matthewgruman.com

The big loser? Well, anyone who writes apps for social networks, pretty much by definition.

Valleywag.

Remember Audiogalaxy? That was pretty much the glory days of p2p, eh? I don’t know why I was thinking of them today, but I came across this very interesting article written by one of the original programmers back in 2002 (when the RIAA took them down).

Smashing

A few weeks ago, I won a license for the “One-Window Web Development” program, Coda, from Smashing Magazine‘s – one of my favourite graphic/web design blogs – Anniversary Contest. Thanks to Hotmail, I didn’t end up getting the license until yesterday, but I’ve been using the full-featured demo since I found out that I won and it is undoubtably the best web development program I’ve used.

Smultron and Cyberduck

When I upgraded to Adobe’s CS3, I went with the Design Standard package instead of paying for Dreamwear (which I dislike and only ever used as an FTP client and text editor) and Flash (which I rarely use) in the Premium package.

I started using Smultron for text editing (HTML, PHP, CSS, JS, XML), which is an excellent open source editor with syntax highlighting and other goodies. I was using the open source Cyberduck for FTP; it integrates nicely with Smultron and has an awesome rubber duck logo/icon. Those two programs worked really well together, and while there were pay packages that worked better, they never worked better enough to justify the cost.

Enter Coda

Somehow I missed Coda – and it’s pretty perfect. It integrates the excellent Trasmit FTP client into an all-in-one web developing solution. It won the Apple Design Award in 2007 for Best Mac OS X User Experience with good reason. Everything just works exactly the way I want it to. It’s fast, it looks great, and it’s been saving me lots of time. I would have bought it if I hadn’t been a winner.

It puts everything you need for web development into one program. You can easily define and select sites from a pane that actually shows a thumbnail from your live-on-the-internet website – it’s one of those things that I find myself just looking at because it’s so aesthetically pleasing. From there, it displays all the required remote/local FTP functions/directories on the left while do your coding on the right. The syntax highlighting is great, it graphically shows you the start and stop of functions (i.e. when your cursor goes over a curly brace, it does this very neat looking fading circle around the relative start/stop brace), it offers suggestions for tags/functions, and it has a very unobtrusive automatic tag closer.

Extras

There is a LOT built into Coda that I don’t use. You can preview directly from the program, there’s a WYSIWYG CSS editor, Terminal, and Books. Actual books. They included digital versions of Desk References for HTML, CSS, and Javascript while also including a PHP reference book. I’m sure I’ll be using them during those “which tag does that?” moments.

Panic

I’m also pretty impressed with the company, Panic. Since I hadn’t heard from anyone about my license, I contacted the guys at Smashing who immediately figured out that it was a Hotmail problem. They got in touch with Panic, who confirmed that it was sent to my Hotmail address, and immediately got in touch with me with directions for the license. I gave them my details, and they gave me my code. All this happened within the course of a single work day. Incredibly friendly and quick customer service.

Coda sells for a $99, and is currently on sale for $79.

Smashing 1st Anniversary Giveaway | Events

Matthew (September 7th, 2007, 1:22 am)

Wonderfully relevant articles with a slightly unfortunate name.

#1: Coda

That comment won me a copy of Coda from Smashing Magazine! I’m absolutely tickled.

The fastest available desktop computers of today will run the program at a speed that allows the printing of about 10 to the power of 7 digits per second. The average year has roughly 3.2*10^7 seconds, so this machine will print about 3.2*10^14 digits per year. We conclude that this machine will need 3.125*10^85 years to finish printing Googolplex.

- Via The Googleplex Page.

The site hasn’t been update since 2002, but still, wow…

Nicknames

One of my nicknames for Travis is “Bitch Tits McGee” because, well, I don’t know. Anyway, I’m working on an online store for a corporate client and wanted to show off a very slick shopping cart implementation – so I sent my user name and password to Travis and let him poke around.

Obviously, he immediately changed my “customer”‘s name to “Bitch Tits McGee” so I was greeted by “Hello, Bitch Tits!” when I logged in myself. I changed my profile back to Matthew, it showed up as such on the Profile page, but it still greeted me with “Hello, Bitch Tits!” – I went to see what was wrong.

Those uninterested in programming should skip this paragraph

Turns out I had stuck the first name into a session variable when I started developing and had been using that the whole time – I hadn’t even planned on the greeting for the final product. Anyway, it was obviously a stupid idea to do things that way, so I changed it to make calls to the DB instead.

User Testing

The point of all this is the importance of user testing and how important it is to application development. Also, it’s HILARIOUS that I found a bug in my system thanks to the help of someone calling me Bitch Tits McGee.

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

- Unknown

- Via boardofwisdom.com.

Vimeo Midgets

You may have noticed the thumbnail, but still very playable, videos in the upper right corner. They are Vimeo midgets and are just incredibly clever – I’d suggest you check them out if you’re into Internet video. I’m running a little PHP with a MySQL database to hold my clip ID numbers. Two random videos are grabbed from the database, and they are aligned dynamically onto the page.

At the moment, I’m entering my clip IDs manually into the database. This is not ideal since I will inevitably forget to do it/make some sort of mistake that breaks the system. So the GOOD news is that I’m now very motivated to try out the Vimeo API which, presumably, would let all this happen without my input. The BETTER news is that I’m about to start a project at work that involves an API, so I’ll have a chance to consolidate my time.

I’ve also replaced Travis’ “About” section with a Vimeo midget.

Mr. Brightside

In other Travis news:

Mr. Brightside Lip Dub from Matthew and Vimeo.

And it Begins

One thing I am going to use this site for is a personal To Do list to keep track of my activities and deadlines. I am developing it with some simple PHP and a MySQL database.

It’s going to dynamically display what I’m up to based on the date, and the deadlines I’ve set for myself. For example, today is July 14, 2007. If I have a goal that has a due date after today, and it is not yet finished, it will show up under “TO DO”. When I define that item as “done”, it will move to “DONE”. Finally, if a due date has passed, the item will automatically move itself to “OVERDUE”.

Things are moving along smoothly. The basic front-end is done as of 11:30am today – I just need to add links to the description and some altering CSS styles to strike out completed goals. The back-end is functioning as an INSERT mechanism, but not yet to update.

If all goes according to plan, I’ll be able to move this into “DONE” by the end of the day and start filling up my list of things to do.

Edit: Done a day early. “Malibu’s Most Wanted” twice in one day is my motivation.