A couple of people have noted that I haven't posted much to this blog. Don't know whether that's a good or bad thing, though. 
The truth is, I've been extremely busy with everything else in my life that I haven't had a huge amount of time to write on the blog.
So here's what I've been up to:
- After a 3-week break, I'm back at work at Atlassian. Luckily, I was able to stay on at the company for my 3rd work placement! That's keeping me pretty busy, as I'm working full time.
- I'm still plodding along with Mat at The Little App Factory. I've moved us across to use JIRA as our bug tracking system, and aim to also use it as a support system (I guess that's a plug for Atlassian). It's not public at the moment, but that's something I am looking at doing in the future. On top of that, I've been working on the next version of Connoisseur (long overdue). I've taken a different approach this time, and have tried to follow the TDD approach as much as I can, and it's worked quite well. (I plan to write about testing user interface code, such as NSTableViews, using OCMock in the future.) I've had to rewrite much of the table code we were using, but I'm glad to say it's much cleaner and reliable now.
- To top all of that, I've started research for my thesis. I initially wanted to cover agile development methodologies, but have found myself gravitating towards XP and TDD in particular. A friend suggested an interesting angle for my thesis, which I'm also investigating. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to dedicate as much time to this as I had hoped. By the time I've done some programming and the support, it's 1-2am and I REALLY don't want to have to read and make notes on research papers. Ick.
That's about it, really. I've been trying to do more exercise, as I sit in a chair all day and night, and that can't be healthy. Soccer is great, and I hope to play a game of squash each week with a friend.
I would also like to do more with my time. I don't feel that I'm very socially responsible, and would like to be. I live a pretty peachy, comfortable life, and I want to help others who haven't had the opportunities I have been given (yes, it's cliche, deal with it :)). How I'm going to do that, I'm not sure, yet.
Jem,
I think you should do what I do, as nerdy and boring as it sounds, ive made a ‘timetable’ for my week! I think just getting down what you do in the week on paper is pretty important for you to plan ahead, and although it may seem that your life has become routine, it really hasn’t, you’re working to a ‘timetable’ now and just not realising it =). I guess, getting it down on paper for me has given me the opportunity to make time for MORE things!
Like, im starting volleyball on tuesdays, i go to the gym 3 days a week, basketball twice a week,i get drunk once (or twice) a week, spend time with the mrs, work monday to friday and i manage to squeeze some thesis in there too.
IF I CAN DO THAT MUCH, im sure u can too jem =)
As for helping other people who are less fortunate than u, as selfish as it sounds, i think you should work out your life first and be sure that you’re ’stable’ enough to help others
Hope that helps!
Will
Or you could donate to the Danielle Foundation. Where every dollar from your donation goes towards ME!
P.S. I’m a STAR! *
Could you elaborate on the support system plugin?
a) what’s the progress?
b) will it work in standard edition?
c) how will it be different from this:
http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/JIRA as a support system
Hi Andrey,
I actually said a “plug” for Atlassian, not a plugin.
It’s simply a matter of configuring the instance and templates in a way that fits in with the support workflow (which we have yet to do).
Jeremy
Thanks..
So any timeframe or general ideas on the flow? We are looking to test Jira out for our customers, we are an application hosting provider with a limited # of customers (let’s say a dozen).
Basically, we want our customers to have their little ’space’ where they’d be able to see both their support tickets and documentations we’ll be setting up for them (some customer specific, some general).
I have played with confluence, and liked it very much. Jira, I haven’t played with yet, as I am in the process of setting it up (requires to be not in standalone mode to be able to integrate with confluence)
http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Integrating JIRA and Confluence
-Andrey
Hi Andrey,
At the moment, no. Atlassian (the makers of JIRA and Confluence) use JIRA publicly as an issue-tracking (http://jira.atlassian.com/) and support (http://support.atlassian.com) system, if you want to have a look at how they’re set-up.
Hope this helps,
Jeremy