Gaston Garcia

My hard drive gave up. Now I’ve got a brand new 320 G empty hard drive. Only OS X 10.6 installed. This is a great time to see what I need to make it.

These are the apps and docs I’m installing in sequential order (not of importance, but there might be a bit of that too):

Textmate. The editor of choice of all smart people.
Chrome. Best browser there is for mac. Probably Windows too.
Coda. Amazing integrated FTP/Text editor.
iTunes update (from 8 to 9.2) so that I can re-sync my iPhone
Dragging tons of Movies from my backup drive to my computer
Dropbox. Working without this is suicide nowdays.
VLC. Best video player. Ever.
Perian. Adds support of tons of video formats to Quicktime.
TextExpander. Text snippets for the lazy at heart. A must have.
Movist. Another video player. I like it.
LaunchBar. Get it now. It’s the best alternative for Quicksilver. I’ve written about it here.
Skitch. Screen capture tool. A must have.
Fluid. Allows me to create URL specific browsers. I usually have Gmail and Basecamp created as Fluid apps.
Git. Version control.
Gem update
Sinatra. Lovely web framework written in Ruby.
Mailplane. Gmail on steroids. I use it all the time.
Fontcase. Font management. Not crazy about it.
MacVim. A good Mac GUI version of VIM.
1Password. Is there someone who still doesn’t use this?
Little Snitch. Do I wish to connect somewhere? Now I decide.
Microsoft Office (sadly this is still needed)
Acorn
Pixelmator (Tryout, instead of big fat Photoshop). Latest version is a damn fine product.

Edit. These are the ones I forgot to install:

Adium. All my instant messaging needs.
XScope. Holy cow. I survived like 3 days without it.

I’ll start working now. If anything else shows up that I needed, I’ll be adding it.

One thing that’s been a pain in the ass is syncing my iPhone with a new iTunes library. Holy crap what a mess.

I’ll just keep stuff I do here while I try to use Emacs. So this is a post in progress.

Note to self: Remember, have fun. If not, forget about it. I don’t have to, it’s for fun.

OK, so here’s what I did first. I downloaded Carbon Emacs and installed it. I got it from here.

Then what I wanted was to replace the default Emacs that OS X uses and use my installation of Carbon Emacs. I did it by adding this to my .profile file:

alias emacs="open -a /Applications/Emacs.app"

Oh oh. Seems like if the file doesn’t exist it doesn’t create it… it only works for files that exist. : P (fix?)

Added some keyboard customization from this file in Github. (Thanks topfunky). Now if before you kill yourself, this is where it should go (I think so)

/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/site-lisp

Geoffrey Grosenbach, producer of the PeepCode screencasts gave me some quick advice on how to get started with Emacs (here).

Unless I have some really urgent work to get done, for which I’ll surely fire up Textmate, I’ll give Emacs a try. I’m already an every once in while VIM user and remember it was hard to learn it.

Anyways it’s good to not be that mechanical and always do the same things in the same way. My baby always reminds of this. So just as today I brushed my teeth with my left hand, I’ll switch Editors for a few days. I’ll see what happens.

On the Nuby on Rails website I came across this post on Emacs. I was in a good mood with my mind full of curiosity and then a thought hit me. “Could it be that I somehow missed the good parts of Emacs?” I remember having used Emacs before, when I was using Ubuntu all the time. I tried as hard as I could to use it, but it was pretty damned hard.

So last night I went ahead and installed the Carbon version of Emacs. I started the tutorial, worked on it for some time, and then I simply closed it. “What a nightmare!”

I just don’t get the whole Ctrl+V command for moving around. It’s just not a comfortable position for my hands. Which finger are people using for pressing the Ctrl key? Do I have to take Hand-Yoga lessons from a Guru to feel ok with it?

: ) Nothing like VIM.

As you can see. I have no problem with the whole editor war thing.

ColorSchemer 2 is out. This is the best color tool I’ve ever used for the Mac. It has tons of features:

• Color Picker
• Let’s you create triads and harmonies
• Integrates with ColourLovers.com

It’s pretty much a must for anyone working in any field of design. It’s quite handy.

To the LaunchBar vs Quicksilver debate I’ve got an answer: I’m sticking with LaunchBar.

During the last 3 years I’ve used Quicksilver, LaunchBar 4, Google Quick Search Box and now LaunchBar 5.

Right after I got my Mac people started suggesting I use Quicksilver and sure enough I fell in love with it. I had never had a power tool like it when I used Windows and it changed the way I used computers. The idea of having everything just a keystroke away was great.

After some months passed I stumbled in a blog somewhere the suggestion of using LaunchBar (I think it was this post in Alex King’s blog). So I tried it out and was amazed at how fast it was. Then GQS launched and I tried that for some months. It was OK, and it was from Google, but after a while I had to admit I was not enjoying it as I had enjoyed Quicksilver or LaunchBar.

I went back to Quicksilver stuck with it. I was just used to it.

After I upgraded to Snow Leopard I discovered I had to update my Quicksilver with a beta update that was released. During those frustrating days of issues with Snow Leopard I remembered LaunchBar and downloaded the new and improved version 5.

Shit was it good! I had forgotten how fast it was. If you’re a Quicksilver user you might ask yourself “What do you mean fast? Quicksilver’s fast”. No it’s not once you’ve tried LaunchBar. It’s lightning fast. There’s no delay either in launching after invoking it, no delay in searching and basically no delay in anything.

So here’s what you’ll get from it:

Speed. Compared to GQS and Quicksilver it’s fast as hell. Anything you can do anywhere else, LaunchBar will do faster.

Great Indexing. I don’t care how they do it but LaunchBar seems to get indexing just right. I’ve never stumbled with the issue of not being able to find the file I’m looking for. I remember using Quicksilver that I had to develop searching skills. Not here. I just works.

Clipboard history. I know Quicksilver has a clipboard plugin. I used it. But LaunchBar has a built-in clipboard manager that rocks. I created custom shortcuts and I can invoke both my complete clipboard history or an instant insertion of a recent clipboard item. (One thing I wish though, is being able to hold more than 40 history items, which is LaunchBar’s maximum).

Quitting, Selecting and Launching Apps. LaunchBar doesn’t just let you launch an app quickly. It’s got shortcuts to easily move from one app to the other, selecting the one you want (just as with Command-Tab) and will also let you quit an app right from the running apps list.

That’s not all it’s got. It’s got tons of features, but these are the most I’m enjoying lately.

Give yourself a treat. At least try it. It’s better than the rest.

(Oh and I’m not affiliated with the guys at Obdev. It would be cool though, I’d probably have a bit more cash.)

I’ve been practicing the Pomodoro Technique for about 1 month now. It’s been an incredibly useful tool for me. It’s brought about changes on many levels. One of which is the kind of To-Do lists I create.

I’ve loved the GTD methodology since I found it 2 years ago. I’ve used many of the most popular GTD apps. Many. I’ve used OmniFocus, Check Off, Things, Hit List and Actiontastic (which dooesn’t seem to be in development anymore). But with the Pomodoro Technique things have changed as well as the apps I really need.

In The Pomodoro Technique all tasks have to be worked on (regardless of how many minutes they will take, how much you want to actually work on them or what context they belong to). They are all important. There is less of the “tagging and setting contexs” of a task. You decide which task (in a broader sense, not a next action) is most important to work on at the moment and just start working on it. You just start your timer and get to work. All tasks become level. There is less bullshit about the task choosing and more work happening.

So with this change in perspective I started wishing for a simpler place to write down lists of tasks (when I need them!). In comes TaskPaper.

TaskPaper is drop dead simple. It’s a freaking list of things to do! But don’t be fooled by simplicity. In simplicity is power (which is at the core of the Pomodoro Technique).

In TaskPaper you define a project name, write down some tasks under it, and just scratch them as done when you’re finished. It’s just like what you do when you grab a piece of paper and write down what you want to get at the grocery store. You get the items and scratch them one by one.

Sure, it’s got notes and tagging, but you’ll see that’s not what’s important in TaskPaper. TaskPaper is all about lists and getting things done.

So if you’re planning on getting the job done without having to watch 4 screencasts to learn your favorite GTD app, give TaskPaper a try, it might be what you’re looking for. And if you already practice the Pomodoro Technique it may be a good option for you too.

I’ve been integrating Acorn into my work-flow for about two months now. (Acorn is an image editor of OS X —an alternative to Photoshop or Fireworks). I’ve been using it for cropping images, creating transparent pngs, optimizing jpgs and basically any “small” task that would require me to open up the gigantic monster called Photoshop. (And we all know that just launching Photoshop means the task is not “small” anymore).

So here’s something that has had me in awe for a few weeks. When in Acorn you select Command-Shift-T, to transform an image, the default behavior of Acorn is to “Constrain Proportions”. Instead of holding the Shift key, which is what you have to do in Photoshop/Fireworks/Pixelmator/etc, you can just transform the image to it’s desired size.

I love this! I mean honestly, when was the last time you had to transform an image without holding the shift key? I bet you haven’t done that in years! Making it the default behavior seems to me a “small” detail that shows how smart new software can be. It just takes a developer that can forget the competition and observe what’s really needed.

I’ve probably wasted years of my life pressing that damned Shift key.

Note: I’m using the 2.2 Beta versions of Acorn. You can get it here.

There’s a growing wish in the web designer community to get rid of Adobe products and find some kind of Photoshop / Fireworks / Illustrator replacement. Why replace Adobe with something else? Well everyone knows the answer to that: Adobe products are bloated and big. They have too many features that no one cares about. They make your computer crash.

Are there any alternatives right now? Well. Yes and No.

For the Mac there are a few names being mentioned. Acorn, Pixelmator and Opacity.

Of these I’ve used Pixelmator and Acorn.

Pixelmator seems to be the one that’s pretty much ahead in the game. But the last version of Pixelmator seemed to me to export bad quality images for web. And it has this annoying bug that messes up layers’ positions when you do Crop, Save Image, and then go back to the original image.

That’s the thing that’s annoying. Pixelmator could have gotten it right almost a year ago, but they don’t focus enough on what web designers need. Their aim seems to be too broad. It’s an almighty “image editor” —which is just what made Photoshop a piece of shit.

I’ve only been using Acorn for a week and I’m really liking it. It draws vector shapes with pixel precision, has optional stroke and curved corners. It’s lightweight and super fast. One major problem is that it flattens PSD files when it opens them. (Pixelmator is way ahead in that area).

The great thing about Acorn is that Flying Meat, the developer, seems to be focusing on getting the web designer community the tool they need. I’m praying that they make it.

The problem I’m facing? When you work with a team it would take one hell of an app to make people ditch their favorite tools. I’m sure this is a problem for a lot of people too.

So let’s wait and see who wins. I’m sure that whomever can deliver an app that can replace Adobe Fireworks will end up making millions of bucks. I just want to be happy making sites.

Further reading:

• Mucking up the Fireworks (Jason Santamaria, 2008)
• An open letter to software developers (Nathan Pitman, 2009)
• A big-assed post about Fireworks (Jon Hicks, 2009)

Yesterday my 30 day evaluation period of Mailplane app ended. I enjoyed using it during the month and now I’m wondering if I should buy it.

So in case anyone doesn’t know about it Mailplane is an OS X app that embeds Gmail inside it’s window and empowers you with some pretty cool tools to make it work better for you. Here’s my favorite features from the big list they have in their site.

Drag and Drop attachments

This is the feature I’ll miss the most. Mailplane allows you to simply drag and drop any file into the Gmail window and it will turn in into an attachment. If you’re attaching images it will even ask you if you’d like to resize them to improve file size. Hitting the “Attach a file” link in Gmail is always annoying. This makes Gmail feel like any other OS X app.

Do Not Disturb Mode

Mailplane comes with it’s own Gmail notifier to let you know if you’ve got unread email in your inbox. But having the notifier saying “Hey, you’ve got 13 unread emails!” can be pretty distracting. So Mailplane let’s you hit the “Do not disturb” button and voila, problem solved. It will go into silent mode and won’t give you notifications of incoming (via Growl) or unread mail. It’s a great feature.

Fluid app as an alternative

Now here’s why I’m in doubt of purchasing Mailplane. Before trying Mailplane I was using Gmail embeded inside a Fuid app. In case you’ve missed it somehow, Fluid let’s you create site specific browsers. You can open and close the “site application” at will, improve it with Greasemonkey scripts, and not have to keep it open in another tab in your browser. (I use Gmail, Flickr and Basecamp as Fluid apps).

Since Fluid takes advantage of userscripts I use a Greasemonkey script that strips Google Ads from my emails. So I’m used to using an Ad free Gmail. Maiplane didn’t seem to have this enabled or to let me enable it anywhere. And it’s a major thing for me.

So for now I’ll wait and see. I’m gonna go back to my Fluid app and see if I miss my favorite Mailplane features enough to buy it.

If you’ve got any tips and tricks for a better Gmail experience I’d love to hear them. These 2 are the best I’ve had. As for you, make sure you give Mailplane a try, it’s easy to fall in love with it.