Blog of Ortz

Maybe it’s just me. I really don’t get Twitter. I’ll just assume you know what it is since everyone seems to use it. I don’t have an account and I don’t think I ever will. This is mainly due to the fact that “Twitter” and “addicted” are so often used in the same sentence. Which gives the impression that nobody knows why anyone uses it. It’s like a freak of nature.

In other news, I’ve started another programming project. I’m making an IRC client in .NET/C#. I’m going to model it after the popular mIRC/NNS combo. Basically I’m going to take the best parts of mIRC/NNS, remove the fluff that nobody uses (or that I don’t, at least), and hopefully. It will basically be a client for people who keep IRC open 24/7. For “power users” if you want to put it that way.

This will be my first proper non-web app, and my first time doing sockets (if you don’t count that IRC bot I made in PHP). One thing I’m trying to change with this project is the fact that I never finish anything. Hopefully announcing it like this will help with that. I really wanted to use WPF but I want to opt for “finishing” rather that getting it exactly the way I want it, since I don’t know that much about WPF. Another way I want to accomplish that is by planning out exactly what the first version will look like so I have something to shoot for. Although, I have never done that before. If you have any links or suggestions I’m all ears! (PS, I turned CAPTCHA off) Hopefully I can do proper versioning too. I’m not too big on planning. D:

I’m still working on the new version of the site (in CodeIgniter) but don’t expect it any time soon.

Been a while since my last post… Seems like I can never think of anything to blog about. TFH is The Flaming Head, in case you’re confused.

I’m currently in the process of rewriting my entire site using the CodeIgniter framework. Not counting my blog and the forums, that is. Actually, I’m not sure if I want to keep the forums up. Nobody uses them, and frankly there’s no reason anyone would want to. And now that I think about it, some sort out shoutbox would probably work just as well. I’ll have to think about it. I’d appreciate any suggestions too.

CodeIgniter has been really fun to work with. This is my first experience with a web framework (apart from Ruby on Rails, which didn’t go so well… something about “convention over configuration” seems a bit communist) and MVC is really awesome. For the first time, I have a feeling like I really know what I’m doing and I’m not just a noob anymore. I think it might be because MVC was sort of an epiphany for me as a programmer.

I’ve decided to be more proactive with learning PHP; trying to learn the sort of things that didn’t really interest/concern me when I was just doing it for fun. Design patterns, for instance. I want to eventually get ZCE (Zend Certified Engineer). Which means I may end up starting on my own framework in the near future. I want to start doing doing freelance online. My biggest obstacle right now is a lack of real experience and, unfortunately, confidence.

As far as non-web programming is concerned, I’ve recently become interested in GUIs, both designing them and implementing them. Usability issues have always interested me because psychology has always interested me as well, and the two seem to go hand-in-hand. I mentioned before that I wanted to mess around with WPF a bit, which I still haven’t gotten around to, unfortunately.

Got my hard drive on Monday, so by now I’m pretty settled in. I know it sounds like I’m moving to a new house or something, but for the past two weeks I’ve been using Linux on my server, and I’ve felt like I’ve had a bag over my head. This is absolutely nothing against Linux, I suppose it’s just the effect of being in a different environment. It’s really hard to get things done with this sort of feeling. It’s a bit like jet lag I guess.

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