I’m finding it exceedingly hard to stay focused on anything aside from the upcoming move. That’s right, once again we’re packing up all of our crap and moving to another exotic locale. Hopefully it won’t suck as much as Monterey, but I’m not holding out hope.

At present I need to get the following done before we bail:

• Crank out BitArtist v1.1
• Get things squared away with my acting admins for WotG and Bomb Shelter
• Finish jumping through the hoops of Hawaii’s insane animal quarantine laws
• Figure out how to push back our move date about at least a month
• Get the house cleared of all useless/non-functional crap for the move
• Go back east to visit as many family and friends as we can before we move off to not see them for years again
• Fill out the damages paperwork from the last time we moved a year and a half ago
• and take care of about a million other smaller things

Why yes, I am a busy boy, thank you for noticing. I’ve been at a constant 6000RPM since we hit California and I’m ready for a vacation or a six week nap, whichever comes first.

Okay, so I’ve been busy, so what. Well, in addition to getting ready for yet another move (yes, another one), I’ve written a few updates for the UserLogin Wordpress widget (up to 2.2 now), went live with BitArtist, wrote another Wordpress plugin, learned to use jQuery, built a few webpages, and now I’m working on building the next release of BitArtist and possibly putting together my portfolio for development and design work.

I’ve also started to as-of-yet unreleased community projects for Way of the Geek. Oh, I may take a crack at learning AJAX and brushing up on my JavaScript and XSL while I’m at it…if I can find time between housework and trying to get back into Japanese studies. Everyone should know at least one other language, not counting programming. So yeah, I’ve been busy.

Sadly, if I didn’t stay busy I think I’d probably go insane. Either that or drive everyone around me insane because I’d be bored to tears. There were podcasts, news articles, rice balls, and associating with friends in there somewhere too.

I like to think that it makes me more along the lines of super-efficient. What am I rambling on about? Let me explain. Yestereday I popped into the WotG IRC channel for a few minutes between running errands and I’d mentioned that I was thinking about building another WordPress plugin. The last one was fun to build and I’d like to do something a little more advanced than just building a widget. Then I took off for a day of running so many places that I spread myself thinner than an Ethiopian prostitute, typical day.

When I came back I started thinking about what the new plugin would accomplish, got a rough idea, and set out learning the Wordpress Plugin API. I knew enough from the last plugin I built to be absolutely useless. I started coding the plugin at roughly 3PM California time, stopped a few times for more errands, and stopped entirely for the night at around 9PM. Worked on it for another couple of hours this morning and it’s finished. Like, completely finished.

So, basically with about 4-7 hours of actual work, no prior training, and feeling my way through the entire thing, there’s nothing I can’t do. Or at least nothing I can’t do to the point that it will at least function, I suppose. Rack that up with the rest of the code I’ve written over just the past months and I’ve not had a bad body of work.

BitArtist, revisiting the WP-UserLogin plugin, a new members rotation script (member-specific nonetheless) for Bomb Shelter Comics, and then cranking the new one out that has yet to be hosted by WordPress (submission just went in today). I’ve been a busy little fella.

I’ve also noticed that I prefer my plugins to pull double-duty, but I won’t waste your time with that on this post. Maybe next time, but not now. For now, I have to get ready to…wait for it…run more errands. Either my butt is going to attach itself to the car seat permanently, or my legs are just going to evolve into wheels because they never stop moving. Anyway, enjoy the wall of text here.

BitArtist, the thing that has eaten my soul all-day everyday for almost the last year and a half, is finally done enough that it can move to beta-testing. Now I can focus on bug fixes and getting a stable release candidate ready for launch…instead of feeling like a crazy person perpetually working on vaporware that people would just roll their eyes at as soon as I mentioned it. It’s real now, bitches!…yes, anyway.

At any point, I’ve got a few people interested in beta-testing for me and the people who’ve seen it in action seem to be rather pleased. So I’m very happy about the feedback thus far. I don’t plan to make a million bucks off it, and it’s been so long that I’m a little fuzzy as to why I put it out in the first place, but I’m glad I did in any case. It’s been a very good learning experience and I’ve found out more about programming on this project than any previous.

I also have plans to open up an open-source code repository of sorts as a community supplement to Way of the Geek at some point, but that’s still a ways down the road. Although when I do launch it I hope it does well. We really do have a lot of bright readers, and I think with the right motivation or even just the right project they could go pretty far.

Insert whatever cliched saying you’d like in the title, it’s all good. Point is, I’ve been extremely busy as of late. Between cleaning up the house, trying to workout at least three times a week, cranking away on the BitArtist project, podcasting, and everything else I don’t have much time to post here or sleep or do much of anything.

The good news? Well, if you’re a webcomic artist the good news is that my BitArtist project is almost finished and should be ready for beta testing next week. It’s going to be completely free, as in beer and speech. Hopefully people will find it as useful as I’ve intended for it to be. Quite a bit of work has gone into it, and I’d like to think that it shows. It’ll be under constant revision and upgrading and I’ll be building/modifying other software I’ve written for public use as well.

So there you have it, I’m a busy busy man. Nothing you didn’t know already, I’m sure. But you all should know by now that I can’t help but state the obvious.