catchup
Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted, so I suppose an update is in order.
I’m up in bellingham taking one class (Programming Languages) and working. I’m working for restek on a per project basis. So far this has included evaluating different calendar/scheduling systems, making the new lab images, and working on the dashboard project (more on that later).
Since myWestern uses uPortal, I looked for software that would easily integrate with that system. Along comes uwCal, a decent package put out by the university of washington. However, the whole thing is written in java, and I have to say the whole tomcat java servlet setup is one big pain in the ass. I don’t think they could have come up with a more intricate or complicated method for running what should be a simple webserver, db, and webapp. Plus, this thing is very hungry for cpu and memory. Boo.
Fortunately, John Huddleston over at reslife has been working on a project called nexus. It’s designed just to organize groups and group events. You pick out what groups or activities you are interested in, and any events for those groups will appear on your own personalized calendar. Very cool. Now, what would make this a killer app, would be the ability to add your own personal event, share your calendar with others, and pull rss/xml based event feeds from other sources.
With those features, I really think that this will be something that students will really enjoy and make use of.
The other project I’m working on is a independent project for John Jordy who works in the councelling center at western. I am working on a app for palm pda’s that will facilitate the tracking of aspects of a person’s health. i.e happiness, stress, pain, medications. This information paints an interesting picture that often times helps people understand the coorelation between those things. “Oh see, here is when the headache started, and your stress levels increased until you took a pain killer, and then the pain and stress went back down.” Ok, so thats a pretty simple example, but you get the idea.
Diving into the world of palm development has been quite interesting. It’s all C/C++, but the forms and input paradigms are much different from anything I’ve done before. So, I’ve done quite a bit of trial and error trying different techniques, but progress has been good. This being my first solo programming gig, I’m extra motivated to do a kick-ass job.
