TheDarkTrumpet.com

Getting LeafNode to work on OSX is a bit of a pain, messing with that today I found that little exists in terms of documentation on how to make this happen. The real problem isn’t specifically with the base install of LeafNode, but getting it configured is where the problem is at:

Installing Leafnode:
port install leafnode

Once leafnode is installed, you have a few commands that you can use at this point:
fetchnews – This will be used to get the listing of groups, which once read, will start pulling the actual documents themselves
leafnode – This can be run a few different ways, but with the macports option it’s really not a bad idea to run this through launchctl (assuming you’re on a later version of OSX).

Once it’s installed, your configuration file that you’ll need to edit is in /opt/local/etc/leafnode/config. Most of the stuff in the config.example will help in configuring leafnode. The important elements that should be edited are:
server – The server name itself
username – Obvious
password – Again, obvious
expire – I personally wanted everything that a newsgroup had, and to continue to fetch as much as possible since I want to be able to search off archived messages. I set this really high, I’d recommend the same.
hostname – This can be configured from your newsreader, but I added this as something if I forgot to configure it correctly.
maxfetch – Similar to expire, just sets the max number of initial articles to fetch. I set this insanely high as well.

The plists for launchctl are located in /opt/local/etc/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.leafnode
One way to load this right away is:
sudo launchctl load /opt/local/etc/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.leafnode/org.macports.leafnode.plist

I’ve also created a symlink from the above location to /Library/LaunchDaemons
cd /Library/LaunchDaemons
ln -s /opt/local/etc/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.leafnode/org.macports.leafnode.plist .

At this point, you can use emacs to connect to your server. Much of the stuff left is to configure your emacs variables. Some example stuff I use is:

;; GNUS Setup
(setq user-mail-address “youremail@domain”)
(setq user-full-name “Your Name”)
(setq gnus-select-method ‘(nntp “localhost”
(nntp-address “127.0.0.1″)
(nntp-authinfo-file “~/.authinfo”)
(nntp-port-number 119)))

(setq gnus-summary-make-false-root ‘dummy)
(setq gnus-build-sparse-threads ’some)
(setq gnus-fetch-old-headers ’some)

(setq gnus-posting-styles
‘((“.“
(signature-file “~/.signature”)
(x-url “http://www.thedarktrumpet.com/”)
(organization “The Dark Trumpet”))))

The last thing that really needs to be done is setting up your crontab. I used the root crontab to do this, using “crontab -e” as root, then I have the following line:
/60 /opt/local/sbin/fetchnews -v -n

There is a lot about the Agile project methodology way that I despise, but short term focus goals isn’t one of them.

First, I should probably introduce the agile methodology. In project management, there are multiple ways of handling how a project is run. The agile methodology focuses heavily on minor but often corrections to a project to help facilitate communication, reduce churn (when something has to be recoded due to requirement changes), and come up with more accurate short-term timelines and less focus on the long term. I won’t get into much more about the agile methodology, but the above should sum it up well.

The part I want to focus on is how this develops focus. When I was talking to my father yesterday, he asked why I am getting rid of stuff and buying less. I told this it had to do with focus. In my free time I’m interested in the following activities: martial arts, art (book binding, drawing and painting), music (playing and listening), reading, programming side projects, doing some work for work, watching some tv/movies, motorcycle riding, language study (writing blogs, learning new languages), and volunteer work. This doesn’t even take in account that I’m a graduate student and work full time. The reason I mention all this is to really illustrate the worst case of someone who has no focus and does too much.

The agile way comes to the rescue. I first had to realize that I want to become a master at some stuff and let other stuff fall back a little. To accomplish this, I am starting (actually did this in the past too) to pick a few things of my interests to focus on for one week. After the week, I want to spend a bit on Sunday morning in a mini retrospective to come up with ways of improving a bit.

To further sticking to the goals, it’s helpful to stick all the times one will do stuff on a calendar. Even when willpower is low, the calendar helps to keep things on track. It also reinforces the thought that being successful each day.

To give my week plans, I decided to focus on martial arts, language studies, and work reading/coding. My short term goal is to do this M-F with a retrospective on Sunday. If all goes well, I’d like to keep this focus a month. 3 hours each night dedicated to this isn’t much to ask.

I focused much of this writing as in what my plans were instead of the more generic what could be done because I feel this type of thing isn’t a known science and is adaptable by the individual. I would be very interested in hearing your opinions and ideas to improve this. Please use the comment area below.