Archive for September 13, 2006

Our story starts in June. At a staff meeting my employer announced that we would be starting a project for a client based in County Kerry. Unfortunately I got assigned – the result was over a month living in a hotel in rural Kerry. Hotels in Ireland charge a lot for external phone calls – including of course internet access. Net result was my leaving my online activities for the entire period except for essential email checks and such.

In July, I finally escaped the torture but was left with another dilemna. This was the year I was due to sit the Final Admitting Exam to the Institute of Chartered Accountants In Ireland. The exams cover Financial Accounting, Taxation, Business Finance, Management Accounting, Auditing and a more "big picture" Multi-Discipline case study. Before I go on, I think I definitely aced most of them – though Auditing was a pure mule and I was unable to finish the entire paper in the alloted time (a hefty 4 hours). Anyways, studying for these exams took up a huge amount of time. I organised 6 weeks of leave from work starting in late July which helped immensely and it was all consumed with study.

As a result off I vanished, leaving everyone wondering where I’d mysteriously disappeared! I originally tried just tracking emails, but eventually I threw in the towel and simply disconnected completely. The problem with hitting the internet for a "quick look" is that you can easily get stuck in for a few hours without knowing it.

Anyways, it should be worth it. My result will arrive in November and hopefully with a full pass. That will go a long way to bumping up my future career prospects (not to mention my wallet ).

So where from here?

Now that I am back and reconnecting with friends and foes alike, I am assessing all my various online commitments. I suppose I am a bit odd in some respects. For all my internet involvement I don’t actually spend huge chunks of time online. It’s surprising how much material I simply suck onto my hard drive, format, and print for reading material on the daily commute.

First up, the Patterns For PHP website is going to get some attention. I need to check for version updates to MediaWiki and phpBB. The PFP Forums should be online over the next 24 hours. I’ve been in contact with my main partner on the website, Edward Yang (Ambush Commander to Devnetwork junkies). He is due to get shell access to the server to help maintainance and such – besides which he knows MediaWiki far more than I do by a long shot.

With maintenance and forums completed, I’ll be returning to the publicity trail to try drum up additional articles and contributors. I’ll still be chipping on my end, but often other folk have more experience with certain key Patterns which makes their input invaluable. I’ll also be following up on several offers I received over the Summer.

In other news, yesterday I received my first Google Adsense cheque by mail. This can only be a good omen I think – hot on the heels on my return to the internet . The net sum of US$116 is now winging towards my current account through Bank of Irelands bureaucracy. The whole thing will be spent on renewing the QS domain, and prepaying for hosting. Just to note – PFP will not see advertising arrive. I prefer my documentation sites ad free.

On the games front. Before I left I made a whole ton of changes to Quantum Star SE Evolved. Check the commit log on the left panel of this blog. The last piece in the puzzle was a Front Controller setup. I’m currently leaning towards bundling the Controller section of the Zend Framework with a few extensions for the specifics of the game. With this last piece slotted, and a migration to Template Lite instead of Smarty, QS is well on course on a desperately needed update. Goodbye 1999 PHP 3 code, hello shiny new PHP 5 code with Unit Tests.

That’s all from me for now. Since I’m back fully – I expect the blog activity will soar as things sort themselves out in all these activities. Still need to catch up on the Protoshell project, and others. But those subjects are reserved for another day.