IR_Black theme for Coda

For those of you who use Panic’s “all in one window” web development tool Coda, here is a port of Todd Werth’s excellent Textmate theme IR_Black. (Note that Todd also has an equally nice version of IR_Black colours for the Terminal - check out his post “A black OS X Leopard Terminal theme that is actually readable” for the deets.)

I’ve ported over the syntax colours for HTML, PHP-HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Here’s a full window screenshot so you can see the syntax colours in action. (The font used in all of these previews is the wonderful (and free) Inconsolata at 12pts):

To install, download the zip below, decompress, and import the files into Coda’s syntax color preference pane. You’ll need to select the matching language with the file you’re importing first, and I highly recommend you export a copy of the original colours just in case you change your mind and want to revert.

You’ll need to check off the Use Inverted Colors preference as seen in the above screenshot to get the dark background and properly match the colours.

For what it’s worth, I really want to like Coda, but Textmate’s stupidly powerful bundles and plugins keep pulling me back. Maybe by 2.0 Coda will fit better with my workflow, but for now I’ll keep jumping between TextMate, MacRabbit’s CSSEdit, and Panic’s Transmit. I have vague hopes for MacRabbit’s Coda-competitor Espresso, but what I’ve seen of the just released public beta hasn’t impressed me much, yet.

Post in the comments if you have any feedback, comments, hate mail, etc.

Looking back, you couldn’t say that twenty-ought-eight was anything less than interesting. Just the act of being a father for an entire year would have been fascinating enough, but the magic wheel of OMGWTF managed to land on a few whammies to add even more spice to the festivities.

• My son Alec turned a year old in June.
• Spent the first half of 2008 recovering from a four month descent into infant insomnia that nearly caused a nervous breakdown. Ah, parenthood!
• The second half was spent dealing with a vicious resurgence of sarcoidosis, which hid in full remission until the middle of the year.
• Thanks to something I’m calling “Littlest Hobo Syndrome” I somehow managed to jump to three employers in 2008: Tucows, Homezilla, and currently call Mozilla home.

Radio silence

Any of these things would have been fertile ground for web site posts, and yet I didn’t even come close to posting in the double-digits this year. I think a lot of people who started writing online early reached a similar point as I did, where the orgy of introspection and public journalizing turned on itself.

Running into a vague acquaintance in 2005 who I barely knew that followed this site (and thus knew a lot more about me than I about him) was the incident that flipped the privacy switch for me. It’s been a slow return to posting for me ever since. I stil don’t really know how to manage the balance between saying too much and not saying anything at all.

Moving on up to that deluxe apartment in the sky

Looking forward, I have a lot of hope for ‘09. My son is growing quickly and is a daily miracle that I cannot get enough of, and I am in love and loved by an incredibly vibrant, beautiful woman. If just this continues in 2009 it will still be an incredible year, but seeing how it’s in my nature to plan ahead, here’s a few things I hope to accomplish in the ‘09:

• Maintain my current work-life balance.

  I’ve been incredibly lucky and have worked for some amazing employers, and Mozilla continues this fortunate streak. But I need to constantly remind myself that I work to live and not the other way around.

• Find more time for the family and friends
• Get offline even more than I already have, and immerse myself in the RL more often
• Take life drawing and photography classes

  My drawing abilities are limited to stick figures and crude renderings of boobs and penises, and my photography skills aren’t much better.

• Improve my french

  Ever since Alec was born it’s been a challenge to maintain my meager french skills. Perhaps starting a weblog written in french is the ticket?

• Get our asses out of our current rental situation

  Either we buy or at the very least moving into something less ass-hattish, but either way we need to get off our asses and get some equity and continuity going on the homestead front.

• Do something with this site, even if that means closing it down and starting over

  I post so rarely to this site that it is becoming more and more of a personal embarrassment. I need to shit or get off the virtual pot with this site.

• Be less judgmental (of self and of others)
• Exercise and run more often

  After starting at Mozilla I signed up for a gym membership at the JCC, so I have no excuses other than I suck. Goal: Suck less.

• Worry less
• Meditate more
• Add “… but that’s a first world problem” whenever I catch myself complaining

  I need to remind myself of this again and again, but the reality is 99% of the shit I whinge about is complaining for the sake of complaining.

Shout out out outs

In addition to my ass-kicking family if there was anyone I could thank that helped to make ‘08 as positive as it was, I’d have to raise a large, frosty beverage to the Supernerds Local 154 (James, Gord, Scott, Greg, Paul, Johnny, Craig, Frank, Michael, Brent, Dan, and occasionally Joanna) and my many beautiful Winnipeg peeps. Thanks for being a home away from home, and for making me laugh my ass off in ways I didn’t think were possible. Here’s to more beverages, food, and meanderingly idiotic conversations in the new year.

Now let’s kick out these motherfucking jams. Onward!

The second fifth Firefox 3 security / maintenance release is now available and I have optimized builds available for G5 and Intel macs.

Check out the official Mozilla Firefox web site to see what’s new in Firefox 3.0.5.

What the hell is Minefield?

So for those of you who have followed my Firefox builds, you all know the drill - those builds used the Mozilla development codename “BonEcho” because it was against the Firefox trademark to distribute non-official builds using that name or icon. With Firefox 3 the development name has changed from BonEcho to Minefield (don’t ask me why), so all of the Firefox 3 builds available from this site will be called that instead of Firefox.

As for the icon, in the past I either used the default development icon (the blue earth) or a slightly tweaked version. Minefield’s development icon changed, though, and it’s just… grotesque. Sorry, I can’t mince words here - basically someone took the blue earth icon from BonEcho and tacked on a fuse to it. Get it? Minefield? Bomb? Ahem.

With these builds I’ve reverted back to the blue globe icon instead of using the default development icon, partially for consistency’s sake, and partially because it’s still a heck of a lot better than the bomb icon. Originally I distributed these builds with an icon by Adam Betts that is quite similar to the current Firefox icon, but to avoid any possibility of people thinking these builds were in any way official I’ve stuck with the globe.

Downloads and caveats

There are no longer two separate builds available as Firefox 3 now boasts “native” form widgets. Makes my life easier.

As I mentioned above, there are only G5 and Intel builds available at the moment, so I’ve left the links to the Firefox 3.0 optimized version up for now. If I can either track a G4 machine down or someone volunteers one a G4-optimized build will soon follow.

Finally, if you really aren’t a big fan of the new redesigned theme, I highly recommend aronnax’s lovely GrApple Firefox themes which basically make Firefox look a heck of a lot like Safari. Not a bad thing in my book, but your mileage may vary.

Without further ado:

» Download Minefield (Firefox) 3.0.5 for Intel

» Download Minefield (Firefox) 3.0.5 for G5

» Download Minefield (Firefox) 3.0 for G4

Totally not required, but if you feel like donating to help with bandwidth costs, etc., I’d be most grateful. Any excess money raised will be donated to Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders). Thanks!

Moving forward there will no longer be more Firefox 2.x builds - as far as I’m concerned it’s obsolete and in the past. That said, I am still chipping away at complete instructions on how to build your own optimized Firefox builds from the comfort of your own home; watch for those in the coming weeks.

As usual, please post feedback and other effluvia in the comments. Enjoy, folks!

Since everyone else at work seems to be on the wordle tip, here’s mine. Seeing how I so very rarely post to this site any more (a mere nine posts including this one in all of 2008) I took the liberty of dumping the last 200 entries into Wordle to get a better idea of what I’ve been posting about over the past few years.

I’m kind of surprised how prominent Firefox is, but seeing how much I’ve posted about the optimized builds I guess I shouldn’t be too shocked. That said, besides that word no other themes seem to stand out, which is as good an indication as any of my rather fragmented attention span.

I so rarely talk about work here (hell, I no longer talk here about anything, but ironically there’s a post percolating regarding that very thing) but I do some fairly big work-related news I’m quite excited about that I thought I’d share with the five of you that are still standing (hi mom!).

The Big Lizard

At the beginning of November I start my new job working at the formidable Mozilla Corporation as a senior user experience engineer. I will be mostly handling design, usability, and other yummy experience-related stuff for the various Mozillian web sites, but I may also get an opportunity to contribute design, writing, cross-stitching, and various spices and herbs to other projects as well. Yes, I’m seriously geeked.

A few people that I’ve mentioned this to asked if I was moving to the US, and no, I’m staying put here in Toronto. It doesn’t seem to be a very well-known fact, but Mozilla actually has an office here. There are quite a few Canadians that work for Mozilla here (some of them in very high-profile positions) and I’ll be joining them to ensure that the proper spelling of “neighbourhood”, five-pin bowling, poutine, toques, and other uniquely Canadian things get their dues around Mozilla.

As with many things web-related, this job seemingly plopped right out of the interwebs into my lap after a chance email from Mike Beltzner, Mozilla’s director of user experience. One thing led to another and here we are, with my web site being directly responsible for yet another job opportunity. Who says blogging doesn’t pay?

Take my (previous, equally cool) job, please

As with any new opportunity something must move aside to make room, and my previous user experience / front end developer job with (the very coincidentally named) “HomeZilla” is now open. If you’re interested in working for a new & cool real estate start-up with good funding and a super awesome boss get in touch with me and I’ll hook you up with the details.

What about the Firefox optimized builds?

As for the genesis of this whole opportunity, my optimized Firefox builds, it’s still early days but as far as I’m concerned it’s business as usual. I’ll now have a direct line to people that can hopefully help me figure out once and for all if these builds are actually faster or if they’re just a perfect example of the placebo effect. Also, I will probably look into seeing if I can get my builds blessed by the Lizard as “community editions” so they can be hosted on Mozilla servers.

Onward to complete and utter inebriation

For a total web browser ass like myself an opportunity like this is like some strange geek manna dripped from a giant poindexter honey pot in the sky, and I’m drinking it up and getting rather inebriated on the coolness of it all. The jury is still out whether I get so drunk I make a complete ass of myself, however, but I’m going to enjoy the opportunity all the same.