Chris J Mears

Best of Canadian Indie Music 2009

Volume 3 — “When You Wish Upon a Maple Leaf”

Welcome to the 3rd volume of my Best of Canadian Independent music mix. Compiled each year, this mix contains my favorite tracks from the top Canadian independent artists.

This year, I’ve included my thoughts, trivia, or shout-outs on each track. Enjoy and let me know what you think in the comments!

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HAML + Javascript

I am very meticulous when it comes to server calls. In most of my Rails applications, I make sure to only specify those Javascript files that are deemed absolute necessary for any given view so as to not clutter things with wasted bytes of memory.

While I was playing around with HAML, I needed to insert a very simple, very specific jQuery function. As of this writing, a simple Google search of “haml and javascript” came up with some old and unhelpful results. The official HAML documentation was, of course, among those results, but the answer was at the bottom of the document and a quick scan of the table of contents didn’t associate “Filters :” as being the correct the section.

Of course, a blog or two and the HAML google group already tackled the topic, so I’m just going to regurgitate in order in hopes that next person with this problem will find the answer in 2 minutes instead of my 10 minutes.

An example:

:javascript
  $(function() {
    $("#tabs").tabs();
  });

Textmate and Git Bundle

I just recently had this problem and saw that the answer was buried in a TextMate blog entry comment thread.

Are you getting the following error whenever you try to use the bundle?

sh: git: command not found

Did you install git through Macports or manually compile the source? Could your Git bundle for TextMate be a tad old?

All of the above was true for me, but I was easily able to solve the issue with the following command:

sudo ln -s /opt/local/bin/git /usr/bin/git

Hope that cuts back on troubleshooting time for some of you out there!

Mac OS X Terminal Aliases

Partly because I wanted to post more and partly because I transfer computers a lot and I figure a blog is as good place as any to share my thoughts with, well, myself.

Here’s a list of aliases I’ve collected over the times searching the Internet (note: so far, not so many, but that’ll change as I keep finding more).

To be put in ~/.bash_profile:

alias ls='ls -aFhlG'
alias ll='ls -l'
alias search=grep
alias ..='cd ..'
alias ...='cd ../..'
alias bake='/opt/local/apache2/htdocs/cake/cake/console/cake bake'
alias cake='cd /opt/local/apache2/htdocs/cake'

If anyone wants more detailed explanation of any or all of these, or if you’d like to know what in the bejesus I’m even talking about, post a comment.

Oh, and I would also happily welcome further suggestions too.

Breaking through the mental block

Motivation is a fascinating thing. Sometimes you have it, other times it’s no where to be found.

I started writing a blog to inspire me, and others, with any random thoughts and ideas that came to mind. Then I realized that I haven’t actually written anything in a very long time. Like all skills, writing takes practice. Practice makes perfect, but to a perfectionist like me, it’s hard to sit down and write when what’s coming out is pure crap.

In fact, the most inspirational piece I’ve heard is from Ira Glass (This American Life), on the subject of sucking. Though the topic is on storytelling, his message is very universal for beginners: you’re going to suck, deal with it and overcome by putting in the effort.

Some other things that I also found helpful are:

• Read Whining, Blue Smoke & the Mechanics of Getting Unstuck
• Make a list of “inspiration” tagged items in delicious or your preferred bookmarking platform. Here’s mine.