Coffee and Code

Claudia: check out this Creepy Spider photo!

It's been an atypically lazy summer for me... I've spent most of my free time hibernating in my house, attempting (unsuccessfully) to avoid the heat.

It looks like Autumn is going to be action-packed though, with a trip up to Wyoming next month followed by a flight to South Carolina in November, to visit my aunt and meet several relatives I haven't yet had the pleasure of getting to know.

The MINI's in the shop right now, so I'm forced to putt around in my slow, banged-up Mazda pickup for the time being. WAAAA!! (I am such a baby sometimes.) But seriously, once you drive a MINI Cooper, driving anything else is just not as much fun!

I'm planning on taking a break from school for the second fall term. During my hiatus I plan on finishing a new web design for this site, putting my new weblog into production and revamping the I-Ching: Oracle of Change application. My plans for the latter include a web services layer, a re-vamped Flash interface, and membership support so that people can save previous readings and stuff like that.

This afternoon, it's off to Galisteo, NM for an afternoon of barbeque, beer, and vulture-watching.

Because of the relative popularity of my Flash-based I-Ching @ SanctumVoid, I've decided to spend some quality time between now and 2007 re-tooling the Oracle. (And popular in this case means that I've noticed some hits on the page that WEREN'T search-bots!)

I-Ching @ SanctumVoid started as a javascript project 2-3 years ago... I then converted the app to Flash. (I personally think the Flash version is, like, waaaay cooler.) Now, it's once again time to re-vamp the Oracle. Here's my half-assed plan:

1. Move the I-Ching nuts 'n bolts logic out of the Flash frontend and into a set of web services. This will accomplish a couple of things: It will prevent me from having to stare at too much ActionScript inside the buggy, crappy ActionScript editor, and it will allow me to create front-ends for the Oracle in different formats, for example, webpage and blog plug-ins.

2. Conversion of the hexagram descriptions to Pinyin transliteration (e.g. Ch'ien becomes Qian).

3. User membership features will allow people to have profiles in which past readings could be saved.

4. A new, flashier Flash user interface.

These are a few of my ideas. If you have any requests for functionality on the new Oracle, drop me a line!

In the meantime, for this Sunday: doing laundry, reading Hardcore Zen, call Andy to gloat about my new 18-inch Iron Maiden: Somewhere in Time Action Figure.

I am jonesing once again for ASP.Net. I've been kinda-sorta working on a new version of my Blogging utility, AetherBlogger, but with all the travel recently, plus the new design work for my website, I've not been too diligent about working on the app lately... but hopefully soon I'll get back to work on it. My I-Ching application needs some work too, though, and I really need to try to quit smoking again and get back to the gym. What the hell am I going to do??? Stop sleeping, I guess!!

Well, take care, people. Until...

New features include: re-vamp of existing (Grey Zen) design, and the addition of three new themes. (see the new top menu.) Wrote a custom blogger for the site too! Now it's all done, and I can finally get some sleep!

The main lessons I learned during this reboot were 1.) separating design from structure really eases design changes and redesign and 2.) I can really put away the coffee. Wow.

My next project will be to finish my I Ching application. Look for a new, smoother, lighter version in December.