As I have mentioned before I have been working, albeit slowly, on finally finishing the conversion of the site from ColdFusion to C#.NET. By and by recently chatGPT has roared onto the internet with a bang, might even say a BING, and although code assist AI, with github, has been in a sort of beta state for the last several months (or even year?) I have thought that a way to revitalize my enthusiasm for working on this site is the start to mess around with it.

As such I have decided to do multiple things. One is to try to use chatGPT while I work in the C# code for this site and document the journey in so doing. Two, since programming and philosophy are some of the main focuses of the site, that I will create a series called ChatGPT And Me (initially called Chatting With ChatGPT) where I will post various chats that I have with chatGPT on a wide range of subjects. Three, I will revive the Learning a new Programming Language series with chatGPT at the helm with critiques from me.

I'm hoping this will be fun and interesting for both me and any audience there might be.

Welp. It's been over 10 years since I last posted here. 8 years since I last did any work on this site. Many things have happened.

First it was just being lazy and not having the drive to post anything while I was working on redoing the backend of the site. Then the work slowed down to a crawl and eventually to a stop. I don't know if there is a link between my lack of drive and the health issues that started to show up in 2015, but by the end of 2016 I was in the hospital fighting for my life. A few hiccups and then Covid-19 we finally reach today.

I am still Alive

The site is not dead and neither am I. The forced change of the backend host for this site has spurred me to try again to get going with this. To bring some order in the chaos where the mind dwells.

The new host has given me some issues, half of which are currently resolved. The main thing that is working right now is the coldfusion version of neThing (v0.8) has been brought back up to full working status so I can post this.

Working

• Me
• neThing (v0.8)
• Sparce
• neSpeeches

Not Working

• neTodo
• neFeedeater (probably gonna kill it)

For a list of project (incomplete, but I will update) you can go here: Projects

So here I go working again.

Hopefully this new year will see some more activity from me. That's my new years resolution for IDT.

As a sort of quick plan for what I want to do this year:

• Finish building the C#.NET version of IDT.neThing
• Continue with the 15 Exercises for Learning a new Programming Language series (#lrn2program), fleshing out the java part, adding c++, javascript, and python
• Work on getting neFeedeater running for other people
• Permanently pull in the delicious links that currently feed into Sparce from delicious.com and convert Sparce into a semi copy of delicious

Let's see how it all goes.

I have been working hard on a .NET project for work and thus have not had the energy to do any other work. The project is nearing a major milestone in the next few months which should means I should be less stressed. Which means I can start working on IDT related stuff. So, stay tuned or something.

After a really long development time (too long, with 6 months where I didn't even touch the code), neThing v0.7 has been completed and released. You can view the changelog to see the changes.

In the interest of simplicity I've started work on simplifying the site. After almost two years working with the split dichotomy of article and blog posts I've come to the realization that it is stupid.

First, because this precludes the notion I've had for a while that neThing is meant to be a gateway of streams, where multiple sources, including the stuff generated from the site itself, feed the postMonster (the backend that handles these things).

Two, because its too complicated. What makes a blog post different than an article post? In reality nothing except a few bits than can be more than handled with a checkbox or two when creating a post.

So, now all posts are posts. They are still identified by where they originated from, such as Twitter, but otherwise blog posts are now fully converted into articles. Which means they have wiki discussion pages and histories. As far as the wiki bot is concerned it is an article and thus can be linked as such by name. Conflicts will arise and thus it will behoove me, and anyone else using neThing in the future, to mark master posts when multiple of them have the same name. The other posts would then use their POSTID as their permalink.

Also notice that the left slider menu is gone. Replaced by two much simpler archive boxes on the right side above the twitter panel. There is also an Archive page that can be accessed using the IDT logo menu up top. The first archive box is simple, it displays years, and then gives links to the months that had posts. The second archive box is a cloud of most tags.

That's all for now.

Yes I'm still around. I got lazy and busy at the same time, so no updates since the last one till now. I was bored and have nothing to do till christmas stuff starts tomorrow so I started messing around on the web. Read an article "Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004" aka "The Blog is Dead". And so it is! Though not for the reasons the article explains, mine is dead right now... well... I already mentioned that. Anyway, I made a twitter account and hopefully January I will force myself to add my twitter feed to my feed eater here at IDT.

Don't hold your breath though. I wouldn't want any blood on my hands.