So I've been a little quiet lately because things have been crazy insane at work and we just went on a week-long trip to Costa Rica.

This is what vacation looks like.

We had an awesome time! We did loads of fun stuff like hiking through the rain forest, hanging out at volcanoes, horse back riding, river rafting, hangin at the hot springs, etc., etc. My lady took some lovely photos—check out the Flickr set so see all of the shenanigans.

Things are still going to be crazy at work for a bit, but I'm going to start building up a fun snippet library on this site and I want to get it started in one of my next few posts. I've got a few cool MooTools Javascript classes that I've had in my pocket for a while and found some good repeat use for. So keep your eyes peeled nerds, and I will not let you down...

If you hang out with me for a good 5 minutes or so, chances are I will mention Chipotle. It's delicious. You either love it or hate it, but I think their burritos are awesome, especially being a chain. I realize they're not authentic Mexican food, but delicious has no nationality my friend. On to my point...

I tend to frequent the joint with the guys at Cuban Council or I'll meet up with my lovely wife, Ashley. On one such occasion, I was filling up my soda cup and decided I'd put both mine and my lady's business cards in the 'Lunch on us' drawing pot next to the soda machine, since the cards were so conveniently located in my wallet. That was several weeks ago.

So today, I'm working from home, and I get a phone call from my lady and she says, "You'lll never guess who I just got off the phone with—Chipotle!!". I had to fight not to pee myself—turns out we won 5 free burritos! Woohoo! Now I realize it's just burritos, but it's my favorite burritos, and they're FREE, so I'm captain insane-o excited! I think anything being free and actually desired on any level is a rad-awesome rare thing. So it is the purpose of this post to share my joy with you all. Tomorrow me and the boys are meeting up with the lady to eat some delicious burritos for lunch. Cheers to you, and keep those business cards a-flowin...

My good pal Colby, of Jolby fame (that's Josh + Colby = Jolby) and I are pretty good about sharing music and such (he's also much hipper with the kids than I am and teaches me the street lingo, such as the word 'taint') and he recently got me into Minus the Bear's newest release, Planet of Ice and it's rockin my world. It's one of those albums where you go to sleep and then the next morning you wake up and realize one of the songs played through your head the whole night and then you can't even be functional until you listen to that very song. 15 times. You know what I mean? Check my recent songs over there on the left, chances are they'll be in there.

It's a really great album, nice and rockin' yet relatively mellow in contrast with some of the crazy hardcore stuff I listen to. There's lots of nice, atmospheric guitar riffs and I think the drummer is fantastic—they complement each other well. And then there's the song, 'White Mystery' which is basically like indie rock Barry White. Wanna get romantic with your lady, emo kids? Put this song on repeat, turn the lights down low and go to town. That's much better than Colby's prescription of speed metal...

So begins my first step into blog nerd-dom. For my very first web development topic, I'd like to discuss what I believe to be is the ideal web development environment. I started learning web design on my own about 8 years ago, starting in Dreamweaver 4 and since then, my work environments have changed a number of times, usually depending on new technology and the continued growth of my learning in the field. Once I started at Cuban Council, I was already at a pretty good place, but the guys over here helped me to step it up to a level of comfort and efficiency that I've never had before. If you've ever struggled with your development environment, I hope my example might help you out...

Mac 4 Lyfe

First of all, I develop on a Mac. The Mac operating system comes with a lot of great technologies already built in for web development, making getting off the ground that much easier. I could go on about the countless advantages of using a Mac, but I'll keep it simple for now—it rules.

Sleep at night with Subversion

The first technology I'll discuss is Subversion. Subversion, if you're not familiar with it, is version control software. It is a must-have if you are working on projects with a team of people, and it's even great for a single developer because it can serve as a step-by-step back up of your work. I've gotten to the point where using Subversion has become my security blanket—if I'm not committing every half hour (or more) I start getting a little paranoid. Even as I'm typing this blog, I'm wishing there were a commit button somewhere. (Note to self: add svn commit functionality to blog editor) I also have nerd nightmares of people breaking into my home at night and stealing my laptop knowing that I decided to hold off on committing my work to the remote repository until morning.

Starting with Subversion, however, is not simple—or at least it wasn't for me. I remember first trying to wrap my brain around the concepts of Subversion and it can really blow your mind. And it's one of those things you really have to understand and use correctly without getting into lots and lots of trouble. When I first started at Cuban Council, one of my first projects was refactoring a website. It was the first time I had been required to use Subversion, so, being the inexperienced user that I was, I decided I would develop the entire site, and then do a commit at the end. Very bad choice. If you're using Subversion, commit as often as possible! I ended up having problems with my commit, it gave me problems with some directories or something—yadda, yadda, yadda, basically I ended up using the svn delete --force flag in an unexpected way and deleting about 90% of my work. And no, I couldn't just recover it from the trash can. And yes, I realize (now) that anything with "force" and "delete" in the same command should be handled with caution. With great power comes great responsibility my friends, go forth and commit.

Give FTP the finger with SpringLoops

One of the small hurdles of Subversion is that, in good practice, you are keeping your development code in a completely separate location from your live code. So if you make any changes, you need to: commit, export your code from the repository, and then pick out each and every file that you made changes to and FTP it. F that. We recently started using SpringLoops and it's friggin amazing. They are a Subversion repository hosting service, but they have one amazing feature that makes them rock: Deploy. Basically for every project you host in your account, you can add X amount of deployment servers (depending on what level you pay for), so you stick in your FTP login and you've got yourself a deployment server. It then has an interface where you can select which server you want, which revision number you want to deploy, click deploy, and bam! Your server is updated! The great part is that it figures out which files have been added, modified, or deleted from the existing state of your server and the deployment only concerns itself with those files. They offer a free version of the service but you only get 10MB and a limited amount of deployments per day. The next step up is $9 per month, which is enough to keep me from using it on a personal basis. On to figuring out how they did it and bringing it to my desktop!

MAMP: Web server in a box

I used to install all of my server software like PHP, MySQL, etc., by compiling from source, which was great to learn the CLI but it's the future baby, and we don't have to do it anymore (at least locally). MAMP runs just like any other application and has all of that stuff ready to go. It's great because it's almost all-inclusive but remains flexible, extensible, and customizable. You can activate and deactivate Apache modules and you can even switch between PHP 4 and 5. I recently tried to experiment with Django in it and could not get it to work, but there are folks who have. With web technologies always changing, it's much easier to update a single application than upgrading your various installations.

FTP with Transmit

Although I gave it the finger earlier, FTP is still necessary for the job. It is pretty simple, so I'm not too picky, but Transmit has a very nice, intuitive interface and is simple to work with. Probably the coolest part of Transmit is being able to modify files directly from a remote server. When you're connected, select a file, hit Cmd+J, modify and save the file and it's updated to the server. Sweet.

Rule the (nerd) earth with TextMate

I use TextMate for code editing and it never stops blowing me away! For all of the useful goodies this program is chock full of, you'd think it would chug along, but it runs great. There are tons of nice, intuitive keyboard shortcuts and with the use of Bundles, "code completion" is evolved to a whole new level. There are tons of built-in Bundles that include key combination or tab-triggered code snippets, commands, etc. that make your coding life a breeze, and the great thing is that you can make your own Bundles too! I've made my own for simple stuff like todo notes, etc. The more I explore TextMate, the more easter eggs I find, and the more it rules.

The achilles heel: the MySQL GUI

That's right. If web development were a Trojan War, you would just have to slice me in the MySQL GUI and I would be down for the count. I've been using a combination of CocoaMySQL and Navicat. They make a cute couple, I have to admit, but using 2 apps for one purpose is a little sucky. They both have some great features and they both have their shortcomings. Navicat has a great Data/Structure synchronization tool and a nice, safe table designer that doesn't apply your changes until you click 'Save'. But it hangs and crashes a lot and importing and exporting is not as simple as it is with CocoaMySQL. CocoaMySQL makes it really easy to export exactly what you want, table by table, with data or not. Nerd pet peeve: It include the table's AUTO_INCREMENT value even if you tell it not to export it's data—easily solved, however, with a simple regex search-and-replace in TextMate. And it's also open source so it's development seems to come along slowly. I've also tried SQLGrinder, SQLEditor, and the MySQL Administrator and Query Browser apps, none of which are quite up to far in my opinion. I've actually considered learning a software development language just so I can take a stab at doing it right.

So that's it! I hope I've helped shine some light on some soft spots for some of you, and if anyone knows any solutions for my achilles heel, or has any other suggestions, I've love to hear em.

Yet again, my timing has come into question. I know, 2007 was like a year ago, but one of the reasons I wanted to make this blog is to make a top 10 album list for 2007! "That sounds a little crazy Chris", I hear you saying, but I love music and 2007 was probably the best year for new music I have yet to experience. So, without further ado, here is my list:

1. A Wilhelm Scream - Career Suicide
   This band rocks! Each and every one of their records gets even better and this one is harder hitting than ever. It's an awesome punk record and the musicianship of the band is incredible. Fun fact: My high school band, One More Day, played with these guys, long, long ago when they were called "Smackin' Isaiah". Well, I thought it was cool...
2. Poison the Well - Versions
   These guys are my favorite hardcore band of all time and their new record got a lot of listens. I will say, I think their previous release, You Come Before You, was their best to date, but they still manage to grow their sound and keep things original within the genre.
3. Every Time I Die - The Big Dirty
   Another awesome hardcore album, the production quality of this record was fantastic, hence the rocking is even harder than you might normally expect. Fun fact: This record scares Phil. I try to avoid playing this crazy stuff in the office, but when it does he asks me if I need a hug.
4. This is a Standoff - Be Excited
   These guys are a super fast, pretty technical punk band and this record won't let you sit still. They came from the ashes of the band Belvedere, and they stepped it way up with this one.
5. The Receiving End of Sirens - The Earth Sings Mi Fa Mi
   At the first few listens I thought this album was lame and was kind of disappointed with the direction the band was headed in. But somehow, into 2008, I started listening to it every day (sometimes several times) and it turns out it rules. They have a really interesting "post hardcore" sound and I find a good deal of the lyrics appealing (which is quite rare, I'm usually just focused on the rockin).
6. José González - In Our Nature
   This is a lot more mellow than most of the other stuff on my list, which I think is why I like it so much. This is a really nice record with an almost spanish guitar feel to it—but not. His intricate guitar playing and overall song writing keep this record very interesting.
7. Thrice - The Alchemy Index Vols. I & II: Fire & Water
   I've always loved Thrice albums and they've always been great about pushing themselves and growing musically with every release. I think 2007 was the year of the concept album, but I remember hearing about the idea for this—a four-volume earth, wind, fire, and water album—quite a while before it actually came out. The music is varied, unique, awesome, and makes me itch for the release of the remaining 2 volumes.
8. Silverchair - Young Modern
   Remember these guys? I got into them when they first got together with Frogstomp. I followed them for a few years and forgot about them. I stumbled upon this release in which they completely reinvented their sound into a very unique rock style which I found to be quite rad.
9. Dustin Kensrue - Please Come Home
   This is a fantastic record and not quite what you would expect from the singer of Thrice, but it just goes to show you that his influences and interests are all over, which is probably why he makes such a great musician. This is a great acoustic, folky kind of record with a rockin edge to it. Fun fact: I performed the song 'Pistol' from this record for my wife at our wedding last year with my pals Josh, Kurt, Nico, and my awesome (new) father Jim.
10. Kanye West - Graduation
    I've never been a rap/hip hop guy at all—well except when I was 9, I used to buy all the Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre stuff I could get a hold of without the 'Parental Advisory' sticker on them—but since then, nothing of the sort. Kanye is a cocky bastard but this album caught me by surprise and it's pretty awesome. Fun fact: Just this last weekend, we were listening to 'Stronger' in the car. Upon hitting a stop light, I did the robot and my wife went into an in-car-seat booty-bounce dance. Thanks Kanye.

And there we have it. And, like I said, this was a great year for music, so here's a few honorable mentions:

• Foo Fighters - Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace
• Bayside - The Walking Wounded
• Radiohead - In Rainbows
• Chasing Victory - Fiends
• Patton Oswalt - Werewolves & Lollipops (not music, but awesome nonetheless)
• Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank
• Boys Night Out - S/T

Yea, it was tough to wear down. So officially this is now the top 17 albums of 2007. Thanks for joining me while I got this out of my system. If you can remember all the way back then, let me know what your top 10-17 were for last year. Maybe even predictions for next year, oooh...