Activity monitor opens windows onto the field of running processes. Terminal opens windows onto the lake command-line communication. Anki opens windows onto the mountain of the Chinese language.

Activity Monitor

Why is my MacBook trying to act as a portable space heater? Why are all my applications slow? Activity Monitor answers both questions by pointing out processes that use too much CPU and memory. Isn’t it ironic that limited memory is the primary cause of system slowness?

• ☞ All Processes.
• ☞ System Memory.
• Columns: PID, Process Name, % CPU, Real Mem, Ports, Threads.
• Sort by Real Mem.
• Dock Icon: Show CPU Usage — This MacBook has four cores.

Terminal

Every programmer needs a terminal window or two or dozen open. How else are you supposed to use a computer? Windows containing icons and menus that you activate using some sort of pointer? Passing fad.

• Preferences
  • Settings
    • wl is a duplicate of Basic with:
      • Text
        • Font: Manaco 10pt — I’ve tried others. Monaco is just so familiar, so comforting.
        • ✗ Antialias text — Not at this size.
        • Cursor: Vertical Bar
        • ✓ Blink cursor
      • Window
        • Title: (blank)
      • Keyboard
        • ✓ Use option as meta key — enables move forward one word (⌥F) and move back one word (⌥B).
    • Startup
      • On startup, open: New window with settings: wl
• Set wl as default setting for new tabs and windows.
  • ☞ Shell > Show Inspector
  • In Settings, select wl.
  • ☞ View > Show Tab Bar
  • ☞ Shell > Use settings as default

Anki

“Anki is a program which makes remembering things easy. Because it is a lot more efficient than traditional study methods, you can either greatly decrease your time spent studying, or greatly increase the amount you learn.” How? Spaced repetition flash cards. (For me, it’s Chinese words and phrases.) Each day Anki only shows flash cards that I need to be reminded about. Ones I know or ones I still remember but will soon forget are saved for later. I’m currently studying 8533 cards (plus a bunch of new ones I haven’t started yet). Each day only need to review about 5% of the total (about 400). Every day it’s a different 5%. New vocabulary words come up every few days. When I’m getting to know a card, it comes up every few months. By the time I really know a word, the interval extends to years — just a little refresher now and again. How I wish I had Anki when I was in school!

Anki uses a SQLLite database for each of its decks. This makes Dropbox sharing trivial. I have a little Ruby utility that finds records average interval for each of my decks: SELECT AVG(interval) FROM cards. I run it each day to record how quickly I’m improving.

Next Time?

Preview for plain PDFs. TextEdit for plain English. TextMate for plain programming.