A couple of weeks ago now Birmingham was named 19th in the New York times places to visit in 2012 list, primarily for its fantastic food offering. At 383 we’re big food fans, and so were fully supportive of the view that Birmingham has a lot to offer the hungry stomach.

All the talk online after the article gave us a little idea for a side project which we’ve spent some time throwing together and are now sending out in to the wild. It’s called brumDished, and it’s a quick way of people sharing what they’re eating and where they’re eating it in and around Birmingham. Think of it as a socially generated gallery of good eats around the city – a way to curate all those different snaps floating around different networks in one place for the world to see.

You can view the site at brumdished.co.uk, and if you want to add to it, simply tweet a picture with the hashtag #brumdished or use the submit form. So, if you think you’ve eaten Birmingham’s best balti or know the king of the kebabs, just share your picture and we’ll pick it up.

(It’s also worth noting, before anyone asks, that this isn’t a startup. Nor is it supported by any agency around the city. There won’t be ads appearing at a later date and no funding has gone in to it beyond the time that we’ve spent hacking on it. It’s just something fun we thought people would like! Bon Appétit.)

It’s not often the text editor gets a mention which is odd considering that as developers we spend the better part of our working life (and a fair portion outside of that) pecking away at one. Here at 383 Project we have free reign in choosing our text editor of choice; some go for the aging TextMate while others prefer the all-roundedness of Coda’s Panic. But a newcomer has arisen that challenges these, offering much of the same power while being faster, fresher and flush with updates; Sublime Text 2.

The best way to describe Sublime would be TextMate’s simple interface, with the guts ripped out and completely reworked. Even though it’s still in “beta” (and what isn’t nowadays), it comes with an impressive feature-set. Project support is built in, Preferences are available in the form of a simple JSON file (meaning you can share them between machines), and all your common commands (go to file, go to line et al) are present and accounted for.

Search in TextMate was notoriously slow, even giving rise to grep-based plugins, but in Sublime even searching across large codebases (think Zend or WordPress) is near instant. The improvements don’t stop with just speed however; the floating minimap provides a visual overview of your code that while at first seems intrusive quickly becomes a brilliant reference point.

Being able to reuse existing TextMate themes and plugins is a massive boost, but Sublime really comes into its own when using the Package Control system to easily find and install new plugins. Some of our favourites include:

• SublimeCodeIntel provides IDE-like intellisense to automatically suggest and complete code references. This brings the biggest feature that often draws web developers to a full IDE into an app that uses infinitely less memory.
• Soda Light Theme offers a light-version of the default Sublime theme. Combined with the colour scheme from Coda or Solarized, you can have an aesthetically pleasing set-up in minutes.
• ZenCoding brings Zen HTML completion to Sublime, making writing HTML a breeze. Type div.container>ul#menu>li*5>a+span, hit tab and your HTML is there waiting for you.
• UberSelection takes the standard column-selection and gives it a massive shot in the arm. Select portions of text and update them all. Tied into the find and replace functionality, it makes updating large blocks of code a doddle.

Sublime Text 2 doesn’t do everything but it is seeing a lot of updates, something that can’t be said for TextMate and co nowadays. It may not be to everyones tastes, but if you’re itching to try something new or tired with the same-old, give it a try.

Buffer allows you to add Tweets & Facebook statuses in one go and then schedule them to be posted out at allotted times. Buffer app, whose team were based in California last year and have recently relocated to Hong Kong, has also just been named the Best Twitter App of 2011 by Wall Street Journal.

The iPhone app allows you to keep your Buffer topped up on the go. The app also includes a bookmarklet which you can add to Mobile Safari to make it even easier to share content you find on the web.

In the near future the app will become a universal iOS app allowing users to keep their Buffer topped up from their iPhone & iPad. An update to the app is currently in review that adds URL shortening, Post Now options & iOS 4.3 support.

Register for Buffer and schedule your future Twitter & Facebook statuses and grab the iPhone app by searching the App Store for “Buffer”.

Just a quick note to wish all our friends a very happy Christmas. It’s been a great year for us at 383 and we’re looking forward to an equally exciting 2012. Thanks to all our fantastic clients who made 2011 so special.

We’re having a studio refit over Christmas and so the blog post image is a sneaky peek of our new reclaimed desks. More on that when we’ve finished the building and sanding in January!

As we near the end of the year we wanted to write about one of our favorite projects of 2011 which slipped through the net at the time;

Digital lightning storms, explosions of paisley, kaleidoscope-bursts of catwalk models and a carpet of Dalmatians. All in a days work for 383.

When Bullring tasked us with creating a breathtaking backdrop to their Autumn/Winter catwalk show, ‘The Show: Redefinition’, we wanted to bring to life the season’s latest trends in a spectacular and innovative way.

The concept for the Show was an ambitious one – produce a holographic fashion show which would seamlessly blended the real world with digital. Our involvement was pretty hands on throughout; from storyboarding, conceptualising, video-shoot direction, motion graphics, animation and publicity. At one stage we even found ourselves working with a Dalmatian puppy!

We enjoyed a close collaboration with the client from the outset – sharing concepts and storyboard scamps with regular catch-ups and preview meetings as the project developed. We were pretty chuffed with what we created (watch the video above for some of the motion work) and it was great to see Bullring shoppers’ reactions on the day too.

And if you missed ‘The Show: Redefinition’ this time round, you’ll just have to see what Bullring have in store for next year.

Warwick University, wanted us to create an interactive minisite that would house their Christmas related Research, Videos and Podcasts. The result is this side scrolling, fully illustrated site, with some nifty little animations.

You can see the site for yourself, here.

You can see our progress (if you can call it that for some of us) over on our Movember micro site  here.

“…Whittled down from a long list of agencies compiled by the combined expertise and insight from The Drum, RAR and MiNetwork, we think our final list includes the best agencies across a variety of disciplines and locations who may thus far have flown under our readers’ radar.”

Here’s a sneaky peek of the interview Jake gave as part of it.