Sunday, January 22, 2012

Git happy - A Two-second Fix for OSX git: command not found


After downloading and installing the appropriate git dmg from http://code.google.com/p/git-osx-installer/downloads/list?can=3, add a trailing slash to the end of the git file in paths.d as follows:

sudo vi /etc/paths.d/git

so it reads like this after you're finished:

/usr/local/git/bin/

Exit the current terminal window, open a new one. You're done.
PS. You don't have to use vim if you really don't want to, but hey...

Saturday, January 14, 2012

An Excellent Start to the Year (or "Great is the Enemy of Good.")


Let me read something to you, and tell you what it means to me. If you like, we can talk about it.
This is important: my aim is not to make the perfect bread or pasta or mayonnaise or biscuits - the best I've ever had. It's to set a baseline to work off of. When I was writing "Walk on Water," about a renowned surgeon, more than one doctor noted the common saying "great is the enemy of good," meaning that when surgeons strive for greatness, they can cause harm when they might otherwise not have harmed had they simply strived for good. I've worked with the greatest perfectionist there is in the cooking world, and I love that hunt for the perfect sauce, the perfect custard, but here I'm after good. Only when we know good can we begin to inch up from good to excellent.
And this...
We must have craft before we have art, and craft is founded on fundamentals.
These quotes are from a book my wife and I sometimes read in the kitchen. It was written by Michael Ruhlman, and is called "Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking."


True perfectionism hinders as much as it might inspire or encourage. Excellence, not perfectionism, should be what we strive for, and become the standard by which we operate.


In "great is the enemy of good," great is perfectionism, born of vanity, ego, obsession, or a possible disorder. Whatever the cause, it is unhealthful. Good does not mean merely sufficient, good enough to get by, or mediocre. Good is a reasonable, healthy minimum given the constraints of time, ability, resources, and the true expectations of those affected by our efforts.

So, this is not an assault on striving toward high standards, but recognizing that we should keep everything in perspective while doing the best we can, knowing that "only when we know good can we begin to inch up from good to excellent," and acknowledging that "we must have craft before we have art, and craft is founded on fundamentals."


Get the fundamentals down pat, then build upon that platform a structure of excellence.


That's what this little corner of the interwebs is about, primarily within the context of developing software, primarily in PHP. Why haven't I written more before now? I guess I know a thing or two about perfectionism...


Have an Excellent Year!