Big changes are underway here.  First of all, our first child is now 18 months, and we’re expecting another boy in September.  My wife just graduated college.  I became SharePoint certified around the beginning of this year and have been working on several projects using that technology.

First is the subversion viewer that I’ve already posted about.  Then there’s an Exchange calendar viewer that I’m releasing as open source.  I also have another project in incubation that I may discuss later.  However, this is probably the last time I will mention those projects here.  I have rebuilt paradoxlost.com and will be doing most of my “professional” posting there.  Here I will post personal things, any writing that I do, and anything game related.

My Decal projects are currently suspended while I decide what i want to do with them.  They haven’t been rewarding for some time, but I don’t want to completely abandon them.  New code is randomly thrown into Decal, but nothing is polarizing the team to get a new release out.  Our primary server being down doesn’t help any either.  Perhaps Turbine’s recent acquisition by Warner Interactive will breath some life into AC.  If Decal picks up again, I will pick up my plugins again as well.

While we were in Florida we had been told to visit a restaurant called Boondocks.  They have some great burgers there and another really curious attraction:  Bread/Fry addicted fish...

Back at the beginning of August, we spent a week in Florida.  Below are some highlights.

My wonderfully amazing wife gave me the coolest present for Valentine's day:  she named a star for me.  Even though I'm well aware that it will never be used officially, it's still one of the best gifts that I could have been given.  Below is a not-so-great view from Google Earth.  This summer, I'm going to see about getting some photos taken to show off.

this.age++;

The years seem to keep getting shorter, and I seem to be getting less and less done.  I'm hoping to change that this year since I've been running this site for 4 years now and have only made a handful of posts.

I'm looking to make some pretty big changes to both of my sites in the near future.  Paradoxlost.com will become much less Decal-centric in the future.  I have considered both hosting my personal projects on this site and creating a projects sub domain on paradoxlost with the ability to categorize things much better.  Either project will be fun to write.

I have two paths that I intend to follow for site upgrades.  I'll be rewriting this site using the new ASP.NET MVC framework (available here, lots of information from ScottGu here).  My non-windows sites will be moving to Python, particularly extending the web.py framework.  I love playing with python, and I've found web.py to be particularly useful for play.  It's very non-intrusive.

Decal is still moving forward.  I don't know what the future holds for AC, but we do still throw code into poor old Decal.  It's been in beta for so long that I think parts of it are getting moldy.  To help with things we recently recruited a new guy into the core team.  Those of you who still visit #acdev know him as Flynn and on VN/IGN he goes by Thorfinn_Sigurdssen.  He jumped right into the new view system, and it actually saw a lot of code churn before the holiday season (and final exams).

And for anyone starving for a new release of decal, join #acdev (irc.sorcery.net).  We could use some lively discussions to get us interested and motivated in AC again.  Who knows, you might even convince us to reactivate our AC accounts!

Until next time!

In last night's episode of Eureka (Duck, Duck, Goose), the winner of the fair was Megan, daughter of Julie He(a?)rrington.  It's always fun to come across little things like this in life.

My head's a little clearer now, so tomorrow I'm going to start a series on writing a plugin for the new Adapter in Decal.  Be warned now:  this series will be covering the redevelopment of ACAim from the ground up.  This will include all of the network code and message parsing.  The actual decal code will be very minor compared to the rest.  It should very much prove to be a learning experience for everyone.

I've almost always been behind the times with my computer hardware.  It wasn't until this past tax season that I was able to have a modern desktop (Athlon64 2800+).  As the holiday season approaches, I find myself wanting to upgrade my workspace again, even though there's no chance in hell of it happening, to include something to make me more productive or something fun.

For productivity, I'd like to see a pair of these sitting on my desk.  I was lucky enough to have a pair of them with a previous customer, and absolutely fell in love with them.  The amount of space the save compared to CRTs and the extra productivity from having that much screen area are wonderful.  I honestly find it hard to work with my CRT combo at home, and almost impossible on the single head setup I have at the office now.

For fun, it would absolutely have to be an iBook.  Either the 12" or 14" model.  With the power of BSD and the simplicity Apple is famous for, not to mention the design put into the new models (durability, battery life, etc), make it hard to not want one.

Ah well, I suppose new toys will have to wait til next taxmas, unless some nice, generous users happen across the paypal button on my projects pages and show their appreciation.  In the mean time, I shall return to my attempts to ressurrect NB2.

I've often had trouble sleeping.  I've usually shrugged it off too.  Until recently it hasn't turned out to be that big of an issue, but I can honestly say I should have taken care of it ages ago.  My ability to focus is almost completely gone now, and I can barely get any work done.  Even after taking ambien to help me sleep, I'm still exhausted and unable to concentrate.

Oddly enough though, in the middle of this, I've never had more dreams (which I hear is a side effect of the ambien) or inspiration for stories.  I've penned a few paragraphs of a tale that really intrigues me, and I hope that I can do it justice while writing it.  As the stories, or even the chapters, find themselves whole, I'll be posting them for all to enjoy.  I'll probably post a teaser in a few days after I flesh out some of the direction better.