Seize the storm

Previous post about RJ 

James Oliver Rigney, Jr., also known by his pen name, Robert Jordan passed away yesterday, September 16, 2007.  According to various postings I’ve read, his passing was peaceful with his wife at his side.  His last words were given to his wife, a whispering of love for her.  The main blog site is down right now, I assume from overload of bandwidth.  I also read on another site that a toast to RJ will be on Wednesday @ 5:15 ET, RJ’s favorite drink was cognac if you’d like to toast him to his own beverage.

For those concerned with the status of the last book in A Memory of Light, I have read on another site that RJ did spend much of his final days dictating outlines and plot details to what he called, “an army of writers.”  So rest assured, at this point it looks as though the book is still on schedule to be published.

To RJ, rest in peace - thank you for the years of wonderful reading.  One day, we’ll discuss your magnum opus on the farm in Two Rivers.  Sleep well, and wake my friend.

Progress Achieved

As of the end of last week, total hours are now over 100 for the 3.0 development on Photo Ops (or whatever it will be named in the future).  The database, licensing, and other important internet communications are done.  Now the fun part begins.  I’m probably about 20 percent into the UI features I want to get done before the release.  Perhaps I’m being a bit pessimistic but I know that there is still a long way to go.  I could go into the specifics of the features that I’m working on but of course, I can’t allow myself to divulge any of that yet. 

The COOL Stuff 

I suppose I can give some general hints.  The watermark interface has improved with some new features added there.  Even my wife thought the new features were pretty darn cool.  Next, I started into a brand new feature but ran into some roadblocks (more like lack of knowledge in how to code those things).  I’ve learned that if I can’t usually solve it in about 3 hours or at least feel some sense of getting it done, then I should just drop it (for now) and delay working on that to get to other important features.  So right now I’m working with the main UI and layout of the program.  Because my development machine has two monitors, I’ve ran into a problem working with and debugging some of the new features.  So that’s what I’m currently smoothing out.  Even while I am programming, my wife can attest that I’ve torn down features and totally deleted large chunks of code to start over because either it wasn’t done right in the first place or I have a much better way to do what I want.

Mid-Development Bump/Delay

So right now, I’m over in Germany doing a little vacation before I do some work for my full-time job for the whole week and thought I’d take the opportunity to get everyone updated on status.  I’ve had some great responses on a beta team.  There are probably four or five that have emailed me saying that they would like to be a part.  I could still use one or two more people so let me know if you’re interested.  Again, many thanks for your patience.  Know that I have kicked it into high gear - while I did not meet my goal of 24 hours per week, I did get 19 hours per week average since I decided to devote any time I could find to Photo Ops development.  It is paying off and it’s great to see the program progressing much more quickly.  The vision is becoming a reality…stay tuned!