Creative Friday

Blogging Through TextMate

I’m trying out blogging via TextMate (Warning: QuickTime movie link). MarsEdit seems like a great application but I already own TextMate and it’s a very versatile application. It’s so good, in fact, that it’s kept me from buying a copy of Coda from Panic, one of my favorite Mac software developers. Coda is good, but the text editor pales compared to TextMate. When I combine TextMate and CSSEdit, there’s little justification to buy Coda. I’m going to try TextMate for a few blog posts to see if it’ll do the job and then I’ll take MarsEdit for a 30-day-free-trial whirl and see how much better it is.

This is definitely more fun that using the web interface.

Redesign…Finally

I’ve finally started designing my Wordpress template for my site. It’s pretty embarrassing that I’ve been using the Wordpress Default template for so long but it’s a new year and I’m ready to get my stuff back online. One word to the wise, when you’re redesigning your Wordpress template, disable WP-Cache. I thought my head was going to explode when I started making changes to the blank template I was using. No matter what changes I made and uploaded to the server, it simply wouldn’t show when I refreshed my browser. I thought I was losing my mind until I discovered the WP-Cache plugin.

This site is going to be designed over the course of the next few weeks and it will undergo large changes. Today’s update is simply text and CSS. No graphics.

Too Many Email Services

I’m in email hell. I’ve got my own Domain account, a .Mac account, a Yahoo account, a Gmail account, and I’ve even got a Hotmail account. They all do some things really well, and they all lack in other areas really badly. The only one that is a complete and total waste of time is Hotmail, it honestly offers nothing. I don’t want to keep several email accounts open and operational, I don’t want to just forward everything to one account (which is my current solution) and I don’t want to keep track of all of this crap anymore.

The Pros and Cons

Gmail (Pro)
Gmail has the best spam detection by far. And Gmail finally offers IMAP which makes me a happy camper.

Gmail (Con)
Google is starting to scare the shit out of me. I’m not fanatic about privacy, but Google goes too far the wrong way and I would very much like to drop off of their grid. I also think their web interface looks awful.

Yahoo (Pro)
The Daddy of ‘em all. I freaking love the AddressGuard (email aliases) and use them for everything, from buying to services to blog registrations. It’s a great way to keep my actual email out of the hands of no-good jerks.

Yahoo (Con)
They only offer POP which is completely useless. When I access my email on my iPhone, I can’t use all of those great email aliases to send the email.

.Mac (Pro)
.Mac’s email is pretty seamless with my Mac. It offers IMAP. And .Mac offers 5 email aliases.

.Mac (Con)
The .Mac service for me has been way too sketchy to be relied on for my main email.

My Domain (Pro)
What else can I say? It’s my domain. There’s also the professional feel to having chris [at] myowndomain [dot] com.

My Domain (Con) My domain uses a web interface that looks and behaves like the last time it was updated was 1999. For someone that must access their email through a web browser while at work, this is just a gigantic deal breaker. This is the account I want to use the most, but it’s the least useful.