Skip to main content

How To Start 2008

So this is my obligatory start-of-2008 post. I know I haven't written much lately, but work was busy and then there was the holidays, and I'm making a commitment to really revitalize my blog. Part of that may be that my adsense, after years of blogging, as only hit half the required minimum balence for payment. But, I'm not in it for the money. Not unless there was a lot of money in it!

For 2007 this means... that I need to wrap up the last year

We moved back to North Carolina when the Pennsylvania winter cleared up, and I'll admit that the summer was a bit rough. I lost my most steady contract when funding went sour, shortly before the movie, but you know what? Staying home with the family was great without a lot of work to be done, and we got by OK. I enjoyed the time.

After a while, I started CharPy, the Charlotte Python Group. We're still small and growing, but the first meeting gave me a lead on a full-time position at SocialServe.com, where I'm now happily employeed. We're bringing the group back up, after a holiday hiatus, and looking forward to a year of expanding in any way we can.

For New Years Resolutions this means... I have some promises to make

I'm going with the usual diet and excersize. I quit smoking years ago and I've very recently become a vegetarian, so the time is ripe to really hit the health bandwagon with an excersize routine, however small but consistant. Dropping 10 pounds over the holidays is pretty encouraging.

More important to me is my new dedication to do something non-code and creative at least once a day. So, that means I'm either writing, drawing, painting, or practicing the guitar, my lost skill. I'm actually scheduling some time to read fiction, as my non-fiction reading is just consuming all my literary life.

For Blogging this means... I need to expand and focus

I'll be posting my writings on Spilt Mind and writing about what I read and watch on Mental Outlash, two blogs I barely touch. I'll try to write some personal things on my original blog, but I don't even think anyone has it in a reader or every looks at it. I'll likely do something like cross-blog linking, so be aware that posts may now contain links to recent posts in my other blogs.

For Projects this means... one of my back-burners needs to cook

Keeping all of my own projects on hiatus can't continue. I need to take one of them off, but probably not until the summer. I'm guessing my domain, jigspace.com, is going to get used soon, so look out for it.

For 2008 this means... unoriginally, I have predictions

Everyone else is doing it!
  • Kindle will be called a success, but won't be. Kindle 2 will be slimmer, cheaper, and the pricing model will drop
  • Android phones will have terrible advertising. iPhone will continue to be sexier, reguardless of any real comparison
  • IronPython will adopt the standard library and I've got my fingers crossed for this one
  • At least one major PC gaming title will release with simultaneous Mac, Linux, and Windows support
  • Glow technology will find its way into backlights
  • Cross-browser extension platforms will emerge so we can break the chains of Firefox
  • Nintendo will open up the WiiStore for indie game developers
  • Apple will open the iPhone and iTouch to compete with Android
  • Someone will release an Android compatibility layer, if partial, for iPhone
  • An over-the-counter recreational drug will be announced
Good year everyone!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

CARDIAC: The Cardboard Computer

I am just so excited about this. CARDIAC. The Cardboard Computer. How cool is that? This piece of history is amazing and better than that: it is extremely accessible. This fantastic design was built in 1969 by David Hagelbarger at Bell Labs to explain what computers were to those who would otherwise have no exposure to them. Miraculously, the CARDIAC (CARDboard Interactive Aid to Computation) was able to actually function as a slow and rudimentary computer.  One of the most fascinating aspects of this gem is that at the time of its publication the scope it was able to demonstrate was actually useful in explaining what a computer was. Could you imagine trying to explain computers today with anything close to the CARDIAC? It had 100 memory locations and only ten instructions. The memory held signed 3-digit numbers (-999 through 999) and instructions could be encoded such that the first digit was the instruction and the second two digits were the address of memory to operat...
1 comment
Read more

Statement Functions

At a small suggestion in #python, I wrote up a simple module that allows the use of many python statements in places requiring statements. This post serves as the announcement and documentation. You can find the release here . The pattern is the statement's keyword appended with a single underscore, so the first, of course, is print_. The example writes 'some+text' to an IOString for a URL query string. This mostly follows what it seems the print function will be in py3k. print_("some", "text", outfile=query_iostring, sep="+", end="") An obvious second choice was to wrap if statements. They take a condition value, and expect a truth value or callback an an optional else value or callback. Values and callbacks are named if_true, cb_true, if_false, and cb_false. if_(raw_input("Continue?")=="Y", cb_true=play_game, cb_false=quit) Of course, often your else might be an error case, so raising an exception could be useful...
1 comment
Read more

Announcing Feet, a Python Runner

I've been working on a problem that's bugged me for about as long as I've used Python and I want to announce my stab at a solution, finally! I've been working on the problem of "How do i get this little thing I made to my friend so they can try it out?" Python is great. Python is especially a great language to get started in, when you don't know a lot about software development, and probably don't even know a lot about computers in general. Yes, Python has a lot of options for tackling some of these distribution problems for games and apps. Py2EXE was an early option, PyInstaller is very popular now, and PyOxide is an interesting recent entry. These can be great options, but they didn't fit the kind of use case and experience that made sense to me. I'd never really been about to put my finger on it, until earlier this year: Python needs LÖVE . LÖVE, also known as "Love 2D", is a game engine that makes it super easy to build ...
Post a Comment
Read more