Jorge Manrubia

I’ve changed my blogging system from Typo to WordPress. I found several problems with my Typo installation, specially regarding to performance. I was very interested in updating to the latest version of Typo, which addresses many problems (including its performance). Unfortunatelly, I didn’t manage to make it work in Site5, the hosting service that runs this blog. The last version of Typo runs on Rails 2.2. Site5 hasn’t updated to 2.2 yet. I updated my local gems of rails to version 2.2.2, but I didn’t manage to make it work (and it seems that I am not the only one having this problem).

I really love Typo and I don’t discard to use it again in the future. For now, I’m going to enjoy the benefits of using WordPress, the most widely used blogging System. I had some experience configuring a WordPress site, so I knew what to expect:

• Extremely easy configuration
• A huge amount of themes and plugins available

My first theme choice was Skittish (the theme I was using with Typo). The problem was that it wasn’t updated to the last version of WordPress and it needed minor fixes to work. I decided to browse the WordPress Theme Directory and this site which offers a selections of themes. Finally I found a very nice one: The Vostok theme. I was looking for something exactly like this:

• Extremely clean and simple.
• Maximum legibility with dark tones.

Their creators are experts in interaction design and usability. I think that a simple product like this blog theme is a proof of their philosophy and expertise. I just can thank them for sharing this wonderful theme under a GNU v2 license.

I’m writing this entry using Textmate. I been a lot of time waiting to use this fantastic editor. Finally, I’ve bought a 17 inches MacBook Pro. I’m really loving it!. So much time reading things about MacOS (and Textmate) and now, well, all my expectations are fulfilled.

Until now, I was using ubuntu in my laptop. JEdit was my every-day editor. I really consider it a great editor, totally customizable, extremely solid and with a huge amount of plugins available. I’ll keep using it in other computers (for example, in my work).

So why change? Well, like many people, I was amazed by the look of the Editor used by David Heinemeier in the first Rails screencast. Since then, all the reviews about Textmate I’ve read agree: it’s a superb product. I’ve only been using it for 3 days and I’m totally convinced it’s going to be my editor from now on. A very nice surprise is the excellent LaTeX bundle.

This is the first post in my very new personal page.

I created this site because I wanted to have a place to write about software development. I have interests in many areas, specially those related to MDD (Model Driven Development), software development methods and agile practices.

This site starts as a fresh Typo installation hosted on Site 5. I love Rails and Ruby and I intend to use this site as a place to experiment. We’ll see if the experiment lasts…