Tim, the Enchanter

My company, Lead Media Partners, being as cool as they are, has fostered and encouraged me to improve TextMate to support many of the features I missed when switching from my other favorite IDE, RadRails. Over the last 3 months, I've been adding commands here and there, and have been packaging it up into a seperate bundle. With this bundle, TextMate has now officially been promoted to my favorite editor.

To see what all the hype is about, you can grab the bundle, get more info, and see a 5-minute long screencast I produced introducing the features over at code.leadmediapartners.com.

Google just granted the Git-OSX-Installer project page 50MB downloads, plus another 100MB in disk space, so we can now host the Git OS-X Install packages on Google Code. (and abandon the problematic free solution)

Thanks Google! We love you!

Now, if only, there was some way to reduce the file size of the installer. Right now, everything is compiling REALLY HUGE. The MingW guys have their package down to under 8MBs. Anyone have any suggestions?

Recently I learned, on accident, how to create a session cookie in JavaScript (which was causing a bug in the Campfire Growl Script).

  function setCookie(name, value) { document.cookie = (name + "=" + escape(value)); }

Here's how to NOT create a session cookie:

  
  function setCookie(name, value, days) { 
    expire_str = days ? ";expires="+(new Date(new Date().getTime() + days*24*60*60*1000)).toGMTString() : ""
    document.cookie = (name + "=" + escape(value)) + (expire_str); 
  }

HINT: Specify an expiration date on the cookie

If the campfire growl script is forgetting your settings, update to the latest :)

Holy cow this guy's got passion.

Sometimes, when two other people are conversing in campfire, I tend to watch the little growl bubbles fly by and not give them much attention. Then, when they ask for my input, I'll usually keep going on about my day, without even noticing.

This is part of the reason why my Adium chat logs are full of messages like: "Hey Tim, you get my CF message"?

Not DRY.

So, a new feature was born. Growl at everything and "stick" when your name was said (meaning, show the growl message FOREVER... or at least until you click it). Having it growl only when your name is said is still an option.

To upgrade: uninstall the script (In the Menu: "UserScripts" -> "Manage Userscripts" -> Select Script -> "Uninstall this Script"). Repeat the install instructions again. Or, get fancy, if you have the fancy smarts.

Here's the script. Enjoy!

We've switched to git almost entirely. After running into some rather painful overhead with getting everyone on Git (especially our designers, who generally don't have Developer Tools installed already), I set out to create an installer. Here are the fruits of that endeavor:

Download Git for OS X

It's worked well on several Leopard machines. It ships with it's dependencies, and will handle updating your environment variables in ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist, ~/.profile, and ~/.bash_profile for you. Isn't that nice? Everything is installed cleanly into the directory /usr/local/git, so removal is easy. See, git is your friend now.

If you've got another installation of Git, you may want to remove it first before switching over to the package distribution

Want to build your own package for Git and OSX? Head on over here, for the source and instructions used to create the package.

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Update: The original release was 40MB and took up 85MB of hard disk space! After some optimization tips from Pieter and Johannes Schindelin, it's now weighing in at 3.2MB download, ~8MB installation size. Much better!

Labels: git

Lots has happened with the campfire growl script since it's release. Thank you for everyone who has supported me with positive feedback! You keep the open source community thriving!

Briefly, here's the news:

• Todd Ditchendorf contacted me about including the campfire script in the next release of Fluid. The Fluid script bundle is here.

• Technoweenie (Rick Olsen) extended the script to growl only when your name was said. What an awesome idea! I wanted more flexibility since I'm in several rooms that require different levels of attention. So, I added a configuration pane:
  

  • Growl only when someone says your name:
    
    
    
    

  • Want to watch multiple words? Use a regular expression! Kapow!
    
    
    

  • It's configurable per room

  • Settings are stored in a cookie

• Also, Robby Russel posted some detailed instructions on how to install the campfire growl script. He did an awesome job, and I've got to add in, Robby is one cool cat. Initially, a lot of people got the impression that it was Robby's script (because his blog gets so much coverage than mine). When I wrote him about it, he quickly fixed it. Also, Todd is a stud too. He wrote up an article on his blog clarifying the matter. Thanks Todd! It's people like Robby and Todd that make open-source development fun and fulfilling.

Labels: javascript

After being in the forge for quite some time, the Git textmate bundle version 1.1.1 (and 1.1.0) has been released out of the shoots

This release includes several bugfixes and updates to make it more compatible with Git 1.5.4.3 (the current latest version of git). Backwards compatibility for Git 1.5.3.x has been maintained.

The code has been completely reorganized into a mini-mvc templating framework, with a JavaScript library making it easy interact with the controllers and do some Ajax-like stuff. The end result is MUCH easier coding and less code duplication (it's no longer necessary to write custom gateway scripts to interact with git). The bottom line: easier to make it feature rich and intelligently interactive.

To see a full list of changes, refer to the CHANGELOG

Also, a list of what's planned can be accessed here: TODO

Please send comments, questions, support requests, etc. to the Git-tmbundle google group

Thanks!

Labels: git, git-tmbundle, textmate

37 Signals' campfire users: If you haven't heard of Todd Ditchendorf's "Fluid" for MacOSX yet, it's a fantastic piece of software that allows you to embed your favorite web-applications into a site specific browser. Recently, release 0.7 of FluidApp included a JavaScript API which allows you to set Badge icons and Growl messages.

37 Signals has been excellent on getting campfire integrated with FluidApp and adding badge icons to campfire for Fluid.

I wanted a bit more functionality, so I whipped up a GreaseKit script which adds growl messages:

Click here for installation instructions on how to get growling on campfire

Labels: javascript

I've been putting this off for a long time. It's sad to say that for me, the largest impediment to undertaking a blog was lack of a name I could get excited about. When I found out the domain "theenchanter.com" was available... I got all jittery inside and I jumped on it! After all, had I procrastinated but a few minutes longer, such a golden opportunity to capitalize on my name being in a favorite movie of mine might have been lost. I'll channel my updates, discoveries, and thoughts through this channel. Thanks for reading!