Sliced Software

Go to File...

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 08:28:33 -0500

I’m still using TextMate these days despite being frustrated with a lot of things including the complete lack of forward progress and no information about TextMate 2. I’ve thought about switching to vim, especially after reading a great article by Jamis Buck. I’ve always loved using vi and I get by, but to be honest I just don’t think I’m good enough yet to use it as my every day editor for work I actually have to get done. Especially considering I would be using vim to work with a project and not just vi editing a single file.

Regardless, one of TextMate’s biggest strengths is its Go to File window. Fuzzy search across all your file names. It’s dead simple and extremely fast. The only problem is that a lot of my views have the same name; index.rhtml, for example. I’d love to see the Go to File window support an escape key that toggles the matching to the containing directory they show in gray after the filename. For example, you type index and then you hit CMD-OPTION and you start typing the directory name to filter on the matches already showing.

I wonder if this is possible with a plugin without rewriting the entire window.

Working From Home

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 09:50:31 -0500

It’s incredible how much you can get done when working from home. Before I went full time at Gawkk over a year ago, I had a software engineering job at a regular company. I was in an office. People would call all day. People would stop by. I had to physically go to meetings. It really affected productivity.

When I started working from home, I thought that it would be tough.

“I’ll really need to try and concentrate. There will just be so many distractions.”

I mean, it’s what everyone was telling me.

“You’re going to work from home? Wow, I could never do that. I’d never get anything done!”

But really, what distractions are there? You don’t have to stop what you’re working on to make it to a meeting. You don’t have to answer the phone calls from people who don’t want to wait for a response from an email. You also don’t have people dropping by to just shoot the breeze.

Once you realize that 9 to 5 isn’t when you have to be productive. Everything else falls into place. Sure, I like to generally be at my desk before 9 and I try and remember to pull myself away after 5 (although I can get sucked into my code), but if I was up late the night before and feel better starting at 10, it’s not that big of a deal. The key is working when you are productive. There is no sense at sitting at your desk doing nothing from 9 to 10 if on that particular morning you feel like crap. Work when you are productive and the distraction-less environment will help facilitate that.

It probably also helps if you actually enjoy doing what you do.

Customer Support

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 10:54:00 -0500

A few days ago, I ordered a pair of snowboard pants from The House. When they showed up last night they were the wrong size. Further investigation revealed that the drop down containing sizes on their website listed them wrong. The size I selected was not the size they thought I ordered.

Luckily, The House has great customer support. I called the toll free number and a woman answered immediately. No automated menus. She answered, I said I was sent the wrong size, she transferred me to the right person.

The person who I was transferred to helped me find a different pair of pants. Discounted them. Ensured they would ship the same day and gave me free shipping on them. In the box will be the return shipping labels for the pants that were the wrong size so that I won’t have to pay shipping to send those back.

There was only one painful part of the experience. The on hold music was just a single song on loop. James Brown’s “I Feel Good”.

The man who would be Sergey

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:47:19 -0500

The man who would be Sergey: Just stumbled across this article about Gary (Gawkk’s fearless leader). In all of the times we spoke about Direct Hit, I never knew that the ranking algorithm worked that way. It’s brilliant.

Ring tone apps

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 12:48:00 -0500

Ring tone apps: Great article by Craig Hockenberry (of iconfactory and Twitterrific fame) talking about the current state of the App Store in terms of development risk for more complex applications.

The Road to 1.0

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Almost four years in the making, I’m very pleased to announce version 1.0 of my Database Development Environment, PGnJ. Although it started as a side project, since February’s release of 0.8, I have kicked developed into high gear. My goal was to release version 1.0 by year’s end. A goal that I am very happy to have met.

When it came time to lock down what I felt would be worthy of the 1.0 badge, I found myself back at the roots of PGnJ’s design. Rather than simply packing PGnJ with the same old features that other database clients all have, I tried my best to stay true to the fact that PGnJ is meant to be a development aid. For example, I was less concerned with the standard table modification wizards that you see everywhere, than I was with a flexible system that could be extended in future releases. This is where SQL Templates were born. PGnJ 1.0 comes with a few stock DDL SQL Templates for easily creating and altering tables and columns. These templates include :variables that can be easily navigated using SHIFT+TAB and even special :type variables that show a tooltip with commonly used data types for the current database. In a future (already in the works) release of PGnJ, you will even be able to edit these templates as well as create your own.

Although there is already a long list of new features and refinements in 1.0, for me it still comes down to PGnJ staying out of your way and at the same time making it as easy as possible for you to get your database work done.

Thank you to everyone who has sent feedback and used PGnJ in the past. I hope that you continue to send any and all comments you may have to tom [at] slicedsoftware [dot] com!

Successful Move to Slicehost

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0400

All of slicedsoftware.com, including the LIRR app, is now running properly over at slicehost.com!

PGnJ 0.8

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Today I’m releasing PGnJ 0.8. I’ve been sitting on these updates since October but haven’t released them because I’ve been really busy with work. In addition, Leopard came out and I wanted to revisit some of PGnJ’s user interface.

Download PGnJ 0.8 now

With this release I really wanted to concentrate on further refining the application rather than adding a lot of new SQL related features. Some of the things I’ve done with this release include:

Adding an automatic software update system.
Adding a preference system with a hand full of useful preferences.
Completely re-implementing the source tree selection logic.

To see the full list of over 20 new features, changes and bug fixes, check out the changelog.

I wrote about what was coming in 0.8 a few months back so I thought I’d quote some of my previous thoughts below.

First, I added an about box and a preference system.

After that, I decided to tackle automatic software updates. Unfortunately, since PGnJ is written in Java, I didn’t get to use that slick Sparkle Framework that all of the Cocoa developers use. I had to do my own thing.

So, being that I try and make PGnJ look and feel like a real OS X application, I decided to model my software update system after the Sparkle Framework. In addition to just looking good and working well, I figured that people are used to the software update process that Sparkle provides so I went ahead and developed a pretty neat software update framework for PGnJ. Take a look at the third thumbnail to see it in action.

Another thing I thought I could do to really spruce things up was something that I hope most people don’t even notice. I really wanted to add some row selection intelligence to the database object tree on the left side of the application.

To read more, check out the full post.

Mobile LIRR schedule application

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

I’ve hated the Long Island Rail Road site for a really long time. The worst part of using the site is that half the time you have to do it from your phone. Even with an iPhone, it’s just really terrible.

So, I set out to solve this problem. My main goal for the initial version was to tackle the ease of use on a mobile device issue.

Features for the first version:

Remembers your last station selections.
Let’s you easily reverse direction for your ride home.
Auto selects current hour as the start hour for the search.
Auto selects the current day type (weekday or weekend).
Displays transfer stations.
Displays whether a train is peak or not.

Some ideas for the future:

Ability to SMS yourself the currently displayed schedule.
Ability to quickly see the next or previous set of trains before or after the currently displayed schedule. For example, if the last train of the currently displayed schedule leaves at 7:30am, by clicking ‘See later trains’ or ‘See earlier trains’, you won’t have to re-enter any search parameters.
SMS gateway for accepting schedule queries.