Wow, how have I not found the program “screen” until now? It allows you to manage multiple terminal sessions in one. Very useful, especially when your going through SSH and have frequent connection issues. Here’s a quick word from some other random dude who loves it.

Screen is best described as a terminal multiplexer. Using it, you can run any number of console-based applications–interactive command shells, curses-based applications, text editors, etc.–within a single terminal. The desire to do this is what gets most people hooked on screen. I used to start a half-dozen terminal emulators when I logged into my machine: I wanted one to read my email, one to edit my code, one to compile my code, one for my newsreader, one for a shell into my web host, and so on. Now I start one terminal emulator, and run screen in it. Problem solved.

The other main cool feature of screen is its ability to decouple the terminal emulator from the running programs. This means that you can use screen to keep programs running after you accidentally close the terminal emulator, or even after you log out, and later resume right where you were. It means that the idea of a “session” in which you are running a number of console programs is a free-floating entity that you can bind to any terminal anywhere, or no terminal at all if you want.

As most people probably know… well some, I run my own business, and until just recently I did all my invoicing with excel sheets to keep it simple. Well I decided to move up in the world and find something better, cause even with the few jobs I get, I found I was actually spending a fair bit of my time writing up the bills and typing in all the client info as apposed to spending time doing actual work.

Being the open source lover that I am, I wanted something Free and Linux friendly. I looked a bit and found some meh ones and a few that didn’t quite work with my setup … but then… out of a user comment… I found … wait for it… SOMETHING! More specifically Bamboo Invoice! It was simple, easy to setup (for a tech) and was pleasant enough to look at.

Bamboo Invoice

The first thing you’ll probably want to know if your considering it, is that it is actually a web app, meaning it needs a web server and database program to run; not a problem for me, but probably will be for some one who doesn’t run their own web server, but if your interested just look up windows LAMP server or something and you’ll find some pretty good and simple web server software that you can run off your own computer and get this thing running.

Any way long story short, I can now just click on “New invoice”, select a client, and put in some amounts and its good to go. It also shows me who has and has not paid as well as if they are overdue on payments. When I have to do taxes at the end of the year it also just show’s me the numbers for the year so I don’t have to manually add them up anymore (not to mention some fancy graphs ^_^).

I realize this is probably pretty boring stuff, but it’s been awhile since I updated my blog so… here it is ^_^ Also its exciting for me cause its making my billing easier and I got to setup a new web app on my server.