Wow. As a person who is always asking the question, “am I using the best tool available”, I am well impressed with my first impressions of Sublime Text 2!

This burning question drove  me to learn and use Emacs for about two years in my daily workflow, and then to Vim for about the same length of time. Vim’s different editing modes and powerful text manipulation features are the reasons I would never switch to another editor – unless this other editor has the option to incorporate all of Vim’s key bindings and mode-based editing features. Enter: Sublime Text’s “Vintage” mode.

Vim has never left me wanting, until the day I tried Sublime Text 2. I definitely recommend trying it out for yourself!

Further reading:
http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/general/are-textmate-and-coda-yesterdays-editors/
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tools-and-tips/sublime-text-2-tips-and-tricks/

Did I mention that I love Kickstarter?

If you use a drawing tablet as part of your daily workflow (like I do) you will at some point feel a fair amount of frustration if you regularly switch between drawing on the tablet and typing on your keyboard (like I do). Here’s where PenMoto comes in!

PenMoto is a magnetic ring that quickly retrieves and stores a pen making it possible to transition from writing to typing with the simple flick of a finger. The self-sizing ring and coupler adapt to nearly any pen or stylus, and is ideal for a Wacom pen.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1107850856/penmoto-improved-and-relaunched

I love Kickstarter! (http://www.kickstarter.com/)

And I love CW&T’s Pen Type-A!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/205734763/pen-type-a-a-minimal-pen

Two humble designers who have a fondness for the Hi-Tec-C pen, but weren’t as fond of their expected plastic housing, decided to create a Kickstarter project to see if there were others in the world who shared their appreciation for this pen, and of well constructed, minimal design. Their project goal was to raise $2500 and with that they would produce 50 Pen Type-A pens. With 3 days to go until the project comes to a close, their current pledge total is sitting almost 10 times more than what they aimed for! Yet another Kickstarter success!

As much as I’m looking forward to receiving my very own Pen Type-A, I’m happy to play a part in bringing an idea into being!

http://cwandt.com/

Which is best?

In the past year I’ve successfully changed my primary text editor from TextMate to Emacs. As a web developer my needs aren’t great, but my decision to switch was fueled by my never-satisfied question of: “Am I using the best text editor?” In short, my quest lead me to a fork in the road… emacs or vim.

I chose emacs. TextMate is a brilliant text editor for Mac, and I’m not going to go into all the reasons why it’s a good text editor, but features I found myself wanting were split windows, incremental searching and more powerful file-system integration (searching, filtering and editing of files). Every programmer’s preferences are different, so it stands to reason that the perfect text editor is one that is powerful and customizable enough to be tailored to each users’ preferences and needs. Emacs has not left me wanting, but a year down the line a lifehacker post titled, “Five Best Text Editors” has reawakened the burning question… Is emacs the best text editor?

If you’ve hit this brick wall and are now at the “emacs or vim” fork, here are some links that might help you come to a decision.

• According to a very recent lifehacker poll, vim (21%) beat emacs (8%) by coming second to Notepad++ (49%). I know many developers that use Notepad++ and love it, but after experiencing the power of emacs, I think only digging into vim will satisfy my expectations of a good text editor and allow me to make a more objective decision.
• Many Ruby developers have taken to emacs. There are many powerful ways emacs can be used to better the workflow of a ruby developer. “5min of Emacs” video by Geoffrey Grosenbach (of Peepcode.com) showcases this very nicely!
• Screencasts – Both emacs and vim have quite a high learning curve and personally I find screencasts and video tutorials far easier to digest than manuals and books. Probably due to vim having a larger user base there seems to be a greater number of vim video tutorials available than emacs. A great post on Nettuts+ lists some of these great resources! 25 Vim Tutorials, Screencasts and Resources

The internet is full of opinions when it comes to emacs and vim, and it can be really hard to make an objective choice. Learning both editors, considering their learning curve, is impractical; but it’s the only way to find out if the shoe fits. If you are interested in following my findings, as well as other noteworthy web related topics, please feel free to subscribe via RSS, or follow me on twitter (http://twitter.com/vorn). Also: if you have any comments on the holy war that is emacs vs vim, please leave a comment!

In the first week of Apple releasing their new iPod Nano there were already signs of watch straps re-purposing this small form iPod into a premium multi-touch watch, allowing Apple fans to “switch” in yet another area of their lives. A very cool idea, but it wasn’t done right… until now!

TikTok and LunaTik are the two watch kit options available in the project and, with the help of all interested mac geeks, the TikTok could be available as early as December, and the LunaTik in January. The website uses an increasingly popular method of funding and creating interest in their project by way of “pledges” or donations, ensuring that your Apple geek dream comes true!

So it’s been a while since my last blog post, but I’ve been keeping busy!
I am currently working on a project which is my take on how a web content management system should work. It has all the expected functionality such as page management, complex page layout creation and the adding of paragraphs and images. But there’s more to it than that…

Why I’m excited about it:

• Interactivity – In every action, the system will meet and surpass user expectations. Everything is as simple and easy as it should be.
• Helpful Enhancements – Helpful features have been placed throughout the system to make things easier and help when something goes wrong. Features such as un-deleting of elements, user action tracking and detailed error handlers to more easily fix problems.

Who is it for?

• Anybody!
• If you’re a graphic designer/illustrator/photographer, or just about any creative person looking for an online portfolio, this system has all the right features to showcase your work!
• If you’re a web designer looking for a framework to manage your client website content.
• If you’re a non-profit organization or a charity this system will be available for FREE!

What more can I say? Watch this space! It’s status is almost ready for beta testing, so expect a demo video showcasing some of the features and functionality soon!

If you’re interested in seeing more about this system, please leave a comment, ask a question or suggest a feature! I’d love to hear from you.

10 Things I Learned from the jQuery Source – Paul Irish
Popular modern javascript coding practices as used by the jQuery source. Nice friendly presentation by Paul Irish.

Code Snippet Gallery – Chris Coyler (of css-tricks.com)
Helpful collection of solutions to common CSS challenges & examples of modern CSS capabilities.

Does it still make sense to use em rather than px? – David B. Calhoun
Good read. Comments have some good points too. Moving from px to em isn’t just snobbery, the fact this measurement is relative to it’s parent font attributes, all decendant font styles will keep their relative sizes and line-heights when scaling the text. Although, as mentioned in the article, all modern browsers handle this themselves the main benefit can be seen when specifying a different base font style.

I guess I should start by saying “Welcome to the blog portion of my website!”

This blog aims to be a somewhat professional stream of articles, links and resources focusing on all things web, and the role design plays across various creative industries.

Falling into the “power user” category you can expect this blog to touch on the geekier side of a Mac, modern web technologies and their implementations, text editors (gnu emacs mainly) and anything else that I happen to find in my daily activities.

Watch this space!