endperform.org

I’ve started messing around with Emacs in the past few days. It’s installed at work and here at home, but I haven’t done a whole lot of anything with it yet. I’ve been working on my .emacs configuration before I go too much further, setting and unsetting some things to get it to my liking. I found an interesting setup called org-planner mode which may end up in me being able to get organized at work *finally*. Time will tell, but I have to get some of the basics down first.

One thing I keep reading is that a lot of people are switching the Control and caps lock keys in their keybindings. It sounds like an interesting idea, and I can’t remember the last time I hit caps lock on purpose. I might go ahead and swap them out. So far, though, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be too big a deal to learn and use.

I had a lot of ambition in 2007 to start coding things again, but as with every year, most of my thoughts came and went. I have learned enough Python to be dangerous, at least, and I’m still pretty OK with Perl, although I barely use it anymore. I’m still messing with a bit of PHP as well since I deal with it at work, but I’ve been thinking a lot about rewriting some of our internal webapps using Django. Problem is that it needs to be maintainable by others in my department, but I’m thinking if I code them right it shouldn’t be too horrible.

As far as personal projects go, there’s not really a whole lot I’ve found to code up. I’ve thought of a couple of things, but never really got into them. I should, though, so I can sharpen my skills. I’ll be working on the work projects at home mostly, but I want to have something I can do for myself, or if nothing else, something else to help out on. Hopefully in 2008 I’ll be a bit more inclined to write more code.

Here we are, a little less than two weeks until Christmas, and you know what I was wearing last weekend? Shorts and a t-shirt. It’s my first winter in the south, and while it has been rather chilly most of the time, there have been no ice or snow storms, and I think the temperature only got below freezing once or twice overnight so far. I just love it down here.

Not much new to report elsewhere, really. Work is going well. I got a bonus this year along with a great annual review. Family life is excellent, and in general I’m doing fine. I’ve had my moments thinking about my father (welcome to the holidays), but that’s to be expected. This weekend we’re getting the Christmas tree and getting the apartment all Christmas-like. I’m sure I’ll be taking pictures at some point.

On the geek side of things, not much going on. I’m still enjoying Arch Linux, and I’m still playing around with Python a bit, but I haven’t found a project to spark my interest much. I have been working on a couple of things for work, though.

As I had mentioned previously, when I moved down to the Atlanta area, my job was also shifting. Gone are the days of coding in COBOL / Perl, now I’m doing tech support / installation work one of the company’s big products. I can’t say that I miss the COBOL at all, really, because it was something that I think is finally beginning to decline. Most COBOL-based systems out there are in maintenance mode, or might have been retrofitted for web services (I kid you not). That being said, I do miss coding in general. One thing towards the end of my tenure in PA that got to me was that I was getting burned out on coding. I now realize though that I was getting tired of what I was doing, more than coding itself. Anyway, with that said, I’ve been thinking about things I could code up, but haven’t come up with anything profound or interesting. There are some PHP apps at work I could potentially merge, which could be fun, but then again, would it be worth the effort? If nothing else, it might be fun.

I’ve also entertained the thought of starting to mess around with Django. Problem there is my Python skills are lacking at best, and it’s usually not a good idea to try to learn a language while using a framework. Ruby keeps crossing my mind, but I’d rather use something that I’ll get use out of. I’d see more use out of Python, especially in a work sense, so lately I’ve been more focused on Python, and PHP to a lesser extent. I haven’t really done anything with Perl since leaving PA. I mean, I have Castgrab, which is something I whipped up a while back, but that’s become pretty outdated. I think for now I’ll start working on some Python tutorials, and also play with some PHP and see where that takes me.

I’ve been inspired to restart Castgrab, a script used to download podcasts. I saw it mentioned on a couple of podcast software lists, and it seems as though there’s a bit of interest in it. So, I present to you the current list of things I’m going to work on for the 0.5 release of Castgrab:

* Video support
* Cleanup of .castgrabrc and subscriptions
* General code optimizations

Who knows when I’m going to get this release out the door, but it’ll give me something to do when I have the urge to code something.