PixelCog Blog
Disable .DS_Store in OS X El Capitan
Like many OS X users, I hate .DS_Store files cluttering up my folders. For the average OS X user working in the Finder these are hidden safely away from view, but for most programmers and really anyone who works in the Terminal these little garbage files tend to get in the way. [read more]
Yosemite Menu Bar Icon for Mint QuickView
Since upgrading to Yosemite, I’ve wanted to switch my interface to “dark mode”, but there were a few incompatible menu bar apps holding me back. One of these was Mint QuickView, which both looked awful with a dark menu bar and contained an old, outdated logo. To remedy this, I created a quick drop-in replacement for the ugly icon. [read more]
Simplify OpsWorks Development With Packer
After publishing a long-overdue update to the “Virtualizing AWS OpsWorks with Vagrant” tutorial from last year, I decided to make a second post detailing some optimizations I have made to my own local development workflow. [read more]
Flat Byword Icon for Yosemite
Since upgrading to Yosemite, I’ve been loving the new design and the flat icons. However, the few old-school icons left on my dock are now a complete eye sore by comparison. Since the Byword icon is staring back at me most of the work day I decided to go in update it. [read more]
Convert Gmail Messages to PDF with Google Apps Script
Recently I had need of a method to quickly and easily convert Gmail messages into PDFs. In the process, I created a small library of helpful tools for use with Google Apps Script that I believe others may benefit from. What follows is a description of the library and some example usage. [read more]
Backing Up a Google Calendar to S3
This blog post will be a quickie. A client of mine recently asked me to start making regular backups for their business-critical scheduling data (which is currently hosted in a shared google calendar), so I decided to automate the process. This afforded me the opportunity to explore the aws cli tool, iam roles for compute cloud instances, and other fun stuff so I thought I’d pass it all along. [read more]
Virtualizing AWS OpsWorks with Vagrant (UPDATED)
Having recently made the switch from my old PaaS provider to AWS OpsWorks, I’ve resolved to take this opportunity to update my local development workflow along with it. My peers have been extolling the virtues of Vagrant for years, so it’s time to finally see what all the fuss is about. [read more]
Recovering a Corrupted iPhoto Library
My hard drive RAID was damaged recently during a move and much of its contents were lost or corrupted. This included my iPhoto library with six years of personal photos. In order to recover my library I had to carefully combine several collections of partial backups with data recovered from the faulty hard drive. [read more]
Domain Routing With Amazon S3 and Route53
In addition to being a great static webhost, Amazon S3 can be used as a cheap way to blindly redirect domain names. I needed to use this method recently so I thought I’d document the process for future reference. [read more]
Jekyll From Scratch - Extending Jekyll
In my previous posts I’ve covered the basics of Jekyll, and building a static website framework from the ground up. In this post, I’ll demonstrate ways in which you can enhance your otherwise-static Jekyll website or blog with interactive components like comment threads, site search, and contact forms, and I’ll share a few additional tips and tricks I’ve run into as well. [read more]