Thursday, September 29, 2005

Gaming Open Market Closes!

So Gaming Open Market is closing this Sunday :-( What is GOM? Well it's a website that trades virtual game money for real US currency. Specifically, they dealt with Second Life currency, called Lindens.

Second Life is a 3D virtual world created by its citizens, where your avatar is free to build, create, script, sell, socialize, play, dance, explore, etc. I have been a part of SL since its BETA period in 2002. My friend Darryl and I have built a pretty successful in-game business selling scripted pet dogs in Second Life.

We traded our Lindens for cash on GOM, but that will no longer be possible come Sunday. Linden Labs, creators of Second Life, say they are building their own currency exchange. Let's hope it works well!

Komodo and Subversion

Yay! I got Komodo and Subversion to play nice! :-)

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Quest for the Holy PHP Editor

In my never ending quest to find the best PHP editor, or code editor in general, I have downloaded numerous trials and demos. I was using Zend Studio for a bit, and really liked the feature set, but found it a bit slow due to the fact that it's written in Java.

Now I am testing two other editors, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

  • ActiveState Komodo - So far top of my list! Includes the following features:

    • Code folding
    • Key binding
    • Code insight
    • Source Control integration (Perforce, CVS, Subversion)
    • Code completion
    • Project management
    • Brace matching
    • PHP Debugging
    • Syntax checking
    • Syntax highlighting
    • Auto indent
    • Indentation guides
    • Tab grouping
    • ...much more
  • SlickEdit

    • Code folding
    • Key binding
    • Code insight
    • Source Control integration (Perforce, CVS, Subversion)
    • Code completion
    • Project management
    • Brace matching
    • Syntax checking
    • Syntax highlighting
    • Auto indent
    • Tab grouping
    • Excellent visual diff tool
    • ...TONS more...

So I am liking Komodo way better now because it has a much cleaner user interface, and is more targetted to PHP and web development than SlickEdit. SlickEdit is heavily C/C++ focused.

SlickEdit does seem to have WAY more features, but it takes a rocket scientist to figure out how to use it all and set it all up. But I do have the feeling that if I took the time to set it up exactly how I wanted, that it could become the "do all" editor I need. It's a daunting task, however.

Komodo, on the other hand, has a very friendly interface and is very simple to configure to your liking. Unfortunately, I can't seem to get Komodo's Subversion integration to work on Windows, but I did manage to get it to work in SlickEdit. Komodo's Perforce integration works very well, however.

I'll keep messing around...who knows, maybe I'll find ANOTHER editor to play with!

Cool site: SnipURL!

Well I just found out about a cool site that turns any long URL into something short, and it's free! It's called SnipURL. Check it out!

Life in the Valley

Welcome to my blog! What is this about? Well, it's just my musings as a Silicon Valley techie, my life out here, cool things I find online, etc. Nothing Earth shattering, but basically a good way to get my thoughts down. A "diary" for the new millenium, if you will.

DISCLAIMER: I do not guarantee that anything seen here is in the least bit interesting to anyone but myself...and sometimes I can't even guarantee that! :)