In order to test Sublime Text, the Sublime-centered word processor available to use in your browser right now, we attempted to write as much of this article as possible without stopping. We were determined to hear the website play through an entire loop of “What I Got.” As we come to this very word, the “life is too short, so love the ones you got” verse is starting and stopping like it’s playing from a Discman bouncing around in a backpack, but we’ve given up in order to switch tabs and confirm that, yes, “What I Got” was indeed released in the year 1996. Our experiment was a disaster.
The idea behind Sublime Text is simple even though trying to figure out how to use the site as an effective writing tool remains a mystery. It works by asking the user to type away in a big text box in order to hear the Long Beach band’s biggest hit play from start to finish. Stop typing to, say, think for half a second and the audio stops. Get started again and it picks back up, as if powered by the motion of your fingers. You also inadvertently start to type out the lyrics of the song you want to hear play in more than frustrated snippets.
In short, this is a good concept but a truly terrible idea for anyone looking to better concentrate when they’re writing, even if you’re someone who absolutely needs the sunshine melodies of the Sublime single to get you in the right mindset to write the next great American novel (about smoking weed on the beach, probably). Who knows, maybe this is still a concept that can be improved upon and an update that allows us to power “Santeria” with our words will end up turning Sublime Text from writing interrupter to unlikely muse. Only time will tell. We ain’t got no crystal ball.
[via Boing Boing]
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