Weevil Genius

Recent juggling of multiple projects has created a need to track what I’ve been doing day by day, as well as keep some notes on what I want to be doing. I have thus revived a system I created long ago to edit a weekly log file in my favorite editor (vim) via a keyboard shortcut. As I’m currently working mostly in OS X, this required some modifications from the Linux version I used in the past. The desired action is relatively simple. I press a hotkey combination and a text editor window opens with the current week’s log file, which has been created on the fly if it didn’t already exist.

Working in a cross-platform environment, I sometimes find it necessary to deal with DMG files (Apple disk images). Instead of finding a coworker with a Mac, I have found it easier to equip my linux machine to be able to read, write, and create these images (uncompressed only) natively.

The key is the fact that a DMG image is merely a HFS+ filesystem in a single file (similar to the way a .iso file is a CDROM filesystem in a single file). While I’m not sure how the extra DMG options (such as encryption, compression, or being “internet enabled”) work under OS X, I have verified that it is easy to create simple, uncompressed DMG images from scratch in linux. Here’s what works for me under Ubuntu Dapper & Feisty.