Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Coding Vacation '08: Bad Timing

Several weeks ago I took the initiative and committed to something that went against my conventional patterns of behavior.  I decided that I would spend some vacation time devoted primarily toward developing software -- my personal projects, of course.  In the back of my head, I heard voices telling me that this was not an acceptable justification to take vacation time.  Vacations are for trips or visiting family, they said.  But, much like the thought processes that steered me toward the video game industry rather than business apps, the thoughts compelling me to take this vacation won in the end.  I announced my plans confidently to my friends and family, as if asserting it this way would protect against any criticism.  And, well, I didn't receive any.  In fact, I only received support.

My girlfriend, of course, saw this as an opportunity to spend more time with me every day.  She is currently unemployed, so she has a lot of free time.  It's very difficult to make the argument that I need to spend so much time doing things alone on my computer when I have a rare opportunity to spend extra time together, but she seemed to understand.  Of course, that didn't stop her from coming over often, inevitably leading to a lot of time spent away from coding.  Much of this time was spent with her playing the newly released World of Warcraft expansion: Wrath of the Lich King.

I can't blame her for this; I always want to play, and I have to keep myself at least somewhat disciplined.  It just makes it so much easier to play when I have someone to play with.  Between my uber druid and my hopelessly gay mage, there's so much fun to be had; so many hours to lose.

image image

For the past week it's taken all my energy to avoid getting completely sucked into the grind.  I have to reach level 80.  I have to purchase an epic flying mount.  I have to obtain uber gear, etc.

To make matters worse, I'm leaving to visit my brother for Thanksgiving tomorrow.  Don't get me wrong, I love visiting him, but it's more time spent away from coding.  Compounding this is the fact that he plays World of Warcraft as well, and I'm giving him the new expansion pack as a gift.  Nevertheless, I'm bringing my Mac Mini and an LCD monitor with me tomorrow.  Yes, I'm a little bit crazy.

Despite all of this, I have made significant progress on my app, but there's much to be done.  I will talk more about it later when I feel less reserved about it.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Red, White, And Blue Logo


Some say, it's amatuer. Screw those guys.



Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Oct 31st == Nov 30th && Shared plans == win!

So much for that beta by Oct 31st. I've had a lot of petty life things distract me from what's important: Red, White, And Blue! It is coming together though and I have high hopes. There are some interesting obstacles involved with keeping many clients in sync (quasi sync at least), and all the bugs that can occur when you have a client that loses sync with the db.

I have a really annoying issue where a browser's cache will prevent users from downloading a new client, so should I rename my client on every update just to trigger a download? Sounds clumsy. I don't think I would like old silverlight clients pinging my services either, so will I have to check a version string on every login? Seems so.

I am relying on the fact that all of my WCF sessions will exist in the same AppDomain, so I can use a single static to keep track of users. Risky and clumsy, I know, but I'm already stretching the capabilities of a shared hosting plan about as far as possible. I don't know many websites on shared hosting plans using WCF services, Ajax style PollingDuplex binding, Linq2Sql , hosting silverlight. This stuff came out last night (pretty much), so I've been happy with how much I can get away with on a shared hosting plan.

It really is a tribute to the computer industry when you can get so much power for a measly $100 / year hosting plan. This is our one up on any other industry: the low barrier of entry. Can you even imagine something similar in the auto industry? Investment banking? The factories, connections, and brown-nosing needed to do the most trivial things in other industries makes me love my field that much more.

See you next Sunday and have a happy thanksgiving!