Tools on Thorsten Hans

Autocompletion for kubectl and aliases using oh-my-zsh

Tue, 22 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Kubernetes is managed and used by utilizing the command line interface kubectl. I got a ton of questions regarding my terminal configuration for daily k8s tasks. Questions like “Which aliases do you use for regular k8s tasks?” or “How did you get autocompletion for all the k8s stuff up and running on your mac?” So this post will answer those questions quickly to ensure everyone will become more productive and can spin up even more pods and nodes in less time 🚀

Make writing technical content great again!

Sat, 04 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Like many other developers, I write articles for various print and online magazines. I do this for almost a decade now and I’ve used many different approaches to make writing as comfortable as possible for me. That said, I want to share the tools I use and the workflow I prefer.

When writing about frameworks, programming languages or scripts, you’ve some slightly different requirements than authors of regular books or articles. You want to:

Treat your iTerm2 like Guake

Sat, 15 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

iTerm2 is a real productivity boost for macOS users. There are numerous great features built in the terminal replacement. This article will explain how to configure the hotkey window iTerm is offering.

Over the past couple of weeks, I found myself using Ubuntu quiet often. Unfortunately, iTerm2 isn’t available for Ubuntu, but there is Guake which is another powerful terminal. The experience and integration Guake is offering for Linux distributions is amazing, Guake registers a global shortcut to easily open the terminal no matter where you’re currently working on.

Chromebook review / Chrome App Model

Fri, 14 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Today I received my Acer C720P Touch Chromebook. I’ve used it now for around about two hours. It is a stunning device, double check the price on Amazon it’s about $280 (199€ in Germany) Amazon Deeplink !

Some technical details

Intel Celeron Processor 2955U
2 Gigs of RAM
16 Gigs SSD
11.6” Screen @ 1366×768 pixels
TouchScreen
Multi-Gesture TouchPad
7.5 hrs Battery Lifetime

First Impressions

As you can see in the picture below, the device looks pretty good, and you may recognize the glossy display. The keyboard is good for programming, but it’s a bit small for my hands.

Setting up iTerm2 with OH-MY-ZSH and Powerline on OSX

Thu, 07 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

When people ask me why I’m using a Mac instead of a Windows device for doing all my stuff, I always end up with a single but significant reason: I have a real shell! Most hardcore Windows fans are answering to this comment: “Well there is PowerShell” or: “Hey we have Cygwin” but to be honest, those are no alternatives to a real shell 🙂

A few people asked me over the time which configuration/theme and stuff I use within my terminal and because I’ve to set up a new device in these days (a stunning brand new 13" MBP Retina with ForceTouch)

Managing Node.js and io.js with NVM

Mon, 23 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Are you building Node.js Apps? Use NVM!

If you haven’t seen NVM (Node Version Manager) in action, go and install it now. I can’t imagine working with Node.js based projects without NVM. I wrote this short post because I saw a friend of mine doing some first steps in Node.js without having NVM installed. So instead of explaining him the basics on a phone call, I wrote this summary, which I’d like to share with you.

Developer presentations using reveal.js

Thu, 19 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

reveal.js has been around for a while. I saw many people using it for their presentations (for example AC ). AC also wrote a great article on how he is organizing his presentations on GitHub using reveal.js.

AC’s idea is cool, but I wanted something more something which is less pain, I don’t want to set up a gh-pages branch on every repo I create for my demos.

Instead, I built a presentation hub using reveal.js and some simple Gulp.js tasks.

Easy switching between yammer accounts

Tue, 22 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Yammer is organized within different networks, which is excellent as long as you’re invited with a single mail address. As soon as you accept an invitation for a second email address you’ve to explicitly log out with the first mail address and re-login with the second one.

Yammer is currently not offering a mechanism to merge or link two accounts.

Most Yammer users are using different browsers to deal with this problem. However, that wasn’t a solution for me. I’ve configured Chrome to fit my needs, provide all my bookmarks in a single place and I won’t lose this experience because of the missing ‘merge my accounts feature’ in Yammer.

Dell Venue 8 Pro Review

Wed, 26 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

During SharePoint Conference 2014 in Las Vegas, I bought a Dell Venue 8 Pro because I was looking for a small device in addition to my Surface Pro and my 15” MacBook Pro.

Here my most essential requirements

Long battery lifetime
Running Windows 8 Pro
Having access to all my essential services like — Multiple Exchange Accounts
OneDrive
OneDrive for Business
Windows Azure
The device should be rechargeable easily

At this point, I’d like to say thank you to my good old friend Heino, who pointed me to Dell’s device and gave me the chance to play a little bit with his Venue 8 Pro during SPC14.

Surface 1 Pro — A development machine

Tue, 22 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Because many people are asking me how developing software on the Surface 1 Pro works, I’ve decided to write this second recap here. Right now my Surface is about 8 months old, and the general availability of Surface 2 and Surface 2 Pro are an excellent reason to recap.

First of all, I’ll give you a rough overview of what’s installed on my Surface Pro right now — Microsoft Windows 8.1 Enterprise

Visual Studio 2013 for SharePoint Development — My experience from the Preview Phase

Fri, 18 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

On 18th of October Visual Studio 2013 was published on MSDN. So today (one day later) it’s a perfect day to share my experiences I’ve earned during the preview phase.I’ve installed the VS2013 Preview early in July (it was available since 26th of June) on my SharePoint development system. The first thing I’ve noticed was that I didn’t have to upgrade the solution file, which turned out to be a great benefit because my colleagues could continue working with VS2012 and we didn’t run into merge conflicts because of solution or project file modifications. In August I started a big SharePoint App Project, and I decided to build it by using the Preview. After some initial considerations, we decided to realize the project as a Provider-Hosted-App with SQL Azure Backend. So there were many different aspects of our project.

Repair OneNote sync on iOS7

Fri, 20 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I usually write only stuff related to software development. However, I’ve to share this quick little notes because it can drive you nuts to get OneDrive on the recent iOS release syncing again.

OneNote itself is one of my favorite apps, and I use it every day for personal and professional (shared) note taking. Microsoft did a great job bringing OneNote with an excellent feature-set to all platforms.

As almost every iOS user, I was also looking forward to iOS7 which ships a ton of good stuff I was waiting for. So I decided to update my iPad first. After downloading and installing the update, everything looked, and I was thrilled having the latest and greatest software finally on my device.

Productivity boost with SublimeText Plugins

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

For developing native web languages I use SublimeText 2 (http://www.sublimetext.com/ ). Like many other editors, SublimeText offers a great plugin ecosystem, which allows you as a developer to add various functionality by installing additional packages.

Within this post I’ll introduce some plugins I’m using to increase my developer performance.

Package Control

Package Control is the most robust and vital plugin; it allows you to add new plugins to sublime without typing endless commands into the console or manually copying files to the application directory. To install Package Control, you’ve to execute the following script from Sublime Text’s Console

Maintaining Brownfield JS Apps? Check Js2Coffee

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Do you love CoffeeScript? Alternatively, you’ve to maintain Brownfield JavaScript based Applications?

Checkout Js2coffee! Js2coffee translates your JavaScript Code into nice, readable and valid CoffeeScript. In addition to the Js2coffee website (js2coffee.org ), there is also an NPM package available. You can install it directly from the terminal

npm install js2coffee
# or globally
npm install js2coffee --g

You can translate your JS file easily by providing the following command.

10 Days using Surface Pro — A developers review

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

While visiting the Global MVP Summit 2013 in Redmond, I decided to buy a Surface Pro, because they don’t sell it in Germany at this time. There were more reasons why I bought the Surface Pro in opposite to other devices such as Lenovo’s Yoga — which is also really awesome — or perhaps a Samsung Slate or HP’s Envy.

Surface offers pen support which is working like a charm, it’s really smooth; you get fast feedback and it’s really, really precise.
Surface is the fastest tablet with Win8 on it. (Did ultimate developer test -> VS 2012 Startup-Sequence) 😀
No matter when Surface Pro will be shipped in Germany, but there will be accessory, I hope so 😉
Surface is really handy and it isn’t that heavy as news sites are telling you
Surface is also cheaper than comparable competitors
It offers 4 gigs of RAM

Okay these were a few reasons why I bought it, but now let’s move on, I’d like to share my experience with Surface PRO.