Since switching to Sublime I’ve been using the command line much more.

I’ve blogged about how to easily access the terminal from within Sublime.

Recently I discovered the Shell-Turtlestein package which makes it even easier to run quick commands.

A quick and simple way to run arbitrary shell commands in Sublime Text 2.

CTRL+SHIFT+C will popup a small prompt for a shell command at the bottom of the Sublime window.

And If you hit CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+C it will launch a terminal window giving you the same functionality as the “Terminal” package mentioned above.

I find this great for doing things like SVN STATUS.

Shell-Turtlestein isn’t in Package Control yet but can be found on github here: https://github.com/misfo/Shell-Turtlestein

• Current Beta: 2165
• Current Dev: 2176

This is updated almost daily and includes new features as well as bug fixes. I’ve been using it for the last few weeks and have had only 1-2 crashes and some of the features like autocomplete and autoindent are well worth it!

Drafting table

Then along came Computer Aided Design (CAD) and we all ended up sitting passively in front of computer screens.

Fast forward to present day. Keep going… I’ve been sitting a long time.

I’ve been following the ‘standing desk’ idea now for awhile. A few months ago my wife was redecorating her office and we had a trip to Ikea on the horizon so I spent some time on ikeahackers.net and came up with some ideas.

Billsta Table

The general rule among standing desk experts is the table top should be at about elbow level. The Billsta is just a tad too short. Right now I have it resting on a few 2x4s and may even raise it a bit more.

Feet Relief

The last bit of the puzzle was what to do with my monitor and laptop. Standing requires the monitor to be much more elevated off the desktop than sitting. I surfed Craigslist for while and found someone selling some monitor arms. This allows me to free up my entire desk surface giving me much more space, and if I sit I can adjust the arms accordingly.

I haven’t lost any weight (I blame the holidays) but I do feel much better since starting to stand. If you’ve been thinking about trying it there are many ideas on the web on how to inexpensively get started. Next I’m going to investigate hacking up some sort of standing configuration at work.

Where the magic happens

I won’t be able to make it again this year but that doesn’t mean you can’t go! :)

For a whopping $72 you get not one, not two, but three days of open source, CFML goodness…

• OpenBD? Check.
• Railo? Check.
• Mura? Check.
• The opportunity to discuss open source CFML with the people who are building it! Check.

I haven’t looked at either the schedule or speakers (I don’t want to get depressed) but I don’t have to.

Why? Because of the fantastic team who is organizing OpenCF Summit. Organizing a conference is a lot of work but I know folks like Matt, Kurt and Peter are passionate about what they are doing and the sessions and speakers they have lined up are going to be great.

I blogged about open source CFML back in 2009 and I think it’s great to see open source CFML thriving!

No longer are these merely fancy product titles floating around behind an open source idealogy. Now we have some big community members throwing their support behind the concepts! And I know these people will not let these products wither and die. They are all passionate people who have the best in mind for CFML and I’m so excited to come along for the ride!

OpenCF Summit is taking place on Feburary 24 – 26, 2012, at the Special Events Center in Garland, Texas.

Register today!

Today I needed to work on multiple things so I broke down and discovered how projects work. Like everything else in Sublime they are very simple, and offer a lot of flexibility.

Step one is to create a new project. You do that by simply adding a folder.

Project > Add Folder to Project…

Your project files and folders should now be displayed in the sidebar.

Now save your project.

Project > Save Project As…

This will create two files:

1. your_project.sublime-project
2. your_project.sublime-workspace

From the Sublime Text 2 documentation:

Projects in Sublime Text 2 are made up of two files: the sublime-project file, which contains the project definition, and the sublime-workspace file, which contains user specific data, such as the open files and the modifications to each.

As a general rule, the sublime-project file would be checked into version control, while the sublime-workspace file would not.

The sublime-project file allows you to make project specific configurations to Sublime. You define multiple folder paths as well as specify folders and files you want to exclude from view. You can also define per project Settings for Sublime:

{
    "folders":
    [
        {
            "path": "wwwroot",
            "folder_exclude_patterns": ["images"]
        },
        {
            "path": "c:\wwwroot\project1\assets",
            "name": "Project 1",
            "file_exclude_patterns": ["*.php"]
        }
    ],
    "settings":
    {
        "tab_size": 8
    }
 }

Here we’re defining two folders. The ‘name’ attribute will define the name that is displayed in the Sublime sidebar for this folder. This is helpful if you have a long path or folder name and want a more descriptive label.

Once you have multiple projects setup, you can easily switch between them by hitting CTRL+ALT+P. That will bring up a dialog of all defined projects. You can either click on the project or start typing a project name to apply a filter.

I’m still learning how best to use projects but I like the flexibility of defining multiple folders and being able to specify the path. I’m working on a project now with many deeply nested subfolders and can simply map to a specific directory instead of having to click down through several folders.

SELECT INT_SUB_ID FROM INT_SUBCATEGORY WHERE INT_CAT_ID = 123

My eyes! My eyes!

I immediately hit Package Control in Sublime and sure enough there is a SQL package: Format SQL.

After installing (and restarting Sublime) you have a new option under Selection. Format > Format SQL Statement.

This got the indention correct but I was looking for some case changes:

SELECT INT_SUB_ID
FROM INT_SUBCATEGORY
WHERE INT_CAT_ID = 123

Looking at the python-sqlparse library documentation there are some statements to change case for keywords and identifiers. So I cracked open \Sublime Text 2\Packages\Format SQL\FormatSQL.py and found this line:

return sqlparse.format(s, keyword_case="upper", reindent=True, indent_width=indent_size)

And modified it like so:

return sqlparse.format(s, keyword_case="upper", identifier_case="lower", reindent=True, indent_width=indent_size)

And now I get:

SELECT int_sub_id
FROM int_subcategory
WHERE int_cat_id = 123

Done!

I’m excited to be presenting about code review.

In the past there were things the majority of developers didn’t do…

1. Version control
2. Unit / application testing

I think in the last few years the majority of people I’ve spoken to have adopted both of these. SVN/git and MXUnit have made these previously tedious chores almost enjoyable!

But if you mention code review most developers will either have no idea what you are talking about or shake their head in disgust while mumbling something about ‘waste of time’.

Getting Started with Code Reviews

Code reviews have been shown to beat both unit and integration tests for finding bugs. So if you are already writing tests – why not do code reviews?

“I believe that peer code reviews are the single biggest thing you can do to improve your code.” ~Jeff Atwood (Coding Horror)

In my preso I’ll cover all the pros and cons (the pros hopefully will outweigh the cons) and show you how you can easily get started with code reviews.

cfObjective is the best ColdFusion conference north of the Mason Dixon line :) and is three days of great speakers, great content and great networking.

The schedule has been posted, and registration is open. See you there!

I have both the Remote Desktop application and Putty available but managing all these connections is a bit tedious.

I did a bit of research and discovered mRemoteNG.

mRemoteNG is an open source, tabbed, multi-protocol, remote connections manager. It allows you to view all of your remote connections in a simple yet powerful tabbed interface.

It basically provides a single location to manage all those connections in one location. It provides a nice clean interface with tabs which I find very useful when connecting to multiple servers at the same time. In addition to RDP and SSH it supports the following protocols:

• VNC (Virtual Network Computing)
• ICA (Citrix Independent Computing Architecture)
• Telnet (TELecommunication NETwork)
• HTTP/HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol)
• rlogin
• Raw Socket Connections

mRemoteNg

I use a lot of software from Donation Coder, including Find and Run Robot and Screenshot Captor. Recently in their newsletter they mentioned a new clipboard manager called Ethervane Echo. Intrigued, I’ve been using it for the last week or so…

Ethervane Echo Clipboard Manager

For the longest time I’ve been a huge fan of Ditto.

The author of Ethervane Echo actually based his tool on Ditto but with some adjustments. What I really like about it is the addition of tabs. The tabs allow you to organize your clipboard somewhat.

With the search it’s easy to find previously used text, but occasionally I’ll have something I use over and over, and want to easily access. With Ethervane I can move that to the ‘sticky’ tab and it won’t get flushed out as the clipboard fills up. Or if I’ve recently copied something I can hit the “Last Hour” tab.

Everything in Ethervane is easily accessible via keyboard shortcuts, and it some easy to use maintenance tools to use to keep your clipboard data cleaned up.

The only downside is it is text only. No copying and pasting images, which I don’t find to be that much of a drawback.

If you are currently using Ditto or another clipboard manager I’d definitely check it out, and if you aren’t using a clipboard manager at all – what are you waiting for!

Now thanks to the awesome community of plugin authors this has been resolved. Check out SublimeTODO.

Extract TODO-type comments from open files and project folders

Installation is easy via Package Manager just look for ‘SublimeTODO’.

“TODO”, “FIXME” and “CHANGED” are supported out of the box (and you can add your own).

To view your todo’s hit CTRL+SHIFT+P (on Windows) and enter “TODO”. “Show TODOs in project and open files” will popup (you could also map this to a keyboard shortcut). Hit ENTER.

A new tab will popup with your TODOs:

+ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- +
| TODOS @ Tuesday 10 January 2012 20:20                                        |
| 1037 files scanned                                                           |
+ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- +

## NOTE (4)
1. dsp_foiaform.cfm:267  Strip out any delimiters (spaces, hyphens, etc.)
2. dsp_foiaform.cfm:336  The first argument after TARGETSTRING must be a string.
3. dsp_view.cfm:89 </span> #trim(PROSECUTION_DETAILS.DETAIL)#</td>
4. docket_security.cfm:262  ValueList function adds a decimal point. It is CF bug 53488, 

## TODO (1)
1. cfping.cfm:0  This needs to be fixed --->

The only thing lacking is there is no easy way to go directly to your TODO though there is a ticket open on github to add this support.