2 Bit Hacker

Been giving a bit of thought to a project recently. I’d like to write a web based event planning application, primarily for use by my gaming clan for planning LAN parties and movie get-togethers, and that sort of thing. This is all loosely based off the #978 Events page, which I think is largely defunct now.

Just trying to jot down some ideas about events at the moment.

Events should have three states, planning, open, and closed. In the planning stage, the date for the event is not yet known. Users viewing the event can see a list of possible dates and select which ones would be best for them. The event planner (a user) can then decide which date to have the event on. At this point the date is fixed and the event switches to the ‘open’ state.

In the open state, users can register whether or not they will be attending the event, along with any notes and comments they may have. This is a direct rip-off of the #978 system. Users can change their note and status at any time in order to reflect the changing world in which we live.

After the event has passed, it’ll switch over to closed, so that people don’t sign up for things that have already happened.

None of this is really all that difficult from a programming perspective, it’s just trying to get the interface to be something easy to use and intuitive for people. I think it’ll help a lot with our LAN party planning, since we currently just use our forum’s poll feature, which doesn’t allow for multiple answers or tracking who voted for what.

Perhaps I’ll get to this after Delia’s calendar.

Right, it’s been a while, here’s a rundown of how things in life are going.

Delia and I are doing pretty well. Her massage business is going fairly well, though she’s still working one day a week at Staples. Her concert last weekend (on her birthday) went well. I’ve got some pictures from it on my camera, just need to upload them sometime. I’m still playing way too much WoW, but I’m trying to cut back now that my main character is up to level 60. I should probably just hop on for raids with my guild and a bit on weekends.

We’ve been in the new apartment for nearly two months now, we still have some stuff that needs to be unpacked and put away, but for the most part we’re pretty well settled in. I’d like to rig up something a bit better for our garage door opener at some point, since we don’t have the transmitter for the opener. Right now it’s just a key-switch to open/close it from the outside, but the barrel of the lock likes to come out. I found a few remote control relay boards that might do the trick, but it’s not really a high priority. I’d also like to pick up a box of cat5 cable and a crimping tool of my own to make the ethernet run from the cable modem (in the living room) to the computers (two rooms away) a bit neater.

My car is finally paid off (yay!) so of course it now needs to go in for repairs. It’s been leaking coolant for a bit now, just haven’t had the money to go get it fixed, but I finally do, so it should be going in tonight. Near as I can tell it’s not the radiator or the pump, so I’m hoping it’s just a loose or broken hose someplace. Other than that, it’s been running well. Nearly up to 110k miles.

Work is going along, I’ve been getting quite a bit done in the past couple of weeks, finally getting our notification system mostly finished off. Right now I’m working on speeding up our image capture stuff to something more useful than 1fps. It’s proving to be a bit more work than I expected, since my program wasn’t really designed for it, but I think it’ll work out. I still need to write up a resume and start poking around for a new job. My plan to work full time somewhere else and just do SimPro stuff on a contract basis, which I think will work out better for everybody.

I’ve also been tossing around the idea of a new computer. Mine is still running fine, but it’s starting to fall behind the curve with newer games. I’m thinking a nice Athlon64 on an nForce4 board with a GeForce 6600 should do nicely. I’ve also got an eye on one of the newer 19-inch LCD panels with an 8ms response time. They’ve been getting good reviews, and a lot of places are saying they’re finally ready for gaming. Hopefully I’ll be able to put some money aside and get all that stuff before the next LAN party.