mrap-blog

[mrap-blog]

Free Write 2020-09-16-01

You're spiraling out of control. You look around to see if anyone else notices. They're not even paying attention. No one is watching. Your thoughts bounce around in your head. You've lost control to reign them in. You don't know what to do at this point. All you can do is wait out the storm.

Write as a writer. Hold yourself accountable to getting the job done. You don't have to flow through it. You just have to do it. We're made up of many parts.

Where do your beliefs come from? You didn't wake up putting together your memories. You didn't design yourself today. You woke up like that. Design happens over a longer period of time. Your parts, your fragments create you as a whole—each win and loss. Your struggle is beautiful. Don't enamorize your battle. You don't need to be a martyr to succeed. Find shortcuts. Waking up every day is a gift we all take for granted.

Can you turn fantasy into reality? How good are you at making things happen? It's those moments that we say to ourselves, "I can't believe I'm doing this!" I live for that realization. Let that moment come from all the cumulative work that you put in. Each idea you patiently waited on. It'll all be worth it. You're ascending; you just can't detect it. Progress is difficult to measure in a snapshot. Be patient. Keep at it. Do the work you need to do each day.

Today is a difficult morning. I woke up with brain fog. Listening to the keyboard types is therapeutic. Drink water upon getting up.

When you meet an obstacle, be a wave crashing on a rock. Create a beautiful collision. After you collide with it, you should not be the same. Reach for what you want. Stretch yourself thin. Scream at the top of your lungs. Live a saturated life. Look foolish. Break your own mold. All you are is an 80-year long chemical reaction. And you react to the world around you. Integrate with the universe. Own your part of the puzzle. See things from obscure angles.

Close your eyes and dream up a world you'd like to live in. Make it true. Build a scaffolding of a dream. Blueprint it. Design the rooms, the flooring, the doors, the wallpaper. Pick a starting point and work on it. You are the project.

Fold your consciousness in on itself. Walk a street without a name. See faces you'll never pass again. Breathe in the moment. It's fleeting. Have many fleeting moments. Appreciate how rich your boring reality really is. That's happening for each and every single one of us. We're all missing pieces of our own experience. You're ephemeral. You're royal. Goof around. Piss people off. Apologize. Find things that bewilder you.

This universe is fucking strange, ain't it? Yet, it feels like home. The strangeness feels all too familiar.

[mrap-blog]

Exploit the Hard Days and Build Trust

You’ve been so good all week. You haven’t broken your streak yet. In fact, you’ve caught a wave of momentum for the past few days. But today is different. You don’t have the confidence you felt yesterday. There’s doubt. Not just a small tinge of it; it’s enough to convince you today is the day your streak ends. Bottomline: there are two outcomes today: you do the thing or you don’t do the thing. What’s the difference between the two outcomes?

What caused the split? What drove you over the edge of doubt? The good news is that so many things can help us conquer that doubt. Caffeine, a supportive group of friends, an empowering blog post, an inspiring book, vlog, quote, sunshine, a workout. You get the idea, inspiration is everywhere. Then why are days like this so difficult to conquer if you’re swimming in an ocean of catalysts?

It’s because you’re human. You’re a complex orchestration of cutting edge biology powered by calories, driven by ever-changing needs and wants, figuring out who it is and wants to be. Yeah, you’re a piece of work.

Each day is a new day, and you should take it as such. Don’t look for blind guarantees of success - they’re lies. Instead, build trust in yourself by doing the things you said you would. Make that agreement. And know that some days are going to feel 100x harder than others. But, you can exploit that.

When you make a commitment, add on conditional triggers. For example, say you made a commitment to write a blog post each day. Knowing that you definitely WILL encounter those rough days ahead, account for them. Say to yourself, “when I become aware that it’s a rough day, I will immediately begin to write.” You’re deciding a default action when a particular condition is met. When that condition is met, you don’t have to think about anything since you’ve already decided what you want to do about it. The last part is crucial: you need to do what you said you would. This is the part where trust is built. If you can do this, you’ll be more confident each endeavor moving forward where more trust is built.

Get your reps in. These are small, yet critical actions that are the foundation of who you are and what you’re capable of moving forward.

[mrap-blog]

Just Start

You wish you'd do the thing you've been wanting to do. You draw up plans and level up "required" skills. You cram all the videos and blog posts you can speed through. You upgrade your workflow, adding in the latest productivity hacks and apps. What you're not doing is starting.

So start, and stop fucking around.

[mrap-blog]

Extend the time it takes to reveal your Mac Dock

First of all, if you're not already hiding your dock, you should. Unless you're allergic to extra screen real estate...

Extend the delay to keep the dock from appearing accidentally. Type this in your CLI but make sure to replace the SECONDS_HERE with your desired delay time:

defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float SECONDS_HERE && killall Dock

If you care at all, I prefer a 5 second delay.

[mrap-blog]

My neat/minimal "Twoline" git log

Add this into your gitconfig file:

[alias] twoline = log --pretty=format:\" %Cblue%s%n %C(auto)%cr | %h | %cn%Creset%n\"

Use it: git twoline

[mrap-blog]

So tomorrow is my first day at my new developer job. Then this happens to my machine. My timing is impeccable.

[mrap-blog]

Headed back to #mavericks. Sorry #yosemite, you're just not ready.

[mrap-blog]

Doing what I love, no permission necessary.

[mrap-blog]

It's no sin to be a beginner or an intermediate. It’s no sin to be a competent programmer instead of a leader. The sin is in how long you remain a beginner or an intermediate after you know what you have to do to improve.”

Steve McConnell in Code Complete Second Edition

[mrap-blog]

Spot's app icon. (subject to change...as always)

[mrap-blog]

"Places nearby you" on the Spot App

[mrap-blog]

Mockups of two key screens for the Spot app.

[mrap-blog]

Vim tip of the day: nnoremap ; :

The : is one of the most used keys in vim. It runs your common vim commands such as :w or :q. But there's one problem: : is only available via shift + ; per usual qwerty keyboard. I can't count how many times I've accidentally entered :W instead of :w. It's always a threat to my "flow".

Solution: Map ; to :

Add this to your vimrc:

nnoremap ; :

Restart Vim. Now, in normal mode, you can do something like :w without using shift. Pretty slick.

"But I use the semicolon command!" Then add this too:

nnoremap : ;

Now ; and : are completely swapped.

[mrap-blog]

When someone sees the same people every day...they wind up becoming a part of that person's life. And then they want the person to change. If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.

from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

[mrap-blog]

Blazing Fast Key Repeat (Mac OSX)

Go go go keyboard repeat!

1. Install KeyRemap4Macbook

2. Go to the Key Repeat tab and apply these values:

Delay Until Repeat: 150ms Key Repeat: 40ms

3. Tweak values to your liking!

Recommended: disable OSX Lion's context menu popup on long key presses

paste this into terminal:

$ defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

[mrap-blog]

Drawing out the client's request for a "unscoped" place.

[mrap-blog]

Tip: Easily Change Terminal Title

This really helps when working with multiple Terminal tabs.

Add this in your ~/.bash_profile (or other bash file):

title() { echo -n -e "\033]0;$1\007" }

Now, all you have to do to in terminal is:

$ title My Title