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CS5 Evolves Tour hits Gothenburg

Software, Teaching 02 May 2011
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Terry White, Paul Trani, Jason Levine, Greg Rewis (ltr) Getting Ready To Present

Today Gothenburg was hit with the CS5 Evolves Tour with the great Worldwide Evangelists from Adobe: Terry White (design), Greg Rewis (web), Jason Levine (video) and Paul Trani (flash). During their three hour presentation at Lorensbergsteatern, they wowed the audience with CS5.5 goodness and as far as I could tell, the audience was indeed very impressed.

It’s been a great time hanging out with the guys here in Gothenburg and I hope Adobe sends them back, unless I scared them away of course…

Terry White Presenting

Blotter: Showing iCal On Your Desktop

Software 27 Apr 2011
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Desktop Background

Late last week I read a review of Blotter, a new application on the Mac App Store that puts your weekly iCal calendar just above your desktop background as an overlay. In many ways, this might seem like a way to surely increase the stress, however I find it to have some advantages for me.

First of all, it is very clean and simple. Sure, it works best on top of an equally clean and simple background, Blotter lays the calendar out in a very nice way. You get a good view of not just the current day, but the entire week ahead (which can be customized to only show workweek or full week, as well as show the coming 7 days instead of the current week). It will display all the different calendars that you tell it to, no more, no less and to some degree also keep the color coding, which is a must for me.

What I found particularly useful with this app is that it makes me use my desktop for something useful, while adding the ease of previewing what is coming up right now, without looking too far away. For me, seeing my calendar is not a way to get more stressed, but a way to become relaxed in knowing that I am in control.

What this app really needs!

I did mention that Blotter supported the color coding to some degree. I would like to see the color coding be spot on the same thing as in iCal. I have noticed a few of my calendars not retaining their proper color which is very bad for me since I use that to get a good overview of where I am expected to be and what I am expected to do. Basically, I live on color coding.

Secondly, I desperately want a way to get rid of the menu icon for this app. An option to put it in the menu bar would be appreciated as I prefer that for utilities compared to the dock. The best thing would be to run this in the background not having any icon, although I can see that being a problem in terms of development.

Conclusion

I’d recommend you trying out this app if you want the calendar on the desktop. At $9.99, Blotter isn’t too badly priced, even though the lack of trial in the Mac App Store makes it harder to justify when you are not sure it will do what you want. I however must say that it is fully worth all its $9.99 price tag.

Coda Plugins That Make My Life Easier!

Software 18 Apr 2011
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Coda from Panic SoftwareWhen it comes to web development, I particularly like the Coda application (made by Panic Software) which does just about everything I need as a web developer. However, there are a few plugins that I rely on that make my life much easier and help me work faster in Coda. I want to share this list of five plugins with you. The best part is that these plugins are all free.

Coda PHP & Web Toolkit

First of all, the Coda PHP & Web Toolkit give me some proper validation features. The plugin offers PHP syntax validation that jumps to the error and auto-saves. It also offers to clean up and reformat both CSS, HTML, Javascript and PHP in a way that you can personally configure, which I think is pretty neat. Furthermore, it will minify your Javascript and CSS as well as validate them as well.

CSS Tools

CSS Tools does two things that are needed now and then, most often just to save some space. Firstly, the plugin lets you compress your CSS files, removing extra space. There are two modes for this, one high compression and one medium compression, with the latter leaving more spaces than the former.

Secondly, it beautifully reformats a stylesheet written in a multi-line syntax into a single-line one and vice versa. This is especially useful when I want to send a stylesheet that I have written to another designer who fancies the single-line syntax, or when I get one in single-line and want to work on it in my favorite formatting way.

Emcoda

What Emcoda does for you is turn email addresses into protected ones that are harder for a spam bot to grab, using a javascript code. This is a very specific use-case, but is sometimes a brilliant way of showing your actual email address, properly formatted online.

WordPress Mode

Here is my absolute favorite Coda plugin. The majority of the projects that I work on will at one stage or the other be turned into WordPress templates. WordPress Mode adds autocompletion for WordPress functions and template tags to make the coding go much faster. It does indeed since you don’t have to go looking in the mighty WordPress Codex to see if the function was spelt in one way or the other: You get it inside of Coda.

First Impressions of New MacBook Pro

General, Technology 14 Apr 2011
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MacBook Pro

A couple of weeks ago now, I decided that it was time to upgrade my MacBook Pro to a newer model with much more power seeing as the Creative Suite had been running increasingly sluggish on my old one. Since my MacBook Pro is my primary work machine, it is important that it is powerful enough to do what I need it to do while being light enough for travel.

What did I get?

I ended up opting for the 15″ MacBook Pro with a 750 GB normal hard drive and 4 GB memory from Apple, which I will be bumping to 8 GB myself shortly. The machine has the 2,2 GHz i7 processor and sports a full 1GB VRAM as well, which will be great for heavy-lifting in Photoshop. To top it off, I chose the high-res screen (1680×1050) although in glossy, since I have become used to it and quite like it.

How well does it work?

So far I have pretty much just gotten set up on it, installing new apps and moving files over to it. There are a couple of things that strike me with this one, compared to my previous MacBook Pro.

1. The extra real-estate is nice!

Sure, it is normally the case when you get a new screen, but it seems that the high-res version now available is just perfect. It might be close to the small-side, but I find that it works very well, providing that extra resolution that you need when doing graphics design.

2. More Dampened Keyboard

I seem to notice that the keyboard has been slightly more dampened on the new model, compared to my old. The trackpad is the same way too, much quieter when you click physically. Nothing to complain about here. I am always for quieter keystrokes.

3. The Battery Makes Such A Difference

The new machine promises a 7h battery life in Apple’s better battery test. I cannot begin to say how much of a difference this makes. I have been suffering with, at best times, a two-hour battery life on the old model, while always on the best graphics card (switching required a login). The upgrade is almost worth it for the battery time alone, especially when traveling.

Right now, I am very happy with the performance of this machine and I am very happy that I decided to get it. Once I get settled in and upgrade the RAM, I’ll let you know how it runs with the Adobe Creative Suite.

Photo Club Presentation in Mariestad

Teaching, Travelling 11 Apr 2011
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The Photographer and PhotoshopI am writing this post on the train back from Mariestad where I have been presenting to the local photo club there. The topic for the evening has been Photoshop of course with a focus on features that you must know as a photographer (The Photographer and Photoshop). I’m very glad to have been asked back there, and hope that I perhaps can come again in the fall.

Mariestad offered wonderful weather, sunny and 18° C!! Where did the summer weather come from? Lovely. To top it off, all parts of my trip itinerary has been perfect. It’s just one of these days.

Now it is time to get some work done before I get back to Gothenburg and can finally go to bed…

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