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Welcome to pbrisbin dot com at 8080. You'll find it's mostly [GNU/]Linux-related geekery here and some of the information presented is specific to the [amazing] distribution known as Arch Linux. Some of my favorite topics are the XMonad window manager, Bash scripting (or just general command-line adventures), and the great email client Mutt.
Please don't hesitate to contact me; simply send emails to anything at pbrisbin dot com.
Enjoy the site.
XMonad is a type of tiling window manager. It makes me happy. If you've never used a tiling window manager, the idea is simple: automatically resize any open windows to fill the whole monitor with no gaps and no overlap. Usually you get a bunch of virtual workspaces to spread out your windows by category too. And there's always a floating layer available if you want to pop any windows out of the tile and move/resize them freely (or have them start that way by default). It's a very efficient way to work with your computer as you waste no screen space, you can quickly navigate to or rearrange your windows, and you can do all of it without ever touching the mouse.
If you haven't noticed, my desktop runs on Arch linux. Arch is an amazing DIY distro that gives the user the barest of bare installs; from there, you can build your system, piece by piece. There is no hand-holding, and the user is expected to install, maintain, and configure his entire system on his own. Through appropriate use of the amazing Arch wiki, forums, and IRC, this isn't so bad - it simply takes reading, and time. The benefit being not only can you make it exactly what you want, but you'll learn more than you could imagine about the inner workings of your system. This transparency and required effort can lead to both fulfillment and frustration; this is a feature, not a bug.
If you want to try a distro that expects a lot from its users while still offering a great package manager and simple transparent tools for maintaining your system, please try Arch. Be sure to read the Beginners guide before installing, and do some research (manpage, wiki, forum, google) before asking questions - Though most Archers are extremely friendly and willing to help, showing that you've done some research before asking the same often answered question will go a long way in earning the respect of the group; and, at least in the beginning, I'd bet you find your question's already been asked and answered somewhere.
aurget - A simple pacman-like interface to the AUR
downgrade - Bash script for downgrading one or more packages to a version in your cache or the A.R.M.
php-source-highlight - PHP extension that uses the GNU source-highlight library for syntax highlighting
XMonad modules - Writing an xmonad.hs can be fun; so much so, that eventually, one file just isn't enough. I've recently modularized parts of my config into separate files under ./lib. In exchange for any breakage this might cause to those that use this particular config, I'm also maintaining haddock documentation for all the modules. Read on for the full apology/announcement and a link to the module documentation.
Published on Mon, 30 Aug 2010 22:38:22 -0400, Last modified on Mon, 30 Aug 2010 23:27:21 -0400 -- 0 Comments
Haskell RSS Reader - Just finished writing an RSS Reader using haskell to show aggregated feed items in a ticker-text style dzen bar. I've definitely got some polishing to do, but I'm really happy with how it turned out. Check out the details and let me know what you think.
Published on Sun, 15 Aug 2010 11:51:28 -0400, Last modified on Thu, 26 Aug 2010 20:09:15 -0400 -- 0 Comments
Web Preview - I've been enjoying Jumanji as my web browser of choice lately. Unfortunately, this meant it wasn't as convenient for me to use my uzbl-auto-refresh script as a live preview of sorts for my web pages as I wrote them. This motivated me to do something entirely different: I archived all of my Uzbl scripts and configurations and started fresh. I now have one simple webpreview script which spawns and refreshes a minimal uzbl-core instance used solely for previewing web pages as I write them. I'm really happy with the result.
Published on Mon, 26 Jul 2010 19:47:51 -0400, Last modified on Sun, 08 Aug 2010 13:17:58 -0400 -- 0 Comments
Scratchpad Everything - A follow up on my recent XMonad Scratchpad post. I've replaced the terminal-specific scratchpad extension with a more general one that allows any arbitrary application to share the scratchpad paradigm. I find this works really well for a volume mixer, resource monitor, etc.
Published on Sun, 13 Jun 2010 20:46:21 -0400, Last modified on Sun, 08 Aug 2010 13:18:09 -0400 -- 7 Comments
Uber-Mutt - Uber-mutt: a small but very powerful text-based mail client patched by the best. So far, it's aur/mutt-sidebar plus a nifty forgotten-attachment-detector patch. Thanks to Ghost1227 for the hard work. Everyone should go checkout aur/uber-mutt.
Published on Sun, 06 Jun 2010 15:53:08 -0400, Last modified on Sun, 08 Aug 2010 13:17:16 -0400 -- 2 Comments
Removal By Inode - Just a short writeup on an effictive way to remove files with odd filenames. Find the file's inode number on the filesystem, then use find's -inum flag to take it out.
Published on Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:15:12 -0400, Last modified on Sun, 08 Aug 2010 13:16:54 -0400 -- 0 Comments
Raw Audio - Information ragarding my latest hobby: Android development. I've written a simple app called Raw Audio, which just loads a user-entered URI using the built-in MediaPlayer() class. This lets me pick up my mpd stream from anywhere. On this page, I go through the Classes method by method and explain what they do.
Published on Thu, 27 May 2010 21:05:54 -0400, Last modified on Sun, 08 Aug 2010 13:16:49 -0400 -- 0 Comments
Comments - Finally did something I've been meaning to do for a while: add Comments functionality to my site. I did it with some simple home-brew php; This approach suits me, minimal and simple. Check out how I did it, and leave some test comments before I deploy this live to all my other pages.
Published on Tue, 18 May 2010 19:24:41 -0400, Last modified on Sun, 08 Aug 2010 13:15:15 -0400 -- 21 Comments
HTPC - Details on my recent HTPC build; hardware I got, software I installed, and even some screenshots.
Published on Sat, 01 May 2010 11:22:59 -0400, Last modified on Sun, 08 Aug 2010 13:16:07 -0400 -- 0 Comments
Scratchpad Terminal - How to add a scratchpad terminal to your XMonad setup. If you've ever used Quake or some other drop-down terminal, you know how useful these are. XMonad's contrib module makes it easy to add one of these natively to your WM.
Published on Sat, 10 Apr 2010 00:34:24 -0400, Last modified on Sun, 08 Aug 2010 13:18:13 -0400 -- 0 Comments
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