The Art of Being Dorian

Yesterday I started upon moving justCheckers into a web application. I didn’t want to pollute the trunk of the subversion repository. So I created the webappbranch. You can grab it by running:

svn checkout https://justcheckers.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/justcheckers/branches/webapps

My next major task to tackle is updating the documentation on the wiki and in the source code. After that I just need to create a few JSPs, and link up the code properly.

Technorati Tags: justcheckers, jsp, web application, svn, branch

Made the plunge today into FOSS development again. As I mentioned in my previous post, I considered and started work on the next version of justCheckers. There are a few reasons why I restarted the project. I want to play around with Java web technologies. I also want to experiment with project management and FOSS development, again. And I am emotional attached to the project.

One of the failures of my past involvement with the project, was the assumption that people would be as excited about the project as I was. I assumed that people would flock and essentially build my dream for me. I underestimated the challenge of motivating people and managing progress. Drafting an excellent design, a todo list and increasing communication throughput would result in vast source code contributions. Managing a non-commercial open source project turns out more complicated than that.

The future of justCheckers requires a more nimble approach. That is one of first task is to streamline developing the codebase.

As I mentioned the next version of justCheckers will use Java web technologies. The majority of work for version involves migrating the Swing GUI to JSP. Also I plan to refactor the code to use the Model-View-Controller pattern.

Part of streamlining the development process, includes a serious reduction on other activities. Since I am sole remaining developer, I decided to reflect in reality. My team members no longer contribute to the project. So I removed them from the team. Since I don’t have a team, I am also removing the team mailing lists. I never found the current mailing lists useful. Instead of that, I will come up with a simple way for the community to communicate with the project. It probably won’t be a world writable forum or wiki. I can’t be bothered with cleaning up spam.

I’ll keep you posted.

If you wish to contribute to justCheckers, please leave me a comment.

Technorati Tags: justcheckers, web development, project management, web technologies

Too busy to blog this long weekend. Still I feel a short update is in order for my readers.

Went out on Friday with the Rudy and Olga, to a nice little place in downtown Toronto called West 7. Open 24 hours, nice Italian cuisine, tea candlelights and jazzy-lounge music; basically you can’t go wrong with a formula like that. And they make a mean bruschia. Almost as good as the one I had in a villa in an olive grove overlooking Terni, Perugia. You may be jealous.

Also I got to play around with somemore overhyped AJAX and WSDL web technology. I still think that the entire over-the-web technology needs to move past the whole document and browser interaction paradigm. The KDE 4 promises to change that with their Plasmoid concepts.

Moving on to Saturday, got to hike in Hockley Valley again. Nothing beats walking through forests and old fields. Ok, mosquitoes always suck. But the smells, sounds and sights of nature relax the soul in ways no urban or suburban landscape can. The sound of water rippling by. The sunshine filtering through the cedar forest, filling the air in a sweet woody smell. The flurry of grasshoppers springing up, avoiding your footsteps as you walk through a sun baked pasture. Reconnecting with Nature is an exhilirating and sootheing experience.

I got to reconnect again with Nature today, by attacking our hedge with a pair of shears. This time there was no love lost between me and nature. Almost crashed into a hornet’s nest. Cutting thick branches also sucks. But the hedge is trimmed now.

Kinda jealous that this semester’s web development course at UofT gets to tinker with some pretty neat Web 2.0 ideas. My own web development course of JSP, CGI-Perl and Servlets with database applications feels dated by comparison. I don’t knew all this Ajax and web services stuff as much as I’d like to. Hmm… Another technology to learn?

Anyways, it is 1:14 now and need my sleep for tomorrow’s workday. Night.

I am currently looking for work, so if anyone is interested in a software developer or software engineer position please let me know. I have experience from university (finished my B.Sc. in Computer Science at the University of Toronto) and from my open source projects in:

• Java development.
• PHP and JSP scripting.
• Database (MySQL and SQL Server) programming.
• Technical, computer manual writing.
• Graphics: mostly Java AWT and SDL.
• Website development (XHTML, CSS and Javascript).

I am looking something that I can either do at home or commute to in Brampton, Mississauga or Toronto. So if anyone is interested please send me an email at:

dorian dot pula at gmail dot com.

Thanks in advance for all offers.