Did some Googling and found out that it’s actually is as simple as updating your .vimrc file with a couple lines of code.

if has("gui_running")
	set guioptions=-t
endif

Perfect.

Whenever I switch machines and after I had installed all necessary software I use, I copy over my dotfiles. Sometime I modified some dotfiles in one machine and copy it over to another. So managing dotfiles with a Git repository make perfect sense.

I start googling for a method for managing this. Most of them seem very complicated for what I thought should be really simple. This is when I found this blog post, and decided to follow it.

However I only wanted to commit certain dotfiles, not all of them. So I ended up doing it manually. Here is what I did.

Go into home directory

git init


And then I created a .gitignore files to ignore all files in the home directory and add specific files to track.

/*
!.gitignore
!.vim/
!.viminfo
!.vimrc
!.bash_profile


Add and git remote, and push. My dotfiles are here – github.com/jibone/Dotfiles

In the earlier part of the film there was Zuckerberg frustrated and drunk. He went on creating ‘Facemash’ a ‘hot-or-not’ type of website which compares two pictures of student from his collage. In the film Zuckerberg did it in a not so sober state, so how hard can it be?

I am currently working at EzyPzy, a not so start-up company but thinks it is. In it there are EzyPzy Labs, where we do fun projects for ourselves. So just for the hack of it we tried to do a similar to Facemash type of website, but with popular Malaysian personalities.

We did it in two days sandwiched in between time spend doing some actual work. The result is Choose.my where what you do is to choose your option.

You are presented with two popular Malaysian personalities and you have to choose one. You have to choose one in order to proceed to other options. We made the website sticky enough that you have to choose whatever presented to you.

Go ahead try it out. Choose.my/heroes

So I decided to write my own function that would get the first paragraph from the post content to use it in the main index loop.

I place this in functions.php :-

if(!function_exists('get_the_content_first_paragraph')) :
function get_the_content_first_paragraph() {
    $content = get_the_content();
    $content = apply_filters('the_content', $content);
    $content = str_replace(']]>', ']]>', $content);
    $content_explode = explode("</p>", $content);

    $c = 0; $p = count($content_explode); $return_data = "";
    while($c < $p) {
        $test = strip_tags($content_explode[$c]);
        if($test != '') {
            $return_data = $return_data . $content_explode[$c] . "</p>\n";
            break;
        } else {
            $return_data = $return_data . $content_explode[$c] . "</p>\n";
        } $c++;
    }
    return $return_data;
}
endif;

The first part of the function gets the content of the post formats it and split all the paragraphs into an array.

    $content = get_the_content();
    $content = apply_filters('the_content', $content);
    $content = str_replace(']]>', ']]>', $content);
    $content_explode = explode("</p>", $content);

I wanted to get the first paragraph of the post, however sometimes I start my post with an image, if that’s the case then I want to get the image and the paragraph that comes after that. So the next part of the function goes through the array.

It first strips the HTML tags in the array item. If the first array item is an image, it’ll have the tag, and therefore returns empty, because we striped the HTML tag. In that case the function will return the first and the second paragraph from the post.

    $c = 0; $p = count($content_explode); $return_data = "";
    while($c < $p) {
        $test = strip_tags($content_explode[$c]);
        if($test != '') {
            $return_data = $return_data . $content_explode[$c] . "</p>\n";
            break;
        } else {
            $return_data = $return_data . $content_explode[$c] . "</p>\n";
        } $c++;
    }
    return $return_data;

If say you want to only return a single text of the first paragraph, and skips any image or embed codes, just remove the ‘else’ statement.

On the loop sometimes I due want to show more than just a single paragraph, when I have the <!--more--> tag on the post, so here is what I do on the loop :-

<?php 
    if($pos = strpos($post->post_content, '<!--more-->')) :
        the_content(__(''));
    else :
        echo get_the_content_first_paragraph();
    endif;
?>

There are probably easier ways of doing this and I’m just to dumb to see it. If you due know any share in on the comments.

I’ve also decided to adopt html5boilerplate, not entirely just most of the basic ideas and snippets from that project. I even keep the bright pink highlighting color, go ahead highlight my text. Since I love doing my CSS with Sass now, I use this little project on Github, HTML5-Boilerplate-with-Sass.

I spend a large amount of time arguing with myself while doing this theme. Should I use a light border to separate items, or just a big fat white-space. You can see which route I took.

Here are some snapshots of how this website looks previously:-

I’ve also decided to share the code. The theme code are on a public Github repo.

If there is not trending venue, use the form to jump to a certain location. List of trending venues are displayed once you are at a location where there are a lot of checkins.

Some technology and API used for this project are, Foursquare API, Google Map API v3, Google Map Utility Library MarkerClusterer. Codes are up on Github, if you want to have a look.

Does this thing have legs? probably not.

Secretly I have a crush on the Metro UI design that Microsoft is adopting on all of it’s new OS devices. Even though on the Wikipedia page it says that the Metro principles were use as early as Microsoft Encrata 95, but I think it was the Zune that Metro makes its first appearance. And now you can see the user interface on Windows Phone 7.

The thought process behind Metro is as if the Microsoft designer folks are saying, “Look at what Apple is doing, we do the opposite.”

Apple has rounded corners in their icons and stuff, Microsoft’s Metro have sharp edges. Apple’s iOS is about icons of apps, Microsoft’s Metro is about tiles.

Metro to me is more then just a theme you slap on an OS or software. It’s a design philosophy.

“Metro is our design language. We call it metro because it is modern and clean. It is fast and in motion. It’s about content and typography. And it’s entirely authentic.”

Some people says that they are annoyed with the whole lack of UI in Metro, but it is in fact the lack of ‘UI’ that I love. There are few core principles that defines the Microsoft Metro Language, and I’ll try to go through here pretending that I know a thing or two about design.

Content not chrome

It is always the case that content is something that lives inside a UI wrapper. In Metro, most of the time the content itself is the UI.

Take an example of a dialog box. A dialog box only needs a title and the content message. In most Operating System either Windows 7, Mac OS X or Ubuntu, their dialog box have the content in the content field and the title in the title field. There is a border there separates the title and the content. Both the title sits inside a window container. The window needs to have some border on each sides. To make the window look like it is in focus there is some drop shadow on each sides. See how complicated it is to have a dialog box?

In Metro usually the case is that a dialog box have title and content. No chrome, just content. No gradient, just flat colors. I like the fierce reduction of unnecessary elements that Metro subscribes to. In Metro, typography is UI and so does white-spaces.

Typography

The title fonts usually is a little bit bigger then the content. Metro plays heavily on typography. In Metro they celebrate typography. In Metro typography is not just fonts, it is the UI. Typography done right can be beautiful. Not only that it’s attractive, it is also functional because it telling you something, you are reading from it. The right balance of weight and positioning can create a visual hierarchy. Text is not just text, text is UI.

Motion

This is one principles that Metro play on well. An OS needs to be fast and responsive. The key word here is responsive, because a responsive UI can give the illusion that the OS is fast, even though it might not be as fast as one would like. In metro, motions plays an important role but it’s always the case of just enough motion and not too much motion. You would want the dialog box to slides into place and stays there. You wouldn’t what to chase after a dialog box now would you?

Conclusion

Those were just some of the core principles of Metro that I really like. Metro lets you focus on the primary task and lets you do a lot with very little. I also like the full bleed canvas where it is as if the application is one big piece of canvas and only a section that is related to what you want to do are in focus.

I like how in Metro is about presenting you with information that you need so you can glance through. Metro wants to give you what you need and stay out of the way.

Metro is currently taking shape on Windows 8. Based on what I’ve seen in the Developer Preview version of Windows 8, there is still a ‘desktop’ you can go to, I wish they would eliminate this all together. The whole ‘desktop’ and ‘window’ metaphor is so 90s.

This whole post sort of reads like a love letter to Metro, can you imagine that? A self proclaim Apple fan writing a love letter to something Microsoft related.