markjgsmith

How I use my linkblog - finding a git tutorial I watched last year

Situation:

I need to commit some changes to my dotfiles, when I do a git diff I see that there are two distinct changes that have been made because I must have forgotten to check the previous change in, no doubt I was distracted by something much more impotant at the time. The world is like that sometimes. Other people are just so me me me sometimes. :)

I could check these commits in one commit, it's no big deal, they are my dotfiles in any case, it won't matter really. On the other hand I know there is a git command just for this called patch, but I don't use it very often and I don't remember the flow. However I do remember that I watched a tutorial on youtube but it was a long time ago, at least a year. I did post a link to it on my linkblog because it was quite a good video. Might as well learn it now, plus I can write a how to blog post.

Solution:

So I open up my linkblog on the search page. I search for: git patch "youtube.com"

Adding the url in quotes returns exact matches for the url. I hit the search button and receive a load of results. I use the browser in page search by doing ctr-f and type 'patch' in the browser search box window that opens in the top right of the browser. I hit enter and all occurrances of patch are highlighted in yellow. Hitting enter a few more times and the focus jumps down the page and BAM there is the tutorial: "Intro to git patch mode tutorial". As an added bonus I notice that there is another video I posted about git patch right above it. Cool!

I click the cmd-click the domain at the end of the line and a new browser window tab opens up loading the youtube video. Oh so THAT's how to git patch!

Here is a link to that day in my linkblog timeline. The video was by a chap named John Karey. Thanks for the video John. #

How I use my linkblog - posting a link to my latest blog post

Situation:

Earlier I wrote a how to blog post. It would be nice to add it to my linkblog timeline in case anyone stumbles across my linkblog. Then they might get a better idea of how a linkblog might be useful. It might also be interesting to others that are building software and writing documentation to see my flow.

Solution:

I open the post in my web browser, load the blog post I just wrote and click the bookmarklet in my browser bookmarks bar. I added the popup bookmarklet to my browser bookmarks bar when I setup my linkblog account.

The popup window appears and I add the text "New Post:" to the start of the message text. When I am linking to a blog post I wrote, I always add this prefix so that I can easily search for them later, and it also draws a bit of attention to the link for people that might read my linkblog.

I click on the 'Meta' tab and add some tags. While typing the tags, a drop down appears under the tag box to suggest tags that I have previously used in posts. I click the tag in the drop down and it autocompletes the tag in the tag boz or just continue typing and hit enter when I am done typing the tag. Tags can have spaces in them but no underscores.

I jump back to the main tab and click the "Post Message" button. The window disappears as if it was never there. I open my linkblog and find that a new item has been posted linking to the blog post.

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