It's a new year and time to roll out a new site over at http://gregnewman.org. This is something I've been trying to get done for a long time now and just haven't been able to find the time or inspiration to get it done. I even failed at sitesprint twice in this endeavor.

Then came along Anton Peck with this bright idea to do a post per week for a year, hence Project 52. I couldn't resist. It's a doable goal in my opinion and apparently over 500 other people think so too.

hello!newman

One of the things I have wanted to do was write and post more of my personal artwork. I haven't done it in the past for many reasons but one that stands out for me is the fact that I didn't want to flood the developers with art and didn't want to flood the artists with code. So I wrote this engine dubbed `hello!newman` using Django to help segregate the content a little better and each journal has it's own feeds. hello!newman is up on github and will be an ongoing project for me as this site evolves. Please feel free to comment here or create a ticket on github if you find any issues. If you're using IE6 and you find an issue... bite me. I don't care.

So far, I'm pleased with the direction I'm going with the design. While I have a few details to work out and some more features to add it will serve its purpose nicely.

20seven.org

For those who don't already know me, I've been blogging at 20seven.org for many years and I decided it's time to archive that domain and go with a little personal branding. It's too much work to get all that data into a fresh app and do all the redirects so I'm archiving it. If you are subscribed to the feed over at 20seven.org, please update your feeds to the new site (below).

Feeds

• Combined Feed
• Art Feed
• Code Feed
• Photography Feed

As many already know, I live in org-mode and keep my org files in a private bitbucket repository for safe keeping. One thing I don't (or didn't) do is push those files to the repository on a regular basis. The other morning I ate my wheaties and gained enough super power to rectify the issue.

After two years or more I have finally been able to get my real name on twitter (gregnewman) and will be switching over to using that as my main twitter account. I will keep 20seven around as a pointer to gregnewman but please re-follow me there and I'll be working on re-following all my friends under that account.

The beginning of August, following my relocation to Charlotte, will kick off the Personal Site Sprint along with my friends Chris Harrison and Bryan Veloso. The sprint will end with a launch date of September 1st.

What this means is we will all be redesigning and documenting the process of our personal site refresh. I will be detailing the process from initial pencil sketches all the way through to final launch. I might even throw in some screencasts.

I am also going to take this opportunity to leave Movable Type in favor of Django. This is something I've wanted to do for a while and haven't had the time or energy to do.

Personal projects are a PITA so I'm hoping that doing the sprint with two other great designers will keep me motivated.

I spent last weekend finishing up a logo for a super secret project I can't go into yet at the client's request. I can share the logo in the meantime.

When the client gives me the green-light I'll come back and update the post with a link to the project.

I've been using Basecamp for years and have a love/hate relationship with it simply because it costs me money for clients that don't want to use it. However, I can't get rid of it because there are a few clients I have that need collaboration for designs. For coding projects I use various ticketing systems from Trac to Sifter and I won't get into that in this post.

During a current project Trac is being used for the backend parts but it falls apart on design collaboration. After a few late nights I'm thrilled with the progress of Django-Loupe for design collab.

Next out of the gate this week is the org-mode logo refresh. Well, actually it done last week but I'm only getting around to posting it now. As I mentioned in the last post, it's been hell-busy here.

Org-mode is an Emacs Mode for keeping notes, maintaining ToDo lists, doing project planning, and authoring with a fast and effective plain-text system. I live in org-mode daily and when it was announced that it is up for a Sourceforge Community award I freshened up the logo for Carsten Dominik. The original logo was by french illustrator
Christophe Bataillon.

The image shows the before and after of the logo. The site now has the new logo posted.

I finally got some time to work on my backlog of logos this week and they are starting to hit the streets. So if you're waiting on me to finish the commissioned logos, they are coming quickly! Sorry for delays, it's been hell-busy here.

First out the door is the new djangodose logo for they great guys of TWiD fame Eric Florenzano, Brian Rosner and Kevin Fricovsky. I believe they have announced they are recording this Sunday for those (including myself) who are anxious for the new show. I'm still working on the site design which will be finished just in time for the show release.

I took a break from Emacs this weekend to give the new version of BBEdit a spin. The first thing I noticed was that it doesn't have snippets (clippings are the accurate term) for Django. Personally, I use yasnippet in Emacs so I took an hour and converted the library I use to clippings for BBEdit in the hopes someone finds them useful.

I've been a long time OmniFocus user and am a daily (or habitual) emacs user so it only makes sense for me to dabble with org mode for a GTD system. After all, when I'm writing code, why not have my projects todo lists in the next window. So this morning I figured I'd give org mode a try. It's not polished like OmniFocus or Things but seriously; why does a todo list need satin pajamas? I'm not sure I'll stick with it but I at least need to give it a trial run for a week or two.

How I Roll
When I get an email from a client that needs attention I use the clipper that comes with OmniFocus (Clip-o-tron 3000) to create a new task with a link to the email embedded. I also like to send research urls from Safari for projects to my todo lists as notes. This helps keep me on top of things (if that's possible) as projects progress.