For a long while I’ve been thinking about creating a little application to handle easily creating lists and pages of lists. I actually started on it earlier this summer, but at the time I was pretty unhappy with the direction it was heading. Recently however, I had a few ideas on what I should do differently, and now it seems to be what I had originally envisioned. I haven’t come up with a great name yet and have instead simply decided to call it Vimes after the character from Discworld (for no reason other than I like the name and Discworld is awesome!). What I have up right now is merely a demo of how it will work, and it is missing some of the larger features that will make it be really useful. But editing and arranging lists is working quite well (especially if you use Chrome).

I’m going to keep this post short, with the plan to update again soon. I’ve made a goal to have 50 posts this year and this is #7! So I’ll be back pretty soon, I believe!

So remember a while ago I mentioned something about a new project that was nearly finished and was going to be ready soon(I am quickly learning soon for means up to several months )? Well today it’s officially out. And while I still have some tweaking and fiddling left to do I’m proud to announce that Intones has been made live!

I remember a long time ago being frustrated that I missed some new releases from some band I was in to at the time. At that time I thought it’d be nice to have someway to be notified when new cd releases were made by bands that I liked. I wasn’t quite sure how to do it then, and so I sort of left the problem at that. Last year I decided I wanted to learn python and use Django to make something cool when I was reminded of this problem. I thought that surely there was someway I could get new cd release information without trying too hard (ie researching/inputting new releases automatically.) Sure, enough there are several ways to go about it. I finally settled upon using Amazon and their store APIs to figure out what new information is and thus a site was born.

Of course, it took longer than expected. Not because of any difficulty, but the birth of my first child, holidays, and etc all means I’ve been pretty busy these days. It’s been fun though. Now on to some bug fixing, and planning out the next project

1. Run 100 Miles
2. Don’t eat fast food for lunch
3. Write two projects/games

And that’s it. I mean there are other goals I have, I want to draw more, play guitar more, use my camera more, but I don’t have any concrete goals set for those and for now I want to focus on just a few things. So let’s break down each goal.

Run 100 Miles  – Pretty straight forward, that’s only 2 miles a week if I take two weeks off. However living in Kansas has made me realize only crazy people run in the winter outside. So until the weather is nice I’m stuck with a weekly regimen of biking 3 times a week. I have my dad’s bike trainer so putting up 20 mins every other day should be cake, assuming I can convince myself to do it, which at this point I’m motivated so it’ll happen and be wonderful(err painful for the next few weeks). Then when the weather gets nice I’ll add running to the mix. So even if I only run one mile in 10 minutes (which I should be doing better I hope) I’ll quickly make up the first few months of not running if I run twice a week for a minimum total of 4 miles. Anyway that’s the major goal I want to accomplish I’ll be setting up something here I think to keep track of just how far I’ve gone.

 Don’t eat fast food for lunch – Ever since I’ve been working lunchtime has been less than healthy usually and more than expensive (in the long term). So I’m cutting this out. I’ll take my lunch or keep food on hand to easily make something at home for a healthier and cheaper lunch. I’m making an exception for Chipotle and when my company provides me with lunch (which isn’t too often and even then it’s usually subs or something somewhat healthy). So I’ll probably be posting recipe ideas for lunch as they come to me. Hopefully I’ll be able to make a nice list for myself so that when I get bored of a certain set foods I can switch to something else.

Write Two projects/games – Okay well I’m computer programmer, that’s what I do for a living. Though usually I write in php, javascript, or html/css. Argue however you may as to whether or not that is real programming (short answer: it is) I want to take on a few personal projects this year just for fun and just to have another look at coding. Write now I’m thinking of writing a tetris type game in python just so I can learn python and have an initial go at putting together a game (ie all the parts, gfx, game logic, key handling, sound effects, who knows maybe networking). Why tetris? Cause it’s easy and I love some of the variants like quatra so I want to write a python version where the game logic can be easily replaced . The second project, well I’m not sure yet. I think Linux could use a good heidi-sql clone, but I’m not positive I’m interested enough in that to follow through on it. It could be a more ambitious game too, but for now I’m going to leave it open.

Anyhow, I hope the new year is going well for you all, and who knows maybe we’ll talk again soon!