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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • As a longtime Goodreads user I’m kind of smitten with Hardcover. It offers nearly everything I want: good database, lists, status, searching. Also has responsive developers and a promising roadmap. The one thing it’s missing is, sigh, my friends. hashtag-networkeffect. I’m a paying supporter.

    I’ve been a paying supporter of Storygraph since its beta days, but I just don’t really get it. Its social aspects are awful. Maybe it’s great for automated book recommendations, but I have zero interest in that. I just want to see what my friends are reading, have read/reviewed, want to read. And I want to keep track of my books.

    Bookwyrms looks promising but each time I try it I run into new stumbling blocks. I will keep playing with it, but for now my efforts are all on Hardcover.


  • There are two usability tweaks that I would find it hard to live without: (1) red prompt on last-command failure, and (2) highlight what I type, dehighlight output:

    Reason for 1 is obvious, 2 is more subtle: it helps my eye scan scrollback and identify what I’ve typed, which is what I’m scanning for 90% of the time.

    Implementations vary, here’s how I do it in zsh:

    1. PS1='%(?.%K{cyan}%F{white}.%B%K{red}%F{white})XX%b%k%f %(?.%F{cyan}.%F{red})yyy%k%b%F{yellow}%(!.#.$)%f '. Duplication is evil, but AFAIK necessary because the conditional (error check) is %(? and I highlight both parts of my two-part prompt. Suggestions welcome for removing the duplication.
    2. zle_highlight=("default:fg=white") (on a Solarized Dark term, where the default fg color is light gray. Adjust to fit your needs).

  • What problem are you trying to solve? Please think about that, and about your backup strategy, before you decide on any specific tools.

    For example, here are several scenarios that I guard against in my backup strategy:

    • Accidentally delete a file, I want to recover it quickly (snapshots);
    • Entire drive goes kablooie, I want my system to continue running without downtime (RAID)
    • User data drive goes kablooie, I want to recover (many many options)
    • Root drive goes kablooie, I want to recover (baremetal recovery tools)
    • House burns down or computer is damaged/stolen (offsite backups)