Build & Deploy

Notes from a Web Developer & Accidental Systems Administrator

[klinger-io]

Don't drown in email! How to use Gmail more efficiently.

I usually I blog about Angellist, Startups, Founders, the Future and especially Metrics but I have shown this “lifehack” to so many people that I thought it’s worth it’s own blogpost. Hope it’s useful.

If you struggle with keeping on top of your emails in Gmail you want to maybe try my setup. It’s hard for me to lose track and trust me - i am easy to distract

This is how i use Gmail since 2010:

GTD - Getting things done

An easy to manage, usually empty inbox on the left

All “todos” in the first box

All emails “awaiting a reply” in the second

All “delegated” emails in the third

All emails related to meetings, flights, etc easy to find in the fourth

All done with 0 plugins, using only standard gmail features

It’s hard to lose overview using that setup

I couldn’t even imagine using gmail any other way. No seriously. I see those messy priority inbox tab inbox systems and I am just scared. Scared that google will someday force me to use those features.

Btw: This approach is not particularly new. I learned it from a person (forgot name) at LeWeb 2010 and it was mentioned on a blogpost which was called “Gmail Ninja” (couldn’t find the link).

How I manage daily work

An email comes in

Handle those you can instantly

The others mark as todo

If you want to keep track of them when you replied, you mark them as “Awaiting Reply” or “Delegated” (that way you can always quickly find them and follow up)

You archive all emails

You inbox on the left is empty again

All important ones are in the special boxes ones the right

Example:

Received an email

Was able to reply instantly (if i wouldn’t have had the time i would marked it as yellow bang (Todo))

I replied

Marked with “awaiting reply” (question mark)

Archived the email

The email is no longer in my inbox but in my “awaiting reply list” on the right side

His reply will come into my inbox (and we start over with replying instantly or marking as action)

Archive - Inbox Zero

That’s it! You are done.

Hope fully that workflow also helps you.

Interested? - It takes about 15minutes to set up…

… but might change how you work with email forever ;)

In a nutshell it’s

Multiple inboxes

Special stars

The multiple inboxes have searches matching the special stars

Several filters to avoid repetitive tasks

Step by Step guide

Add multiple inboxes

Go to Settings (you will find it under the cogs icon on the top right)

Go to Labs

Enable Multiple Inboxes

Choose right side layout

Choose the correct special stars

Go to Settings > General

Scroll down to Stars

Add the stars you will want to use

I use:

Yellow bang for Todo

Red bang for Important Todo

Question mark for emails I expect or await a reply. (so i can followup)

Orange guillemet (double arrow) for emails i delegated to someone but expect to be done. (so i can follow up)

Purple star for any arranged meeting, flights, event tickets, call or anything else related to an event where i might need to find that stuff quickly.

Filter the inboxes to match the stars

Go to Settings > Multiple Inboxes

Switch to right side layout - the option is in the bottom (!)

Add the filter rules you want for your inboxes

Here is the list of all names of the stars:

has:red-star

has:orange-star

has:green-star

has:blue-star

has:purple-star

has:red-bang

has:orange-guillemet

has:yellow-bang

has:green-check

has:blue-info

has:purple-question

You can btw also do more complex filters by adding OR, AND or basically anything else you can use in search. Eg. I use OR to show both important and VERY important todos.

Note on mobile: If you use the mobile Gmail App a lot i would suggest to use the normal yellow star for todo. That way you can at least mark todos in mobile. Unfortunately the other features won’t work as well because the gmail app doesn’t support them.

Enable the inbox layout (aka kill the tabs ;) )

This part is a bit annoying - basically you need to disable a lot of fancy default features of gmail. If the new multiple inbox layout doesn’t appear in your inbox after you finished the guide you might have missed some step here.

Go to Settings > Inbox

Switch to “default”

Turn off any configuration you might have regarding tabs

Turn off any configuration regarding priority, important emails or filters

Go to your inbox

Click on the cog and click on “Configure Inbox”

Remove everything

And while you are at it: Switch layout to “compact”

Now reload

Getting to inbox zero the first time

Let me guess you got a lot of emails in front of you right now or? I had several thousands the first time.

You need to get from several thousands it to Inbox Zero. And this needs to happen now. But it’s actually quite easy.

Go through the first two or three pages of email.

Mark everything that is a todo with a todo icon (in my case yellow bang).

Every thread where you had the last email and await a reply mark with your awaiting reply icon (in my case question mark).

The same for your delegated and events emails.

When you went through the first two or three pages and you have the feeling nothing (still) important appears anymore do the daring move.

Click select all (the checkbox on the top left)

Confirm that you really mean all 6523 emails

And click on archive

Now your inbox should at zero and your right areas full.

More Gmail Workflow Tips

If you like the suggestion above you might be also interested in my other gmail workflow tips:

Robot the majority of your emails

I am pretty sure you receive dozens of newsletters, groups etc.

Unsubscribe what you don’t need

Filter what you only need if you search for it (i do this eg for follower updates etc)

Filter everything that can be automatically processed (eg all my invoices get a label, all my commercial invoices get a label and are forwarded to my assisstent who will then use it for bookkeeping)

By now i have over 100 filters and i only see new emails if i really need to see them.

Keyboard navigation

Enable shortcuts in settings

Learn them

Most important y for archive, r for reply, a for reply all, s for star

Auto advance

Choose auto-advance in Settings so you can cycle through your new emails in the morning really fast

Undo sending

Enable Undo send in Settings > Labs

Wonder for the rest of your life why this is not a default feature

Merge your email accounts to one

Screw multiple logins

Fetch all your email to your main gmail account

Be sure to use the “smtp” feature to avoid the emails being send as “on behalf of”

Choose to always reply from the email you got the message sent to

Ideal if you have private and professional emails coming now to the same inbox

Install rapportive. But i am pretty sure you already have done so. ;)

Update:

A few people mentioned that they suggest using labels instead of stars. Labels are accessible in the mobile app and also in other apps.

Personally I prefer the stars because they are quicker to access. But if you are looking for a way to have the same workflow also accessible in your mobile - labels might be the solution.

That’s it.

I hope this workflow helps you as much as it helped me and several people i showed it too - If you want please tweet this article. And also feel free to hit me up on twitter if you have any further questions or suggestions how to improve my workflow: @andreasklinger

Until then, lifehack the planet,

Andreas

[startupsidd]

How To Use Roles and Manage Grant Permissions in PostgreSQL on a VPS | DigitalOcean

PostgreSQL is an open source database management system that stores and manipulates data produced by other applications. This guide will cover how to manage permissions and privileges within PostgreSQL by controlling roles and grants.

How To Use Roles and Manage Grant Permissions in PostgreSQL on a VPS | DigitalOcean

[startupsidd]

Configure the AWS Command Line Interface and specify the settings for interacting with AWS.

Revisiting some basic AWS setup - CLI profiles

[startupsidd]

[startupsidd]

Homebrew permissions & multiple users

You can enable homebrew permissions for more than one user via the admin group, or via any other user group. Here is a slightly expanded recipe to configure this:

The group needs to administer the local homebrew install directory. So assign /usr/local toadmin group (or your preferred group) and enable group write permissions:

chgrp -R admin /usr/local chmod -R g+w /usr/local

The group also needs permissions for homebrew's local cache of formulae and source files at/Library/Caches/Homebrew:

chgrp -R admin /Library/Caches/Homebrew chmod -R g+w /Library/Caches/Homebrew

If you run into further similar permissions issues while using homebrew from multiple accounts, note the offending path and consider trying the same approach.

Leif Hanack has blogged a similar solution, where he creates and configures a dedicated user group brew for the purpose.

[startupsidd]

Running cron job with rvm and rake command, via shell script

According to RVM documentation: https://rvm.io/integration/cron

For every rvm or gemset there is an environment file which describes it. You can obtain it with:

rvm env --path -- ruby-version[@gemset-name]

That is the path to the environment file of rvm.

It is a good habit when running rake tasks from cron, to invoke them from a shell script.

The crontab should be something like:

30 22 * * * /bin/bash /path/to/shell/script.sh >/dev/null 2>&1

And then in the shell script :

#!/bin/bash cd /path/to/project source /path/to/env/file /home/ubuntu/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p545/bin/rake RAILS_ENV=production rake task

[startupsidd]

Creating new users on AWS EC2 Linux - Ubuntu 12.04

Managing Users

Each Linux instance type launches with a default user account. For Amazon Linux, the default user name is ec2-user. For RHEL5, the user name is often root but might be ec2-user. For Ubuntu, the user name is ubuntu. For SUSE Linux, the user name is root. Otherwise, check with your AMI provider.

Using the default user account is adequate for many applications, but you may choose to add user accounts so that individuals can have their own files and workspaces. Creating user accounts for new users is much more secure than granting multiple (possibly inexperienced) users access to the ec2-user account, since that account can cause a lot of damage to a system when used improperly.

To add a new user to the system

Effectively adding users to an Amazon Linux instance involves two basic operations: adding the user to the system, and providing that user with a way to log in remotely.

To add a new user to the system, use the adduser command followed by the name of the user you wish to create.

[ec2-user ~]$ sudo adduser newuser

This command adds the newuser account to the system (with an entry in the /etc/passwd file), creates a newuser group, and creates a home directory for the account in/home/newuser. 

(If you created the user account with useradd, you have to set up everything for it manually. This is why, when creating user accounts from the command-line, it is recommended to use adduser in Ubuntu (and Debian, and other Debian-based systems) instead. You might just want to remove the user with userdel or deluser and recreate it with adduser.)

http://askubuntu.com/questions/159878/cannot-login-to-newly-created-user-account

To provide remote access to this account, you must create a .ssh directory in the newuser home directory and create a file within it named "authorized_keys" that contains a public key.

Switch to the new account so that newly created files have the proper ownership.

[ec2-user ~]$ sudo su - newuser [newuser ~]$

Note that the prompt now says newuser instead of ec2-user; you have switched the shell session to the new account.

Create a .ssh directory for the authorized_keys file.

[newuser ~]$ mkdir .ssh

Change the file permissions of the .ssh directory to 700 (this means only the file owner can read, write, or open the directory).

Important

This step is very important; without these exact file permissions, you will not be able to log into this account using SSH.

[newuser ~]$ chmod 700 .ssh

Create a file named "authorized_keys" in the .ssh directory.

[newuser ~]$ touch .ssh/authorized_keys

Change the file permissions of the authorized_keys file to 600 (this means only the file owner can read or write to the file).

Important

This step is very important; without these exact file permissions, you will not be able to log into this account using SSH.

[newuser ~]$ chmod 600 .ssh/authorized_keys

Edit the authorized_keys file with your favorite text editor and paste the public key for your key pair into the file.

Note

For more information about creating a key pair or retrieving a public key from an existing key pair, see Amazon EC2 Key Pairs

You should now be able to log into the newuser account on your instance via SSH using the private key that matches the public key from Step 2.f.

To remove a user from the system

If a user account is no longer needed, you can remove that account so that it may no longer be used.

To delete a user account, the user's home directory, and the user's mail spool, execute the userdel -r command followed by the user name you wish to delete.

[ec2-user ~]$ sudo userdel -r olduser

Note

To keep the user's home directory and mail spool, omit the -r option.

[startupsidd]

What command would you use to list out just the hidden files for current folder?

ls -d .*

[startupsidd]

LinuxQuestions.org offers a free Linux forum where Linux newbies can ask questions and Linux experts can offer advice. Topics include security, installation, networking and much more.

cat /etc/passwd | grep "/home"

cat /etc/passwd | grep "/bin/bash"

[startupsidd]

[startupsidd]

[startupsidd]

Explains how to find out Linux distribution name and Linux kernel version number using bash shell command line options.

ow do I find out what version of Linux distribution I'm using from the shell (bash) prompt? You can use any one of the following method to find out your Linux distribution and name:

a] /etc/*-release file.

Tutorial detailsDifficultyEasy (rss)Root privilegesNoRequirementslsb_releaseEstimated completion time2 minute

b] lsb_release command.

c] /proc/version file.

Method #1: /etc/*-release file

To find out what version of Linux (distro) you are running, enter the following command at the shell prompt: $ cat /etc/*-release Sample output from my RHEL v5.x server:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5 (Tikanga)

Sample outputs from my Ubuntu Linux v7.10 server:

DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu DISTRIB_RELEASE=7.10 DISTRIB_CODENAME=gutsy DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 7.10"

Method #2: lsb_release Command To Find Out Linux Distribution Name/Version

The lsb_release command displays certain LSB (Linux Standard Base) and distribution-specific information. Type the following command: $ lsb_release -a Sample outputs:

No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Debian Description: Debian GNU/Linux 6.0.1 (squeeze) Release: 6.0.1 Codename: squeeze

How Do I Find Out My Kernel Version?

Type the following command: $ uname -a OR $ uname -mrs Sample outputs:

Linux 2.6.32-5-amd64 x86_64

Where,

Linux - Kernel name

2.6.32-5-amd64 - Kernel version number

x86_64 - Machine hardware name (64 bit)

Say hello to /proc/version

Type the following command to see kernel version and gcc version used to build the same: $ cat /proc/version Sample outputs:

Linux version 3.2.0-0.bpo.1-amd64 (Debian 3.2.4-1~bpo60+1) ([email protected]) (gcc version 4.4.5 (Debian 4.4.5-8) ) #1 SMP Sat Feb 11 08:41:32 UTC 2012

Related media

This tutorial is also available in a quick video format:

Video 01: Find The Linux Kernel Version Command Tutorial

Putting It All Together

Animated gif.01: Finding out Linux distribution name and version with various commands demo

[startupsidd]

Deploying a Rails + Solr + Unicorn + Nginx Application With Chef + Knife + Capistrano on Digital Ocean -- Part I The following is a merging of a few …

[startupsidd]

Data Types - RAILS & MySQL (& PostgreSQL)

RAILS:

column(name, type, options = {})Link

Instantiates a new column for the table. The type parameter is normally one of the migrations native types, which is one of the following: :primary_key, :string, :text, :integer, :float, :decimal, :datetime, :timestamp,:time, :date, :binary, :boolean.

[SOURCE: http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/ConnectionAdapters/TableDefinition.html#method-i-column]

MySQL Data Types:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/data-type-overview.html

RAILS & PostgreSQL:

[Source: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17918117/rails-4-datatypes]

Here are all the Rails 4 (ActiveRecord migration) datatypes:

:binary

:boolean

:date

:datetime

:decimal

:float

:integer

:primary_key

:references

:string

:text

:time

:timestamp

Source:http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/ConnectionAdapters/TableDefinition.html#method-i-column These are the same as with Rails 3.

If you use PostgreSQL, you can also take advantage of these:

:hstore

:array

:cidr_address

:ip_address

:mac_address

They are stored as strings if you run your app with a not-PostgreSQL database.

[startupsidd]

Delete all lines containing a pattern

Tip 213 Printable Monobook Previous Next created 2002 · complexity basic · author tarjei ·...

[startupsidd]

Removing file from GIT remote but not from local file structure

git rm file.txt removes the file from the repo but also deletes it from the local file system.

To remove the file from the repo and not delete it from the local file system use: git rm --cached file.txt

(for further reference: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2047465/how-can-i-delete-a-file-from-git-repo)

[startupsidd]