Top all-time · #3182
George Ornbo
Personal blog · shapeshed.comprogrammingweb
George Ornbo's personal blog at shapeshed.com covers programming and web. Since 2008, 24 different Hacker News readers have linked it 63 times, most often “Vim: You don't need NERDtree or (maybe) netrw”. The last post was in 2023, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (8) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers cite George Ornbo's posts as practical developer tips: Vim netrw setup, testing old Internet Explorer versions without paying for Virtual PC, and GIMP path editing versus Photoshop.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 8 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Articles by George Ornbo, a UK-based technologist
Most-linked posts?
- Vim: You don't need NERDtree or (maybe) netrw5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2016-10-18
- Vim: So long Pathogen, hello native package loading4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-10-20
- Test all IE version from linux3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-07-20
- HTML5 Speech Recognition API2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-01-21
- Command Line Utilities with Node.js2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-01-02
- JSON on the Command Line with Jq2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-08-05
- All magic comes with a price2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-04-24
- API design for an event-driven world2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-01-24
- The void of undefined in JavaScript2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-03-28
What Hacker News says?
You can open directories in Vim, with netrw which is usually there by default: https://shapeshed.com/vim-netrw/#netrw---the-unloved-directo...
Comment linking /vim-netrw/
on “Broot – A new way to see and navigate directory trees”Submitted JSON on the Command Line with Jq as a story · 117 points
HN discussionI switched from Jekyll -> own rolled Node.js generator -> Hugo. For me it is better because of simplicity and speed. I use it to power a 400 page blog ( https://shapeshed.com/ ) with this source code ( https://github.com/shapeshed/shapeshed.com ). I used Jekyll in a small organisation and it meant everyone needed a working Ruby environment This caused much pain across platforms. Hugo ships a single binary for multip…
Comment linking /
on “Hugo: A fast and modern static website engine”Submitted Vim: So long Pathogen, hello native package loading as a story · 110 points
HN discussionThis isn’t neovim specific but this was one of the more delightful and impactful discoveries https://shapeshed.com/vim-netrw/ Configuring netrw right and having my vimrc load a side pane with it on load, combined with configuring my tab key to cycle between windows... Perfect.
Comment linking /vim-netrw/
on “What's New in Neovim 0.10”Submitted The void of undefined in JavaScript as a story · 51 points
HN discussion> FWIW, I intentionally keep IE 6 on my work machine (not a big corp, but we sell to them) for testing Why not use Microsoft's ie VPC images? http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=... "In order to help web designers and web developers test their websites in older versions of Internet Explorer, we've provided the following VHD with Windows set up with the specified version of Internet Explorer.…
Comment linking /journal/testing_with_ie6_ie7_and_ie8_on_virtualbox/
on “Google Apps dropping support for older browsers”Submitted Test all IE version from linux as a story · 24 points
HN discussionGIMP has supported editing all components of a path, converting to a selection, moving the entire path, and adjusting the handles, for a while. If I remember correctly, it was buggy until around GIMP 1.2. The second half of the video on this page, after the "Direct Select" tool is chosen at 0:16, is completely doable in The GIMP. http://shapeshed.com/journal/photoshop_101_path_and_direct_s...
Comment linking /journal/photoshop_101_path_and_direct_selection_tools/
on “New GIMP 2.6 Gives Photoshop a Run for Its Money”Submitted Vim: You don't need NERDtree or (maybe) netrw as a story · 14 points
HN discussionWatch this three minute video or view the concise notes below it for some very nice tips on handling buffers. http://vimcasts.org/episodes/working-with-buffers/ > You can quickly jump between the active buffer and the alternate buffer using the command <CTRL-^>. Pressing it again takes you back to where you were before. If you don't like the <CTRL-^> command for this, you could map it to something else, such as the…
Comment linking /vim-packages/
on “VIM Pays Excellent Dividends: Learn it early, if you can”Submitted The HTML5 Vibrate API as a story · 13 points
HN discussionThat's great! There's nothing wrong with that. However, "semantic elements" became popular shortly after the push for the "semantic web" which was entirely based around making the web easier to process for machines. Many of the original sources all talk about how it's easier to digest for humans too, but that's just a happy byproduct. https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Semantic.html https://www.lassila.org/publications…
Comment linking /the-importance-of-semantic-markup/
on “On The <dl>”Submitted Getting email through spam filters from a Rails App as a story · 10 points
HN discussionhttp://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyId=... You may also want to check out http://shapeshed.com/journal/testing_with_ie6_ie7_and_ie8_on... if you wish to use virtualbox rather than paying for virtual PC
Comment linking /journal/testing_with_ie6_ie7_and_ie8_on_virtualbox/
on “IE removed from spoon.net”Submitted Vim: So long Pathogen, hello native package loading as a story · 9 points
HN discussionnot sure what's substantially different from e.g. (2011) http://shapeshed.com/creating-a-basic-site-with-node-and-exp...
Comment linking /creating-a-basic-site-with-node-and-express/
on “Bitters: medicine to make the centralized Internet go down”Submitted Writing cross-platform Node.js as a story · 9 points
HN discussionSubmitted Google Pixel isn't a strategy. It is a vanity project as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted All magic comes with a price as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Instant Rails dev environments with Tmuxinator and Foreman as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Creating a basic site with node.js and Express as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Writing Cross-Platform Node.js as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Vim: You don't need NERDtree or (maybe) netrw (2016) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Running Nginx and Node.js in parallel on Ubuntu as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Native Vim8 Packages (2016) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Custom Vim Bindings in tmux 2.4 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Listening to BBC Radio with mpv as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Vim: you don't need NERDtree or (maybe) netrw as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted JSON on the command line with jq as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
