Network Tools, Craftsmen and Why My Mac Is a Good Hammer

My brother is intensely interested in tools, especially handtools for woodworking. He likes to go to markets and buy old tools, it seems a strange type of hobby so I finally asked him why ?

It turns out that many of these hammers, chisels, and planes were actually HANDMADE by those tradesmen from 50 or more years ago, often when they are apprentices. And many hammers and chisels were customised by that person to fit their exact way of working, short handles, long heads, cutting blades at odd angles.

It strikes me I am part of time honoured tradition by making my own tools. My laptop is my own hand made hammer and chisel set, and I choose MAC as the raw material.

Is a laptop a Hammer ?

I always perceived that my laptop is a special type of toolkit, in the same way that a tradesman has his toolbox of hammers and screwdrivers, I had a laptop with Windows and various pieces of software that are my tools. A TFTP server, notepad for manipulating text files, mail client, ftp client, and so on. Back in the 90’s this was the choice.

and Windows was enough

And for the first ten years of my career, Windows was enough. It seemed to have everything I needed. Previous to networking I had been a Windows and NetWare administrator, so I was comfortable with the tools and never expected or looked for more. Indeed, there were enough challenges in IT in the early nineties because there was no Internet.

As my network skills continued to grow, and I went on to learn more, I started to dabble in Linux, Perl, Apache and similar. This opened my eyes to a whole new world of tools. Tools that could be customised to my method of working, tools that I could craft to do things that I had not done before. New ways of working and thinking.

My key tool then became Linux and Perl (which led to NMIS (Network Management Information System) and a couple of years of dabbling as a network monitoring tool and then into other areas of network monitoring and management focussing on Linux. While I never became a master of Linux or Perl (to my regret), I have some handy skills that I use often (especially when designing). I have spent some time dabbling in web servers and building websites for fun and learned a lot along the way.

and to OS X

And now I have my MAC. Which has the all the tools of Linux, including Perl, and a whole raft of zenware that make my day more productive, and, in some tenuous way, more enjoyable. Anything that makes my day uplifting is well worthwhile.

I use quite specific pieces of software to do certain tasks - thus

• Firefox (but mostly for the addons such as del.icio.us, Foxy Proxy and HTTP Header
• Omni Outliner to collate thoughts into a coherent whole when researching
• Keynote for visually effective corporate presentations
• Omni Graffle - faster diagramming than Visio (export might get better in V5 ? )
• *nix tools for testing (dig etc)
• Safari - as a backup browser
• and so on

More recently I have moved to using Applescript and Perl to do some unusual things, Ivan Peplnejak blog IOS Hints and Tips has tips on using EEM to do quite unimaginable things to your IOS router.

After considering those tradesmen who make their own tools, I feel some affinity to them. While I have not exactly created a hammer from raw materials, I have taken an off the shelf tool and crafted it into a shape that I can use faster, and more effectively. It took me some time to develop my current level of ‘mastery’ and I will continue to develop exertise.

I feel good about that, believing that my work has “craft and skill” is worthwhile thing.