Nothing in particular

Well, it's been a while since I've done this.

I often try and think of a few things that I can blog about but my head is too full of my daily work to allow space for such frivolities.

As you may know, I have two major projects on the go which I'm developing side-by-side. IP.Dynamic is our upcoming content management system and Invision Power Board 2.1, which is a pretty major refactoring release. I've finalized the core structure of these programs and they are both written the same way and can share modules, classes and other code. It's been quite a fun undertaking and it means that IPB is now using proper OOP methods and it removes all the nasty global calls that previous versions required.

Work has been going well on Invision Power Board. In just over a week I've been able to refactor all the code to use the new IPS kernel systems and structures and I've made progress into the proposed feature set which includes a rich text editor which has been spawned from the IP.Dynamic RTE. I've put aside some of the templating and CSS changes for the next release as this was turning out to be IPB 3.0 and we simply don't have the time to make such large changes at this stage.

IP.Dynamic has been in alpha testing for just over a week and it seems to be going well. The alpha testers have had access to IP.Dynamic installations which we host and have been encouraged to have a good look around and to note their thoughts. Even though the system is still in a very early alpha release and maybe only about 60% complete, it's still capable of being used to run a website. We're in the process of moving our custom coded websites over to a single IP.Dynamic thanks to its ability to separate template sets which can be applied at page level.

We've had some good comments from the alpha testers and I'm about to release a mini-questionnaire to encapsulate their experiences so far and I'm going to try and organize a live web-chat (as suggested by one of the alpha testers) to thrash out some issues and develop some ideas. It's been very useful to have a very controlled set of testers as you often get a lot of white noise when receiving feedback.

Over the pond in the US; we've just moved into a new office suite. We literally ran out of room in our previous location and we got an offer to good to refuse for a 7,200 sq.ft. facility which is not only much closed to city conveniences it also gives us room for expansion which we're going to need on the release of our new products and services. The new building has finally been fitted out to our requirements and the new furniture has been delivered (just don't ask Charles about his desk). We'll get some pictures up once the dust has settled.

In the offline world, I've been making time for those old fashioned book things. I've read the first two of James Patterson's 'Alex Cross' novels (Along Came a Spider and Kiss The Girls) and ordered the next two from Amazon. I loved the first two books and can't wait to read the next ones. I can't believe I've not picked these up before. I know that they've been made into movies - but the movies aren't faithful to the books (surprise!) and although Morgan Freeman is an excellent actor, he shouldn't have been cast as Alex Cross. Patterson often describes Cross as "Mohammad Ali in his prime" not an aging man with a grey beard! Those crazy folks in Hollywood, eh?
For a little "light" reading, I've been reading Mark Brando's "Screaming Eagles at Normandy" which chronicles the 101st Airborne from inception to the Normandy invasion. Unlike many other books on the 101st, it doesn't focus on E/506 (Easy Company) and is full of colour pictures taken by soldiers who disobeyed the "no cameras on jumps" rule. Excellent stuff.