Since starting my job I’ve rather cut down on posting news – mostly just because my time is mostly taken up with work. I’ve substantially cut down on contract work and my own open source work has trickled to a slow drip. Still, here’s what’s been up!
Form Tools
Other than writing a couple of new tutorials (PayPal integration and PHP Validation), I haven’t had much time for this project. So sad! I did start on a Wordpress plugin a few weeks ago, but haven’t had a moment to work on it. Once this next batch of contract work is completed I should be able to get back to it. I’m really quite looking forward to it, actually – the Wordpress plugin in particular should be of genuine use to people.
Firefox Plugin Development
As soon as I started my new job at Central1 Credit Union, I looked around for things that I could do to help the company but wouldn’t put a strain on any of its resources. It’s always easy coming up with grandiose plans to improve things, but inevitably they require time and resources. I wanted something small I do myself. So, I thought I’d write a custom Firefox plugin that would automate a few nagging tasks for the company: managing a local database of test accounts for credit unions, and linking to problem / order tickets in our internal ticket tracking software. The result wasn’t too bad! XUL was initially a whole lot of fun, then by the end of it, rather a drag. Working with XUL rather feels like you’ve time-travelled back to the mid to late 90s when you had to develop all your JS nfrom scratch. These days one gets rather reliant on Prototype of jQuery to handle 90% of the annoying hum drum tasks, letting you focus on implementing your ideas. XUL doesn’t have anything comparable, so simple things like getting the selected item in a tree can take an hour or two of puzzling through… it really is in terrible need of a complementary jQuery-like library to handle all the stuff you don’t need to know about. That would be a fun project…
Google Wave
A couple of weeks ago I watched the Google I/O keynote about their upcoming product: Google Wave. Initially I was interested, but now I’ve been mulling it over I’m really starting to see the potential for such a tool. I’m still waiting for sandbox access, but when I get it I’m going to start mapping out a custom Wave for my company. Basically it would just be a standard Wave, extended with a few features for custom applications that we ourselves use. I think we could really benefit from such a collaborative tool; it could substantially improve communication on individual projects. But until I get access and I can get a better feel for the product I’m just reading the documentation and keeping my eyes and ears open. Looking forward to getting access, though!
Work!
The day job is going well, I think…! I’ve just begun the Grand JavaScript Refactor Project of our core credit unions websites, which should be tremendous fun – there’s lots of room for improvement. The contract work is good too. I’m still working off and on on Skookum-Brand.com, vancouverfringe.com and some sites for Boston Pizza. But by and large it’s slowing down, thanks heavens. Eventually I want to cut it out altogether so I can focus exclusively on my open source work.
Multiple Tank Syndrome…
A little while back, my girlfriend and I picked up a fish tank. Can’t think what prompted us to do so, really… we had enough pets in the house – but somehow it seemed like a good idea. Well, three months on we now have 4 fish tanks – and have spent an absolutely shameful sum on money on the damn things.
But good grief it’s fun. Our new tank #4 is a small 10 gallon tank which was originally planned as a snail breeding tank. Then one of our guppies had 62 babies (as they are wont to do…) so it’s now becoming a guppy tank. *sigh*. Between the tanks we now have 4 bettas, 64 guppies, 10 platties, 1 swordtail, 3 glass catfish, 3 cories, 4 mollies, 124987748721 pond snails, 51298727 ramshorn snails, 2 dead apple snails both named Agamemnon, 10 trapdoor snails, a dozen zebra snails and (allegedly) 4 trumpet snails who vanished 30 minutes after being introduced to the tank. In my opinion, sod the fish: the snails are far more interesting. Ignore everything you read about them, they’re bloody brilliant.
