Many of you may be familiar with the uber text editor, BBEdit. I recently upgraded to the 8.0 version of this fine utility.
My verdict? Well, it’s pretty similar to 7.0. There are a few key new things that made it worth the upgrade price to me. The first is the document sidebar. Instead of having a few dozen windows open, you can have just one and switch between them. This is a big win for small screen users (like those of us with 12″ Powerbooks). It also highlights the current line, which seems minor, but is amazingly useful. Hunting down the cursor can be a real chore, so this is a real time-saver. It also lets you the system spell-checker (which I’ve become addicted to.
Unix buffs will also like the improved “bbedit” command (which lets you pipe text into it). Also very useful is the new “bbdiff” command, which lets you compare two files from the terminal with BBEdit. Cool!
There are other features which aren’t quite as important to me, but may be of interest to some. So check it out! You may find it’s worth the $49 upgrade fee.
For the first time in my life, I will not be going back to school at the end of the summer. My parents asked me if it felt weird. As of yet, no, it feels perfectly natural going to work every morning and come home every evening. Perhaps it’s too early to judge how I will feel, but I’ll say this: I’m feeling fine.
I won’t have to return to the world of academia, with its self-imposed sense of importance, lack of real world relevance, and absurd idealism. I can finally interact with other people in a real way. I’m not saying I hate school. I’ll probably start on a graduate degree sometime soon. It’s just that after 16+ years of education, every little bugaboo about its culture has turned into frustration. They become all you focus on. I’m sure the “real world” will be the same way after some time, but I’m hopeful that its downfalls will cause less friction with my personality.
Gone are the all night homework sessions. I can show up at 8, leave at 5, and not think about work again until I show up at 8 the next morning. It’s truly liberating to do something on the weekend without some kind of assignment (or senior thesis) hanging over your head.
