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Aliases for common Vim typos

I've been enjoying Tom Ryder's blog which is chock full of Vim, bash, and git smarts. Today's tip alias those commonly fat-fingered Vim commands:

command! -bang E e<bang>
command! -bang Q q<bang>
command! -bang W w<bang>
command! -bang QA qa<bang>
command! -bang Qa qa<bang>
command! -bang Wa wa<bang>
command! -bang WA wa<bang>
command! -bang Wq wq<bang>
command! -bang WQ wq<bang>

Add these to your .vimrc (here's mine), and your Vim is a bit more forgiving.

If you're new to Vim, be sure and read Tom's rundown of buffers, windows, and tabs.

Metadown

Nice gem from Steve Klabnik that extracts metadata from and parses Markdown files. Embedding post metadata in YAML format at the top of the file is a common approach employed by several static site generators such as Jekyll, Octopress, and nanoc as well as NestaCMS, the CMS that powers this site. Nesta's metadata isn't pure YAML and at times I wish it were.

Cambelt - new image placeholder service

In the mold of Placehold.it, Cambelt is an image placeholder service. In addition to size and color options, Cambelt supports custom fonts, icons, as well as HTTPS support.

Cambelt

There's a Ruby helper that gives you some view helpers and lets you set some site-wide defaults:

Cambelt.configure do |config|
  width = 640
  height = 360
  font = "Questrial"
  font_size = 48
  text = "Sample Text"
  bg_color = "#cccccc"
  fg_color = "#333333"
end

Brent Simmons rediscovers the joy of web development

A Rip Van Winkle of sorts, Brent Simmons, a prominent developer of native Mac applications, takes a fresh look at web development, ten years removed from his last "serious web work." More than a just a formulaic top ten list, Brent gives a newcomer's take on several technologies we take for granted.

I was reminded of how the Cocoa world felt in 2002 — those days felt like early days again. There was so much excitement for what we could make and what would come next.

And now it feels like that for the web. Again.

Exciting times, these.

GitHub is a fish bowl

When you create a public repository on GitHub, the whole world can watch you work. As developers, we feel the need to say "But wait, it's not done yet!"

But that's the whole point of social coding isn't it? In addition to just sharing code, aren't we supposed seek out those developers more skilled than we are and learn a thing or two? After all, if we were only interested in deconstructing finished products, there would be no Food Network. The same goes with software. Watching a project come together is a chance to peek into how software is built.

I started watching Rick's Faraday project when it only was a few commits old (before it was even called Faraday if I recall correctly). Rick's approach to REST wrappers seemed intriguing and he graciously fielded my questions as I started using it in a few pet projects. I liked it so much I began spreading the word at conferences and meetups, and out of that came Faraday Middleware.

Faraday is now appearing in all sorts of Ruby projects and enjoys a growing network. Mislav is doing a great job moving the project forward. Speaking for myself, it's doubtful if I would have been involved at all had I not caught Rick working one weekend in the fish bowl.

Oops, can't find a feed

Call me old school, but I still use RSS. Sure, I use Twitter and other social media to get my news, too, but I still like to geek out in my newsreader and track my favorite sites and authors. It's part of my funnel for this site and The Changelog.

Despite what you've heard, the death knell of RSS was a bit premature. You must believe in RSS, too, because many of you have some fantastic sites and you put the Subscribe or RSS button really large right there in the sidebar. This means that you hope someone will take the time to actually subscribe, right?

Then why do I keep seeing this from my add-to-reader bookmarklet?

oops

Do a favor for eager would be subscribers (like me) and link to your syndication feed in the <head> of your website:

<link href='http://feeds.feedburner.com/wynn' rel='alternate' type='application/atom+xml'>

With just a little effort browsers (and their human users) will pick up on your feed and reduce the subscription process to a single click.

Apple RSS addressbar

Thanks in advance.

Responsive web design and the role of Photoshop

Trent Walton, at the end of a larger piece on using media queries to detect screen height to adjust font size:

We’re leaping past any point where the word webpage makes any sense, and into a world where what is seen at any one screen size (or Photoshop comp) only captures a sliver of the display capability responsive websites muster.

I wonder if Responsive Web Design will diminish the role of Photoshop in the design process. It's hard to argue that the Adobe product dominates the industry, but my use has diminished over the years. Since modifying layouts in Photoshop is just plain tedious, Photoshop has been reduced to a stopover between Illustrator and the assets folder of my web project, lingering just long enough to get an adjustment layer (or two) and some layer effects.

Now, if in this brave new world designers need to create comps for multiple pages at different screen resolutions, I think the designers who can work in the medium of HTML+CSS will come out on top.

Rob Pike on complaining

Go creator Rob Pike in reaction to how Go and Dart have been received by the development community:

I resolve to recognize that a complaint reveals more about the complainer than the complained-about. Authority is won not by rants but by experience and insight, which require practice and imagination. And maybe some programming.

Thoughts on the languages aside, Rob touches on something I've been mulling over the last few weeks - the seemingly growing din of complaining online.

Perhaps my aging ears are just more sensitive to the sound. Perhaps my childhood fear of turning into a grumpy old man is manifesting itself as an acute awareness of other grumpy people. Either way, in order to avoid just complaining about complaining, I've decided to take some positive steps.

Less garbage in. I recently went on a Twitter and Facebook purge, removing folks from my streams that had a low value-to-snark ratio.

Less garbage out. I'm trying to watch my tone in what I share online. It's not about squelching my thoughts, it's about adding value.

Waste time productively

72 hours. That’s how long I wasted watching four and a half seasons of 24. I will never get those hours back. Now that’s a waste! It was not relaxing (it was actually quite stressful and anxiety inducing), it wasn’t intellectually stimulating and I didn’t learn anything. Fortunately I came to my senses and stopped watching it.

From now on, when I waste time, I’m going to try to do it by learning something new, even if it’s something I won’t ever use.

Wise words from Brandon Keepers. I've "wasted" a lot of time going through his codez.

Damien Katz on Apache and CouchDB

If it sounds like I'm saying Apache was a mistake, I'm not. Apache was a big part in the success of CouchDB, without it CouchDB would not have enjoyed the early success it did. But in my opinion it's reached a point where the consensus based approach has limited the competitiveness of the project. It's not personal, it's business.

Thriving open source projects have a dictator, benevolent or otherwise.

Move off of GoDaddy with no downtime

Steven Bristol has a great checklist for moving your domains off of GoDaddy and keeping your site up at the same time:

I don't lose my current DNS settings. Although I want to use DNSimple to manage my dns settings, some of my domains have a lot of configuration and I never had the time to move everything at once. It turns out I don't have to: DNSimple will use your existing DNS server by default if you transfer. Now I can do all of this in two steps, which makes it easier for me.

Could have used this last week.

Looking for more? View the archives.

Wynn Netherland

Wynn Netherland is a full stack web creative who lives in Texas. When he isn't trying to change the world at Pure Charity, he geeks out on The Changelog, writes about Sass, and occasionally speaks at conferences and meetups.

You can follow him on Twitter or GitHub.