One problem with putting tasks and due dates into plain text files is that it’s hard to get a useful sorted view of all tasks that are due today or overdue, the immediacy of due dates get’s lost in the noise of the lines of text. So I did something about it. I created a menubar application that scans a directory of files for `.taskpaper` and then compiles a nice list of all your tasks sorted by when they are due.

Get it here: https://github.com/sirtimbly/plaintexttaskmenu

I’m still working on packaging it (which should be simple because it’s all built on Electron) but, for now you can download that github repo, and run electron from your command line locally. It’s been working pretty well for me. My favorite part is that the app actually creates a sorted task-schedule.md and task-schedule.html file in the directory you scanned, so that the sorted task data can be consumed by other scripts and systems, or you can even print your html file each morning if you’re that kind of person.

To generate those styles I tried out Inuit CSS (SASS) Framwork which is a very minimal framework that has almost no visual styling out of the box. I installed their bower components and only activated the few modules I needed and then added my own custom overrides on top of it. It was great. I love working in SCSS, and Inuit was really easy for me to understand since I had already been using the Foundation SASS mixins on other projects. Inuit is similar, just simpler and lighter out of the box. Adding Inuit components requires a trip to the terminal to run `bower install blah`, so if you’re already comfortable with a bower and SASS workflow I say, try out Inuit. The one Inuit feature I wanted to try out but couldn’t without a paid license is user accounts and registration. If it came to needing user accounts I would be tempted to build a Laravel, ASP.Net MVC or ServiceStack.Net application instead.

From document to website in one day. It’s a neat idea, My process looked like this.

1. Install Craft locally. I  ran my local Craft website using a pre-built vagrant definition I found on github.
2. Start with your content. Create your content fields and matrices in the CMS. Import and write your content.
3. Set up the HTML with semantic markup in the Craft Twig templates.
4. Create a new site.scss file. Turn on SASS `sass -watch craft/templates/site.scss:public/css/site.css
5. Install the Inuit Bower Components. Add them to your SCSS file. Turn on the features you want.
6. Change the baseline size. Develop a color scheme, add color variables in your SASS.
7. Style the elements of the HTML you already created. Tweak visuals until you’re happy or you run out of time.
8. Deploy. I deployed my website to Azure websites through a connection to my private BitBucket source control repository.

It was quick and painless to create a website starting from a document and a few photos. I can see this being a really interesting way to build websites. I like the ease of setup, and the power of creating from scratch. And the knowledge that I didn’t just throw a static html file on a host somewhere, and I didn’t need to install WordPress or develop or buy a WordPress theme.

I started practicing with long exposures of the stars. This is a 30 second exposure from up in the mountains a couple weeks ago, it shows clear trails from star movement throughout the length of time the shutter was open. Still, I am fascinated by this photo and wanted to share it.

Download Wallpaper 2560×1600

Download Desktop Wallpaper at 2560×1600

Download (2560 x 1600)

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Near Woodland Park, CO

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Colorado Springs‎ CO‎