Ever since switching to a Mac full-time, I’ve been using and loving TextMate as my editor.  It’s simple, clean, themeable, and has great svn support. Love it, absolutely love it.  However, there is one little snag that drives me nuts.  It is pretty minor, really, but being the OCD guy that I am, it does drive me bonkers: I use the ProjectPlus plugin to be able to sort folders in the project pane. I always want my folders on top, and files underneath, no exceptions, 100% of the time.  It works great most of the time, but when I add files externally, via Finder or PathFinder, the files and folders in the project reorganize themselves by name.  Drives me batty.  I know it might not be that big a deal to most, but it does disrupt my workflow a bit.  I’ve searched high and low on the interwebs, but haven’t been able to find a solution.  Does anybody have any idea if this can be prevented?  Bestow your wisdom upon me, O Internet.

Been a while since I’ve posted (sorry about that), but I had to rant about this annoying little process.

So I have this freshly installed Windows XP virtual machine and I needed to install a PDF reader. I used to use Foxit Reader, but I always have problems with the toolbars staying arranged in the right places, so that’s out.  So I headed to Adobe’s site to get their reader.  Immediately, I noticed that the installer package contains Acrobat.com running on top of Adobe AIR (which I don’t have installed, so it’s nice enough to do that for me, too).  Seriously?  I just want the damn PDF reader.  So I suck it up and click “OK”.

What happens next is what really blew my mind. I get prompted by Firefox to install the “Adobe Download Manager”. Download Manager?  Seriously? I’ve already got a download manager…it’s called Firefox.  So I dig a little deeper to see why they’re using this.  In their FAQ, they say they’re using to “allow you to pause and resume large downloads”.  Large downloads, huh?  Like a 40mb PDF reader? Bottom line here, is whatever happened to just clicking a link that says “download”?

I guess it was inevitable, given how their install processes for the Creative Suite programs have gotten out-of-hand.  But seriously, all those hoops to just get a PDF reader?  On my Mac at work, I can use Quick Look by hitting Space on a PDF icon and instantly  see the PDF.  Instantly, no splash screen for the reader, just the PDF, open right in front of me in a fraction of a second.  Just sayin’…

Oh well, Adobe’s slowly going the Microsoft route, and I guess there’s nothing that can be done about it.

I’ve been reading up a bit on Python lately, which is a pretty popular high-level programming language used for a variety of applications – including web and desktop apps.  It’s used extensively in a lot of Linux applications, and Google utilizes Python in a lot of their work.  The performance of the language seems to be a key selling point, as does its refreshingly simple syntax.  Naturally, I’m curious about using the Django framework in my own work.

This doesn’t mean I’m leaving PHP in the dust – I still use it extensively at work, with no plans of stopping anytime soon – but I just have a feeling this is a language I would like to work in. Python’s syntax is similar to Ruby’s (at least at first glance), and from what I’ve read it outperforms Rails by quite a bit.

The project that I’m going to cut my Django teeth on is my wife and I’s blog: www.rustyandben.com. I talked briefly about overhauling the site a few months ago, but some other higher priority projects came up. I’m getting to the point now, however, where I can start working on it again. I’ll be re-designing and developing from scratch (obviously maintaining all data), so it makes the perfect opportunity to try out Django. I’ll be upgrading my Media Temple hosting to a virtual dedicated server so that I can have root-level access in order to install whatever software I want. This, in turn, will allow me to try out a couple other technologies I’ve been wanting to check out: SQLite (a lightweight flat-file database system) and Lighttpd (a lightweight and fast HTTP server). More on those as I assess their feasibility.

I’ll be posting about all this again soon, as I’m planning on writing a series of posts about the creation of the site.