Bedroom Computer

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Since my roommate moved out I have the spare room back, and have moved my bed into that room, so I can once again have a room separate of the computer/office stuff. The problem with that is sometimes I really want to see what's the dealy without leaving that room.

I would, at some point, like to make a bedroom computer.

It would need to be able to keep track of the time, obviously, as it's main purpose would be as an alarm clock of sorts. Event planning would be nice too, perhaps using 30 boxes or Google Calendar to keep track of my events. Some sort of RSS/email viewing would be the nift as well. As I mull it over weather would be the cool. In thinking about it I thought it would be a fantastic idea if the computer could wake me up ala Star Trek.

"Good Morning Scottie. The temperature is a cool 96 degrees and 100% humidity in sunny Southern Louisiana. You have work in one hour and 45 minutes. You have 2 events today. There are 5440982 emails awaiting you. There are 30 new items in your RSS archive. The Klingons are on the starboard bow."

With a voice recognition software this could become even more fun, allowing me the ability to give voice commands such as "Set alarm for 8:30 PM" or "Play me some John Tesh baby!".

Add in X-10 type devices like usb light and device control and there are no limits to the fun one could have.

"Computer, run Barry White.exe"

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I am a depressed little php monkey

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Work is a chore. Even when you are doing a thing that you really enjoy doing, doing it for someone else can make it seem like the last thing you want to do.

I love coding. It's a ball to create something new, and every time I do something on my site or another that makes a few lines of code do something nifty I get a little pang of joy in mah heart.

The big problem here being that most of the projects I'm working on end up being unyeilding tweak jobs. Fix this here, that there. Grind, grind... There is no sense of satisfaction until the site/project/chore is done, and instead of burning me out on that job it tends to burn me out on coding.

So I find myself in somewhat of a situation. I really want to work on something involving the site as a fun aside to the work I'm doing for pay. Sort of a coding break to keep things interesting. A way to find a happy little oasis of fun in the middle of the great desert of work. I'm going to try this out for a while, saying to myself for every 8 hours I work on a normal project I'm going to put 2 into something I think is neat. If it works for Google who the hell am I to argue?

The big problems with this being to actually keep to this schedule. Not spending 10 hours on my fun thing and 2 hours on the work. Not working straight through without any fun. And definately not sitting in front of my computer reading Google News and del.icio.us/Popular while I should be working.

Now to figure out what to play with...

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Top 100 Movies Challenge

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So I was surfing about and jaunted over to Audrey's site. While I was there I saw a link called "Goal by 25". I of course assumed it was about me, something like "Meet The Bane" or "Write a sonnet praising the all powerful Bane" or maybe something as simple as "Express my longing and absolute adoration of the mighty man that is known to the world as Bane. He's so dreamy."

It's probably obvious that I didn't find any of those things or I would have started this post with a much larger font. What I did find though was pretty neat!

She has apparently set a goal for herself to watch all the movies on the AFI top 100 movie list by the time she is 25. Which is a neat goal and rather admirable that she wants to take in so much great cinema. Of course, myself being a great and very cultured man, I have had such a goal for myself up on my website for some time now, (Since yesterday when I stole the idea from her and put up a page of my own for the list) though I have yet to get into the list very far. Some of the movies I have watched in the past but I decided why not just watch them all regardless? So I'm starting from the beginning.

My List Here. I may go and make a script for this so I can comment easily on the movies that I watch and have dates and what not, to sort of document the project. May be fun. :)

Should you decide to take on the project yourself let me know and I'll link yours from the page.

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Formatting

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I will format today.. well tonight now.. or tomorrow..

One of those.. I really need to do it but I keep putting it off because I can't be assed to get everything set back to the way I like it. I actually had gotten to a point last year where I could format my computer and have everything back and ready on it within an hour and a half or so. Which is pretty sad actually.

I also need to sort my bookmarks, what a mess.

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New Project Woes

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I'm thinking about undertaking a new project. And it is one that will certainly drain my time and I'm not sure how exactly I want to go about it.. or even where to start.

Most of you that know me know me from TalkLoud, my forum community. TalkLoud is coming up on it's 3rd birthday (4th if you count pre vb forum wipe), and I wanted to do something special with it. The choices?

A: Upgrade TalkLoud to vb3, with all the bells and whistles and junk that come with it.

B: Give TalkLoud a new layout. The old one is nice and all, but starts to look a little well.. old to me. Not sure how those of you who dont see it every day feel about it, so feel free to chime in.

C: umm.. Closing it. This is the hardest of the three to decide on, and was actually something that I gave considerable thought to, as the posting had more than died out over there.

I have pretty much ruled out C, as long as everything continues to pick up it seems like it could stay around for another year or so. But I am trying to get the go go juice built up to give Option A a go.

The problems with this are time, effort, and understanding. vb3 is a whole new system that I really am not that thrilled about going into without the time to invest into doing it right. Combine this with the fact that the current version of vBulletin that TalkLoud is running on (vb2) is hacked so horribly that I don't even remember what features were there to begin with and which ones I addded.

So, what would YOU do? ;)

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Portal Coming Along

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The Webcam Portal is almost finished with the base elements. It is at this point completely functional, if a bit lacking in the things I originally intended to put in it. Once I finish off the registration routines I will link that.

The biggest problem I have is sort of two fold.

1) I have too many damn ideas, and not enough time to do them.
2) When I find time to do one it ends up becoming almost bloated because I obsessively add features and every new twist I can shove in.

My new webcam portal is a good example of this. It has support for Jabber and Odigo names, not likely something that will be common. It also has support for FOAF files, something that will be downright uncommon. Yet still the archive and login stuff remains unwritten. The fun stuff I overwork and the boring stuff gets left undone.

I really need a better way of getting passed my laziness, or finding a way to make the crap work fun. When I was working in a team this was pretty much accomplished by leaving some of the most insanely stupid commenting you have ever seen, or giving functions names like "Magical_Duck" and "Ninja_Crabwalk". Now that I'm for the most part working alone its a little different, as entertaining as I find myself (and I can make myself laugh from time to time) it's just not the same.

So really I wonder how others get passed the boring work without ruining the fun stuff.

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