Upgrading to Sublime Text 3

Posted & filed under Programming.

When Sublime Text 3 was released I groaned along with many others. Why a new version? What are the incompatibilities? But most importantly: Will all my old packages that I know and love still work??

After attempting (and succeeding) in upgrading to ST3 and trying to install all my old plugins I know, love, and use daily I can safely say: the old packages work! They work! And it’s glorious!

There is a but here: the process of installing some plug-ins is not as plug and play as it is for Sublime Text 2. There is a certain amount of ‘getting your hands dirty’ work required – namely using git to check out the ST3 compatible branch. Aside from that you’ll leave the process without any stains on your newly washed white shirt.

So let’s dive in, shall we?

Installing Sublime Text 3

You’re a responsible developer right? You’ve paid for Sublime Text 2 already right? Supporting a brethren developer’s hard work, putting food on his table, a new Retina MacBook Pro in his lap?

You have? Good. Cuz that’s all that’s required to download ST3: an active and valid ST2 license.

After that’s all squared away head over to the Sublime Text 3 download page and commence with the installation.

Tip: You can install ST3 alongside ST2 without any modifications to either program. Each install to separate application names and ‘Application Support’ directories without needing any user intervention. Interestingly enough the application name for ST3 is ‘Sublime Text’. Seems Jon Skinner’s gone back in time with this change.

Install Package Control (for ST3)

Ready to get down and dirty with git? Of course you are.

The Package Control website plainly instructs how to install Package Control for Sublime Text 3.

I could regurgitate those instructions here but I’d rather not muddy the internet with cloned instruction sets. If you have any issues with this part feel free to ping me.

Using Package Control to install packages

For most packages I was able to use Package Control without any issue.

The packages I have currently installed and working brilliantly are:

  • CoffeeCompile
  • CoffeeScript
  • Emmet
  • GitGutter
  • GitHubinator
  • LESS
  • SideBarEnhancements
  • sublime-closure-linter

However there were two packages I do use daily that I didn’t want to lose that did require a bit more manual labor.

Installing SublimeLinter for ST3

Ready for some more git wizardry?

Follow these four simple steps:

cd ~/Library/Application Support/Sublime Text 3/Packages
git clone https://github.com/SublimeLinter/SublimeLinter.git
cd SublimeLinter
git checkout sublime-text-3

Yey fun, you’re done!

Installing Soda Theme for ST3

Ready for some intense deja vu?

Follow these four simple steps:

cd ~/Library/Application Support/Sublime Text 3/Packages
git clone https://github.com/buymeasoda/soda-theme/ "Theme - Soda"
cd "Theme - Soda"
git checkout soda-st3

Yey fun, you’re mostly done!

If you want to use the Soda Theme Color Schemes follow the steps outlined exactly – just put them in your ST3 folder instead.

Et voilà Finito!

Conclusion

I’m finding Sublime Text 3 to be a lot faster than ST2. Perhaps my (now old) install of ST2 has become bogged down with crap that it doesn’t need, but in switching to ST3 I’ve found its fuzzy search to be leaps faster and I’m finding it’s new fast open of files to be an interesting UX update (when you select a file in the project browser it now opens up a temporary tab instead of previously just showing the text in the code window. Hope that made sense).

Aside from speed ST3 is the future of ST3 and it’s better to get on the bus as it’s going through the station and before it’s out in the country somewhere remote and unattainable. This metaphor went nowhere.

Looking forward to hearing your successes in upgrading to ST3. I also can’t wait for the whole package community to fully embrace ST3 support. Should happy any day now, right? ;)

New Music From January, February, and March 2013

Posted & filed under Music.

Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. ― Plato

I love music almost as much as I love sharing music.

If I can share an album that becomes an anthem for you then the amount of joy derived isn’t quantifiable.

The following albums weren’t necessarily released this year, but it’s when I discovered them.

I hope some of them strike your fancy!

(more…)

First Version of Theme HarryWolff 2.0 Is Live!

Posted & filed under Me, Programming.

If you look around you can see that I’ve switched to the new theme that I’ve been developing over the weekend. It’s made with love and I’m glad I was able to get a working version ready for tonight.

I don’t have many details ready to share at the moment as I am a little tired and my brain is slowly grinding to a halt…but rest assured that a thorough run-through on how the new theme was developed will follow.

I think this theme is a nice improvement over the previous theme. If not in style, then definitely in readability. That was the focus and I think I achieved my goal.

For now please enjoy the new theme. If you see any weirdness let me know.

Creating A New WordPress Theme

Posted & filed under Code, Programming.

The theme around here is feeling a little stale to me. I’ve started working on a new theme for this blog, using WordPress-Skeleton as the base for the git repo and the Bones theme as my theme’s starting foundation.

So far I’ve been enjoying both immensely:

WordPress-Skeleton

It was easy to move my git repo to use this format (you can see the commits required here). The primary reason I moved to this structure was it returned the power of development back to me as opposed to being completely at the whims of WordPress.

Now WordPress is in a tidy gitsubmodule and all my custom content (theme) is in its own folder and isn’t affected by WordPress upgrades.

One thing I haven’t yet decided how to manage is plugins: should I control which plugins I use and commit that to the repo, or do I let WordPress manage that? Anyone have any thoughts?

Bones WordPress Theme

I haven’t yet fully dived into Bones but so far I’ve enjoyed the clarity of its comments and the strong base it provides. The default HTML structure is semantic and intuitive and I’ve had no confusions when it comes to structure.

I did run into a bit of a pitfall when I tried to add a JavaScript library to load on my page, however it didn’t take terribly long to see that the bones.php file was the one that managed those tasks. I’m chalking this up to my naivety when it comes to WordPress theme development, as up until now I’ve only worked on child themes.

For my own development pleasure I added grunt to my Bones theme, making it easy to use SASS and LiveReload. I opened an issue on the Bone’s GitHub page to add that work to trunk however I may just have to suffice myself with an additional blog post (oh the horror ;) ).

Under Development

I hope to get the new theme in Beta state in the near term so I can switch the blog over to it and then enjoy applying updates as I dev.

If you want to watch while I work all updates are going to be pushed to the new-theme branch of my public harrywolff.com git repo.

Big things comes from little things

Posted & filed under Me.

One of my fantasies is to start the next Facebook type success story. Make a new website, attract hordes of users, build an influential business, and become wildly successfully. Many times I’ve caught myself daydreaming, trying to conjure up that billion dollar idea that will make everything I want come true.

Yet those day dreams never produce anything. It’s impossible to dream up a success. It’s almost impossible to start with a big idea and work your way backwards from there.

I realized today that you need to start small before anything big can be created. Big things are just collections of small things. If you start making small things before you know it you’ll have that big thing you wanted all along.

Big things come from little things. Start your own little thing today.