I'll Just Put This In My /usr/local/sbin/
I recently changed my journal from .txt to .md to be compatible with my new content management system. I'm excited to have discovered this system which allows me to back up my system customizations with a vim repo, and to edit all files listed in a csv file at once. I'm now sharing this with the world - join me to learn how to work this way and make the most of your system!
Discovering a System to Back Up System Customizations and Edit Files Listed in a CSV File at Once
By Michael Levin
Saturday, June 18, 2022
And here we go! I just renamed journal.txt to journal.md to keep it consistent and compatible with my new content management system. This is a huge move for me. Previously, I couldn’t care less about how markdown rendered in my personal private journal. It was not for sharing. Events of recent times have made it painfully obvious that almost the entire purpose of this location is to “seed” content for other locations. You need somewhere to just begin writing without inhibition or particularly committed purpose, but still with the open-endedness to just copy/paste it over to where it belongs… which just by virtue of doing that POOF! It’s published. Or at very least, it’s organized into another private Github repo. Not everything maintained with my content management system need necessarily be published via the Github Pages system. But the same system that can is identical to one that does not (and keeps it private). The only difference is the public/private setting in Github and configuration of Github Pages… brilliant!
Okay, so we pay out annual dues to Microsoft for unlimited private repos. So what? It’s nothing compared to the boon of abilities this yields in one’s life. Plus it keeps all your personal information management skills compatible with what’s necessary for a professional developer. Double-win! And now that I’ve adjusted my Linux Terminal prompt to show what git repo branch is active (although I’m almost always in main), I can start to take more advantage of git branches by virtue of it being kept in the front of my mind. Previously (currently, really), I only use git as a sort of personal unlimited undo feature. I’m not a professional developer, so I don’t really collaborate on code. All my “code” is personal, or just really journal-writing like this. Git and vim being so thought-of as developer tools does a disservice to humanity. It should be incorporated into mainstream education so everyone has these abilities.
Okay, so where am I going with this? Getting organized, of course. For months I’ve had a list of Github Pages sites to assure myself I could get them published easily and add content to them with vim copy/paste between buffers of always-loaded files. It worked well. But how much do I really have to update TicTacUFOSightings.com or TardigradeCircus.com. They’re both great ideas, but their time has not come (or is over). As of yesterday, my content management system supports site-files in arbitrary location and of arbitrary lengths, so I could keep all these sites in there and more while only generating out the ones I need while I’m typing in them. If I’m in my personal journal, I hit the @l macro (or I may switch it to @g) in order to slice & dice it and output it to the _posts directory within. Ugh, am I going to have to neutralize all the markdown in this file now? Yeah, maybe. Casual project over time. It would have great utility for even this journal to be sliced & diced as if published.
Hmmm, okay so next steps? Take ~/github/skite/sites.csv and put a copy of it into ~/github/journal. Rearrange them for the order you want to use them and add in the private repos that are not part of public Github Page publishing. I’ve got a tremendously important letter to write tomorrow. I want to get a first draft done today. It’s about an incident that happened today and I want to capture all the details (in a longer version) while it’s still fresh on my mind and want to talk about it as the incident that happened yesterday. But technically it actually happened today, so I can wait until tomorrow (Father’s Day) and still talk about it as yesterday. So I can have a chance to gather my thoughts and get organized in these other “higher level” ways that has been long overdue. Okay, so go and copy sites.csv into journal.
Okay, so now I should be able to just :badd sites.csv and have it in my vim buffer along with this journal. Check! Okay, now add the entries for the other repos. Interesting! My WorkJournal.zd line works as an example. So I already had one in there that worked this way and the slice & dice system was already working on it, so I know I have it working. Of course, the only difference is whether the Github repos it pushes into are public and Github Pages or not, so this is just a solid system for managing any journal. Sweet!
#!/home/healus/py310/bin/python
from os import system
import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_csv("~/github/journal/sites.csv", delimiter="|")
df = df.applymap(lambda x: x.strip())
df.columns = [x.strip() for x in df.columns]
alist = df[['path']].values.tolist()
journals = " ".join([f'~/{x[0]}/journal.md' for x in alist])
edit_journals = f"vim {journals}"
system(edit_journals)
Sweet. Now I edit ~/github/journal/sites.csv to whatever I like and then just type “all” from any Linux Terminal, and I’m editing all files listed in csv.
Hmmm, while I’m at it I ought to always be editing my .vimrc and on quitting, backing it all up to my vim repo, along with my .bash_profile and /usr/local/sbin/all file.
#!/home/healus/py310/bin/python
import shlex
import shutil
import pandas as pd
from os import system
from sys import stdout
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
df = pd.read_csv("~/github/journal/sites.csv", delimiter="|")
df = df.applymap(lambda x: x.strip())
df.columns = [x.strip() for x in df.columns]
alist = df[['path']].values.tolist()
journals = " ".join([f'~/{x[0]}/journal.md' for x in alist])
edit_journals = f"vim {journals} ~/.vimrc"
system(edit_journals)
def flush(std):
for line in std:
line = line.strip()
if line:
print(line)
stdout.flush()
def git(cwd, args):
cmd = ["/usr/bin/git"] + shlex.split(args)
print(f"COMMAND: << {shlex.join(cmd)} >>")
process = Popen(
args=cmd,
cwd=cwd,
stdout=PIPE,
stderr=PIPE,
shell=False,
bufsize=1,
universal_newlines=True,
)
flush(process.stdout)
flush(process.stderr)
shutil.copyfile("/home/healus/.vimrc", "/home/healus/github/vim/.vimrc")
shutil.copyfile("/home/healus/.bash_profile", "/home/healus/github/vim/.bash_profile")
shutil.copyfile("/usr/local/sbin/all", "/home/healus/github/vim/all")
loc = "/home/healus/github/vim"
git(loc, 'commit -am "Pushing .vimrc to Github..."')
git(loc, "push")
print("Done")
The utility of this is pretty amazing. I edit all my files at once whenever I like, but I keep the list of master files in a visually formatted csv file that serves other purposes in the content management system. Whenever I quit out of this vim session, all my system customizations are backed up to vim.
I wish I worked this way since I discovered stuff like this at 18 years old on the Amiga. Well, I know now. Share it with the world. Okay, done.