It’s been a while... I’ve been busy coding away. Here’s an update.

    I’ve been rather busy recently now that our beta version of software where I am employed has made its way to production.  Since that has transpired, all of our Trac entries can be attacked in a more systematic manner.  Here’s a little rundown of what I’ve been doing.

    Handling my son’s integration into his newest school year endeavour, as well as my wife’s into hers.  She just completed her masters degree and is starting her second year (first full year) as a teacher of Biology..  to kids born the year that she and I graduated (together) from high school.

    Creating the backlog of CodeDevl.com podcasts, and editing.  I never realised exactly how much time it takes to edit a podcast recording.  For every five minutes spoken, there are ten minutes spent editing and cleaning up.

    Learning and implementing GIT version control/repository software at our place of employ, as well as my local network as a replacement for Subversion (SVN).  

    Wrote a python (base classes pure) application which handles all migration of beta software to both the GIT repository paths as well as handling moves to production (including automated changes to certain header includes).  I’m rather happy with this application as it has saved many issue from transpiring.  Due to the haphazard manner in which some of the code base is arranged (particularly the beta vs. live paths), problems can and have occurred, hence my reasons for taking the initiative to create said program.  

    Additional work with re-learning Java, and keeping current with other technologies (Python 3K/3000/3.0), Javascript, Ruby, Smalltalk concepts and to a lesser degree Lisp (not including additional emacs functionalities).

    I do promise that I will be continuing to update both this written journal as well as the podcast site, and just wanted to let those reading that I have not dropped off the face of the earth, just immersed myself back into the changing flow at my workplace. 

Check External Data/Configurations First.

I was recently on holiday with my family visiting other members of my family as well as friends.  It was at this time I pulled out my trusty MacBook Pro, fired up TextMate, pulled down the newest subversion repository of my simulation software 'SimulaE' and attempted to show my friend the crafty english parser component I wrote.  I showed him the test suite with all of its various scenarios and then suggested he throw an attempt at it so that he may be amazed at its crafty logic.  

He did, and it failed, and I was surprised to say the last.  So given that I was on vacation, I wasn't going to focus must time on this issue other than updating the subversion repository so that I could look into the issue at a later time.  Well, two days ago I finally did so, and found out after careful checking that one of the datafiles utilised for cross checking and sub classifications of parts of speech of english lacked the necessary word (also the culprit of the mis-parse).  After making a quick addition to the aforementioned lookup file, the test ran just fine, and passed with flying colours.  

Lesson learned (for what feels like the millionth time);  check your support configuration and/or data files, because your code isn't broken, just doing what it is supposed to, based upon the information it has available (data files) to it.