So it's been a while since I updated this thing. Lots of stuff has
been happening, so I might as well jump right into explaining what
those things are.
Current and upcoming projects
Work
Working at the Participatory Culture
Foundation continues to be great. Probably if you're reading
this on Planet Miro or
whatever you're already aware of this, but it's a recap from my
perspective anyway.
Miro 2.0!
Miro 2.0 made it out the door, and
the responses have been mostly positive. The general consensus is
that it's everything people loved about Miro,
but more
stable and with a better interface. Which is great, because
that's mostly what this release was about, and really matches my
feelings and impressions from development as well. When I first
started volunteering on Miro was when the user interface overhaul
first started. While the overhaul of the interface is apparent from
an aesthetic perspective, it should be emphasized how much of the
codebase was really gutted and reworked. I'm really glad to have
been part of this transition period because I think it's given me a
lot of perspective and was a great learning experience.
So anyway, yeah. That's what I did while volunteering and for the
first few months of fulltime PCF employment. Then my focus
shifted...
Miroguide 3.0!
Yep, for the next couple months of development I switched to working
on the Miro Guide, which also
underwent a rather large facelift for its 3.0 release. Some things
changed on the backend too, but not as much as with Miro 2.0.
There was a lot to learn though... although the Miro Guide uses
the Django framework, it
feels a bit closer to a Pylons
application as it uses its own ORM for the database and a few other
such things (mostly just the ORM though). I really enjoyed working
on it and learning about it. Toward the
end Paul Swartz came back
to work on the application. Was quite enjoyable collaborating on
things, and we even managed to move things over
to git, which is awesome. (Miro also
will be switching to git soon, and
there's a
conversation on the mailing list in case that's of interest to
you.)
Anyway, Miro 2.0, Miroguide 3.0 and the
new http://getmiro.com website all
launched in the same week, so that was a bit exhausting, but it all
went really well.
I'm not sure many people know, but the Miro Guide
is AGPLv3.
So yes, like Miro, the Miro Guide is
genuine Free
Software. There's been a lot of interest
about free network services
lately, so I'd like to try and make that more clear because I'm
afraid many people who would be interested simply don't realize
that. We'll probably do more advertisement of it soon once we get
this git stuff all straightened out.
And speaking of free software and websites, that brings me to my
current work duties...
Miro Local TV
Yep, Miro Local TV, which was
announced
a number of months ago. It's not in a state I'd consider
presentable yet, but development is coming along. Multiple
location-specific sites work and you can view videos, but it's still
not ready to be shown off yet. Hopefully I'll have more to say
about this shortly. (Indeed, I was actually writing a longer bit
about a specific topic related to this in here, but I've decided it
merits its own blogpost.)
The wedding and the wedding website
So, the wedding... coming up soon, less than three months away
now. What can I say... Morgan has been more on top of this
than I have. I hate to take up such stereotypical gender roles
about it, but I guess that's the way it has worked out. Still, I've
been working on a very specific piece of the wedding:
the wedding website.
So, it took quite a while, but most of it is done and up. I'm quite
pleased with the way it's turned out. Still two major pieces to put
in place... gotta get the reception-music-submission stuff
working, and have to put up a video of the animation I originally
proposed to Morgan with in the first place. I've got the video
ready.. just gotta get that stuff together.
Orgmode
Org-mode! Not really a project as
much, but I recently switched over all my life and project planning
over to using this wonderful piece of software. I was
using PlannerMode
previously, but I was finding that as the number of things happening
in my life grew, the less the day-planner idea was working for me.
I initially took interest in orgmode because I wanted to be able to
ditribute some small amounts of todo lists and project outlines with
my personal projects. And then using it was just been so
nice that it's continued to take over my whole workflow.
Anyway, I don't regret it. Orgmode is a wonderful example of user
interfaces in plain text. I highly recommend watching
the Google tech
talk... it might make an orgmode user out of you too.
The GIMP class
Yep, I'm going to be
teaching a class on the GIMP to
students at Casa Aztlán. Or,
at least, that's my expectation. We're still in the recruitment
stage. It'll be a one night a week thing for six weeks, if enough
students sign up for it to happen.
An unnamed animation
I am going to be working on an animation in collaboration with
friend (and former boss)
Robert Metrick, who makes some awesomely
weird stuff. We're meeting on Monday (tomorrow) to start some
brainstorming and plan it out. Not sure exactly what it's going to
be yet, but I'm hoping it will be about a 4-6 month long project.
Yes, as you are probably expecting, I am expecting to do the
animation in Blender.
PyCon
Not much to say about PyCon except
that I will indeed be there, and helping with the video recording.
Maybe I'll see you there as well? We might do a Miro sprint
there... not sure if anyone would be interested?
FOSSGaming.org
I registered the domain name fossgaming.org after a long
conversation on Identi.ca (that also
lead to the creation of
the !fossgaming
group). Basically, free and open source software is coming along
really well in almost all areas, but not as much in the game
development department.
I'm not sure what's going to happen with this totally. I am
planning to put up
planet.fossgaming.org
in the next couple of weeks
with Feedjack (and you are
right, the dns has not even been set up for that yet) in an effort
to get more free software game developers talking to each other.
Aside from that, I'm hoping to help with steering this, but I won't
be able to invest that much time into it myself for at least the
next couple of months. I'm hoping to help foster a community that
can make some headway on its own, and then in a couple months I'll
be able to jump in more myself. Maybe things don't work that way
though, so its possible that this won't really make it that far
until after the wedding. We'll see.
If you have thoughts on it, or are interested in helping this
project along, contact
me; I'm happy to offload some of this work.
Pumping Station One
Pumping Station One is
a Hackerspace (think YMCA for
nerds) that is starting to really come together in Chicago. Looks
like they might be moving in in April. I became a member and
attended the last meeting. I probably won't be too heavily involved
here for a bit, but I'm excited to see this start to take off. I
might even do some co-working from here.
The diet
I've mentioned that I started focusing on my health again. Well,
2.5 months into this diet, I've lost more than 30 pounds, so things
are going really well. I'm mostly following
the Hacker's Diet
(dieting through engineering, management and statistics). I'm
counting calories and biking. The effects are noticable, and I'm
feeling better with each passing day. I'm actually using orgmode to
track my diet, which is working out extremely well... maybe
I'll make a post with more details on this later.
Summary and life bits
Are we moving?
So, moving... one of the reasons I took my current job was the
possibility that we might be moving depending on what happens with
Morgan and grad school. At this point, we still don't know, though
it is looking increasingly likely that we'll be around Chicago for
at least another year. Otherwise, we might move to either
Philadelphia or Boston. I'll update when I know more.
Busier than ever, but better than ever (and no more projects)
Clearly, things are busy, but I'm keeping it together and I think
I'm happier than I've ever been. But I've hit the limits of what I
can do here. Everything I have now is fairly manageable, but if I
tacked on anything more it probably wouldn't be, so... I won't.
Sorry this post was so long. But now you know.