Author: Dorian

Coder, Writer, Dreamer. Based out of Toronto.

Solo Coding and Android Progress

The move to using Android as a base for justCheckers is going well. I’ve already managed to setup a nice looking user interface. And the information screens work without any problems. All that remains is to build a settings screen and the game screens. This entire project is still a work in progress and so I expect many changes as the project matures.

Another thing I realized is that at the moment I do not need a team of developers to build justcheckers. At least at the moment, I can get more done without worrying about coordinating a team. I might ask for contributions at a later date, but for now I’m going to fly solo.

Behold the Android

Just in case someone thought that this project is dead, I would to disprove them of this. I’ve resumed work on justCheckers with a slight change of direction. Over the past few months, I’ve started work as an Android developer for a media firm and I’d like to apply all that I have learned on this project. By switching over to Android, there are a lot of things that will get simplified. Especially the end product is a lot easier to deploy on Android handsets than on desktops. Does this mean that the desktop version will cease to exist? No. Rather it will be easier to the desktop version, once the existing codebase is refactored. But for now I will concentrate on the Android version, because it is easier, more fun and will easily raise the visibility of the project.

New Site

Apologizes for the surprise website change.  However after months of silence and lots of haggling with Drupal, I just could not take it anymore.  So now the official justCheckers site runs on WordPress 3!  Yay!

This website is still a work in progress.  I still need to upload the old content from the older Drupal site.  Also while the default theme is great, it really needs some love before I can say the website is fully ready.  Hopefully before the end of next week, I’ll have most of this done.

Apologies to All Who Answered My Call for Help

Oh my, I must apologize to everyone who has offered to help with the justCheckers project.  It seems that my Gmail spam filter likes to chuck SourceForge related e-mails into the abyss of the spam folder. And I just noticed a whole thread of people offering to help with justCheckers! I apologize for not checking earlier. I will get back to all of you who replied back to my call for help, very, very shortly. In the future I will keep an eye on my spam folder, to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Cleaned Up and Open for Business

It took a while. A much needed upgrade, some changes to bring this site back into the larger multi-site effort I’m involved and some re-integration work back into SourceForge… and justCheckers is back! Finally there are no more blockers to getting back into coding, and hopefully moving this project forward. The plan is to finally get around to implementing the work I’ve meant to implement for so long.

So justCheckers is open for business… and is seeking new developers.

Back on SourceForge

I tried, but I just could not wrap my head around Bazaar and Launchpad. Both are amazing technologies from one of my favourite firms: Canonical. However for this project, there was too much hassle to get started and to migrate to using Bazaar. So instead I’m reverting back to the tried and true: Subversion and SourceForge. I setup a new account for myself on SourceForge, and renewed the project’s account. I’ll setup a TaskFreak! TODO list and web analytics for the project next. And after that I’ll dive back into developing justCheckers. Also plan on recruiting developers to help out once I stabilize the source code.

Content Entry and Organization, Done!

Yesterday evening I imported the last of the content from the developer’s guide from the old justCheckers site. I didn’t import any of the even older web content, since most of that was redundant and old. On one hand, I would like to show for my progress back in university. On the other hand, I don’t since I made some rather glaring mistakes back then. Back in university, I attempted to run justCheckers as a professional open source project. Of course, being new to both professional programming and project management I made some fairly easy to avoid mistakes.

For the time being, I can say that all the relevant content is in now on the site, and is properly organized. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get back to developing justCheckers again. But first I want to make the site look less of a default Drupal install. Don’t get me wrong, I like Drupal default themes. However the justCheckers project has a unique style to it, and that should reflect in the look and feel of the site. I plan on using a theme based of the static theme work I did earlier.

Migrated to Launchpad

The fine folks at Launchpad have imported the justCheckers source code from SourceForge’s Subversion repository to Launchpad’s Bazaar repository. The Launchpad page for the project is at: https://launchpad.net/justcheckers

I’m still new to using the Bazaar version control system that Launchpad uses. In fact hosting a project on Launchpad is new for me too. Expect some turbulence until I’ve figured out how to best develop using Launchpad.