Subjects for May...

How did it get to be May so soon?

Anyway - Here are three topics that I will write about in the next month (at least):

1) Rewriting origamicentral taking advantage of AJAX (provided by Dojo).
2) Investigating what it will take to do my own hosting of web and email.
3) Learning a new language (either spoken or computer - not decided yet)

If I manage to start doing my own hosting then there will be more -

Wait and see.

Ok. It's officially ridiculous now...

My origami website is just about six years old now.

And, although it does just what it is supposed to - that is waaaaay too long for a website to go without any changes.

Last month, I discovered that the database back end for the site went down (I have no idea how long it was down though). And, I realized (again) that I really need to rework the site.

It's been six weeks since then.

Time to get to work.

Finding time...

I figured that it would be difficult to find things to write about in a blog.

What I didn't guess is how difficult it would be just to find the time to write.

I'm starting to realize now though.

So, in an effort to make this a little more consistent, I'm going to try to put together a list of ideas for my next few posts and keep at least two or three 'ahead of myself'.

We'll see if that works (crossed fingers).

We are experiencing technical difficulties...

At some point in the relatively recent past, my origami website database got corrupted.

I don't know exactly when or how - but it did.

Because it is essentially a static reference site - I never really have done any maintenance on it.

I keep thinking that I should rewrite it (Since the site was created six years ago, it could use some work).

Also, this just highlights the fact that I should host it myself.

Just in case you want to find where a particular origami pattern is published, here is the site in it's current (very old!) form:

http://origamicentral.org

(You will notice that it auto-forwards to http://origami.joyfulnoisewebdesign.com)

I'll post about it again after I get around to rewriting it (And it won't auto-forward after that).

Yeah! More work for me.

Employees of 'some company' are not eligible...

As if to highlight the fact that programmers (typically) make poor testers (at least for systems that they worked on) - A new Geronimo user sent a question to the support list that basically said "When I deploy an app to the root context it doesn't say that it is in the correct place".

That is something that I noticed quite a while ago. But, because I was able to work around it - I never bothered to look any deeper. This is at least the second time that someone else had to complain about something before I 'scratched my own itch' to fix a problem that I had experience myself.

Well, it is fixed now.

Hopefully, I will learn my lesson this time. If I run into a problem, then there is a good chance that someone else will too (eventually). Besides fixing a problem once means I don't have to remember how to work around it.

My brain is cluttered enough as it is.

You have reached the end of side one...

I wonder how many kids have never heard a recorded voice say that.

Anyway, it is the end of the work week (supposedly) and my first week of having a blog.

Amazingly enough I manged to get in enough posts to look like there is one for every day of the week.

Next week (or later tonight, or sometime this weekend) I will hopefully be able to post something that is actually worth reading.

Hopefully.

My first 'pearl' of wisdom for you...

Even though it might seem like a good idea to be the only one who can do a particular task at your company or be the only one who knows some particularly important piece of information - it really isn't. There are degrees of being indispensable and they probably could at least limp by without you there (they just may not want to limp by).

On the other hand, it is really no fun when you have your own deadlines to meet and one of those other areas where you are the -only- expert suddenly catches fire.

Is human cloning possible yet?

Bummer.