Articles for people looking to transition from TextMate to Vim.

Arthur Debert (Stimuli): “Hello VIM, or quitting TextMate cold turkey”

In my last post I’ve mentioned my way through VIM. Quiting TextMate cold turnkey wasn’t easy. But fear not: there are a bunch of plugins that will make it a breeze.

Jeff Ober (Artful Code): “From TextMate to Vim”

TextMate is an excellent editor, but it is beginning to show its age. It has a few squeaky wheels that have yet to be oiled, and it looks as though the author may be getting bogged down in the minutiae of his next release. With the next version apparently due sometime after the colonization of Mars, it seemed an auspicious time to try out another editor.

Jamis Buck (the buck blogs here): “Coming home to Vim”

Fast forward three years. The vim landscape is different now. There is actually a Mac-friendly GUI version of vim now, MacVim, which actually looks like it belongs on OS X. Vim 7 supports UI tabs, and a much more powerful auto-completion mechanism than before. And plugins like rails.vim and fuzzyfinder.vim mean that TextMate no longer has a corner on powerful project navigation.

On Reddit: “Ask /r/vim: How do you work with a project in vim?”

What I love about TextMate is that I can open a directory and it will list its hierarchy in a drawer, making it very easy to navigate files. Add to that the wonderful Cmd+T which incrementally lets me search for files within this hierarchy and quickly open one in a new tab.

I’m looking for something like this in vim. Or I’m wondering how other people solve the problem of working on a project which requires quickly opening different files and navigating within a hierarchy?

Also useful for those switching from Mac to Linux. ;)

So I had a PNG image file that I wanted to scale down. As usual, I opened it in Preview.app, went to “Adjust size…” under the Tools menu, and changed the pixel width to like 500 pixels, with the height changing automatically with the aspect ratio.

That’s when I noticed the rather astounding “Resulting Size” display below:

Ahem.

After a couple of retries just to make sure, I wound up converting it into a JPG first then resizing. I’ve never seen that glitch before. :)

I wonder what would have happened if I’d actually resized it! Would my computer have burst into flames, taking down the Internet with it as it pulled in millions of processing hours attempting to compute the resulting image? We’ll never know!

UPDATE: Unable to resist my curiosity, I tried to resize it, but it just vibrated once and stayed the same size. Anticlimactic! The GIMP resized it without any issues, so I’m assuming it’s a bug in Preview. I will file a bug report with Apple.

Hmm, maybe I won’t have to keep on waiting interminably on the iPhone to ditch AT&T exclusivity. The Droid is thoroughly and suddenly intriguing.

Washington Post — “Verizon Droid Is The Real Deal”

Verizon and Motorola finally lifted the curtain on their new Droid Android phone yesterday. Make no mistake, this is Android’s flagship product, and the first phone that will pose a significant threat to Apple’s iPhone. And it will be available very soon, possibly as early as the end of this month.

MobileCrunch has been tracking the phone, which has also been called the Tao or Sholes, for some time. Just about anyone who has come in contact with the phone can’t stop talking about it. And from what we hear, they have good reason.

I have resisted the iPhone’s siren call* despite just about everybody I know getting one, and the only reason is due to AT&T. I am a long-time and very happy Verizon Wireless customer, and I’m not willing to compromise on that.

And, coincidentally, I think I’m due for a new phone on my plan. [Rubs hands together maniacally.]

The Droid is based on Google’s open-source Android operating system (itself based on the Linux kernel), has a pull-out keyboard, and is rumored to be running on the same processor as the iPhone.

Let’s hope their pricing isn’t stupid. :)

* I do have an awesome iPod Touch thanks to a birthday gift from Alex, and I love that thing to death.

Why was I not informed there was a freeware Western-themed total conversion of Quake 3 Arena?! I need to fire my informants and get new ones, obviously. Pardner.

Smokin’ Guns is intended to be a recreation of the “Old West’s” great atmosphere. It is being developed - as you can see in the name - on id Software’s Quake³ Arena Engine. This Total Conversion includes completely new weapons created with historically correct information about damage, rate of fire, reload time etc. It also includes new gametypes and maps inspired mostly from movies.

Via reddit

About a week ago, NetNewsWire on my iPod Touch began crashing on launch. I looked up info online and indeed it was a known issue. The intrepid developer Brent Simmons had already submitted a patched version to the App Store. In fact he noted it on his @nnw_iPhone Twitter feed on October 4th:

Uploaded 2.0.1 (free and premium) — fixes the crash-at-startup bug. Hopefully they’ll get approved and on the App Store quickly.

So far so good.

Since I know Apple’s App Store takes forever to shuffle stuff through what I can only imagine is an assembly line of elves from Santa’s Workshop working in the off season, I waited the usual 2-3 days to check for NNW’s availability. Yet I was only teased by an update for Cro-Mag Rally or one of the other (fine) Pangea games.

In the intervening nine days, I have occasionally and fitfully attempted to launch NetNewsWire, only to be denied by crashes. I also tried “Check for Updates” in iTunes, only to be presented with the dreaded

dialog box with the lowly, singular OK button. As if I have a choice. Just for the record, I am not OK with it. Not at all. And what’s with the instantaneous denial? Did you even check?

App Store holding area.

I am picturing some App Prison like in Tron where they torture the Programs for believing in the Users.

Please Apple — let my programs go!

UPDATE 10/16/09 17:17

Holy crap, the update finally showed up just now. And just short of a fortnight after it was submitted. Nice job, Apple! Feh.