Web/Tech
Schools been really exciting, and put quite a strain on my life. I wouldn't say I've been stressed, just really busy. But the same old excuses start getting old after a while, right? I'll be done with both of my certificates (Java and C++) at the end of next semester.
Work is picking up because we are in full production mode now and hitting real milestones on the game. And my best buddy/favorite cousin is getting married in May. It's going to be a flurry of activity for the next couple of months.
SCD is going well. I recently had deluge of tests and procedures done to follow up with Crohn's at the one year mark. I'm steadily holding a small amount of inflammation in my ileum. I'm thinking about if I should take some light and relatively safe medication to get rid of the inflammation, but I'm largely undecided right now. In hind sight, I probably should have taken something early on while doing SCD to avoid scaring. But it was a very conscious decision to do SCD alone and even knowing what I know now, I'm still very comfortable with the decision I made.
Programming is going really well I think. There have been a few times are work where I dig into some simple code and find an error that previously people thought was at a higher level. Those moments are really rewarding. In my java class we have finally gotten around to making user interfaces, which makes my programs more viable in today's computer world.
I have to run of and be responsible now. But I'll leave you all with links to my first (VERY simple) Graphical User Interface (GUI) programs. Temperature converter and background color changer.
It's been over a week since I've posted, which might lead some of you to wonder "where the heck is she!?" Well, despite not having a job, or any other regular commitments, I've been keeping myself quite busy.
First, and least important, is that I have been playing more World of Warcraft lately. I think this satisfies some innate need I have to be short term goal oriented. At this time in my life the only goals I have are the ones I set myself, and that's kind of a big list of large items. WoW gives me small daily goals to achieve and gives me a sense of accomplishment on a daily basis.
A more long term goal I have been working on (and the reason for the attached picture) is learning C++. C++ is the computer programming language that was used at the game companies I've worked at. In the last 7 years or so I've picked up tid-bits about programming and scripting languages here and there, and even edited a few programs. In the grand scheme of things that's so little experience with programming, I could never say I know such-and-such a language. So I thought while I'm unemployed I could learn C++ and get a better idea of what the teams I manage are actually doing. As a far distant dream, I'd love to be able to write a small game of my own, but that's much further down the line.
Last, and probably least, I've been tracking my daily walks with Sadie. They are getting longer and longer everyday. Hopefully I'll be in shape in time for our late June backpacking trip.
Drew and I took a short hike at Baylands today. It's my first hike of the year and the first since getting sick. It was mostly flat, only an overall elevation change of 28 feet. While we walked I was picking up rocks and putting them in my backpack -- I'm going to use them for irrigation in my garden pots -- so there was some physical challenge in it. It went pretty well.
The graph above is from a program I used to track our walk on my iPhone. You can see the full spectrum of data logged on the RunKeeper website. It's a pretty nice program, but there are a lot of programs for the iPhone that track your walking/running/hiking activities. I might try a few others out this summer too.
I want to apologize in advance for this post sounding a lot like gibberish to all the non techies. I know not everyone who reads my blog likes to read about web development and video games, but these are things that I enjoy writing about and so it seems silly to consider not writing about them.
When building this website I used the Drupal content management platform. I've used Drupal for all my websites for about two years now. I really appreciate that it's so versatile, modular and potentially quite powerful. Every time I build a site I learn more and more about the modules that the Drupal community publishes, and they are what make Drupal all of those things I just mentioned.
When I built the new Ippalily site this time around I think the most challenging thing was setting up subscriptions the way I wanted them. My target audience wasn't going to want anything too complicated. In fact, most of them weren't even going to want to bother managing a user name and password. So I needed something that was simple. I also wanted to implement HTML in emails. Both were tricky things to set up. I ended up using a module called Subscriptions to manage the subscriptions for me, and HTML Mail to handle the HTML in email. This was a tad tricky since I had to reset the table weights in the database.
Another really cool thing I did this time was use the Google Analytics module instead of dropping the code onto my template page. It really makes it a no brainier for someone trying to build a website. It makes me giggle a little because I really think it's possible to build a whole Drupal website that is really functional and never once have to touch any kind of code, scripting or template file. I just love how accessible building web content is these days.
There are still a million little things I want to get working with this site (fix the mobile theme, get Picasa feeding pictures here, integrate with social networking sites, and the list goes on), but I also wanted to get the site going because I found myself writing all sorts of blog posts no one was going to see if I didn't make the site live. Now I find myself very busy filling out job applications, getting all the ducks in a row for school and putting together a friends website. All those little things will probably end up being weekend projects months from now. But hey, it's always nice to have plenty on my to-do list, that way things never get boring.
