Work and side work has been keeping me pretty busy these days, so there’s not much new on the personal project front. Thanks to these I’ve learned a bit more about the WordPress Plug-In API, which is always interesting.
I’m hoping to get some time off this summer so I can get back to seriously learning Scala and Go. I’ve got a VPS with both of them installed, and just waiting to have time to tinker.
If you’re going to program in C++, I highly recommend Code::Blocks. I’m normally a Komodo (Perl, Python, etc.) or Visual Studio (VB.NET and C#) guy, but Code::Blocks totally blows away every other C++ IDE I’ve used. That includes Visual Studio, Borland C++, and vi. I’ve been using it as I refresh and expand my C++ skills, and it actually makes C++ fun.
Pages for Toylantis and Developolis have been posted. These are two of my largest builds using just about every building toy line I collected at the time. In the future, I should remember to include more Construx in my creations.
thumphper.php is the first version of the half of my attempt at replicating the basic functionality of Photobucket:
This script generates PNG images and thumbnails from files uploaded to my home directory and stores them in a separate, web accessible directory. It’s run from crontab every few minutes, it’s not event based.
I just added a page for my K’Nex contraption the Carousel of Blondes, which is a small gadget that spins a pair of collector cards around.
There are pictures of my builds, and they will be added as soon as I can piece together a little WP plug-in to display them properly.
A new section for Builds has been added. This will display my projects using construction toys. A good chunk of these will be LEGO, K’Nex, and Fisher-Price TRIO, as these are my favorite types, but other systems will show up from time to time.
Right now there are only two entries on the page, but more will be added soon, as I collect up pictures from my home computers and sort them out.
For future reference, the gear on the bottom of GeoTrax trains that drives it on the tracks fits K’Nex gears but not LEGO gears.
I’m posting this here because I spend so much time with PHP at work, I forget the Perl way of checking if files exist. Hopefully this will speed up my search time, maybe even ingrain it in my memory.
File exists: -e
File size: -s
Is directory: -d
Sometimes I feel a bit silly being as enthusiastic as I am about simple kids toys like TRIO and Duplo. John Robb’s post on Drone Bonjwas got me thinking, though. If you take as a given that drone swarms have a future, why do you have to limit it only to combat? What if drones have just as much a future as construction equipment, as these Quadrotor Teams show. If your job in the field is controlling swarms of drones, building towers and such out of basic, modlar parts, then maybe having experience and adaptability with Duplo-like parts could be an asset.
I thought I could use WordPress as a client-cum-archive for LiveJournal, but it was too much of a hassle. Therefore, from now on, blog.andrewburton.biz will redirect here.