.

This isn’t a dispatch solely to extoll the virtues of rsync.net—I’ll do that another time though, because they seriously are some of the most amazing people I’ve ever done business with. They happen to be the best in the industry as far as I’m concerned, and since I like the best of things, I use ‘em. And this new service they’re offering makes them even more attractive and reinforces my belief that I was wise to start using them.

Now, onward to the meat and potatoes. I did some testing and verified this works in my environment, and one of the excellent techs at rsync.net (seriously, you can’t beat these guys in any way for service provided, ethics, and support) validated my work and got me all squared away.

It turns out that all you need to do is move your existing repository (the actual directory of the repository on the filesystem) to your rsync.net home directory (or wherever you want to put it there—I called mine SVN-REWL on rsync.net ‘cuz that’s what I called it locally) and then aim your SVN commands yonder instead of the old one. It’ll Just Work provided you’re using the right version of SVN, I had an older repository I tested and it wouldn’t work due to db incompatibilities and some other harsh language.

Some people use local filesystem repositories even on their local machine just to have the version control and revision history on documents they work on. So if you’re one of those people, you can likewise just copy over the repository to your rsync.net account, and you’ll be ready to move on as well. This is pretty easy though I had never done it before, so I was a bit pensive and skittish.

When you’re in your SVN working copy, which is the local “live” version you work out of, be it documents, audio files, source code, headers, and all the other crap you can throw into SVN, you can open up a Terminal and do


svn info

…which will tell you all about your working copy, where you got it from, what the revision is, the URL and repository root, and other information.

In my case, it looked a lot like this:

.—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-(rewl@cosmo)
`—> svn info
Path: .
URL: svn+ssh://cosmo/Volumes/projects/SVN-REWL
Repository Root: svn+ssh://cosmo/Volumes/projects/SVN-REWL
Repository UUID: 6cc96013-d40f-0410-a444-e0d3ce12975d
Revision: 179
Node Kind: directory
Schedule: normal
Last Changed Author: rewl
Last Changed Rev: 179
Last Changed Date: 2007-05-22 15:59:45 -0400 (Tue, 22 May 2007)

I fired up Fugu and copied over my SVN-REWL filesystem off cosmo (the household fileserver) to my rsync.net account via sftp, which took around an hour to do on my craptastic cable modem. Maybe two hours. I don’t really remember, I was busy catching up on email and feeds. Once it was there, I fired up svnX and set it up to browse my new copy of my repository.

FYI, this is the syntax you’ll want to use, if you’re on usw-s001 like I am:

svn+ssh://(userid)@usw-s001.rsync.net/(userid)/SVN-REWL

I told svnX that my username was 1096, which should be superfluous since you’re specifying one. I use ssh-agent and ssh keys, so I don’t need to give it a password, and I could instantly browse my newly-copied remote SVN repository. I browsed, reloaded, looked at old revisions, until I was satisfied.

But now what? Do I want to check out the entire thing again just to sync my local working copy against it? That sounds a bit counter-productive, don’t you think?

Of course SVN has a way to deal with just such an eventuality.

Go to your working copy and type in something like this (you’ll see what to do):

svn switch—relocate svn+ssh://cosmo/Volumes/projects/SVN-REWL \
svn+ssh://(userid)@usw-s001.rsync.net/(userid)/SVN-REWL

And svn’ll grind away for a while and make that change happen for you. Future update/stat/commit operations are successfully done against the rsync.net repository, and as expected, my output from svn info looks like this now:

.—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-(emory@daydreamer)-
`—> svn info
Path: .
URL: svn+ssh://1096@usw-s001.rsync.net/1096/SVN-REWL
Repository Root: svn+ssh://1096@usw-s001.rsync.net/1096/SVN-REWL
Repository UUID: 6cc96013-d40f-0410-a444-e0d3ce12975d
Revision: 179
Node Kind: directory
Schedule: normal
Last Changed Author: rewl
Last Changed Rev: 179
Last Changed Date: 2007-05-22 15:59:45 -0400 (Tue, 22 May 2007) rewlLast Changed Rev: 179Last Changed Date: 2007-05-22 15:59:45 -0400 (Tue, 22 May 2007)

So there you have it. Moving an SVN repository to rsync.net really is painless.

Right now rsync.net is perfect for people who keep projects or documents in SVN like I do, but they don’t yet have the facility in place to allow other users to access your repository, only you. I think they’re going to be adding basic auth soon, which would allow workgroups to use rsync.net for svn and remote storage, which makes rsync.net once again more attractive than the others out there.

Thank you to the support tech that answered my questions on a Sunday afternoon 15 minutes after I sent an email. On a holiday weekend. You made my day.

A few weeks ago I had a reason to send something edible across the United States. This is something my grandmothers routinely do with cookies, so I was relatively certain that this was something I could pull off. Not that my grandmothers are simple ladies—oh no. They’re the smartest people in my entire strangely organized family.

The recipient of the Timbits had recalled them fondly on more than a few occasions after having gone back deep into the jungles of Canada to help their friends and loved ones create fire and find potable water for the entire village. This no doubt also entailed an epic tale of mankind versus the wilderness, bear attacks, and an angry $diety that lives deep in the bowels of an active volcano.

For those who are curious about what the hell a Timbit is, and don’t know where they drop, you may think of them as a donut-hole as sold by inferior donut chains. They are Bind on Equip and quite a delicacy. (Yes, the drop and bind on equip jokes are extra-nerdy Warcraft shit.)

I wanted to do something Extra Nice for this person so I decided that this tasty Canadian delicacy was an appropriate route to take. But how to get my mitts on these tasty Timbits? Once again my favorite vendor in the information security arena comes to the rescue. One of the jedis they have working in their support team is, in fact, from Ontario and asked me if I had any Tim Hortons locations near me. I was surprised to learn that they were opening them up and down the Eastern seaboard. There were like three of them within five miles of my house.

This is where I sent an email to the customer service people at Tim Hortons. The next morning I hadn’t heard anything other than a confirmation. And to prove that all Americans are impatient nitwits, I called Tim Hortons to ask them if they were to ship donuts cross country to an expat, how would they do it?

I spoke with Tim Hortons crack team of customer service representatives, who found the entire conversation hysterical and worth of gathering what had to be a small audience of Tim Hortinintes. The verdict was that they were not sure how to best ship such things, because their product was far superior to everything else on the planet, and much more susceptible to becoming casualties of shipping and American postal service shenanigans.

That was not the best thing I had heard all day. My curiosity took over instead, and my epic creativity went into motion. Surely there was a way to pull this off, deliciously and perfectly.

What I wound up acquiring:

• Glad Press and Seal Wrap (Which everyone should have anyway)
• Re-usable plastic container with air-locking lid. Either made from Glad or some other company. They’re cheap and you probably have a few for taking snacks around or a sandwich into work.
• Foam padding. (Bubble Wrap will do)
• Small box.
• Box of Timbits (Original and Apple, which sounded the best)

I removed the Timbits and wrapped them in Press and Seal wrap, forming an ad-hoc plastic cavity for them to safely mingle. I put these nestlings into the plastic container, drew a picture on top of it with a Sharpie and put it into the small box with the protective foam on either side of it to keep it from bouncing around too much.

I folded up the box the Timbits came in, and put that in as well. I figure, what’s the fun of having Timbits if you can’t carry them around in a small paper box. With handles! HANDLES!

I tossed in a 3×5 card full of hopes and dreams of my Timbits reaching their destination tasty and delicious, and went to the post office. I taped up my box and dutifully filled out the sheet containing all the usual information you provide when shipping something, and opted for next-day delivery.

The US Postal Service ships things cross country, next day, cheap. CHEAP. I couldn’t believe it. It is very inexpensive.

I went to the counter and made sure I had the right papers for my Timbits. Nothing would suck worse than them being stopped at Customs entering California and questioned for hours before being deported back to Rhode Island or the Canadian hinterlands from which they came.

When the Postal Employee asked me about the package in front of me they asked me if my box contained a number of objectionable things. When they said food I said no, because they also mentioned food after a long list of things like pipe bombs and gasoline and vodka. I can’t imagine my grandmothers have been lying to Postal Employees for all these years so it is possible I can in fact tell them that I’m shipping food.

But I didn’t want to risk it. So I lied. I’ll call the Postal Service and find out what their official stance is, if this article hasn’t put me on some Postal Service Terrorist Watch-list yet.

I notified my recipient that there was an incoming delivery of something that may require signature (I forgot to ask) because it was being Next-Day’ed. They left a note on their door telling the letter carrier that the package they were holding contained a kitten and that it was very important that the box was left regardless of signature status so that it could be fed as soon as possible.

Oddly enough this didn’t result in their subsequent arrest. I was certain a SWAT team and the ASPCA were there with tiny little box-cutters trying to safely free a kitten before it died.

The Timbits made it safely and perfectly tasty. The recipient of the Timbits was very appreciative and I felt like I did a very good deed. I was quite satisfied with myself.

So I know some of you were wondering what my latest flickr pool was all about but clicking around you probably figure it out fast.

I spent a lot of time and a lot of brain power on getting an HP C5180 all-in-one scanner, copier, printer, photo printer, hipsterpda authoring tool. It wasn’t pleasant. In fact, it was pretty horrifying considering that the latest drivers and software on the HP website are badly broken.

Also, I know I’ve been busy lately. I assure you this is more related to work and family than a terrible fixation on a certain gnome, though I’m starting to get teased a little by my friends for such things. So onward and upward.

This guide is designed to help the owner of an HP All-in-One model printer (or any other HP printer and perhaps any printer that will feed 3×5 cards) print cards using Mac OS X.

Assumptions:

You’re an awesome hipster and have a deck of cards in PDF format, 1-up, to prove it.

You have a printer similar enough to the HP Photosmart C5180 that you can fake having one or have already cleared off room for your own. (It is worth looking at—Epson doesn’t have a printer of this capability in the same price range at the moment and my RX500 died because I used stupid third-party inks that blew out my heads. It also prints photos very well though the scanner software sucks and HP has issues with QA of their software apparently.)

You have yourself a nice place to put all those cards, such as a Levenger Shirt Pocket Briefcase, or a Levenger Rope Case.

You have a Mac running OS X 10.4+. I only say that because I’m not sure if the UI elements look the same in Panther. Its been a while. Maybe you should upgrade.

You have a stack of index cards. I get mine at a local office supply store (Morrison Office Supply on Thayer Street, Providence Rhode Island, US) because I just love the owner and his shop. You can probably get them just about anywhere though. I like plain ones. I go for a nice weight that isn’t too stiff and isn’t so flimsy that they’re going to easily tear. The HP lets you put them in the main tray. Don’t try using the photo paper tray. It doesn’t work. They’re too small for that, but the big huge tray lets you accommodate smaller sizes. Go figure.

When you load the cards, you can’t even see them anymore. It makes it hard to know how many you have left. I’m usually only printing 10-20 cards at a time though, so it isn’t like I’m raking the leaves while my printer sits waiting for cards.

Preview.app

Preview.app is the preferred way for me to open the hipsterpda DIYplanner templates. It is a great PDF viewer all-around anyway. First things first, open the document.

File » Page Setup

Make a custom page size. I self-assigned 0.00 inch margins. This is roughly similar to 0.00 centimeter margins.

I called mine “Hipsta” and set the page size to width 3 inches by height 5 inches.

Easy.

You’re going to want to set your Paper Size to that custom Hipsta selection you just made.

You’re also going to want to change the scale a bit. I got the best results at 95% but I’ve had great luck with 96% as well. 100% is too big, and your cards will get the edges cut off by the margins, even though they’re at 0.00. Ping me if you get a better result than this. I’m happy with the results I’m getting, but would probably prefer getting a larger print onto 3×5.

So yeah, I set mine to 96%.

Punch the big OK button.

File » Print

Here we go.

Name your preset.

Create a new preset. Call it “HP Trying” or whatever you want to call it. Something like “I hope this works!” is fine, too. Don’t get cocky with your naming of this preset, I think it interprets assertiveness as a threat.

Save your preset.

You’re going to save your preset after every change we make, so get used to it.

Go to Layout

Select the drop-down menu below Presets.

Pick Layout, and make it look like this:

Save your preset.

Paper Handling

Select the drop-down menu below Presets and select Paper Handling.

Leave everything as-is, but change “Scale to fit paper size:” and change that to Hipsta.

Save your preset.

Paper Type/Quality

Select the drop-down menu below Presets and select Paper Type/Quality.

I like to use Plain paper. I leave quality on Automatic. I use sRGB even though the cards are all grayscale now. I think they used to have some with little faint splashes of color. Or my Epson was so cracked out that it was injecting some color where none should be. That doesn’t seem all that unlikely. I really screwed that printer up. That’ll learn me.

Do you see Paper | Color Options | Ink?

Click on Ink.

The middle setting bleeds too much. I nudge it down a peg. Your mileage may vary.

Save your preset.

Copies & Pages

Select the drop-down menu below Presets and select Copies & Pages. Set the number of copies you want, and what page-range you want. It will probably be 10-20 copies of Page X.

Don’t forget to do this because if you don’t, you’ll hurt yourself scrambling to launch Printer Setup Utility to stop the print job you just kicked off lest you get showered with 84 index cards.

This printer cranks them out fast. Like little ninja throwing stars they’ll spray at you. Heads-up.

Now what?

That’s it, slacker. Now that you have a saved preset you can dig through your 1-up PDF hipsterpda templates and find the one you want, hit Print, change to your hipster-pda printing Preset you created (Please Work, HP Trying, or Tickle Me Merlin) and assign how many copies you want of that card.

If you come back and print more later after having closed the document, you have to pick Page Setup again to tell Preview.app you’re printing to Hipsta again. It will not remember that on a document-by-document basis, which would be nice. I submitted a feature request to Apple for that.

Wrap-up

So that is that. You can crank out cards really fast on this printer, and they turn out really well. Honestly I think my Epson controlled ink output better, but the HP does pretty awesome and also lets me load cards directly, instead of cutting my own, which is very error-prone because I have the patience of a 3-year-old.

Shout-outs

To my peeps on the 43 folders block, merlin, berko, pookster, keep it real. Real organized.

The fine folks at DIY Planner who slave night and day to make your life easier.

I’d like to give the finger to HP for putting borked software on their downloads site. You guys should try installing your software once and attempting to use it before putting it on the download site. I bet that may solve your problem of putting broken software online. Unless you did test your software and decided that it was good enough in spite of not working.

OmniPlan Coming Soon!:

This promises to be a very interesting application.

As promised, here is my review of the Circa Junior notebook from Levenger.

Summary: This is a very versatile notebook with enough flair and cachet to squelch my Moleskine love affair. Heavy journal-writers and notebook-capture types will want to also order a set of bigger rings. Also: make sure you buy the dividers.

Oh how I love Levenger.

A couple of years ago I fell in love with goofy but loveable notebooks called the Moleskine. Everybody has seen them and I don’t think anyone doesn’t love them. They have great paper, a clever design and a probably-more-than-slightly-exagerated-history that I find endearing. The only problem is that I can’t remove pages from a notebook. I hate tearing, and I don’t like the smaller Moleskines with perforated pages. Its a sickness, I know.

The other problem is that sometimes I want grid paper and sometimes I want ruled. I don’t like having several different notebooks that I have to label, since the Moleskine binding isn’t exactly sturdy and moves around a lot and my labels are difficult to keep in place because of the texture of the cover.

Lately I’ve really been enjoying my Rope Case, Shirt Pocket Briefcase, and other assorted niceties from the people at Levenger, so I decided I would give the Circa notebooks a try.

They come from Levenger in a nice gift box which opens up into a cloth bag containing a quite striking notebook with a luxurious leather cover. I got the Junior size, but they also make an 8.5×11 flavor. That seems like an awful lot of notebook.

The leather is lovely, the rings are solid, and the stitching seems quite solid with only one exception—the pen-loop.

As you can see, the pen loop can hover on the outside of the notebook. I don’t know if that is how it is intended to be used, because there is an adhesive near the stitching underneath, and it doesn’t seem very tight. But if you have the pen inside the notebook it stays open, which is even worse. So I’m crossing my fingers, gritting my teeth, and hoping that I’m using the pen loop properly and that my observations about the stitching and adhesive are incorrect and that it will last for years.

If you’ve been reading the 43Folders Board lately, you’ll notice that I am, in fact, using a Lamy Safari fountain pen and so far love it. Everyone seems to think they’re a solid pen and I think it is quite nice.

The Circa Junior is only a little bit larger than the standard Moleskine notebook.

The upside is that instead of carrying two or three Moleskines, I can mix up my paper types and carry one Circa Junior. I thought the binding was an open ring, but they’re closed. You can of course find a lot of places that sell “rollabind” rings, but I am not entirely sure what size would work best for me yet. The small rings the Junior comes with can accommodate around 80 pages plus dividers and clear cover “sheets” that I tape photographs to. I thought about getting a set of “antique silver” looking rings but they only seem to come in small or large. I think medium is more my speed. It will keep the notebook manageable and still have plenty of room for a lot of writing, brainstorming, mind-mapping, network diagrams, journal entries, note-taking, and more.

I am really impressed with Levenger’s paper.

It feels great, looks great, and their ruled paper has an awesome little margin carved out for little diagrams, navigation notes and other analog meta-data, and the title of the page can be easily surfed because of a nice pre-defined area that you can use for subject, topic, and date and time. Pretty clever.

Since I do GTD via the 3×5 bus, I have seen Levenger’s index cards and found them really lovely, just a little too heavily branded for my taste and not as functional as printing my own using the DIY Planner templates. I have never used a Levenger notepad or anything else, so I didn’t know what to expect with this paper. It is really excellent.

Only a tiny bit of bleed-through in a couple of spots from a fountain pen, and the feel is great. I suspect my little dabs of bleeding are from my novice fountain penmanship and not a poor choice in paper type by Levenger. Rollerball and ballpoint, and of course pencil, are completely clean.

Since the paper is rolla-bound, you can easily tug a sheet out or put one in, and they also stay secure in the notebook. I was surprised that the notebook feels so sturdy seeing as how they’re just bound in place by little rings, but it really does work well. Plus, it is easy to flip through, organize, and manage note-taking standing up by whipping the front cover all the way around to the back giving you a nice writing surface.

One of the nicest things about the Moleskine is that goofy little pocket in the back. Everyone loves the pocket. It is simple, clean, and useful. Levenger thought of that too, of course, so alongside the pen loop are three pockets.

You can stuff a few business cards in there, some money, or of course, 3×5 cards into the pockets of the Circa Junior. I’m always nervous I’m going to stretch out a pocket though, so I’ll be trying hard to keep it very light back there. I am using mine to hold 3 buisness cards, 4 index cards, a couple of bills and there appears to be no stretching. Perhaps I’m being too kind to it, since it will be hurled into bags, hauled out and used hard.

This is a great notebook. It feels great in your hands, it can be easily organized and changed-up as your needs change, and you can easily archive past rollabind pages in binders sold all over the web. I looked around and didn’t see anything from Levenger that does that, but the market already has several options there.

If you’re going to separate your pages by subject or type of paper, you will need to get those cool colored tab dividers. They’re nice, and labelmaker friendly. I’d also recommend the clear front and back covers to further protect your pages and give you a nice little canvas to tape things to, or to affix a couple of post-it 3×5’s or index tabs to flag individual pages.

It is likely that I’ll end up “modding” this notebook a bit with some swanky rings if I can find some that look nice. Honestly I don’t know if those metallic ones are really tacky from looking online, but I have a suspicion that they are. I will probably order a bigger set of plastic ones instead if I decide I need to hold more pages at one time.

Time will tell if the pen loop is perfectly fine or a disaster. I wish they had more colors to choose from, mainly because I love the orange leather of my rope case and a ballistic nylon version would probably sell very well. I don’t think I would have gotten leather if there was a ballistic option.