Tag Archive for ‘code’

Racesquad 1

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Just after Christmas I began work on my most recent project (yes I probably should have been doing one of the other dozen projects I’m always talking about). RaceSquad is a fantasy motorsport manager/game that I’ve built from the ground up based on the things I’ve liked and disliked in the many other similar ‘programs’ I participated in over the years. If you’re a motorsport fan, why not sign up to see what you think, feedback is more than welcome. http://racesquad.com

Gazing into my crystal ball 21

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Ok, so there hasn’t been as much activity on here in recent months as I would like, but finding time to do all the things I want (and need) to do is the problem. With a bit of luck I will be able to recapture some time to work on projects in the next month or so. I am now inside my final month of University (finally), with a handful of fairly large assignments to complete, but no end of year exams to worry about. However also over the next month I also need to find somewhere to live which will no doubt consume a fair amount of time. But then, hopefully, I should be able to get back to work on my side projects. Lets have a quick look at those projects.

Redoable

I have received so many requests for me to update Redoable, initially for Wordpress 2.2 (which only introduced a couple of small issues) and more recently for Wordpress 2.3 compatibility. This one is a bigger issue since the way that categories are handled has changed completely. Then there are all the little bits and pieces that were never really “just right”, most probably due to Redoable being my first Wordpress theme, or in this case theme modification (Redoable is based on the code of K2). Mind you these ‘issues’ haven’t stopped over 30,000 downloads.but with the last update way back in April it really is time for some progress to be made.

So where do I begin. Well, it just so happens that Michael Heilemann and co are into the ‘release candidate’ stages of K2 1.0. K2 has become even greater over the last 10 months, and it is already Wordpress 2.3 compatible. Tyler Longren (creator of Unwakeable, another K2-based theme) recently announced that he planned on basing the next version of Unwakeable on K2 1.0 when it was released. A couple of months ago I had planned to do Redoable 1.3 and fix some of the main issues that had come up since the release of 1.2, but I simply couldn’t find the time that I wanted to spend on it. I can now say that there will be no Redoable 1.3.

Nope, I will be jumping straight to Redoable 2.0. Again I’ll be using K2 as the base, and although I have started some initially work, the main body of work on 2.0 won’t begin until the final stable release of K2 1.0 is available. While its not going to be exactly the same as 1.x, it will keep a lot of the ‘flavour’ of it since that seems to be what people want. I’m still thinking through about which additional plugin support, and other features I’ll add to the K2 base, but hopefully before Christmas there will be a new version of Redoable for you all the play with.

Wordpress Plugins

I am well aware that just about all of my plugins need to be updated to work with the latest Wordpress 2.3. In particular Ultimate Category Cloud, which no longer works due to the previously mentioned category changes in WP2.3. Other plugins just need a tidy up, and general bug fixing. I will hopefully get at least some of the plugins updated to go along with the release of Redoable 2.0

More Wordpress themes

I didn’t take long for people to start requesting a download of the ‘Pipedream’ theme that I am currently using. The thing is that Pipedream was designed for my site and my site only, its not really ready for a public release (yet). It doesn’t really work like a normal theme, due to the number of customisations that are built in. Beside the idea was that I wanted my site to be unique, which I had lost while I was still using Redoable. However I have begun thinking about a ‘Public’ version of Pipedream, but as far as a release date it probably won’t be until the new year.

A couple of weeks ago, I was sick of doing uni work one night and just started playing around with a magazine style layout which has kind of progressed into the beginnings of another new Wordpress theme. Unlike Redoable and Pipedream this new theme is going to be much lighter and brighter, with a slightly different approach to the way that posts are arranged and displayed. More about this new theme in the coming months.

Hahlo

Although I’ve only just rolled out the new version of Hahlo I’ve still got a list of things “to-do” which just didn’t make it into 2.0. Most of them are minor behind the scenes things, but there are also several things that have been requested by users. Things such as an quicker way to refresh the current timeline, currently it takes two ‘taps’, one would be ideal. Another thing I would like to try and get working is some form of user options to allow people to customise their Hahlo experience. For example some people would like to login and be taken straight to their friends timeline, other would like to be taken to their favourites list, I would love to be able to implement this.

I also have plans to release a very simple Hahlo desktop application, still using the webapp but in a standalone webkit-based application. I had considered turning Hahlo into an Adobe AIR application, they seem to be all the rage at the moment, but since just about everything in Hahlo relies pretty heavily on php and the functions within, and AIR doesn’t support php that pretty much canned that idea. In the meantime if you really want a Twitter app running on AIR, I suggest trying out Snitter.

Others…

And on top of all that I’ve got a couple of other things that I’m working on, one of which I’m working on at the moment as part of a University assignment. Plus no doubt I’ll run off on a tangent and end up working on things that aren’t on the list above as well.

iPhone development and blog neglect 2

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Its always the same. I almost always find that I try and do too many things at once. As a result some things get neglected.

Hahlo

The last time I posted anything here was when I launched Hahlo, and that was almost three weeks ago. Since then I’ve spent a lot of time chasing bugs, and trying to improve it. You have no idea how much I wish I could get my hands on an iPhone, beause trying o develop for a device that you can’t get near is very difficult.

Who knows exactly when they will release the iPhone in Australia, but I don’t see it arriving until mid next year. I’m kind of hoping that we might benefit from the delay by getting an updated version. Even better would be if they release new iPods with similiar functionality (obviously without the phone bit).

Following the launch of Hahlo, I asked for (useful) feedback. I got a little bit, but for the most part it wasn’t too useful. I also did some searching (yes I googled my own app) and found plenty of ‘interesting’ comments. One person who shall remain nameless made a less than complimentary comment about Hahlo and its design… I’ll keep what I think about one of their iPhone app designs to myself…

Due to the rushed nature of Hahlo’s development there were some areas where I kind of coded myself into a corner, with no way out other than to start again. To a certain extent thats what I’ve started to do. Using the super nifty iUI library developed by Joe Hewitt I’ve started work on what will be Hahlo 2.0. A simple thing like switching to processing the JSON feed server-side has allowed me to easily add a couple of the things I had originally wanted in my original version, such as parsing url’s in tweets so they become clickable links. you can have a look at the new bea here: http://beta.hahlo.com/iui

Other iPhone related stuffs

I couldn’t stop at just one iPhone ‘app’, so I started work on another. This time I thought of something that would be truly useful on the iPhone, a mobile interface for Lighthouse App. If you’re looking for a simple online bug tracking app then Lighthouse is really worth a look. I haven’t made a huge amount of progress on it as yet, but I will eventually find some time to spend on it.

A couple of days ago Steven Frank (from Panic) released a super simple wiki designed specifically with the iPhone in mind. W2 has the basics, you can create and edit your wiki pages, you can even use markdown for formatting. Theres no login management at the moment, so everyone will have access. but if thats a problem you could always just use htaccess to restrict it.

I spent a couple of hours last night mashing together the W2 wiki with the iUI library to make a wiki that looked like the rest of the iPhone interface. Theres a few buggy bits but overall it works ok. I had to play around with the W2 source code a little, but nothing too complex. You can have a play with my work-in-progress version here: http://beta.hahlo.com/wiki/

Keep in mind that the wiki is designed to work best on the iPhone (although I can’t test that…) or Safari. However… it looks completely different in Safari 3 to what it looks like in the latest Webkit build. Check this out. I’ll have to look into why exactly that is.

Blog neglect

I’m still working on my redesign, its along time coming, but like everything else I will eventually get it finished. I’ve got all the major parts done (I think) but its all the fine tuning that takes time, and I want to get it just right before I make it live.

Also in the works is my entry for the sandbox design comp. Again the major bits are done, I just need to sit down and finish it off. Entries close in a little under two weeks time, so I guess I should get onto that pretty soon.

Well, thats probably the longest blog entry I’ve written in a while. And its probably a good indication that I should post more often.

Twitt-twoo 4

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A couple of weeks ago I signed up for a twitter account, and since then I have been trying to work out the best way that I could utilise it with my blog, and more specifically with Redoable.

Having just read Alex King’s plans for his own twitter plugin, there doesn’t seem to be much that his plugin won’t be able to do once it is released. There are also a few other plugins out there that interact with twitter in various ways.

Twitter Updater will update your twitter to reflect any changes you make to your blog when you make them. Twitter Update Status lets you update twitter from within your Wordpress admin area. And there are couple of different plugin that let you display your current twitter comment.

But as yet I haven’t found one to do what I want in a twitter plugin. So today I started work on combining features from a couple of exisiting plugins, and adding a bit of ajax to allow updating directly from your sidebar wehn you are logged into your blog.

This is something that Alex King has said he might include with his plugin, but instead of waiting I’m going to have a crack at it myself. I don’t need all the archiving, auto updating stuff, I just was to display my twitter and update it easily.

For those who have used Facebook, they should be able to understand the concept behind my thinking. In Facebook you can set your current ‘status’, sort of like your status in Jabber or MSN, and you can do it just by clicking a little edit button, typing your status and hitting enter. Done, easy as that. And thats what I want to bring to Wordpress with ‘Twitt-twoo’, my twitter plugin.

Habari: next generation blogging 0

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There is a brand new blogging platform thats just starting to poke its head above the horizon. Habari which is the Swahili word for ‘news’, is being built from the ground up by some well known names in the blogosphere. This is how its described on the Habari Google code site:

Habari represents a fresh start to the idea of blogging. The system is fast, easy to use, and easy to modify. New users should have no problem using and enjoying Habari. Advanced users should have no problem tweaking Habari to do exactly what they need it to do.

Habari relies on PHP5 with PHP Data Objects (PDO), and your choice of SQL database (MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite). Habari is strongly object oriented, and implements the full suite of the Atom Publishing Protocol. User-created plugins make Habari do nearly anything imaginable, and a robust theme system permits the use of several popular templating solutions.

The first mention of Habari, at leas the first I saw about it, was by Chris J Davis early in the new year when he announced that his blog was now powered by Habari. They have also set up the beginnings of a wiki as well as a couple of Google groups for those who are keen on being involved in the project in anyway. The source is currently available via svn for those who want to give it whirl, simple installation instructions can be found in the wiki. I setup up a copy on my dev server this afternoon, only took a couple of minutes.

Obviously there is still alot of development to go, but if you think you might have something to offer then have a look at joining the Google groups. Thats what I did, and I hope that I can contribute in some way to the development, even if its just small thing like bug testing etc.

One of the running discussion is regarding a logo for Habari. Several people have put forward there own suggestions, and I just could resist, I had to try something for myself. This is the first thing that came to mind while looking at some of the other suggestions.

Habari logo concept 1

Initially I really liked this idea, but the more I looked at it the more I could see other logos within it. For example, the speech bubbles inside the letter ‘a’, is very much like the old Vodafone logo. And while unintentional, the black and white version of the logo is similar in idea to the Wordpress logo. Habari really needs something a little more unique. This was my second shot which I whipped up this afternoon. There are a few variations.

Habari logo concept 2

Trying to move away from the “letter inside a circle”, but still using the letter ‘h’. I also tried to think of some sort of generic icon/logo that could be used instead. The only one that I was really happy with was the ‘asteriks’ which I added a touch of colour too…very Web 2.0…I also played around with a few font faces for logos. This combination was my favourite.

Habari logo concept 3

So maybe you’re tired of your current blogging platformand looking to try something fresh and exciting, or maybe you are just curious, as I was, and want to know more about this exciting new project. Check out the Habari site for more info.

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