PolarLava::Blog

Being that I haven't been getting any serious development work done on any of my main projects lately, I thought I'd try to do a rundown of what the future holds for each of them…

CycleLog
Part of me would like to expand the CycleLog to support multiple riders and package it for release.  Of all my projects this one is probably the most unique and might be of use to someone else as there are few alternatives available.  But alas I already have too many projects going on to keep up with thus I've resisted the temptation.  Besides, it meets my needs and I keep adding feature each year that interest me.  Maybe someday.  For now I'll have to be happy with the updates done in January.  The next additions likely will be a bike maintenance log and ideally some ride results graphing.  Again, someday.

MyClient
A bug fix release for MyClient was issued in January.  The plan is still to eventually add support for simultaneous connections to PostgreSQL databases along with MySQL.  Not sure when this will happen, but that's the plan.  It's likely that this won't be until I find the time and inclination to do something useful on PostgreSQL.  I believe largely it's really just a matter converting one of my current MySQL DB classes to use the PostgreSQL equivalent functions.

PolarBlog
PolarBlog is at a relatively stable state since implementing and releasing Akismet support to augment the comment and trackback RBL system.  There's a few minor things I'd like to do, but largely this project is waiting for Yaper 3.x so I can rework it using that templating engine.

Weather
After wallowing around for a good long time, I finally got this documented, packaged up and released in March.  Baring a change or addition to the NWS XML feed, this project likely will not be updated anytime soon.  It's stable and it works, what more does it need?

Yapter
The V3.0 rewrite is underway, but progress has been slowed by a number of both internal and external factors.  I began building the project site and documenting its usage, but in the process I stumbled into a hide() function bug.  I last left off trying to fix that problem, but it remains unresolved and I have not had a chance to pursue it further.

As —or lately more of an "if", the weather improves I will be spending more time outdoors and hopefully logging lots of miles on my bike.  In turn this means less time for other things, but if I get some issues under control I should still have time to plug along on my projects.  That the positive side of it.  The negative is that I've spent a lot of time in the past several years dedicated to maintaining multiple projects.  Frankly I'm a little burnt out right now and have spent what time I have working on little side project and trying to figure out exactly what to do with my online presence.  At some point I think I'd like to split PolarLava in half, leaving the development things here and moving the more personal things to Papendick.us.  Again this is just another thing to divert my attentions from my projects.  But the time will come when all of the things I would like to do will come to pass.  It's all just a matter of having the time to do it and deciding what's most important to me.  Because in the end, that's all that really matter, right?  :)

Midnight Scene (What can it be?)

Flash of light shines so bright
In the dark of night
On the way home you sight
This strange streak of white
What can it be?

What can it be?
This midnight scene
In the fog of a summer eve

Don't think I'm crazy
It's the same from my passenger's seat
Asked if I was what he'd seen —
I just had to agree

What can it be?
This midnight scene
Seems so strange to me

Just that plain streak of light
Shining bright
In this midnight scene
Don't ask me
Oh! What can it be?


4/25/1982

Brian's Theme

The chicken breeder and the sucking wound from New Jersey
Surrounded by sine waves
Severe brain decay
And no escape from a poor education

Flippin' chicken
Got him infected with this
Sucking wound (oooh, ah, oooh, ooh)
Ah! From New Jersey (Atlantic City baby!)

Eating all the garbage
Feeding the disease
What is the meaning
Of this superficial allergy

Anybody listening that can cure him of this misfortune
Should call —Toll Free!
And donate your time to help this poor man
Regain his sanity
"Drop Dead"

"Tickle his throat with a plastic spork, then seal him with Wisconsin cabbage."


4/25/1983

It's been about a couple of weeks now that I signed up for a Twitter account.  And only this morning was the first time I posted to it.  If you're plugged into Tech to any great degree you quite likely have already heard about Twitter.  It's the hottest new thing on the web these days.  It's another of those cases like Facebook or the god awful MySpace.  Something that has come out of nowhere and is destined to make somebody a shit load cash when they get bought up.  In short, just another example that make you go "Damn, why didn't I think of that?"

So for me it's more of a matter of whether it's something that I can utilize to complement my blog.  After all, Twitter really is simply a micro-blog that allows you to spit out random thoughts quickly.  And you can do so via SMS (not that I would even if it didn't cost $0.15 a pop), a web interface and theoretically IM…although to this point I've been unable to get that to work.  But if I do that might make this workable for me as I spend a lot of time conversing via IM/IRC throughout the day.  Thus it would be a natural and easy extension to my daily routine -easier that the web interface which is currently my only realistic option.

So how do I then make this fit into my blogging existence?  Well, if you really want to follow me around in pseudo-real-time, then you can do so by getting your own Twitter account and making me a friend or simply be a "follower".  I know I can get an RSS feed with mine and my "friends" posts, but I don't currently see an option where you can get a feed of just a specific user.  I find it hard to believe that's not possible.  (I'm a big dummy, my RSS feed is right there on my public page!)  More research required on that one obviously.  But in any case, I can see where this might be somewhat addictive, but also could potentially complement my blog which I consider to be my information clearinghouse.  Thus I would do some sort of integration there.  There is a Twitter widget available that can display the current post, but I'm thinking of something beyond that…

At this point, if I find I am going to use this to complement my blogging it needs to integrate better for those who only casually follow my blog.  (Yes all 3 of you! ;)  So my initial though on that would be to write a custom extension that would snag my posts to Twitter for the day (if there were any) and then create a "Twitter Archive" post for the day here on the blog.  Doing something like this would then allow me to use Twitter to spew random thoughts throughout the day and then collect them here.  

More crazy thoughts, more things to dilute my working on existing projects…  :)