I was up at 4:30 yesterday morning (since it is now past midnight) and it is now approaching 2 AM and I’m about ready to get to bed. I’ve been up for more than 21 hours and it’s my longest day in quite a while. I was working on my book database this evening, and…
I worked my butt off today, closing out 11 bug and enhancement issues with the application I have been working on (and that is about ready to roll out to production). I’ve reached a good stopping point and I’ve decided to get an early start on the long weekend. I’m leaving work 48 minutes early!…
While waiting for Mom and Dad to call last night, I got some more work done on the MySQL/PHP version of my book collection, reading and submissions database. It is now generating lists from the database, which is good. No styles have been applied yet and so it’s really not in any condition to make…
Working in the computer world, as I have for the last 13 years, and specifically within the world of software development, one becomes familiar with a subculture of people whose notoriety is limited to hardened geeks. These people have affected (usually for the better) the world of computer science in positive ways, sometimes revolutionizing entire…
Over the weekend, and this evening, I’ve been working away at getting my book collection and reading databases converted from their old formats into a normalized MySQL database. This has been done and the database was successfully imported into my instance of MySQL with my ISP. The next step is to write the code to…
At home, I maintain my book collection, reading list, and story submissions databases within MySQL on my iMac. I have scripts that take this data and either build static pages, or create flat files that can be used by perl or PHP scripts to present the data on my website. Currently, my reading list is…
I co-worker of mine pointed out an amusing OS X easter egg today. Macintosh OS X is entirely UNIX-based (I explain this for my non-technical friends) and has most of the common development languages pre-installed. One of those frequently-used programming languages is Python. Buried deep within Python’s folder structure, is a folder called “Test” and…
I finally got around to buying the upgrade to BBEdit 8.5.1 this afternoon. For owners of BBEdit 8.2.x, the upgrade was only $30. I’ve skimmed it since downloading it and I have to say that it is the best upgrade I’ve seen since I’ve owned BBEdit. In fact… It is now at the point where…
I don’t use Quicken or Microsoft Money for keeping track of my finances. Since 1997, I use some software that I developed myself and which I call “The Model” for doing this and it has worked very well for me in all of that time. I am about to start down the road of doing…
“Next generation” is a phrase that annoys me. I am reading the documentation to some new software (yes, I actually read the documentation) that I want to use and in the first sentence the software is described as “an innovative, next generation application…” What exactly does “next generation” mean? I’d like to see “this generation”…
One of the projects on which I am working is a conference room reservation system of inordinate (and unncessary) complexity. This project involves the integration of three different software packages: (1) An off-the-shelf conference room scheduling package; (2) Microsoft Exchange; and (3) an off-the-shelf tasking package. None of these packages have native interfaces to any…
I am working on an application prototype, that will eventually evolve into a full blown application that allows the tracking of projects through their life-cycle (beginning with the funding and through the closing of the project). As part of this, I have outlined an API of about 50 stored procedures that provide the database functionality…