The Art of Being Dorian

Out with the Old

I’m preparing for what I hope will be a new phase in my life.  And one of the things I need for this change is a revised online presence.  I’ve experimented with various ideas and concepts.  And I want to try and implement them in my life.

One of the first to feel the changes, will be my blogging.  I deleted my old Blogspot blog.  All the content exists on this website anyways.   Also I’m planning to make this blog more into a portfolio, than just a blog straight up.  The blog obviously will be accessible, just not on the front page.  Also I’m thinking of doing some ExtJS magic and build a new AJAXy theme.  So if the site breaks, you know what I’ve been up to.

On another note, I’m getting back to developing justCheckers into reality.  And on the side playing around with the newly revived Pyzzle game engine.

Developers, Developers, Developers @ justCheckers

Looks like my recent cry for help with the justCheckers project, was heeded.  I got about 12 responses, and now I’m in the process of picking the core development team.  The developer mailing list is up and functional.   And thanks to Dmitry Platonoff, who I used to work with, gave me a helpful hint to maintaining my sanity.  While I’d like to get as many developers working on the project as possible, I want to be able to coordinate things in a manageable manner.  Also I’m really picky when it comes to code quality.  So I think I will let people submit patches for now, before I start handing out commit access.  Still I’m impressed with the progress.

Updates – justCheckers Open for Business

An update from the justCheckers website:

Cleaned Up and Open for Business

2009, November 17 – 18:02 — Dorian Pula

And some other updates:

I’ve restarted work on my stealth project as part of the “larger multi-site effort”.  In addition, I’m almost caught up on responding to everyone’s e-mails and messages.  I should be free enough to restart my writing and work on other long-term projects.  I’m really excited with the progress I’ve made, and I hope it continues this way.

Move It!

Today I realized I need to get a move on.  I realize now that I must capitalize on the opportunity that is justCheckers.  Originally I set up as a project to learn and advance my skills in programming Java and project management.  I learned a great deal from that project.  And after the project’s stalling, I assumed that no more real opportunities arose from it.  Today I realized I was wrong.  There are a multitude of possibilities that I can exercise in either this project or a similar one.  I’m debating what would be the better move, but I’m leaning towards working on justCheckers for now.
Also I planning some rather massive work on this blog too.  I have plans, and I see clearly how I can capitalize by achieving them.

A Return to Normality

Today marks the first day of getting back to my old schedule and routine.  The transition turned out smoother than I imagined.  Hopefully, no new quirk will appear and I get back to working on all my overdue tasks.  As things stand:

• Writing the first part of the first chapter in the novel.  Had tweak it a bit to avoid a plot hole.
• Working out the plan of attack to restart justCheckers development.  I’m woefully unfamiliar with bzr and Eclipse integration is not working well.
• Some initial plans for the new justCheckers website theme.  Again, new to Drupal theming.
• My consulting work is back to a regular, sane pace and my own expectations have fell into place.
• My expectations and goals in general are more aligned with reality and my own position in it.
• Small urgent tasks keep on stomping on my larger plans, which is a bit trying.  Hopefully this will all settle down soon.

I’ll continue blogging in short irregular bursts, until my projects start moving forward under their own momentum.

Of Journals and Juggling

I’ve found myself recently writing considerable amounts in my diary.  I’ve had many a thought, that I felt compelled to write down.  But such thoughts were fairly private in nature, so I will discuss or hint about them here.  One of thought that I would like to share, is my temporary withdrawl from daily blogging.  I’m trying to concentrate on writing my novel, A Collection of Shards.  And I’m concentrating on reviving the comatose justCheckers project.  Post daily updates to my blog just add more overhead to my day.  And I’ve so precious little time and so many tasks to complete…  So I’m going to take a break, and update this blog when I feel like it.

Rethinking the justCheckers Website

After listening to my backlog of FLOSS Weekly shows, I’ve been thinking about my involvement with my own project.  Naturally I want it to succeed.  But I also want to use it as a portfolio of my work.  On one hand, I’d like to hack everything together by myself.  On the other hand, I simply don’t have the time or inclination to do everything.  Especially if I think about it… my skills in PHP might not be as interesting as showcasing my work in developing justCheckers and working as a team lead.  So I’m think about setting up Drupal, and maybe do some additional integration work…  I’m just not that sure that anyone really cares about my XHTML/PHP/web development prowess, especially with some many powerful tools that are around.

I’ll probably do that… set up Drupal, integrate a justCheckers look and feel into it (showcasing my web designer side), import all the data, setup a team again and move the damn project forward.

A Tiny Update

It is Friday.  Feeling tired from the irregular sleep cycles of this past week.  I didn’t move forward as fast I wanted to this week.  I’ve felt distracted, tired and could not focus.  Still the minutae of this week didn’t tie me down.  Thanks to a friend my Polish writing improved in leaps and bounds this week.  No regrets this week, and many things moved forward.  And thanks to the same friend, I can see a positive glimmer of hope in my future.  I plan on focusing on making my schedule sane again, and living a fairly active but normal life.  No updates on the writing past a few notes, and ideas.  No code updates either, aside from a steady tinkering with the justCheckers website.   Enjoying using the new Firefox 3.5.  It feels so much sleeker than before.  Oh and thanks to the fine folks at Fido for having simple and sane contracts.  Guess whose service is gonna get recommended to friends?

Crazy Busy

I’m going to have to keep these next upcoming posts short.  I am a bit overwhelmed at the moment, with the sheer amount of things going on at the same time.  I still want to try to keep going forward on the projects already in progress.  But I will not add anything new to my plate for the next few weeks.  I’m seriously planning a trip to Europe this year.  Planning this trip will take quite some effort.  Still a short update is in order.

I got meet up my university friend Rob yesterday.  Have not talked to him in ages.  I did spend a long time with him.  But it was great to talk to him again, and I needed someone in a similar position to my own to bounce ideas off of.

I started to compile some notes for my novel.  I wrote down most of the background of the novel.  Now I plan on completing my notes and sketching out the plot.  Then the serious work writing can begin.  As for programming, I’m working on a PHP powered website for justCheckers.  Also I am slowly reading through a book on coding C++ and Qt, along with a silly application I plan on writing to learn the Qt framework.

Kicking Tires

This week, I’ve started working on my delayed projects again.  I feel exhausted from the week.  But I also can not wait to play around with my projects.

Learning Qt

I’ve always admired the KDE and Qt developers.  They make some of the most innovative and interesting technology in the consumer-desktop-mobile land.  I’ve decided to pick up learning Qt and C++.  So far I’ve read the beginning of C++ GUI Programming with Qt 4 (1st ed).  I need to play around with C++, which I plan on doing it while using Qt Creator.  One of my first major Qt experiments might be getting the TEA text editor working on my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.  I know that Nokia just released the tech preview  of Qt 4 for S60 devices.  But I’ll give it a shot.  Hopefully the GUI will port over nicely.

Completing justCheckers

Yes, the project that I left for dead still lives.  I want to work on it, as portfolio material.  I first plan on building a website in PHP (or maybe JSP?) that renders beautiful CSS and XHTML.  And then I need to give the project much love.  But I owe it to myself to finish this application.  I won’t build any crazy game servers.  But I want to make something totally configurable and fun.  And in the process I want to create something that proves that I am a strong Java developer.

Writing A Collection of Shards

I am going back to writing.  Unfortunately I need to start almost from scratch, since many of my written sections simply will not work.  The ideas are there.  I just need to get them down on paper.

Driving License

This one is the ultimate in the tire kicking sense.  I plan on getting my driver’s license really soon.  Aside from parking, I feel comfortable driving.  Once I figure out all this parking stuff, then I’ll be ready.  I’m exciting since this will give me a lot more mobility and flexiblity.  I’ll be able to solve a lot of problems and have even more time to do things in the day.  And I’ll be able to sleep and live in normal time periods.