Tag: Programming

The BBEdit Trial: A Week In

So things were greatly complicated this prior week by the birth of our second son, Levi. Because of this, I was unable to really give BBEdit a test run, but the next month is going to provide more opportunity than I could possibly want. With two website deadlines approaching, I’ll have BBEdit open every day from this point forward.

So far, in the little time I have spent with it, I have been forced many times to repeat this phrase in my head:

BBEdit is not TextMate.

It happens to be something I need to keep in my mind as I try to actually evaluate the text editor on its own merits. BBEdit allows you to edit text files … which is already a point in its favor.

To reiterate the reason I’m doing this, BBEdit 10 is a major release that coincided with the release of Mac OS X Lion. BBEdit has been around for a LONG time, but it has been continuously updated not just for Mac OS X Lion, but made the transition from PowerPC to Intel and from Mac OS to Mac OS X. That’s dedication.

That’s the kind of dedication that I take comfort in, knowing that the company behind my tool will be there to continue to update that tool for the future. TextMate, sadly, seems to be all but abandoned right now with no real updates as to the status of TextMate 2 for some time.

There is one thing I am missing at the moment, and that is Command-T, or Go To File. I was hoping that PeepOpen would fill that void, but it does not seem to work with BBEdit at the moment. I’m hoping that a future release will fix that issue.

Otherwise, I look forward to really digging into things in the coming weeks and months.

The BBEdit Trial

TextMate has been my editor-of-choice since I purchased my first Mac back in 2005. I’ve tried going to Vim, gedit, and some others … but I keep coming back to TextMate.

One I have never really given a fair shake has been BBEdit. Looking back, it is both surprising and unsurprising that I have not done so. First of all, BBEdit was expensive at $100 for a license. Couple that with the fact that it is “old” in the sense that BBEdit has been on the Mac “forever” and I was just not that interested.

Being “old” is something I might have taken into consideration sooner, but with the seeming “death” of TextMate at the moment, the age of BBEdit is one of its greatest strengths. Bare Bones Software has proven loyal to both the program and their customers. Because of that, BBEdit has just hit version 10 and they halved the price to $50 for a license (lower than TextMate’s $58 at the moment).

Hitting version 10 is pretty awesome. Originally released in 1991, I think it is pretty awesome that 20 years later a company is still working on their product and pushing it ahead. That’s a far cry from the seeming “death” of TextMate after only a handful of years in comparison.

So I have the 30-day trial on my machine and it has replaced TextMate on my dock. We will see how the next little while goes and then I will report back with my findings.

Categories
Life Technology

Being Geek

This is a short review of Being Geek by Michael Lopp. I’m writing it up now because I finally had my wife read the chapter she was supposed to and we were able to have a good discussion of who I am.

I’ll give my recommendation first: if you are any kind of software developer or “geek”, just save yourself the trouble and get this book right now. You’ll enjoy it and Lopp is a great author. Now, we get to the little itty bitty amount of meat in this post.

Being Geek is a book that closely  mirrors what Lopp has been writing at Rands in Repose for the past few years. If you have been reading him there, you will feel right at home reading this book.

It gives excellent advice for people who are looking to break into managing geeks (or nerds as he more often calls us). However, it also is beneficial for those who are being managed in one way or the other so that you can understand what is going on and how to handle those strange situations where you have no idea what is going on.

I took away many good things, but I won’t recount them here. The real gem, however, lies in the single chapter that is written for the other, non-geeks in your life. It is a primer on how we think, how we view the world and gives a taste for why you and I are the way we are. It is written with the usual wit and humor that Lopp writes with, but it brings up many fine points as to why we seem to be so strange to so many.

I’m purposefully not saying much here because I would like you to go and read the book for yourself or at least read some of Lopp’s other writings out there. Just go.

Categories
Life

How about standing?

So I finally spent the five minutes it took me to move my standing, sitting desk up to a height that is more appropriate for me to stand at. I used three boxes that had been used for our past five moves (don’t ask). They’ll work for now. If this works alright, I might end up making something a little more permanent while I conjure up the funds to purchase a proper desk.

For your viewing pleasure, a picture is below.

my "standing" desk
This is how you convert to a standing desk on a budget.
Categories
Life

Things Change

Over this trip, I was able to listen to some of the backlog of podcasts from 5by5, mainly the four episodes of Build and Analyze I had forgotten about from Dan Benjamin and Marco Arment. One of the topics that has been discussed over those past episodes has been that of self-hosted blogging platforms.

Marco was the lead developer of Tumblr and is currently the founder of Instapaper, a service I use daily. He’s been working on a project he calls Second Crack. It is, basically, a self-hosted blogging platform that transforms text files written in Markdown into blog posts. Cool stuff. Dan and Marco have talked quite a bit about the design ideas behind it, what Marco has been aiming for as far as post workflow, administrative workflow, how posts get where they are supposed to go, etc. and it is a lot of fun to hear about.

However, I want to write something myself because of it.

Also over the past few days, Andy Clarke has released 320 and up, a really cool inversion on what has traditionally been touted as responsive web design. What I mean by “cool inversion” is that instead of starting with the desktop and working your way down, you start with the stylesheet at the smallest device level (usually smart phone-sized) and work your way up to the desktop. The idea is to download only the needed assets and add stuff as you scale up.

It makes sense, it is cool, and I want to build something.

I’m also looking at forming an LLC again. I know, I just disbanded Replosion about a half-year ago, but things have changed (obviously) so I’m looking for names again.

All in all, a lot of work to do.

So here is what I am thinking at the moment:

  • splitting http://bobmartens.net up
  • http://bobmartens.net will be my personal portfolio site
  • http://bobmartens.net/blog will be my personal blogging site
  • both will be designed using 320 and up as the base
  • http://bobmartens.net/blog will be using my own blogging platform
  • my new blogging platform will NOT have comments
  • it will use static files in the final form
  • it will be simple

That’s the idea, at least. There is a lot of moving parts to get out of the way, but http://bobmartens.net will once again be changing. WordPress is too much for what I want, Tumblr is not hosted by me (which is not what I want or need).

Now I need to actually ship something.