As an aside related to my post about Swift, there is a group forming in Minneapolis around Swift and Apple technologies: SwiftMN.
Join the Meetup group and let us know what you want to try out. I know that I won’t be able to make every meeting, but I am hoping to make the 2+ hour trip as often as I am able.
In case you were underground last week (and I was close to being just that for the week), you heard that Apple announced a new programming language, Swift, at their World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC 2014).
Needless to say, this is something I am going to take a nice, long look at. I happen to kind of like Objective-C, but there are many things about Swift that I really like.
If you are interested, you can download a book from the iBooks Store title The Swift Programming Language and take a look at what the future might look for Apple development.
We use KeePass for storing needed passwords at work and I’ve always wanted a good, native OS X application to use. Today, with just a random Google search, I found such an application: MacPass.
So far it fits my modest needs perfectly and looks good doing it. I’d recommend you take a look if you need a KeePass app for OS X.
The title might be a little facetious, but stay with me.
We recently underwent a semi-invasive project here on campus. It involved replacing the backbone switch for the entire campus and replacing it with a larger chassis which allowed us to consolidate some switches into the new chassis along with adding some 10G switching capacity (which we are now using for our VM storage systems).
What tool was the most important during that project? My iPad.
When a student was stating that their router was not connecting properly with the network, I needed the ability to easily check whether my changes were having an effect. Easiest way to do that? Use my iPad and OpenVPN.
We have a metric ton of projects sitting in the pipeline right now which range from pulling out the last of our Novell NetWare servers and replacing them with OES 11.2 to continuing the migration and consolidation of current services onto smaller VMs and SLES 11. That all comes with a lot of documentation I need to wade through and also using Trello to try to keep track of the moving parts.
What is with me for that? The iPad!
When my family and I recently took a vacation to visit my wife’s family in Milwaukee I wanted to bring along the minimal amount of technology so that we could also pack in a half-hog for my brother-in-law. I still needed to have access to the office and the ability to troubleshoot machines while I was on the road.
What made the cut? My iPad, complete with cellular internet connection, OpenVPN, and Prompt for working with my servers.
I did not originally imagine that this is how I would end up using the iPad.
The idea really stemmed around using the iPad to carry around documentation, and that was pretty much about it. Couple that with some email and web browsing capabilities I was going to be happy using it as my daily-carry machine. However, as I dug into the new iPad Air it became apparent that it could be used for so much more (and in some cases, be better).
So as it stands right now, the iPad is my sysadmin tool of choice in many situations. Of course, there are many tools that I use in a given day, but I have been pleasantly surprised with how well my iPad Air has transitioned into more than just a daily-carry documentation tool.
I’m not sure if this is new, but Microsoft has pushed an update for OneNote into the Mac App Store. I’m not seeing any version history on the app so I am thinking this is the first of the “big” Microsoft Office applications to show up in the Mac App Store.
The better question is this: is this a preview of what is to come for Office 2014?