One of the primary purposes of this blog is for me to write things down that would otherwise disappear out of my feeble, aging mind; thus they stand not only as the moderately-indifferent ramblings of a middle-aged nerd but also as a sort of ad-hoc playbook for the things that I’d really like to dip into now and again. This entry, however, doesn’t fall into that category. Mostly because – unlike a lot of things I do – my .zprofile isn’t something that I forget about and have to be reminded of, and is in fact something that I have to look at Every. Single. Day.
Compared to some, it’s relatively short and simple. I’ve written long profiles before and crammed them with aliases and whatnot, but in the end simple muscle-memory evolution and reduced expectations have kind of stripped that down into the abbreviated list below.
These first six entries are ssh key-protected remote logins to servers that I hit on a fairly regular basis to do routine maintenance. Actual domains and machines replaced with “x”s to protect the innocent. I mean, I’d have replaced the usernames too, but they’re all pretty cookie-cutter…
alias casa='ssh localadmin@xxxxxxxxx.local'
alias dh1='ssh odadmin@xxxxxx.com'
alias office='ssh officeadmin@xxxxxxxxx.net'
alias wm1='ssh w_admin01@xxxxx.xxxxxxx.com'
alias wm2='ssh w_admin02@xxxxx.xxxxxxx.com'
alias wm2='ssh w_admin03@xxxxx.xxxxxxx.com'
This next one pairs the ssh access with a command to run a shell script called (appropriately) stopthemadness.sh which quits Filemaker and reinitializes it. The server is running a very, very large Filemaker application that ties into a very, very complicated pre-press system. Once in a blue moon the thing just throws up its hands and decides that it doesn’t feel like working, so this script fires it up again.
alias pantskick='ssh filemakeradmin@xxxxxxx.xxxxx.com "./stopthemadness.sh"'
This alias gives me my external address and a geolocated stab at where I am. Handy when using a VPN.
alias whereami='curl ipinfo.io/'
This next one is probably the one I use the most:
alias la='ls -al'
I made an ASCII art version of Clarus, because the underrepresentation of Dogcows in modern operating systems is a borderline atrocity. This calls the appropriate cowfile, and is cute but utterly useless for anything except making me grin. If I ever have the chance I’d love to find some way to pipe output from Pine into Cowsay so I could have cows (or Dogcows) tell me my email.
alias clarus='cowsay -f clarus'
Alias that takes me to the git repo of the game I’m working on:
alias tdg='cd ~/dev/tdg'
Change directory to the home directory. This one really should be in the OS by default as far as I’m concerned.
alias ~='cd ~
Sometimes you just want to throw something in the trash from the command line (as opposed to instantly deleting it). Just type trash and then the file name…
trash () { command mv "$@" ~/.Trash ; }
Hides the ~/Library folder…
alias hide='chflags hidden ~/Library'
…and reveals it again.
alias goseek='chflags nohidden ~/Library'
I like to start nettop up in display per-process mode (as talked about here), so there’s this:
alias net='nettop -P'
Finally, here are a few things that I like to have appear in my prompt. Uptime simply shows you how long the system has been running for, as well as the number of users and the load average of the system. uptime
This calls sysctl to print out the type of processor you’re running. It’s useless for any real practical purpose, but I have a lot of Xeons rattling around in my Mac Pro and sometimes it’s nice to be reminded of that, thank you very much.
sysctl -n machdep.cpu.brand_string
Fortune prints out a random saying or pithy bon mot for your delectation and enjoyment. Sometimes I find it helpful to have an inspiring quote to carry me through a particularly frustrating time behind the keyboard. And by inspiring I usually mean spiteful, angry and profane. Hey, each to their own:
fortune
Next, I like to be able to quickly switch audio output sources from the command line because I am fundamentally lazy and don’t like to drag the mouse pointer to the sound menu item and try and remember which option goes to what speaker. It’s easier just to have settings for “speakers” and “headphones” and be done with it, so I used Homebrew to install switchaudio-osx and set up a couple of aliases, thus:
alias speakers='switchaudiosource -s "Built-in Line Output"'
alias phones='switchaudiosource -s "Built-in Output"'
Finally I have a line break and then a quote from Wargames. Because both Matthew Broderick and Tic-Tac-Toe are cool: echo '=================================='
echo 'Greetings Professor Falken. Would you like to play a game?'
Configuring your .profile/.zprofile with aliases and little customizations like this is both simple and – when it gets down to it – fun. But there are some very real, very useful applications to being about to add your own complex, bespoke commands and workflows to your command-line experience, and while most of these trend more toward the fun side of things I’ve found that getting my profile set up right out of the box is both the first thing I do with a new machine and also incredibly valuable at saving time and having to reinvent the wheel…