Posts tagged as:

tools

My Tools: Writing

by Pearlbear on May 11, 2011

I’m mostly doing this last post on my tools to pimp Scrivener. I was a loyal Scrivener user on my Mac for years, and then when I moved to Windows last year, I mourned my loss terribly. But then! Then someone started to work on Scrivener for Windows and Linux. Almost enough to make a grown woman cry.

I do just about all of my novel writing on Scrivener. It’s great for outlining, for research, for writing scenes, etc. And it has a great compile function, to spit it all out into a manuscript when it’s ready to edit. I have probably only used 30% of it’s features, but I love it, and look forward to using it. (Am I really looking forward to using it, or just looking forward to writing…?)

I use LibreOffice for most other writing and editing tasks, although sometimes I must sadly use MS Word for some stuff (like some ebook converters have a harder time with LO files, even formatted as .doc.)

I’ve been experimenting using Scribus for page layout. I use GIMP for any graphics manipulation I need for cover art and such.

And, of course, I do a lot of writing on WordPress and Drupal.

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Git

by Pearlbear on July 19, 2010

I became sold on version control fairly far back in my programming life. Back when CVS (C0ncurrent Version System) was the standard. I learned it, although there were varied gaps in my use of it, so it never became second nature. As I learned more about newer version control systems, I tried them out. For a while, I was using SVN (Subversion), which is similar enough to CVS, but has some nice improvements. More and more folks are moving to distributed version control systems. I began to understand the great advantages of those systems, and decided to pick one to standardize on. Git stood out from the others in terms of popularity and resources. And, I figured anything Linus Torvalds wrote was good enough for me. That was last year. This year. drupal.org is moving to Git, making my life oh so much easier.

In my daily life, Git has 2 major advantages: version control and comparison of versions even when I’m not connected to the internet (you have your own actual repository, not just a working copy), and its speed. It takes less time to clone a whole repository of code than it does to check out a working copy using CVS or SVN! It’s really worth checking out.

I imagine Git will become the new CVS – the new standard, until something better comes along to supplant it.

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Newly discovered project management tool: Redmine

by Pearlbear on July 2, 2009

Any consulting shop that does significant amounts of implementation and development (as we do) needs a project management and ticketing tool. Basecamp seems to be a standard that many people have reached for. We were using Intervals for a while, which is really a fabulous tool if you do a lot of hourly consulting. We also have been using Google spreadsheets for some elements of project management.

All tools have their strengths and weaknesses. And, in addition, the best tool does nothing without good human project management skills using it. As a shop that practices Agile development (we use an adaptation of scrum methodology that seems to work for a shop that does multiple projects with small teams,) finding a good tool that facilitates instead of hobbles Agile was critical for us.

We found, and have chosen to use Redmine for our project management/ticketing system. You can think of it as a multi-project version of Trac, which is a fabulous ticketing/wiki system that we were initially going to go with. Redmine has the elements of Trac that we liked, with the added ability to track multiple projects. Like Basecamp, Redmine has document storage and messaging systems. It doesn’t have milestones per se, but it does allow you to see tasks in calendar and Gantt views, which is very helpful. Unlike Basecamp, you can add custom fields to tickets, users and other features. Having spent many hours in Basecamp, I actually like Redmine much better. It does even do time tracking, which we won’t use, but is nice to know is there. And the wiki is nice. Basecamp’s Writeboards seem so much more like an add on than integrated.

It’s a Ruby on Rails application, and that was actually kind of fun to finally get to install and play with RoR a tiny bit. And it’s great that it’s free and open source. Although that wasn’t an absolute requirement for us, it is most definitely a plus, given so much of our work is implementing open source web tools. And it’s nice to save a few bucks per month.

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My Top 16 tools of 2008

by Pearlbear on December 26, 2008

These span the range from tools I use every day or every week, to tools use more occasionally, but depend on. They also span the range of proprietary, SaaS, and Open Source. They are on this list because I think they are great, because they have undergone a lot of change or development this year, or because they are game-changing.

Open Source Tools

1. WordPress. I use WP pretty much everyday, between my own blogs, and helping clients maintain theirs. WP as a blogging tool rocks my world, and although I certainly could move blogging to Drupal, since I seem to be becoming somewhat of a Drupalista, it’s just not worth it. WP is clean and easy, and virtually hassle-free. There are lots of really great themes out there, and there just isn’t a reason I can find not to use it.

2. Drupal.  I’m somewhat of a latecomer to Drupal. Having been bogged down with my own open source CMS tool before 2005, then having taken a break from development, I missed out on the prime years of Drupal’s development. But now, here I am, and I’m impressed. It has become arguably the most popular open source CMS, and is a very able platform for creating all sorts of great web applications.

3. Xen. I use this everyday, although I don’t really interact with it much. I am administering and/or responsible for a couple of Virtual Private Servers that use it. Virtualization has really come into it’s own this year, and will continue to be a force to reckon with. I’m betting that in 2009, many folks will move from shared hosting to VPS servers. There are a lot of good reasons to consider this.

4. Songbird. Songbird is a brillant idea: build a music player using the Mozilla framework. Songbird was a buggy mess just a year ago, but with the recent release of 1.0, it’s absolutely an application to get to know.

5. CiviCRM. Oh what a difference a year or so makes. CiviCRM continues to mature, and is providing an interesting and important new model for nonprofit software development. It is becoming more popular, and is also highly recommended by those who use it. I’ve been getting to know it this year, and begun implementing it. I like it more and more.

6. Freemind. This is an awesome cross-platform mind mapping tool. I use it to create sitemaps, mostly, but it’s also great for brainstorming.

7. Elgg. Elgg is the open source social network management system. Install it on your own server, control your own data. Don’t use Ning, use Elgg. It finally looks like a project which will allow me to explore the strength of that platform is coming around the bend. Stay tuned.

8. MAMP. Wanna set up a easy development environment on your Macintosh without struggling with Fink or MacPorts? Use MAMP. Easy, fast, robust, and powerful.

Being a pragmatist, I do use proprietary tools, both the Software-as-a-Service, or basic desktop tool types. I use these tools because I haven’t found open source alternatives for these functions that work as well, or are as user friendly.

SaaS Tools

9. last.fm. I love last.fm. I love discovering new music, seeing what people I know are listening to, and learning more about what I listen to over time.

10. Twitter. This was the year for twitter. This was the year that nonprofits discovered twitter, and the year I integrated twitter into my workflow.

11. Evernote. I haven’t yet become an Evernote devotee, but I might. It’s an online note-saving service, with desktop and iPhone clients. It’s great to be able to take notes on my iPhone on the fly, and know they are saved, and will show up on my desktop when I want them. And it’s great to have my notes wherever I go, without bothering to sync my phone.

12. Intervals. Having tried a variety of project management and time tracking tools over the years, from the open source tools like ProjectPier (used to be ActiveCollab) and GnoTime (abysmal), as well as SaaS tools like BaseCamp, I have finally come across what is, for me, the perfect mix of project management, time tracking, and invoicing. It’s not cheap, but it works well, and saves me so much time invoicing, that it pays for itself several times over every month.

Proprietary Tools

13. Adobe Air, and applications. Adobe Air is an impressive framework for rich internet applications. I use TweetDeck, Twhirl, and the Analytics reporting suite among others.

14. Balsamiq. This Adobe Air application deserves its own entry. (I’ve been meaning to blog about it for a while.) It’s a really great tool for creating very rapid mockups of sites that you are working on. It actually is good enough as a wireframe tool.

15. Coda. Panic software makes really good stuff. Coda is a great editor for developers. I like it better than Textmate, which I know is another popular editor for developers.

16. VMWare Fusion. Even being the semi-religious Mac and Linux desktop user that I am, every once in a while I am forced to use Windows. This makes it tolerable. There’s a nice full-screen view, if I want to really feel the pain. There is also a mode called “unity” which allows you to run a Windows application in a regular Mac window. It’s kinda cool.

So what tools did you come to depend on in 2008?

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