The Ebb

The last week or so has seen some fairly "aggressive public displays of communication" on my part. I stepped forcefully into a whirlwind of chaos, all because one morning at work I imagined up a story about a Fox and the Forest. Well, not _all_ because. _In part_ because.

It’s hard sometimes to know when to draw the line. When to respond, when to apologise, when to keep the six-gun blazing.

The Internet Never Forgets it was remarked to me recently. It’s true. Our lives are immeasurably changed by what people can find out, and the Internet makes that finding out quite a bit easier. Easier than a day when crows and pigeons were the preferred methods of communication.

It’s almost two months since I began building ATS. In that span of time I’ve had almost 100% concentration and energy on the go. Last night, after such a crazy week, I almost lost the vision. No. I did lose it. For a moment. I sat at the desk wondering. The tasks are there, I know what needs to happen. It’s just .. it is a long road.

Sounds like I’m whining, I know. Or sympathy begging. That’s not what this is.

I’m not certain what will happen in the next few weeks, months, and the years to come in the world of Clarion. Indeed, maybe in ten years I’ll be writing novels or making computer games. But for now, this is where I am. Does the vision I have for the Community of Clarion bear any merit? Hey, it’s only been a week or so. Some people need time. Others will never come around. Still more prefer to use the community when it suits, and build their own place.

So that’s what I’m going to do. Build my own place. I’m not going to stop trying hard to help unite a community. It won’t happen in a week. And i’d be a bigger fool than usual to think so. That particular vision will take time.

What I can do is forge ahead with the plans for ATS. There is a mountain of work to be done, people to cooerce, bands to book (ha ha), and software to write.

Stopping the melodrama now. Ha. Till next time,

Seriously? 3am?

Man alive, it’s crazy time again.

Usually, I’m well aware that I’ve stayed up late. Tonight though, I’ve only just realised, after finishing a big few hours of focussed work.

Check it out, http://www.archertechnologyservices.com. It’s undergone a couple of big changes. Not to bore you, I’ll keep them quick.

1. Found an image mambot for Joomla that implemented "lightbox", which is a funky pseudo window viewer. Have a squiz at this link.

2. Redid the Product pages. Each of them has six i think. The last page (for each of them), called "Vision", was a masterstroke. Ha ha. A foolish attempt that will probably get pulled down sometime in the near future no doubt.

Anyway. Was a productive night tonight, even though my initial aim was to work out why I can’t get see my installed Thawte Certificate with Safe Uploader. Looks like that will move to tomorrow night.

Done for the nonce, will hopefully post something .. fuller .. tomorrow.

Bam.

Joom-Ba-Liah!

Just for the uninitiated, the title is a homage to the wonderful Soup Nazi episode of Seinfeld

Joomla is a lot of fun. The more I delve beneath it’s archaic exterior, the more I like it. It has what I need at this point in time.

I’d _like_ to have everything ajax-i-fied.

I’d _like_ to get some cool prototype-ee image functionality going on.

I’d _like_ to have people start visiting my site (ha ha).

But I don’t need that stuff at the moment. What I need is what Joomla provides. A great way for me to add content and not have to worry so much about presentation. It takes care of what is showing on the front page. Joomla handles what the Forums are up to (nothing yet), and gives me stats like page visits etc, easily findable.

Definately, when the time comes, I’ll upgrade. There’s a new version of Joomla arriving. Perhaps it’ll be that.

Dev Dawn has had a little tweak here and there. I’ve put back some more posts to read on the front page. Along with a bit of css to allow distinguishing the posts, and a bit of extra info (date/time).

I’ve still got to get my third product out tonight (Rasp). Won’t be long. Just have to add Icons to the buttons, the Help File (and File menu link), and the About window. Then package it up (along with the beta licence) and bamf. Upload. Post on site. Post on forum.

What’s been bothering me today is hard to express.

I’m looking for ways to get the word out about Archer Technology Services (ATS from here on in), and the products. My first thought (good/bad .. not sure) was the blogosphere. A lot of other people seem to become semi-famous through use of it. So why not me?

Well. Because. That’s why.

The only way I could think of that wouldn’t require me to abase myself to the Never-Wrong gods of Slashdot and Digg was this .. send out special invitations to a number of blogs to review the software. More specifically. Every blogger gets invited to review two out of the three (currently) existing pieces of software for ATS.

Importantly, in the invite email, the list of bloggers invited is included. The hope would be that those who were too big to care, would see that others of their calibre (in Blog-Kingdom Heirarchy) were invited too. Not sure if it would work. Possibly.

Anyway. I’m still out-to-lunch on the matter. There are other ways. I can contact actual software review sites. Visit mirc channels. Post on other people’s blogs. Go to seminars. Send out emails.

Plus, there’s the (shock) real world interaction too. Telling people at work, at church .. maybe even stopping people on the street, although that might not be a good idea around here, specially after dark (ha ha).

Anyway, the tiredness is creeping in, and i really want to get Rasp done tonight.

Fare thee well

A Big Weekend Out

Well. Phew.

As per the previous post, I’ve been working my tail off .. but no longer for imaginary ideas and applications designated to be just on my hard drive, never seeing the light of day. This work .. the WORLD can see! Whoot.

http://www.archertechnologyservices.com is just going off. It’s such an amazing-ling empowering experience. I’m actually the destiny of this master .. or something like that. Very cool.

I’m aware that a lot of folk have already gone through this experience, and that there’s lots more hurdles coming to .. overcome. It’s just hard to contain the excitement at this point in time. Fervour. Belief. Joy. Awesome.

I had a very naive idea of getting all three products (SecretKeep, Rasp and DeleteThem) ready for distribution this weekend. It was 2am this morning (Sunday), the install of SecretKeep had finally gone through enough testing to get it on the site for download .. when I realised .. it ain’t gonna happen. Although the other two will be considerably faster. I had to furrow a lot of ground with SecretKeep ..

There was the general functionality of the application. Testing on another machine (only one at the moment). The Help file (thanks to Dr. Explain was quicker to push out than it would have been). The Licence stuff (even though it’s in Beta .. i’m still not quite sure about what goes on there). The Installation file itself (do I use my Tarma ExpressInstall which has been discontinued, or InnoSetup, the freebie. I went with Tarma).

Now that I have a rough list of stuff (and I’m not stupid enough to believe it’s everything yet) that needs to happen, like said, the other two should go a little quicker. Not working Sunday’s put a dent in the speed, but I _anticipate_ getting Rasp and DeleteThem up for download (ha ha .. up .. down) Monday night (aussie time).

Anyway, off to watch some Arrested Development .. man that’s a funny show.

Great Big Long Name

Firstly, before I get to the main course .. I fixed one more problem with Search Potato this evening. The Delicious search didn’t like any more than ONE search term. Ha ha. Wasn’t hard to fix, just a str_replace(" ", "+", $searchString);.

Now, the more exciting (at least to me) news.

The Archer Technology Services website has had a massive overhaul. I’ve got three (and more on the way) apps in beta, and they’ll be up soon. They are small pieces of software, with very simple functionality.

I may have said this before, but a great author gave some advice in regards to entering the world of writing. Write. Short stories, poems .. Something. Just write.

To me, this translates into software development. For myself, in particular. My vision for the immediate future is to release small apps, little functionality, but get content done. I will learn, make mistakes, get better.

It’s been a long few nights working, and I’d like to not be comatose for the kids on a saturday morning :). Ha ha.

Cheers,