Over the years I have grown detached from television. Rarely do I view it. For the most part I watch shows that I enjoy on Hulu, but there are some shows that just beg to be shown on a large screen with the maximum quality possible. One of the shows that I am referring to is a show that I have enjoyed since its inception. That show is Burn Notice. This television show staring Jeffrey Donovan, Gabrielle Anwar, Bruce Campbell and Sharon Gless is an amazing journey into the life of a “burned” agent known as Michael Westen trying to recover his life after being dropped off the grid.

Last night, the season finale for season 3 of Burn Notice aired. Similar to previous season finales, it not only provided a great setup for a new season to follow, but it also stuck to a storyline that will keep you on the edge of your seat for the entire ride. While it is disappointing that the finale was not more than an hour, it still was a captivating ending. I have attached a copy of the season finale to this post for anyone who missed it or for those interested in seeing the show for the first time. Enjoy.

Note: This post was originally written on March 5, 2010, but was not published until March 12, 2010 as a result of Hulu having an 8 day delay.

I have been a self taught web and Mac OS X developer for several years. I know over ten individual programming languages fluently, so I need a development environment where I can worry about the work at hand rather than where my files are, and the Mac OS X application Coda by Panic delivers essentially what I have always wanted. A one window development environment that has SFTP/FTP file listing and editing, powerful CSS editor, helpful books for when I forget a function, and a Terminal for monitoring of my server while working.

For several years I did all my coding in Adobe Dreamweaver. While I did enjoy the editor itself, Dreamweaver constantly distracted me with panels and features I would never need or use. Essentially, it felt too bloated for me. So after several months of complaining Coda was finally suggested to me by Jeff, who is a good friend I code for, but at first I was reluctant to use it. My first experiences with it several months prior had not been pleasant, but I still gave it a chance, and the amazement that came over me when I saw all that I had missed was overwhelming.

One of the features I find most helpful is built in support for SFTP and FTP without leaving the application. Prior to Coda I used MacFusion to mount external SSH servers for easier file editing, but they were sometime sluggish and I would several times have to minimize the code I am editing to find a file. Very inconvenient, but Coda’s file list shows the content of my server right beside the code I’m editing so all I have to do is double click the file and then I’m looking right at it.

I would recommend Coda to any developer who is feeling jailed in by their development environment and want a system that just flows. Coda can be found at Panic’s website and costs $99 USD. While the price may be a little high, you get a lot out of it. If you are a developer who is a contractor or freelancer, the ease of it will pay for itself over time.

Edit: Coda is not just a PHP or HTML editor. It supports ActionScript, ASP, CFML, CSS, ERB, HTML, Java, Javascript, JSP, LassoScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Smarty, SQL, XML, and more.