Monthly Archives: July 2009

Drupal Dreams

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I love my WordPress powered blog.  For a blogging site, WordPress is the way to go.  However there are site that require me to step beyond the paradigms of a blog.

Back in the day, I used to hardcode all my sites using XHTML & PHP.  I’d make them elegant, minimalistic and W3C compliant.  I also wasted a good deal of time doing so.  So now…  when I need to set up a site, I reach for Drupal.  Now thats a fun application to work with.  By no means is Drupal “simple”.  It is a freaking CMS for crying out loud.  Simple and CMS don’t go together.  And it does have its weaknesses.  Getting an image gallery set up in Drupal 6 is non-trivial.  But once you know where things are and how the components work, then you are all set.

Reaching for the Stars

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I’ve always dreamed of going to space.  I remember watching space shuttle launches and the Astronomer series on TV, when I was much younger.  Those inspired me to hopefully one day go out into the cold void of the cosmos.  My dreams unfortunately so far have kept me away from celestial matters.  I have few chances of physically flying into orbit as an astronaut.  I’d have to first become a millionaire, cause I doubt I will join the air force as a pilot or work as a researcher/payload specialist.  Professionally, I could steer my way to getting into robotics and be involved with a unmanned space mission with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories.  Or I could get into astronomy, keeping my feet on my ground and my eyes focused on the cosmos.  Right now however, I can always drive up north.  Leave the big city and its luminous glow, into the wilderness and just enjoy a clear night sky full of stars.

Well maybe as the Matt Aslett of the 451 Group points out: maybe open source will get us into space.  I won’t hold my breathe, but I hope one day I’ll be closer to be out there.

(Aside: Now you can imagine why I enjoy writing a science fiction novel.)

Of Journals and Juggling

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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

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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 Snark By Any Other Name

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Recently I’ve decided playing a most dangerous and unwise game.  A player engrossed in said game may find it so addictive, may throw caution and wise judgement into the wind.  Let me present to you the game of snarking.

snarking (v): (1) The delivery of sarcastic but humorous comments.  The humour may be lost on the recipient of comment.  (2) The humorous practise of using bands small voracious Xen aliens against other Half-Life players.  This humour may also be lost on the recipient.  Still other players will display amusement watching recipient run screaming through a level, followed by a horde of jumping squeaking snarks. (3) The insanely humorous practise of combining practises (1) & (2).

And that is the game I shall play…  Yes, kids this the stuff idle minds come up to keep themselves amused during a workweek.

We Are Away

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And so it begins.  Yesterday I finished writing the notes for my novel, A Collection of Shards.  I mapped out the basic plot, main characters and setting in those notes.  I am impressed with how the idea for the novel is coming together.  The novel will have a tight plot with lots of action.  I plan on putting a lot of attention to details.  The story will feel visceral at times, dreamy at others.  I based my characters on real people, should they should feel alive.  On top of that I plan on narrating the story in a weaving manner, to make it feel layered.  And thanks to the real locations and technology, I can attempt to write a story based on an “altered reality”, similar to that of Strugatsky’s The Roadside Picnic.

With the novel already well planned, I’ve started writing the first chapter.  I changed the beginning to a totally new scene that I’ve not worked with before.  Still I’m excited about writing this novel.  It make turn out as the next science fiction epic.

Morning Light

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Golden rays of sunlight pour into the office.  The yellowish light illuminates the grey, black and beige of the office in light patches.  The rest of the office remains in the dark.  Only the sound of the noisy ventilation system and the mechanical rebound of the laptop keys greet my ears.  I sit and type.  The morning already light up the parking and park outdoors.  But like the few cars on the empty parking lot, my thoughts are few.

I sit and I type.  I write down every fleeting idea on this digital tablet.  I hope that some spark of an idea will form.  I hope that I’ll wake up sometime.  The fog in my mind refuses to clear.  It dissipates slowly with every character and word that appears on the screen.  An excruciating glacial process it remains.  However I would not enjoy any other way of awaken, other than writing.  Already I feel the mental machinery groaning and moaning.  Each thought warms the tired mind.  Each thought like a spark ignites the weary imagination.

A quick glance on my carefully scribbled todo lists bound by paperclip and unbound in breadth, reveals how much the day holds work for me.   So as the morning light filters into the silent office building, I take up my craft, my burden and my joy.

Mental Shards: Ninjas, Stacks and Menus

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I’m a huge fan of checking out RSS planets, especially with the technologies I love to use.  Now I use Google Reader to aggregate and handle these hundreds of stories.  Every so often, a story grabs my attention and gets me thinking.  I’ve starred hundreds, only to never look for them again.  I found that even thought I can e-mail myself these stories, they get lost in the giant abyss known as my e-mail.  So for fun, I’ll post the blogs that caught my attention in a new section on my blog: Mental Shards.  (Yes, you guessed it… it is a play on the name of my upcoming novel.)

Lydia Pintscher writes about dealing with people who communicate in various forms and degrees.  I’d probably fall into the communication ninjas group.  In fact at one point thanks to my Internet tablet, anyone could reach out and touch me over instant messenger.  This became terribly distracting, and even thought I could the same with my cellphone… I’d rather not.  Well actually in theory if I acclimatized people to the concept of on MSN, but may not respond in an instant we’d be good.  Still it is a good reminder, that not everyone feels compelled to feel embedded into the Internet cloud at all times.

Oops… I forget which KDE developer mentioned the Stack Overflow site.  This looks like an excellent resource for developers, especially when dealing with open source technology.

Richard Dale, another KDE contributer writes about the GCDS talk about Moblin.  Here’s a thought: menus are useless.  I’m a bit reluctant to agree.  Most menus are huge and a pain to navigate around.  I’d prefer a flexible tool/toolbar system.  Maybe not quite a ribbons design though.  I am a strong believer in keeping UIs simple, clear and pleasant to use.  However menus seem a necessary evil, for large complex applications.  However the argument, on why do we need large complex menu-driven applications rather than smart intelligent, flexible ones those hold much merit.

Congrats to Celeste Lyn Paul for winning the KDE Akademy Award for Best Non-technical Contribution.  Her work and writing inspires me to one day get into usability, user interface design and (human-computer interaction) HCI myself.  Once things settle down in my life, I plan on looking into doing a Masters in HCI.

And on Phoronix we have: News of a Game Going Free Culture.  Should be an interesting experiment, I wish the developers luck.

A Tiny Update

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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?