In my old job I worked in a very ordinary office, it was open space, with a dark green carpet, beige desks with green chairs too and everyone wore a suit and tie every day looking uncomfortable.

The office didn’t have anything that stood out, the view outside was great but you couldn’t differentiate one room from another except for the people in it (and their personal items) .

It was pretty boring and without surprise, creativity didn’t have a strong presence. Some may say “it wasn’t needed, anyway.” but the thing is, your working environment has a direct influence on your state of mood, your happiness and your productivity. Check for example, Carson’s ideas for their office.

Fortunately there are a lot of places in Lisbon to get inspired, the sun is most of the time shiny with nice weather, there’s outdoor cafes, some parks, nice museums (with free collections to watch) and the riverside is very nice to walk.

Sometimes the best way to get an idea or solve a problem is just getting out of the office for a while and comeback fresh.

I use TextMate on a daily usage, it’s the most useful program I have on my Mac and it simplified alot my development work.

At the same time, I also use SVN for version-control (but i’m looking at GIT…) so I was very happy to find a plugin for TextMate that enabled me to visually know which files were changed, waiting to be commited, in conflict, etc.

It reminds me of TortoiseSVN for Windows (a great tool, btw), so if you use Textmate and SVN I recommend you take a look at SVNMate.

Note: There’s also a built-in svn bundle for Textmate, simply use ctrl+shift+a on a file or folder to access a few basic SVN commands.

CD Projekt (a Poland based games publisher) announced last week his plans for a new games-on demand web based platform.

With a fantastic lineup of classic games (Fallout, Fallout 2, MDK, Sacrifice) from the 90’s, GOG.com (Good Old Games) promisses to change the current digital games distribution by NOT including DRM in the games.

That means after you pay for a game, you will be able to play in which computer you desire and download the game how many times you which, brilliant. The games will sell from $5.99 to $9.99 and will be compatible with Windows XP and Vista. 

It’s nice to see business models on the web abandoning the DRM stigma. 

I wish the best of luck for this program and wish more publishers jump on the wagon (c’mon, I want to see the classic Lucasart and Bioware games). 

I’m having alot of fun at OFFF Lisbon, it’s like someone dropped a creativity bomb in Lisbon. :)

I’ve also taken some photos from the Festival which are available at Flickr, so take a look if you’re interested.

In the meantime, here’s some web development resources for this weekend.

Confused about messing with .htaccess files stored on your server? Thankfully, someone invented this handy .htaccess Editor webapp that simplifies your work.

An analysis and comparative on the various CSS Frameworks available today, my favourite is BluePrint but take a look at what satisfies your needs.

LifeHacker published some tips on Blogging, very good info on helping you blog , I should problably take the time to follow them. :)

If you’re in Lisbon enjoy the rest of the weekend, there’s alot of nice places to visit.

A List Apart - a great source for information regarding web development and design - wrote 2 articles a while back talking about Ruby on Rails.

The articles are a sort of introduction and description of the pros and cons of Ruby on Rails, it’s a good reading:
Getting Started with Ruby on Rails
Creating More Using Less Effort with Ruby on Rails

It’s also worth mentioning an interview that Akita did Hongli Lai and Ninh Bui, from Phusion -