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Pixel Union’s Beautiful Shopify Themes

pixel union - beautiful themes

pixel union“Pixel Union” is synonymous with “beautiful Tumblr themes”. Go take a look at their site and try out the demos of themes like Sticks and Stones with its hand-drawn charm, the retro-urban New Yorker theme or the simple but powerful grid of the Insider theme. Pixel Union themes turn Tumblrs into gorgeous sites that make you want to visit over and over again.

That same gorgeousness that goes into Pixel Union’s Tumblr themes can now go into your Shopify shop. Starting today, you can get your hands on Pixel Union’s new Shopify Themes and turn your shop into a place that customers will want to visit over and over again.

You’ll find the same magic that goes into Pixel Union’s Tumblr themes in their new Shopify themes: Carleton, Jitensha, Technophile and Vintage. They all come with a boatload of features:

  • The same beauty and craftsmanship that goes into Pixel Union’s Tumblr themes, for both your shop’s catalogs as well as its blogs
  • Lots of customizability to make the theme fit your shop: logo, fonts and colors
  • Ties to the big social media services so you can harness word-of-mouth for your shop
  • MailChimp integration so it’s simple to set up an email newsletter campaign to reach out to your customers
  • Pixel Union’s speedy, expert and personalized support

Here’s a closer look at Pixel Union’s Shopify themes…

Carleton Classic and Modern

The Carleton theme is reminiscent of those thick, high-end clothing catalogs and comes packaged with two similar but distinct “flavors”. First, there’s the traditional, clean Classic:

carleton classic theme

Carleton Classic: See its page in the Shopify Theme Store | View the demo

…and there’s the contemporary, bold Modern:

carleton modern theme

Carleton Modern: See its page in the Shopify Theme Store | View the demo

Jitensha

Jitensha takes its inspiration from Japanese culture: the word means “bicycle” in Japanese, and the theme takes its design cues from Japanese minimalism.

jitensha theme

Jitensha: See its page in the Shopify Theme Store | View the demo

Technophile Dark and Light

If your shop is about gadgets and gear, you should check out Technophile. It pays homage to Apple’s legendary interface design and comes packaged with two styles. There’s Dark…

technophile dark theme

Technophile Dark: See its page in the Shopify Theme Store | View the demo

…and if you prefer the white iPhone, there’s the Light style:

technophile light theme

Technophile Light: See its page in the Shopify Theme Store | View the demo

Vintage Theme

If you have a shop that specializes in hand-made, artisanal products, you should check out Vintage Theme, with its letterpress-on-high-grade-paper look and boutique “feel”.

vintage theme

Vintage: See its page in the Shopify Theme store | View the demo

See Pixel Union’s Themes and More at the Theme Store!

theme store pixel union

Shopify gives you lots of options. If you’ve got the time and know-how, you can create a theme that’s your very own. You can also find the right “look and feel” your shop with a free or paid theme at the Theme Store, whether it’s one created by Pixel Union or any other of the wide range created by shopowners and designers.

We’re very happy to welcome Pixel Union to the Theme Store, and we think you’ll love their themes!

This article also appears in the Shopify Blog.

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The First “Grand Theft Auto V” Trailer

The first trailer for Grand Theft Auto V was released today at noon. You’re not going to find out much about the game from it, other than:

  • It takes place in what seems to be present-day “Los Santos”, the analogue for Los Angeles in the world of Grand Theft Auto. Los Santos is one of the three cities in the sprawling Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
  • The plot seems to involve a guy trying to start a new life in a new city, not unlike Grand Theft Auto IV’s Niko Bellic or Grand Theft Auto: Vice City’s Tommy Vercetti. I think it’s safe to assume that his plans get waylaid and through a series of bizarre circumstances and friends and associates with poor life-planning skills (no shortage of such types in the world of GTA), our hero lands himself in a whole world of trouble. It would also be safe to assume that he gets out of said trouble by causing a lot of mayhem.
  • The voice-over in the trailer sounds a helluva lot like Ray Liotta, who played Tommy in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

As with most of Rockstar’s trailers, this one’s all cinematics and mise en scene. There’s no indication of what the gameplay is like, whether you’re playing the story or in multiplayer mode. There’s also no indication of what platforms it’s coming out for (although it’s safe to assume that Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 will be supported, with a PC version to follow later) nor when the game will be released (I assume sometime in 2012).

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Free for a Limited Time: Scott Berkun’s New Book “Mindfire” in Ebook Formats

Cover of "Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds" by Scott Berkun

Until Thursday, November 3rd at around 4 p.m. Eastern, Scott Berkun’s book, Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds, will be available in various ebook formats (PDF, ePub, mobi) for free-as-in-beer. All he asks for in exchange is that you join his mailing list, which sends out a single email each month containing his best posts. I think that’s a fair deal.

Mindfire is a collection of Berkun’s essays and articles, all of which you can find online on his site or other places. If you’ve never read his work before – I would also recommend Confessions of a Public Speaker, especially if you have to do presentations or speak in front of an audience – it’s a great introduction to his writing; if you’re familair with his stuff, it’s many of his gems gathered into one place.

Here’s the Mindfire’s table of contents, which should give you an idea of what’s in it:

Warning
Preface

Part 1: Gasoline
1. The cult of busy
2. Wants vs. Beliefs
3. How to be a free thinker
4. How to detect bullshit
5. Should you be Popular or Good?
6. There are two kinds of people: complexifiers and simplifiers
7. Are you indifferent?
8. Does transparency matter?
9. How I found my passion
10. How to be passionate

Part 2: Sparks
11. On God and Integrity
12. Hating vs. Loving
13. The surprise inspiration of death bonus: Your quota of worry and how to shrink it
14. How to make a difference
15. Why you must lead or follow
16. Why the world is a mess: a theory
17. The size of ideas
18. Book Smarts vs. Street Smarts
19. Why does faith matter?
20. Can you be great, with grace?

Part 3: Fire
21. How to give and receive criticism
22. How to learn from your mistakes
23. How to keep your mouth shut
24. Creative thinking hacks
25. Dr. Seuss and wicked constraints
26. Why smart people defend bad ideas
27. Why you are not an artist
28. How to convince anyone of anything
29. Attention and Sex
30. A strawman for everything

Epilogue
How to Help This Book in 60 Seconds
Notes and References on the Essays
Acknowledgements
Index
Colophon

If Mindfire sounds interesting to you, this is your chance to get it for free – just download it before the deadline passes!

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

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1% Blogger Attacks 99% Blogger

Screenshot of Daring Fireball article "The Type of Companies That Publish Future Concept Videos"

Just kidding about the title – all I have to say is “Well played, Mr. Gruber, well played.” That, and sorry about misspelling your name!

Alexa.com graph showing Daring Fireball's "1%" following versus Global Nerdy's "99%" following.

Stats courtesy of Alexa.com. Looks just like the 1% / 99% wage charts!

And John: keep sending people over here to Global Nerdy! #OccupyMyAdSenseRevenue!

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November is PragProWriMo (Pragmatic Programmer Writing Month)!

november prag pro wri mo

It’s the first of November, 2011, the start of Pragmatic Programmer Writing Month, a.k.a. PragProWriMo!

nanowrimo crest

The idea for PragProWriMo comes from NaNoWriMo, which is short for National Novel Writing Month. Started in 1999, it’s an annual creative writing project in which participants try to write a 50,000-word novel during the month of November. According to Wikipedia, NaNoWriMo started modestly with 21 people working towards writing a novel in a month, but grew to 200,000 participants writing a total of nearly 3 billion words in 2010.

Ten years after the first NaNoWriMo came the first PragProWriMo, which was proposed in a blog entry written by Daniel Sternberg in the Pragmatic Programmers’ old blog, Pragmatic Life. In the blog entry, he wrote:

It’s time to write that book you’ve always wanted to write.

We’ll start together on November first and in thirty days or less you’ll know if you are meant to write a book or not. Your commitment is to sit down every day and write pages. They don’t have to be good pages—they won’t be great pages—you’ll have plenty of time to fix them later. Keep writing.

Less than a month to find out if you can do something you’ve always wanted to try. Such a deal.

I’m not saying you will finish the book in thirty days nor that what you write will be worth publishing. I’m saying that by December first you’ll know.

pile of papersYou’ll have a pile of pages or you won’t.

On one hand, if you don’t, then you are one of the many people who wants to have written a book but doesn’t want to write a book. There’s nothing wrong with that. In a month you’ll know if that describes you or not.

On the other hand, you might find that you love writing. You’ve got something to say and you love the hard work it takes to craft words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into passages that people want to read. Then you are meant to write a book. You won’t be able to stop. You still might not be able to publish your book, but that doesn’t keep you from being an author who has written a book.

In between those two hands are the vast majority of us. We write when the planets align. We have blogs but weeks or months might pass between our posts. We can participate in this month of writing by posting a solid blog entry every day for the month of November. Then we might go back to the once in a while or we might continue.

If you’re a developer and have been looking for a way to stretch yourself, improve your communications skills and expand your career opportunities, PragProWriMo offers a structure by which you can do so:

  • You can take the pragmatic approach and write a blog post every day in November. Although it’s simpler than writing an entire book on some aspect of programming or technology or writing a 50,000-word novel in a month, it’s still an undertaking that calls for a lot of work. The time and effort involved in daily blogging is considerable; in my own experience, it requires about an hour per post, longer if it includes code or step-by-step tech walkthroughs.
  • You can write a book on some aspect of programming or technology during the month of November. A novel-sized technical book might be too tall an order for a month’s worth of writing, but a smaller book with a limited scope – say, an introduction to metaprogramming in your favorite dynamic language, a collection of tips and tricks for Git or a gudie to getting the most out of your Shopify shop – would be within the realm of possibility.

writing like the wind

Creative Commons photo by Anne-Lise Heinrichs. Click the photo to see the original.

To help you on your way, the Pragmatic Life blog offered a set of articles on writing in the month of November 2009:

During the month of November, I’ll post articles about writing. Give it a try, even if you only write a blog article or two – you might find that it pays off in ways that you never even imagined.

It’s November 1st: get writing!

This article also appears in the Shopify Technology Blog.

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RAM: Still the Best Upgrade Bang for the Buck

Standard issue Shopify gear: MacBook Pro 15", Apple 27" display, Apple wireless keyboard, Apple Magic Mouse, Aeron chair

One of the nice things about working at Shopify is the gear you get to work with. The standard issue machine for most employees – most of us are developers and designers – is a 15” MacBook Pro. Combined with the other goodies that Shopify developers get: Mac LCD display, Magic Mouse, keyboard and Aeron chair, it’s a great web development setup.

Until recently, most of the developers were working on machines with the stock 4GB RAM. While an out-of-the-box MacBook Pro is more than enough to support a lot of coding, development and testing are resource-hungry activities. With our developers taking on increasingly ambitious projects and the prices of 8GB SODIMMs falling, we saw fit to double the developers’ RAM. They seemed pretty happy about it.

As the Platform Evangelist, I don’t write any production code; any coding I do is for examples, demos and tutorials. The stock 4GB RAM is more than enough for those coding needs, but my other work uses resource-hungry software. Although I generally prefer Mac software, I have yet to find a tool  that can beat Windows Live Writer, which I run on Windows under Parallels.

Evenly sharing 4GB of RAM between MacOS 10.7 and Windows 7 yields a worst-of-both-worlds on both sides. I eventually went with assigning 3GB to MacOS and the remainder to Windows. While workable, it’s still pokey, especially on the Windows side.

This sluggishness, coupled with my starting work on videos, meant that it was time for an upgrade.

2 packs of Patriot RAM 4GB SODIMMs

At the time of this writing, the price of 16GB of laptop RAM is still pretty steep: most vendors are asking for $700 for a pair of 8GB SODIMMs on average. The less bleeding-edge configuration of half the size — two 4GB SODIMMs — is much, much cheaper: about one-tenth the price of 16GB.

For the early-2011 15” MacBook Pro, the RAM you want for 8GB is 2 204-pin 1333Mhz 4GB DDR3 SODIMMs. I picked up the two SODIMMs pictured above at a nearby Tiger Direct outlet for CDN$68.

Replacing the RAM on the current-model MacBook Pro is pretty easy. The only tool you need is a PH00-sized Phillips screwdriver to remove the 10 screws that hold the base of the MacBook Pro. Popping out the old SODIMMs and replacing them is pretty simple, as the video below shows:

After installing the RAM and replacing the bottom cover, I fired up the MacBook, which booted without a hitch. A quick check of “About This Mac…” under the Apple menu confirmed that the RAM upgrade went successfully:

"About this Mac" window displaying 8GB 1333MHz DDR RAM

Before I replaced the RAM, I ran the trial edition of Geekbench on my MacBook Pro and got this report:

Benchmark for MacBook before RAM upgrade: Geekbench score - 9885

Here are the Geekbench scores for the old configuration:

  • Total Geekbench score: 9885
    • Integer benchmark: 8314
    • Floating point benchmark: 15175
    • Memory benchmark: 5691
    • Stream benchmark: 5260

With the new RAM, Geekbench reported some slightly better scores:

"Benchmark for MacBook before RAM upgrade": Geekbench score 10014

  • Total Geekbench score: 10014
    • Integer benchmark: 8409
    • Floating point benchmark: 15225
    • Memory benchmark: 5926
    • Stream benchmark: 5576

On the MacOS side, things seem a little snappier, especially when switching apps. The difference in performance in Windows under Parallels with the extra RAM is like night and day. I changed the RAM allotment in Parallels so that Windows uses 4GB of RAM and ran the Windows Experience Index test. Here are the results:

Screenshot of Windows Experience window for Windows under Parallels - Base score 5.4

  • Windows Experience Index base score: 5.4
    • Processor: 5.4
    • Memory: 7.3
    • Graphics: 5.9
    • Gaming graphics: 5.9
    • Primary hard disk: 6.4

Dell Latitude E6500 laptop

I decided to compare the performance of Windows 7 under Parallels to the same version and edition of Windows 7 running on my fastest PC, a Dell Latitude E6500 with 8GB RAM (a fabulous parting gift from my old employer). Here are its Windows Experience Index results:

Screenshot of Windows Experience window for Windows on the Dell E6500 - Base score 4.2

  • Windows Experience Index base score: 4.2
    • Processor: 6.4
    • Memory: 6.4
    • Graphics: 4.2
    • Gaming graphics: 4.4
    • Primary hard disk: 5.9

With the new RAM, it’s like having a brand new machine. In fact, with Windows running snappily on the Mac – so much faster than it did before – it’s like having two brand new machines.

This article also appears in the Shopify Technology Blog.

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Dennis Ritchie Day

"October 30, 2011: Dennis Ritchie Day": Old photo of Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thomson working on a DEC PDP computer

Inspired by California Governor Edmund Brown’s declaration that October 16th would be Steve Jobs day, Tim O’Reilly wrote in O’Reilly Radar:

I don’t have the convening power of a Governor Brown, but for those of us around the world who care, I hereby declare this Sunday, October 30 to be Dennis Ritchie Day! Let’s remember the contributions of this computing pioneer.

Photo of Dennis Ritchie

For C and Unix, as well as all the goodies that came forth from their creation – from the concept of platform-independent programming languages and operating systems to the internet to the platforms we use today at Shopify (we develop on the Mac, deploy to Linux and procrastinate on our iPhones, iPad and Androids) to “Hello, World!”, we’re taking this day to pay homage to Dennis Ritchie. As like to say: “Mr. Ritchie, I salute you with a filet mignon on a flaming sword!”

Cover of the O'Reilly book "Practical C Programming"

The folks at O’Reilly are also marking Ritchie’s passing with a half-price sale on sale on C, C++, Linux and Unix ebooks and videos for one day only. If you’ve been meaning to snag some C or Unix books, this is your chance to get a discount – but today only!

This article also appears in the Shopify Technology Blog.