You know, I don’t really expect that the Miles Johnson referenced in this post title will ever see this post, but if he does, I just wanted to extend to him my warmest thanks and gratitude!!!

For everyone else, the reason I’m thanking this gentleman is that it it appears he is my savour when it comes to the problem of trying to get a forum integrated into Unknown Tales. Up until now I was investigating into the idea of using a login bridge or single-sign-on system which would use the user admin features of an external forum system such as phpBB or vBulletin. The problem is that I could not find any suitable ways of achieving this, and even if I was to successfully build something like it myself, it would feel a bit… dirty! (more…)

I’m having a conceptual crisis.

Although it might be a bit early to be dealing with this (at least according to my project plan, which after changing last night puts me back on schedule – but only just), but I’ve started to work on the models and tables I need for the project.

I’m using CakePHP as my development framework, which uses the OOP patten of MVC. What this means, from a practical point of view, is that I need to think of all my data as models rather than database tables. It shouldn’t be too hard to make the switch – but apparently it is! I’m used to thinking about data in tables, and how the tables relate to one another – and although models work in a similar way – they don’t! And to make things worse – once I have finished designing the models, I then still need to go back and start thinking about the tables the models required due to Cake’s Bake feature (which automates the generation of the classes used within your application) using the tables in the database to build the models.

ARGH!!!!

But wait, there’s more. (more…)

I don’t know about you, but personally I think that the focus group I hosted on Thursday was a huge success.

Out of the 15 or so people that I invited, seven confirmed their attendance, but only five turned up. This wasn’t a major issue however as the five I had obviously had their thinking heads on. We were even graced with the presence of my Independent Study Advisor, the wonderful Sue, who sat in and observed the first half. (more…)

According to my project plan, yesterday was the day I conducted my focus group (used to gather information on the features the site needs to have), and starting Monday, I’ll should begin writing the project’s functional specification – based on the information gathered from the focus group.

The truth is that I’ve done it the other way around! For all purposes intent, the functional specification is complete, and yet the focus group is not happening until Thursday 17th! What’s going on? (more…)

I just wanted a share a website that I discovered today while browsing the Magic: the Gathering blog – something called Wordle. It’s quite simple, you just point it at any site with an RSS feed and it creates a word cloud.

Here is the one for this site:

Right – back to work now I guess!

Fancy doing something fun? I’m looking for people who are able to help me initially populate Unknown Tales with starting chapters that the early users of the site can read and contribute to.

The chapters required for the site, however, are not the type you would find in regular fiction. Think Fighting Fantasy rather than The Da Vinci Code. In fact, Unknown Tales has a fairly unique way of working. As a result of this, any chapters submitted need to abide by a set of rules. (more…)