Oh Oh…I have a Blog

As the clock turned from 11:59 PM on December 31, 2011, I made a list of items I would execute upon in 2012… Creating a personal blog was one of them and today I check that item off the list.  So what will I use this blog for?  hmmm. For one, I will use this as a channel for announcing new versions of open source modules and for-profit application I have created over the years. Things like jQuery.ptTimeSelect, jQuery.flickrGallery, League Manager and several new ones I have in my “list” to do this year.

Over the last few years, I have designed and created several pieces of software either as part of freelancing gigs or as part of personal and professional projects.  Whenever I design new pieces of code, like modules and libraries, I always do so thinking about 1) re-usability and 2) performance.  This has made it possible for me to re-use several pieces of software  in multiple project with little to no changes at all.  Another big thing with my coding is that I’m am a very big fan of documentation. I never post any piece of code without it being properly documented.  I feel that any library or software out there today is only as good as its documentation… I don’t care how good the software is and how much functionality it provides; if the documentation/API is not good, you lost me as a consumer.

Side Note: Here is a good example. A few years ago, when jQuery just came out and I was looking to start using a lightweight javascript library, the decision came down to 2 choices: mootools and jquery. Mootools seemed like it provided much more functionality that jQuery at the time… but its API documentation was in poor shape. jQuery on the other hand, had full and complete API doducmenation, which made it very easy to pickup and use. Winner :  jquery

So what can be expected to show up from me in the coming year? Here is a quick list of some of the software I’m looking to post this year as open source:

1. Perl: Dbflat.pm – simple lightweight library providing flat-file “databases” with no dependencies on 3rd party modules outside of perl itself
2. Perl: WebUserSec.pm – simple lightweight library providing user authentication services to an application. Build on top of Dbflat.pm
3. Perl: DateLite.pm – library to quickly do date calculations. Was build using jQuery’s chaining concept approach so that one can quickly move from date to date.
4. Javascript: ui.widget.calendar.js – A jQuery plugins that displays a calendar (similar to google calendar’s weekly view) based on a dataset that can be retrieved from the server via ajax.
5. Javascript, Sharepoint: SPControlledUpload.js – A jQuery and jQuery UI plugin that enables “ajax” file uploading in Sharepoint.
6. Javascript, Sharepoint: SPPeoplePicker.js – A quick jQuery plugin that attaches to an input field and provide a nice interface to the select sharepoint users. Uses the great SPServices jQuery module and jQuery UI’s Autocomplete widget to provide a PeoplePicker.
7. Javascript, Sharepoint: SPCreateLibraryPath.js – Given a url path, quickly builds the structure (if it does not exist) in a document library.

Wow… did I just write all that? does it even make sense?  Ok… I’m now an official “blogger”?

Adding new tag line: Paul the Blogger!