How to Get Dropbox to Backup Files in Other Directories on Windows

If you’re using Dropbox (affiliate link), and you should be, because it’s awesome, you might have noticed that Dropbox will only backup/sync files inside your drop box folder; you can’t tell Dropbox to also sync with other folders.

Now, if you’re on a Mac or Linux system, just add a symlink inside your dropbox folder that points to the other folder you’d like to sync.

On Windows, if you want Dropbox to sync folders outside of your “My Dropbox” folder, you’ll want to use the mklink command to create a directory junction pointing to the other folder you want synced. For example, if you want Dropbox to sync c:\source_code, open a command prompt, navigate to your dropbox directory (cd “My Dropbox”) and type:

(Assuming you’ve already navigated to your “My Dropbox” folder)
mklink /J source_code c:\source_code

Bam. That’s it. Dropbox is now following the link inside the “My Dropbox” directory and it’s syncing c:\source_code because it thinks it’s just another folder in the dropbox. Enjoy!

Quick Hits:Deploying iPhone projects to your iPhone/iPod Touch

This process sucks. Period. To get you through the suckage, I found this article with clear and useful steps. If you’re becoming an iPhone/iPod Touch developer, this is something you NEED to read. The article presents the steps of the deployment process in the best order possible to improve your chances at a successful push.

Deploying iPhone Apps to Real Devices

Happy hacking!

Quick Hits: Things to keep in mind

(1) Before you unpack your gems, navigate to your vendors directory:

/Users/[yourname]/[your-app]/vendor/gems: gem unpack [gem name]

It isn’t the end of the world if you don’t do it ahead of time, but it does make life slightly easier.

(2) Remember that when you find a bug, you should write a test for the expected behavior BEFORE fixing the bug.  “The Rails Way” has a great quote about testing:

“It’s not that Rails encourages you to do test-driven development, it’s that it makes it difficult for you not to do test-driven development.” ~Brian Eng

I’ve interpreted this quote into the following mantra:

“It’s not that rails makes it easy to test, it that it makes you pay when you don’t”.

Finding a bug after creating your test suite just means that you missed a test.  Take the opportunity to correct that.

Happy hacking.