iPad Mini Retina

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iPad Mini Retina

I went out and bought an iPad Mini with Retina yesterday thanks to a new program at my company. They’ll buy me a new mobile device every 12 months in addition to the existing new laptop every 16 months program. I had originally planned on waiting (a long time) for the iPhone 6 but decided this was a better option.

It’s my first iPad and so far I’m pretty impressed with it, especially the display. The pixel density is quite impressive and makes for a great reading device. It makes my iPhone feel hilariously tiny and squished.

I do already have some complaints about it though:

  • iCloud: I’ve had an iPhone since launch day of the 4 and each time I upgraded or replaced it, it was just a matter of restoring the device from an iTunes or iCloud backup and it was exactly like the phone before it. Setting up the iPad however was nothing like that. Practically speaking it’s an entirely separate device from my iPhone. I had to set up all of my settings and apps from scratch. It would have been much nicer if it kept my app settings in sync between my two apps, at least at first. Or something. I don’t know. I just know it was a huge pain to get everything set back up.
  • Lack of universal apps: It was disappointing to discover just how many of my favorite apps were designed only for an iPhone. Thankfully a few of them (but not all) had separate apps designed just for iPads but come on developers, it’s nearly 2014. Get with the program.
  • Weight: It’s not heavy exactly but it’s not as light as I would like it to be either. If you’re holding it by one corner with your hand, it does make your hand tired after a bit. When I switch back to using my iPhone, it feels like I’m holding a feather.

Still, I’m not regretting getting one. It’ll be nice to have a device that I can more easily read stuff on and consume media with.

Portable PhpStorm

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I use PhpStorm to write all of my code for my job at Automattic. It’s an amazing IDE and has made me so much more productive.

However I am an outlier at my company in that I use two different computers rather than only a laptop — my powerful desktop with a big screen at home and my super portable ultrabook laptop when on the go. In order to keep my working environment identical on both machines, I install all of my work applications in portable mode. That is they store their configuration options in files alongside themselves rather than in my user directory or in the computer’s registry. This allows me to keep the applications stored on Dropbox which in turn keeps them synced between my two machines.

PhpStorm by default stores your configuration settings in files inside of your user directory. This is ideal for multi-user machines where each user should have separate settings. This however doesn’t apply to me. So how do you get PhpStorm to store those settings somewhere else?

After installing PhpStorm inside of your Dropbox directory (I have a “Programs” folder for these kinds of things), you need to go into the bin folder inside of PhpStorm’s directory and then open up the idea.properties configuration file in your favorite basic text editor such as Sublime Text or even just Notepad.

EDIT: You don’t even have to install it. If you take the direct download link and swap out .exe for .zip, you’ll get a ZIP file containing all of PhpStorm. You can then extract it to your Dropbox. I’m sure the process is something similar for Mac users.

At the top of the file you’ll find some commented out that have values with ${user.home}/.WebIde/ in them. You need to uncomment these lines and then replace ${user.home}/.WebIde/ with something like ${idea.home}/prefs/ which will instead store things inside of a “prefs” folder inside of your PhpStorm folder.

Lastly you should probably copy the contents of your old .WebIde folder (instructions to locate it can be found here) into the new location so that you don’t lose your existing settings.

Enjoy!

Spoils From Nike Employee Store Visit

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My stepmom was kind enough to get me a guest pass to the Nike employee store here in Portland at their world headquarters. Tons of cool stuff and all of it is about half price compared to normal retail prices. Awesome!

Nike

I picked up a pair of flexible trainer shoes for use with walking and stuff like that, a pair of normal shoes, two sweet jackets, and two shirts with a humorous message on them.