… make nick not much fun to be around these days.

sorry again for the lack of updates (seems to be a recurring theme, doesn’t it?) I’ve been trapped in an endless work cycle for the last 6 weeks, with a couple of contract projects, 2 classes, megapixel.net, and my day job (!) keeping me very occupied these days. looks like it’s going to stay this way for the near future; might even last until late november, considering my schedule.

ever seen one of those nifty moebius strips? that’s what I feel like I’m on. I really need a vacation. a long one. argh.

life has been treating me pretty well, though; I’ve got a couple of really interesting java & j2ee classes over at bcit right now, going on for another couple of months. very interesting stuff, mainly focussed on database/data manipulation (jdbc, rmi, xml) & component (j2ee/java server, ejbs, javabeans) development. learning a lot. with any luck, I might even release one of the apps I’m building once the course is over — it’s very cool (well, I think so, at least :) and might be helpful to other jdbc newbies, to help learn the ropes.

been busy on a couple of side gigs too, though the some stuff has been relegated to the back-burner for the time being. hopefully it’ll pick up again in a couple of months. in the interim, I’m working on a project for a wireless startup in Vancouver that is definitely letting me flex my creative muscle — using apache cocoon, along with jsp/servlets and wml/wmlscript. not often you get a chance to work on that kind of combination …

as you can see, I’ve been putting a lot of time into java/j2ee lately, and horribly neglecting my php … not to worry, though, as we’re in the planning phases for some major site upgrades to megapixel.net, and php will be heavily involved in the new stuff. I’m actually on the lookout for good php-based open-source (or cheapware) community applications right now, so if you know of any (besides phpnuke, postnuke, phorum, vbulletin, phpbb, and thatware of course :), be sure to let me know.

other than that, not much going on. ;) the social life has been taking a major hit (work work work), and I’ve been spending a lot of time watching the news lately, for obvious reasons. my thoughts go out to those with family/friends in new york — I spoke to a friend out there who’s lucky his family made it out in one piece, being just 4 blocks away from “ground zero” when the events occurred … I’m sure others have similar tales, and would be interested in hearing them.

the future is looking pretty scary, considering the response over the last few days.

dark thoughts aside, I hope everyone had a happy thanksgiving (in canada, at least :), and as I’ve said before, I’ll try and keep this thing updated a little more regularly (ha!) … thanks.

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