ActiveMeter

Just added an ActiveMeter counter on the right. I'm just curious how many people visit here...and I'm just vain.

Current Projects

As promised, here is a discussion on my current projects. These are listed in order of importance to others. If they were ordered by importance to me, it would probably be exactly opposite.

Anyway, first on the list isn't really a current project, but only because I finished it this week. So it's still fresh enough to count as current. The project itself was rather boring, data analysis. Finding relations among futures market data, grouping those relations, doing some simple calculations, and doing several histograms on the resulting data. What made it interesting was that I decided to write this program in Python. I must say, I think Python is my new favorite programming language. It's simple, has no braces to keep trace of, and is powerful enough to do just about anything any other language can to. I think Python is my new language of choice.

Next on the list is a Java applet. This one, at it's core, is an image building and overlay applet. The user has several choices of background image and color, or can upload their own background, and can add text or images to the base image. This can then be saved on the server, for some admin to look up and process in whatever way has been deemed worthy. It will be used as a T-Shirt designer for several websites, but I believe it can have many other applications. Auto-detailing previews, greeting card design, perhaps a preview of furniture in your home before you buy it online. I'm sure there are other uses for this. At it's current state, the user can select a background from a list, select from a list of clipart what images to add to the background. Until a few days ago, it wasn't displaying the added images or text on the background, but I finally figured out why it wasn't working. So this project will soon be finished.

So the first project was for my day job, DRC, the second project was for my own company, JTS (is it weird that I work for/own companies only referenced by acronymic letters?). Finally, we get to the fun stuff. These aren't really full projects, with some ultimate goal, but merely projects for my own education and fun in whatever free time I have. I have been looking for freelancing software projects online lately. Several of them are for website and database systems. The ones I've been interested in deal with MySQL and AJAX.

So, I wen't out and got myself a book on MySQL. MySQL Crash Course, by Ben Forta. For the clinet server applictoin I wrote for JTS, I learned intereaction with SQL Server 2005 Express via C#.NET. MySQL is very similar, but, from my experience so far, much easier to interact with. Learning MySQL will not only be applicable to freelance projects I'm trying to get, but also in a grander project down the road .

Also, I've had an interest in AJAX, but haven't started looking into learning it yet, probably after I'm comfortable with MySQL. Also on this list of to-learns is MS SilverLight. Although, I will probably wait to see how much of a hold it take in the internet market before investing any time into it.

Last, but certainly not least, is XNA. The most recent version, XNA 3.0 CTP beta, just came out, and has development options for the Zune games. The CTP doesn't yet support development on 64 bit systems (like my home machine), but when the full release comes out later this year, be sure I'll have it, and will be Zune Gaming in no time.

As a final note, the hint dropped earlier was about my dream in programming. Games. My own games. I've begun tailoring my fun projects towards areas that will ultimately be useful in developing a game eventually. I'm not sure what type of game I'm going to try to produce, or even when I'll start, but it will be online, MMO, and probably fully 3d.

Anyway, that's all for now. Stay tuned for more info on personal projects outside of programming.

Here I am!

So I've gone and done it. I'm a blogger. I never thought I'd be doing something like this. I've always been so quiet and shy, now here I am, post to the world.

Anyway, this will probably be rants about work, life, more work, etc. I'll put on here what I'm up to, both at work, and in my personal explorations.

As for me professionally, I work fulltime as a software developer for a small futures market analysis and consultation firm (sorry guys, no free advertising). I am also joint owner of a networking and software company. Most of the rants will probably be about that. My own company, JTS Technologies, is really up in the air right now, so there is plenty to rant about.

Personally, I'm 26, live in New Mexico (it's okay to drink the water, I'm still in the USA), have a girlfriend of 3 years, a wonderfully cute 2 year old daughter, and two cats. At my day job I have two computers, one with dual monitors. At home I have 4 computers and a server tower (specs follow) a PS2 and a Zune.

Home Computers:
1) 2.2 Ghz dual core Pentium, dual boot windows vista and Xubuntu 8.04, 750 GB hard drive (500 to windows, 250 to ubuntu) dual widescreen lcd monitors
2) water cooled XP pro 1.7 GHz dual 19" CRT
3) crash machine, bare bones, don't remember how fast, been through so many linux flavors
4) XP pro, Hewlett Packard, don't know any more than that, was my GF's old computer, I haven't looked at what I can do with it yet
5) server tower, 15 SCSI hard drives, 4 media bay fans, don't know how fast, I think it's running Windows Server 2000.

I guess that's all for now. Next post will probably b about the software projects I'm currently working on for my day job, for JTS Tech., as a freelancer, and, if there's any time left, my own projects and experiments.