Pull it down and contribute back if you want to see this grow The README.txt that comes with it explains a bit about how it works.

But it doesn’t stop here. Next on the list is its companion Drupal module, of course! And maybe some other stuff as well, but that’s what I have planned so far.

After many months of anticipation, it’s here! There’s quite an interesting story behind this new design, too.

Around the end of summer last year, I asked my good friend Andrew Sepic over at Think Up! Design if he could help me create a better design for WizOneSolutions.com than the one you’ve seen for the last forever. He created what you see now. As time went by, in my spare I gradually put it together, implementing it as a Thematic child theme (thanks ThemeShaper), coding the CSS and ensuring it worked well in all modern browsers (sorry, IE 6). It’s such a relief to finally get this out of the way, and it’s a big step in terms of giving a real picture of what I can do. The old theme had the unfortunate effect of casting my programming skills in a mediocre light. I think this one does them some more justice

I’m not done yet, of course. I’ll keep improving the site, particularly the Portfolio area, so keep an eye out for more to come over the next few months.

Sincerely,
Kevin

Ironically, if you don’t visit the site before I post this message, it’ll mean nothing. So I’ll try to switch to the maintenance page.

Let’s break it down – oDesk offers providers that “fit any budget,” and from a freelancer’s point of view that sounds something like, “oDesk lets certain providers offer laughably low rates and get all the work.” Believe me, that’s what I thought. I didn’t think I stood a chance!

But I got to the point where I had to make some money or go back to working full-time, an unsettling thought, and for the provider, oDesk’s motto is, “Verified Work – Guaranteed Payment” for hourly jobs. And it’s true! Whenever I work on hourly jobs, about 11 days after the end of the work week, the money’s in my bank account. I’m in the US, and I can transfer it with EFT for free! This is big – when I take payment with PayPal, I get dinged every time, which I don’t like.

Obviously, from the above statement you can infer that I have successfully gotten a good amount of work and met some awesome clients through oDesk, and once I have the opportunity, I am considering working exclusively or almost-exclusively through oDesk. Anyone who says that all job sites are the same has got to try oDesk. And while you’re at it, if you’re a buyer who needs Drupal development, why not try me? (see Hire Me section to the right )

Again, the site is oDesk.

(Disclosure: If you sign up through either of the links in this post, I get a (much-appreciated) affiliate commission. But don’t worry – everything in this post is my real experience with oDesk.)

By the way, if you’re wondering why I don’t blog much, it’s because I’m busy working on client projects. Once some of those wrap, I’ll have time to improve the look and feel of everything. You should look me up on oDesk if you want to see my portfolio in another light. I am almost done with implementing my new site design, so you may see that at any time.

Nonetheless, contact me at any time!

I’ll write another post when I can. Until then, have a meaningful Easter.

Kevin

I have lots of stuff I could potentially share and that I run into all the time. I’ve been holding off on blogging too much here because I’m not sure if it would fit the page.

I see on other developer’s sites though that they often just combine it all up – portfolio, musings blog, and the works. But I don’t want the site to get too busy either.

Given that the problem of it being too busy is currently non-existent, I might just go this way, because I’m sure a lot of you developer-types reading this have the same questions I do, and when I find out stuff, it would be great to share.

Let me know what you think though, if you want. I’ll weigh in any comments I get.

Thanks,
Kevin

Just to let you know that, as I’m sure you must wonder upon seeing this site, a new theme is indeed coming. In fact, it’s already been designed and is currently being implemented.

So stay tuned…it’ll be quite nice to look at.

Kevin

It answers the question, “Are you tired of hitting Ctrl-W to move around windows?” Then do I have the solution for you!

Pop these guys into your vimrc file:

nnoremap <S-C-h> <C-W>h
nnoremap <S-C-j> <C-W>j
nnoremap <S-C-k> <C-W>k
nnoremap <S-C-l> <C-W>l

Save it and reload your files (or source it into one). Voilà! Now you can enjoy single-press window moving by holding down shift and control and using the movement keys (hjkl). You’ll need more maps if you want to use the arrow keys, but in the time it takes you to get to those, you may as well just press Ctrl + W and a movement key!

Speaking of sticking to the home row as much as possible, don’t forget that you can use Ctrl + [ instead of Esc to return to normal mode.

Enjoy!

Kevin

When I switched to using Ubuntu for my day-to-day local testing (because I need reliable Xdebug, and Windows Vista’s Apache-PHP module just wasn’t cutting it as far as Xdebug stability goes), I was worried I wouldn’t have a good merging tool to go along with it. VIM’s been working great as an IDE (just when I was about to go back to my slower XP image, too!), but I was wondering about this vimdiff thing I’d heard about. I figured today that, since a couple conflicts came up in my Bazaar merge, I’d give vimdiff a whirl.

I ran it like this:

vimdiff file1 file2

and VIM appeared, nicely split into two panes and with all the changes highlighted – just like WinMerge! This was cool so far.

Then I had to figure out how to actually, you know, merge the changes. So I typed :help vimdiff and got the help file.

I scrolled through, and picked up the only 3-4 commands I will probably ever need. And here they are for you. Note that these assume you’re just diffing two files…which is all I’ve ever done, so you probably are…and if not, you’re probably smarter than me anyway. And they’re all used in VIM’s normal mode (the one it starts in, unless you’re a Creamer) unless otherwise mentioned.

VIMDIFF COMMAND #1 – JUMP TO NEXT CHANGE

]c – Jump to the next difference. Equivalent to alt + down in WinMerge.

VIMDIFF COMMAND #2 – JUMP TO PREVIOUS CHANGE

[c – Jump to the previous difference. Equivalent to alt + up in WinMerge.

VIMDIFF COMMAND #3 – MERGE LEFT

do – Copy the current difference’s text from the file on the right to the file on the left. Equivalent to alt + left in WinMerge. (The VIM help said it’s do and not dg because dg is too close to dgg – a smart move on their part, as I enjoy not deleting to the beginning of my buffer. But if you ever wanna do that, hey, now you know how.)

VIMDIFF COMMAND #4 – MERGE RIGHT

dp – Copy the current difference’s text from the file on the left to the file on the right. Equivalent to alt + right in WinMerge.

BONUS VIMDIFF COMMAND – UPDATE THE DIFF DISPLAY

Occasionally, as you’re happily merging away, your vimdiff display may get out of whack for some reason. VIM does a pretty good job of preventing it (hasn’t happened to me yet), but if you want to make sure you’re all good, just type :diffupdate. Then continue merging. (If you’ve been reading the WinMerge shortcut mapping, this one’s equivalent to good ol’ F5.)

Bazaar’s bizarre merge markers finally kinda made sense after merging with vimdiff!

Thanks VIM people. Maybe I will be donating to Uganda soon

I hope this article was useful. If you’ve got any extra tips, post them in the comments!

And hey, if you’re merging on Windows, WinMerge stands as an awesome tool: http://winmerge.org.

Talk to you soon, and happy merging.

1. Start ConnectBot on the G1.
2. Connect to the server.
3. cd to the directory containing the file I wanted to edit.
4. Type vim <name of file>
5. Edit as usual (remembering that ESC is two trackball presses…that one got me at first)
6. Save file
7. Check results on Browser, if desired
8. Rejoice

Pretty easy! Using an editor with windows, tabs, and syntax coloring on a phone gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Happy Vimming,
Kevin