Sanity Saver - Ticks and Crosses
Sanity Savers are quick tips that help you stay sane when using your computer.
I often create point form lists of things, whether planning a post or a coding sprint or a client activity. And to keep track of which points in the list are done and which will not be done, or what is right and what is wrong, I like to use ✓ and ✗ symbols.
I use them so frequently and am so lazy that even typing ,,tick and ,,cross TextExpander expansions are too much effort.
My Mac Indie Writing Workflow
Over the past few years, I have been writing more and more on my Mac, whether it be single blog posts, blog series, systems documentation, knowledge bases and other articles. The best part is that all the tools I use are indie developed from all over the world, are amazingly great and way better than their mainstream counterparts.
In this post, I want to share the tools I use to write and why I choose them.
Letterhead - Markdown Style
So I get this request yesterday to send a document on letterhead. You all may remember letterheads from back in the day when companies had professional printers print their fancy logos on fancy paper that you then ran through the “good” laser printer that then went into matching fancy envelopes and someone stuck stamps on and mailed them.
I thought that letterheads went the way of the dodo about the same time fax machines and US Mail both died out. I was wrong. It turns out, sometimes to make something “official” (whatever the heck that means) you need it on letterhead. And since it’s 2013, a PDF version is acceptable.
The One-Person Product
Marco Arment, writing about David Karp, founder of Tumblr, in The One-Person Product. Not only is this piece well written, it is an amazing perspective of Tumblr from the inside. But, for me, the salient point and the highest praise in the piece goes to David Karp, the founder and visionary:
David has an impeccable sense of what’s best for Tumblr, and he doesn’t need anyone else telling him what’s best for the product. Many people, myself included, have tried to convince him to go different directions, and we’ve been proven wrong every time.
Is it time to change tools?
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
Winston Churchill
Every once in a while I wonder if my programming tools, languages and platforms need to be changed. Maybe, just maybe, the software mix I use every day needs to be shaken up.
And then my mind starts spinning in circles.
As we all do, I find myself using the same languages and tools over and over again. The same programmer’s editor. The same color scheme and fonts. The same language for scripting. The same platform for web services. The same database. The same server applications.
Every 'The Best Programmers Editor' Review
I read a lot of programmer’s editor reviews and see a lot of arguments about which is best. Yet, essentially, they all do the same thing, help you program the way you want to. So here is my review of your favorite programmer’s editor for the Mac.
My Next Product
My next product is going to be the best product I ever made. Of this I am certain.
It is going to have an absolutely beautiful design inside and out. The internal architecture is going to be sublime, the code and classes readable and maintainable. The functionality in the first version will hit all the high marks and the UI is going to stand out.
My next product is going to solve a problem that lots of other people face every day. Tens, hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of people. And it is going to solve that problem in a new, unique and intuitive way. Users of my next product are going to wonder how they got bye without it.
A Coda 2 Use Case
I upgraded to Panic’s Coda 2 when it came out, and never used it. Unless it was to trigger a software update.
That was until last week.
Last week I was working on an odd project to create a set of web pages that would be hosted on a payment processor’s site, but must look and feel like they are running on the actual site. This was for some non-profits to enable them to accept credit-card donations and electronic payment of member fees. Think of it as a customized set of Paypal pages that run on Paypal’s servers, yet are customized to the look and feel of the parent. Without Paypal, of course.
Octopress now has Footnotes
If you update to the latest Octopress and you still use the rdiscount markdown processor, you now get footnotes like this 1. I was previously using a CSS workaround because I prefer the speed of rdiscount for my growing site2 and still wanted footnotes.
To create a footnote, use the standard MultiMarkdown [^1] anchor to create the footnote reference link, and add [^1]: The footnote content. to the bottom of the file3.
Avoiding the Blogger Trap
I totally agree with Marco in Avoiding the blogger trap:
People aren’t so one-sided. Everyone has a life that goes much deeper than the topics on their blogs.
and
This site represents me, and I’m random and eccentric and interested in a wide variety of subjects.
This site is me, with a hodge podge of posts ranging from opinion pieces, news, geeky ideas, advice, links, jokes, setups and productivity. I write what I find interesting. I experiment. Sometimes I have a point. Sometimes I just want to provoke thought. And allegedly I even occasionally produce a good and useful post.