Ramblings of Narc

Inaugurating the notebook: some things I still need to do:

1. Give the ext_maker an interface; the new_ext and pack_ext functions (and their dependencies) definitely work sufficiently well
2. Also for ext_maker: make the update URLs actually work — probably will involve some DB messing-around. But that’s no surprise, item 1 above also requires the DB.
3. Speaking of which, again for ext_maker — I need a database! It has to hold all the contents of an $ext array, and to be able to rebuild said array as needed. Don’t forget the auto_incrementing build number, and make sure you never have a situation where you could be overwriting an existing package (obviously, the build number should ensure uniqueness)!
4. CMBlog3 needs some more advanced DB design, though for now the existing database will do as a minimal implementation. I’m very proud of how the install page turned out, it’s working beautifully.
5. As a more immediate requirement for CMBlog3, there is a definite need for a good implementation of the URL scheme we’re using. It should be formalized somewhere, to some extent. Heck, we might even be able to make a sitemap! *laughs*
6. Gazelle needs some love — it’s been stuck where it is for a while now. In particular, I’d like some more development of the article paradigm (how? Note to self: research what makes articles so special).
7. Existing and future projects, but especially the three already mentioned, could stand to standardize the whole application design a bit better. There’s a battle in my head between providing a NeoFWApplication class (which could be subclassed), or just a number of application_ (or site_ ?) functions (which could be extended in a fashion similar to how subclassing really works)
8. Speaking of object-oriented development, how about some more OO stuff? How about a fully OO version of NeoFW? Idle question: would that then be called NeOOFW, then?
9. It’s been forever since I’ve read up on RSS, Atom and all that stuff in detail. I’ve been reading up (mostly via Dive Into Mark) on some discussions about the relative merits of these syndication formats — and I’ve become convinced I not only need to implement both (well… all ten — RSS is actually 9 formats), but I also need to support some HTTP specialties, such as ETag and If-Modified-Since. After all, my bandwidth may not be free forever, yeah?
10. I sincerely hope WP is smart enough to do trackbacks right. And that I’m not misusing the code. I wish I knew more about Trackbacks. One more thing I need to start learning about.
11. Hm, up to 11 already and still counting. Well, let’s see… I mildly dislike Python, and I’ve decided that at least part of that dislike is from lack of understanding. Therefore, I intend to start reading up from Dive Into Python, and see if that gives me any kind of happiness.
12. On the personal front: need to pay more attention to what I’m saying. I tend to hurt the ones I love far too often for my (or their!) own good.
13. Also on the personal front, I wonder if I could afford a decent LCD or two. My eyes would really appreciate the investment, I’m sure.
14. Music: Nitin Sawhney is amazing! Find more like him.
15. Backups: Need to do some more backups. I’ve signed up to box.net for my off-site storage (1GB is about enough for the stuff I really care about. Heck, I could probably fit all my PHP code and DB dumps since 2004 in 20 MB if I had to (but I don’t, so there). But on-site backups are good, too… Plus, I’d die if I had to download all my music all over again. Granted, the best backup solution right now might just be to stick a small-ish hard-drive in Eris and backing up to it. Home-made NAS, anyone? Also, I’m starting to like SMB — it’s been working pretty flawlessly here for a few years now. On a similar note, Windows isn’t that bad, either: with uptime dictated more by power outages than actual reboot needs (and keeping in mind I’m also using it as a (secondary) workstation), Hermes is a pretty decent web, db, and mail server. But only for the low usage I give it, I’m sure.
16. Which reminds me: Sirimi needs to be reinstated, and all the stuff from Hermes moved to it (preferably after a whole reinstall of the latest LFS — personal preference).
17. Some more Perl-play might be in order. I’m not satisfied with the way I have to keep referring to the reference every time I need to do something simple (like read a file!).

Going to cut this short now (ha, it’s anything but short!) and continue later, as I have more ideas.

Oh, one last little bit of wisdom (some PHP code):
// Swap $a and $b in place (with "hidden" temp variable):
list($a,$b) = array($b,$a);
Some ampersands might be in order in there, I dunno.

Anyway, toodles!