/\ndy

Textile 2 PDF

Here’s a quick and easy way to generate a decent looking PDF from some simple Textile markup, using TextMate.

1. First, just type up your content in TextMate, using Textile mode. You’ll get syntax highlighting, live spellcheck, all the usual goodies.
2. Next, hit the hot key for Preview (Control-Option-Apple-P)
3. From this window, just print to PDF.

Voilà.

You can always add images and perhaps some CSS to tart it up a bit if you like.

It’s light, it’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s plain text—so you can put it under version control with all the rest of your quick memos, project documentation, and such. Right?

Online brainstorming tool

This is kind of neat; it's an online brainstorming tool at www.bubbl.us. Just type a tab to quickly enter a sibling node, and an enter for a child node.

No Visio or Graffle needed, and you've got a nice quick, hierarchical, diagram.

Bandwidth calculations

Here's a cool tool if you need to do any sort of bandwidth calculations.

For instance, you might have one ISP quoting you so many GB per month traffic, and another quoting so many megabits per second. To save some time, point your browser to web.forret.com/tools/bandwidth.asp and you'll see all manner of conversions at your fingertips.

Are you read for DST? -- check it

One of the foundations of the Pragmatic Programmer philosophy is to always test your assumptions.

Is your computer ready for the newly revised US Daylight Savings Time rules? You can check it by visiting dst.umn.edu

Enjoy!