This also means I’ll be writing in the Read & Trust newsletter, a weekly circulation that includes a long-form article from one of the Read & Trust writers. Subscriptions are $5/month, and you get exclusive content from some of the best writers in the blogosphere. Each month has a theme (e.g. Creativity, Quality vs. Quantity, Fear & Loss…) and the authors rotate each week (I’ll be up next week). Sign up and you won’t miss any of the great contributions from the Read & Trust writers!

Related posts:

1. Miami, Dallas and home
2. Big Nerd Ranchero
3. Mac App Giveaway: Byword

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Read & Trust

First, a “command central” for writing music, coding and fiddling. This has my Mac Pro with a dual-monitor setup, studio monitors, my Oxygen 49 and several mics, my acoustic, electric and bass guitars on a rack to the left and a lot of drawers for cables and additional gizmos (the Mac Pro there also runs the home automation and media servers). I can and will do my day job here, but this is the one I’m allowed to be chaotic at. It’s not that I’m not creative in a sterile (read minimal) environment, but the byproduct of my most creative moments is, well, chaotic surroundings. I’ve decided to just let that happen as it always has, but designate “concentration” spaces for my other two modes.

On the other side of my office is a nook with a small desk which has a keyboard drawer with a Bluetooth keyboard, Magic Mouse and a large Moleskine. There’s also a small lightbox. My MacBook Air sits in front of the lightbox, which is angled toward the wall, and I get a nice, empty desk with a comforting glow around my work area. This desk is for writing and nothing else. My brain is easily trained to accept certain reactions to certain spaces (e.g. bed for sleeping), so I think this will work well.

Lastly, the work-only space. On nice days in the warm 1/3 of the Minnesota year, I have an amazing outdoor office. It’s a small table in a small walled garden facing the heavily wooded area on the slope of the bluff. There are warm, yellow rope lights across the top of the area and the gate slides open to the back yard and woods. It’s pretty close to my definition of perfect. In the cold months, I have an extra space near my main office that I’ll be converting, but I won’t have to worry about that for another month.

I don’t really believe in being distracted. I believe that I procrastinate and create my own distractions, but my workspace rarely has anything to do with it. I have the job flexibility to be able to accept that my brain isn’t in a work mode at almost any time, take 15 minutes to read my RSS feeds or hack around, then get back to it. Once I’m in work mode, I get as obsessed with that as I do with my more creative pursuits. Of course, my job requires creativity, too, and I really couldn’t hold a job that didn’t. The minimalism in the auxiliary workspaces is more to help me keep my clutter contained than to prevent distraction. I think it’s going to work out great!

Related posts:

1. Why Markdown? A two-minute explanation
2. KeyBindings: new, improved “surround” commands
3. nvALT 2.1 progress report

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at An office for every mode

Anyone who’s read this blog, used my projects or has talked to me about anything nerdy for more than five minutes knows I’m a fan of Markdown. The question doesn’t come up often, but occasionally someone dares to ask–despite the apparent probability that it will lead to a lengthy explanation–why I use Markdown in so many of my workflows. I give just about the same response to seasoned nerds as I do to my not-so-computer-savvy friends. This isn’t the Markdown what, it’s the Markdown why…

It’s easy: the syntax is so simple you can barely call it “syntax.” If you can use an emoticon, you can write Markdown.

It’s fast: the simple formatting saves a significant amount of time over hand-crafted HTML tags, and is often faster than using a word processor or WYSIWYG editor. It speeds up the workflows of writers of all ilk, from bloggers to novelists.

It’s clean: Markdown translates quickly to perfectly-formed HTML. No missing closing tags, no improperly nested tags, no blocks left without containers. You also get 100% less cruft than exporting HTML from Microsoft Word. There’s no styling inline, nothing that will otherwise break a site’s design or mess with the XSLT formatting for PDF output. In short, it’s foolproof.

It’s portable: your documents are cross-platform by nature. You can edit them in any text-capable application on any operating system. Transporting files requires no zipping or archiving, and the filesize is as small as it can possibly get.

It’s flexible: output your documents to a wide array of formats. Convert to HTML for posting on the web, rich text for sending emails or importing into a layout program for final arrangement or any number of other proprietary formats.

It fits any workflow: You can make Markdown work with any workflow. It can speed up just about any writing-related process with very little setup. It can also be scripted all to hell, if you want, because plain text is the most flexible of any format known to computer-kind.

And there it is, my two-minute explanation. I’ll be printing this on T-shirts which will be available soon. No, not really. I’ll just keep making Markdown as easy as possible with Marked and nvALT (yes, shameless plugs).

Related posts:

1. Markdown QuickTags: WordPress plugin for Markdown lovers
2. A Bash function for Markdown bloggers
3. Taking the Markdown to Evernote service further

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Why Markdown? A two-minute explanation

Courtesy of Buzan Center Australia.

Most of my projects start out as mind maps (which I may have mentioned before). Whether it’s a packing list, a blog post or a TextMate bundle, I find it easiest to organize my (often scattered) thoughts using what Tony Buzan calls radiant thinking. Lists and outlines are rarely as effective as the non-linear format of a mind map. For me, if it involves brainstorming, it involves mind maps.

This post isn’t about how to mind map (but this one is). It’s a summary of the process by which I settled on my current set of tools. I used Mindjet MindManager (Mac) together with the web app MindMeister for years. As with all things in the Mac app world, I played with every mind mapping application that came out, but only recently have I found myself actually looking for a new workflow. It has, primarily, to do with three things: frustration with MindManager, the advent of the iPad, and a wealth of new alternatives. I’m currently down to a collection of solutions across three platforms (Mac, iOS and web) which meet all of my requirements and offer interoperability with each other and other tools in my workflow.

What went wrong with MindManager

In my opinion, MindManager is still the most powerful mix of ease-of-use, OS integration and aesthetic options on the market. In recent years, though, it’s been apparent that the Mac platform has become an afterthought for the developers. The Windows versions are taking leaps and bounds, and the Mac version has little parity with its feature set. The new features in the last $99 upgrade were pretty much useless to me; in my workflow they were just feature bloat. The decision to find something else was based mostly on disappointment with the development and what I consider to be unduly expensive prices, even for existing customers.

The options

Here’s my checklist of features that I knew I needed in any app I was going to consider:

• Intuitive keyboard navigation
• The ability to visually connect non-contiguous nodes
• Support for images
• Sufficient export options
  • at the least, OPML, PDF and a format interoperable with other mapping applications (Freemind is pretty standard)
• The ability to import other mind map formats, and preferably OPML
• Smart/auto layout (moves existing nodes out of the way of new nodes without interaction)

On the Mac

There’s a fairly wide field of options to consider. I’m quite certain I’ve tried everything available on both Mac and iOS at this point. For Mac, these include NovaMind, iMindMap, Freemind, MindNode, XMind and Curio, among others. I already use Curio for project management, and it’s an excellent choice for any information gathering and organization, but I find it to be overkill when I just want to mind map. I also ruled out NovaMind because I found it a bit unwieldy, though I think that the developer is onto some great things. I ruled out Freemind because it’s old and ugly, and I’m prejudiced like that. XMind and iMindMap are nice and easy to use, but their Java roots and lack of OS integration were turnoffs for me. The one that met my needs and my standards almost perfectly was MindNode Pro.

In a nutshell, MindNode is a minimalist mind mapping application that does exactly what it needs to. It’s easily usable with just the keyboard (customizable shortcuts, even), handles auto-coloring and map layout smoothly and integrates with standard OS X media options and features. You can quickly customize a limited set of options (branch color, font, node width) using standard palettes and tools, and you can add images, audio and file links quickly via drag and drop or from a media palette (with Quick Look support). In short, it meets my needs and has zero feature bloat.

On the web

There’s really only one option for web-based mind mapping that I’ve found worthy: MindMeister. It’s nearly as nice to use as a desktop app, has some very cool extra features without being too heavy, and its import and export options fit perfectly in my workflow. It can also share embedded, interactive maps.

The Geistesblitz feature uses the (extensive) API to make it possible to add quick thoughts to a map from just about anywhere: Dashboard, a web browser, iPhone, iPad, etc. The API has also allowed me to integrate similar functionality into LaunchBar, QuickSilver and TextMate, to name a few. Best of all, it supports live collaboration with realtime updates, chat and permission control. If I’m collaborating with others I run it in Fluid instead of using a desktop application.

On the iPad

There are some amazing options for mobile mind mapping. I won’t list them all, just the ones I actually use:

• MindNode
• iThoughts HD
• MindMeister

There are other, more general options for brainstorming which have also made it onto my homescreen, such as Popplet, OmniGraffle, Idea Boards and HeadSpace, but I’ll keep this focused on traditional mind mapping apps.

MindNode for iPad is an obvious choice for me, with great interaction with the desktop version and available sharing options. It’s as easy to use and as minimalist as MindNode Pro is on the Mac. I couldn’t stop using iThoughts HD, though… it has an awesome feature set and its export options mix well with my other choices. The native MindMeister app also mixes well, integrating with the web version and exporting formats I can import to other apps. I use MindNode when I know I’m going straight to my desktop when I’m done, iThoughts HD for standalone, mobile mapping with portability options and MindMeister for any collaborative efforts, as well as quick, single thoughts.

Since we’re talking about mobile brainstorming, I would be remiss not to acknowledge the utility of the original mind mapping app: paper. A Moleskine and a basic understanding of mind mapping principles provide all the tools you need to brainstorm anything, anywhere. The major benefit that the iPad has is instant, on-the-fly reorganization and modification of nodes, as well as portability to other mediums. OPML will get you from a mind map to a Scrivener document, an OmniOutliner project or even good old Markdown.

A flexible workflow

With this collection of tools I can use the right app for the job in any given situation¹. By considering export options, I can always be sure that whatever I create will translate to other platforms and structures. As an added benefit, all of these options combined still cost less than half as much as buying the desktop version of MindManager.

Each of these apps has their own neat tricks and features. For example, in the web version of MindMeister you can select a node and hit the image button (don’t trigger the dropdown) and you’ll get a random (but usually sensible) image for the node. It works with the link button, too, adding a Wikipedia or other link based on the node’s text. In MindNode, select all and copy, then paste into a text-based application. You’ll get an indented list of your nodes, in order from top right moving clockwise around your map. This is a great way to get your thoughts from map to outline when writing, without dealing with OPML export and multiple applications. I use a homebrew System Service² to convert it to a Markdown outline in any text editor.

If you haven’t tried mind mapping, grab any of these apps (or a good book) and see if it’s a fit for the way you think. I personally believe that the method is superior for any type of thinker, but I only have one thought type to compare. If you dig it, hopefully these results of my extensive “fiddling” will help you begin building a toolset that’s right for you.

Related posts:

1. When plain text is wrong
2. Quick Tip: MindManager to (clean) HTML
3. The MindMeister Markdown Showdown

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at The Mac and iOS mind mapping app extravaganza

Thinking about it for a minute, I realized I really did miss the functionality that AutoTag had given me. While I’ve toyed around with blogging from Vim, I still primarily use TextMate, not least because of the Blogsmith Blogging Bundle. Until that kind of functionality is ported to Vim, I’m happy right here. Thus, I spent my Sunday afternoon reviving the AutoTag bundle.

If you use TextMate to blog on a WordPress site, you’ll want to see this.

There are two parts to this: a WordPress plugin that adds an XML-RPC call for getting all of the tags in use on the blog, and a small TextMate bundle for making good use of it. The TextMate bundle cribs off of my previous AutoTag project, and borrows most of the remote functionality from the original TextMate blogging bundle. Why reinvent the wheel? I’m bundling both together in the download, so if you want to use the WordPress plugin to port the functionality elsewhere (say, Vim?), you can just pull out the parts you need.

[Skip to download]

AutoTagging in TextMate

What the bundle does (short version) is find the most appropriate tags for your content based on tags you’ve already used before. This helps you easily keep your tag collection trim and useful. No disparate tags because of inconsistent capitalization, plurals or conjugation. Things that are related stay related. This can be especially difficult blogging from TextMate because you can’t quickly see “all tags” the way you can from the WordPress editor. This solves the problem.

Install the WordPress plugin

Standard install, like any other (manually-installed) plugin:

• Upload the gettags-rpc folder from the zip download to your wp-content/plugins folder on your server.
• Open your admin page and go to the Plugins panel.
• Activate the GetTags-RPC plugin in the plugin list.

If the plugin activates without error, you should be ready to go. It’s a very simple plugin without a lot of error checking, so let me know if you have any trouble with it.

Install the AutoTag bundle

To install AutoTag in TextMate, double click on the bundle in the download zip file. It should open TextMate, pop up the Bundle Editor and show you the installed bundle and its commands. Done.

Assuming you have AutoTag installed in TextMate and the GetTags-RPC plugin installed in WordPress, you’re ready to go. Well, you’ll need to have your blog set up (Bundles > Blogging > Setup Blogs) in TextMate, but we’ll assume you’ve done that by now.

Using the commands

The AutoTag commands can be triggered in two ways. First, you can just put your cursor one space after the colon in the “Keywords:” line of the template headers. If you don’t have that line in your template, you can just type “Keywords: ” on a line before the end of the headers, or add it permanently by editing the template in the Bundle Editor. Hit tab from there and you’ll get a menu of the three commands in the bundle. You can trigger that from the same point even if you already have tags on the line; it will add appropriate commas automatically. Second, you can use Control-Option-T to get the same menu at any point in the file, although I’m not sure why you’d call it from anywhere other than the “Keywords” line.

Commands

AutoTag: This is the primary command, or at least my favorite in the bundle. It’s only good when you run it after you write your post; it doesn’t have anything to work with on a blank template. Finish your post (or open an existing one) and trigger the command. It will grab all existing tags on your blog and compare them to your text, resulting in a dialog with a list of the best matches ranked by relevance. If you’re curious, here’s what it does when processing:

• Strips out all punctuation from the content of your post and creates an array of words
• Uses the Porter Stemming algorithm to get the stem of each word. This makes plurals, adjective, adverb and verb forms all represent the same word.
• Compares the list of stemmed words to the stems of each tag returned by your blog, keeping matches.
• Measures the frequency of each match in the content and sorts the list accordingly.

Common Words: This command ignores the tags on your blog and just gives you the most common words from your post for selection as tags. It’s a good way to figure out what new tags might be worth adding. Again, it’s not very useful if you don’t have your content written yet.

All Tags: If you’re not finding the AutoTag results satisfactory on a given post, or you want to tag before you have any content, this command will simply return your entire list of available tags. You can use it to check what form or casing you used on an existing tag, and it can be run at any time.

That’s it. If you use WordPress and TextMate together, I know you’re going to love this. Let me know how it goes! By the way, I’ll probably (eventually) build similar functionality right into the WordPress editor, and I’d love to see this ported to Vim, too. Any Vim plugin writers want a challenge?

Download

Related posts:

1. Markdown QuickTags: WordPress plugin for Markdown lovers
2. TextMate as WriteRoom, for free
3. Getting back into real TextMate blogging

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at AutoTag2: smarter tagging for TextMate and WordPress

I’ll be the first to admit that I get a little obsessed with projects that aren’t really going to improve my life all that much. Those projects can be fun to blog about, though, so I present you my brief obsession for this Sunday afternoon.

You may have noticed on this blog that some posts have header images, and some don’t, and that they get styled differently based on whether there’s an image or not. It pulls the header images from one of two places: the post thumbnail (which I can’t edit from MarsEdit) or the first image in the post content with a class of “headerimg”. As long as I’m blogging in MarsEdit (or TextMate for that matter), I’m stuck with the latter option. Because the whole header image deal is handled through PHP in my functions.php file, I can’t really preview how it’s going to look; rather, I get a header image stuck somewhere before, in or after my content. In TextMate, I have a little more “scriptability” at my disposal, and the previews I’ve created there are quite accurate. As far as I can tell, I can’t pre-process content before the template is generated, so I had to try something else… My solution, for now, is jQuery in the preview template. I load the jQuery library up top (inside the header) using Google’s Ajax API:

<script src="http://www.google.com/jsapi"></script>
<script>google.load("jquery", "1.4");</script>

Then, at the bottom, I just start polling for an image with the right class to show up. I know it’s brute force, but this isn’t exactly public-facing, and it doesn’t seem to cause any hiccups in my writing. I have this right before my closing body tag:

<script>
function fixHeader() {
    if ($('img.headerimg').attr('src') != undefined) {
        headerImg = $('img.headerimg').removeClass('headerimg').remove();
        postThumb = $('.postthumb:first');
        headerImg.prependTo(postThumb);
        postThumb.addClass('hasimage').removeClass('noimage');
    }
}
setInterval(fixHeader,2000);
</script>

I’m sharing this just to toss the idea out there, not because I think there’s anyone else with the exact same template setup as mine.

In addition to having Javascript at my disposal, MarsEdit is also AppleScript-able. I haven’t looked very far into that yet, but I did whip up a quick script for adding the “headerimg” class to my images (because I always forget which class I assigned for this):

tell application "MarsEdit"
    set selectionContents to selected text of document 1
    set {astid, AppleScript's text item delimiters} to {AppleScript's text item delimiters, "/>"}
    if selectionContents is not "" then
        set textToInsert to (text item 1 of selectionContents) & "class=\"headerimg\" />"
    end if
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to astid
    set selected text of document 1 to textToInsert
end tell

That lets me just select an image (or pending upload tag) and run the script to add the necessary class.

Related posts:

1. MultiMarkdown in MarsEdit
2. Instapaper Beyond for Safari
3. Marked scripts: nvALT, Evernote, MarsEdit, Scrivener

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Fun with MarsEdit, part I

This paragraph is just to see if I can get an XMLRPC image upload to float left without additional Markdown code.

Related posts:

1. AutoTag2: smarter tagging for TextMate and WordPress
2. WordPress, custom taxonomy, and XML-RPC
3. MultiMarkdown in MarsEdit

Originally posted on BrettTerpstra.com at Getting back into real TextMate blogging