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.

I knew it was too good to be true when I got two podcasts done in one day without having Audacity crash on me even once. Turns out my techno-luck wouldn’t hold out as Bad Behavior, one of the anti-spam plugins we run on Way of the Geek, decided to see me as a spammer and block access to not just my personal blog but deny login access to the entire site for me. So I had to deactivate and/or delete the plugin completely, which wasn’t too hard to do.

In other news, our KitchenAid Artisan series mixer finally came in today and holy crap is it awesome! Heavy duty construction and from what I’ve seen some of the attachments available for it mean business.

Of course it got delivered in the five minutes I was gone to pick up the wife…that’s becoming a trend with the delivery people around here. They wait until I’m out and then, like ninjas, spring onto my porch, drop off the package (usually breaking it in the process), and then take off like a shot in the dark before anyone can see them. I’ve never heard of underground kamikaze package delivery, but if it did exist this would be the place for it.

Oh, and since Devin reminded me during this weeks show, I did receive my HD DVD player back from the repair shop and it makes me very very happy. Much upconversion of standard DVDs and the HD DVD menu functions being accessible during playback has become somewhat of a new toy for me at the moment. Speaking of the show, if you haven’t heard it already, you can hear it now. Either at Blubrry, Techpodcasts.com, or at the Way of the Geek HQ this weeks show is all about gift ideas for the geek in your home.

I just got done Interviewing Chris Baty who founded National Novel Writing Month and I’ve gotta say he’s a really cool guy. Before and after we started the interview he was polite and kidding around, even shot the shit with me for a bit afterwards. I’m definitely impressed.

On a related note, I plan on making the South Bay NaNoWriMo Kick-Off Party tomorrow, hoping to ride up with Mike and meet some new people. Should be a lot of fun.

Recorded, edited, uploaded and wrote articles for two separate podcasts today, troubleshot some code, and a few other things all before 3:30. Not bad if I do say so myself. If I can just keep up this pace for the rest of my life I may actual amount to something.

Oh, must start looking for Christmas presents sometime soon as well. It’s less than two months away now. I also have to figure out what I’m going to do for Halloween. I could go as a huge dork I suppose, I’ve already got the costume for that and wear it everyday.