I have plans for you.

I really do.

So, yeah, right on cue, I show up 5 months later and whine about not posting.

That’s okay though, because I have been posting. Just not here. Over at that new site I told you about 5 months ago, ThisIsLee.com, I break some news every now and then, keep people updated on my lifestream, etc. It’s great. Oh, remember that Ravsonic.TV I ranted about for like two years? Yeah, it is actually done! No shit, and it even does everything I wanted it to do. That’s great. The format of ThisIsLee is going to change a bit because of it, but that’s cool. At least it is done.

So where does that leave Ravsonic proper? Well, it doesn’t make sense to blog here. I feel spreading the blogging across multiple sites is confusing and pointless. My idea of Ravsonic has always been a “company”, and the site should reflect that. If nothing else, the site should reflect the brand and have links to projects I’m working on under the brand and other places that information regarding the brand exists (ahem Ravsonic.TV, ThisIsLee.com).

I believe that’s where we’ll go with this. I’ve always had coding projects and designs I’ve worked on that were meant for public consumption. This site will make it easier to reflect that. Information will occur here, discussion will occur at ThisIsLee (unless it is status updates for a service: that will happen here). Lifestream stuff goes to Ravsonic.TV. Makes sense to me.

Oh, you didn’t know? Yeah, I’ve got like three trashed designs I’ve been working on for this sort of thing since April. I didn’t like any of them though, so back to the drawing board. I’ve got about a month before class starts, so I should have plenty of time to get it going.

This could be one of the last (okay, probably is the last) post on this site as a proper blog, so toodles guys. Be sure to make the move with me over to ThisIsLee.com and Ravsonic.TV, where things like this fit in better. Trust me, you’ll like this site better when it is done anyway. Promise. Yes, it is going to get done. I’ve been ubermotivated lately. I’m ready to get this show on the road.

While I’m working on the backend for ThisIsLee.com, I’ll be posting more frequently here in the style I’ll be writing in over there. Just so you can get used to it.

You never really notice how much you do to your new computer.

I’ve had my new Macbook for exactly two weeks as of today. On the first day, I ordered 4GB of RAM for it. On this 14th day, I ordered a 320GB hard drive for it. Many people I know have asked me why, considering I still have 60GB free on this one. I want to do Boot Camp, a few different VMWare machines, and be able to hold all my multimedia (videos/photos/ALL my music). I haven’t done much of that yet, because I don’t think I’ve got the space. Hopefully, the extra 200GB will help.

That’s not the point of this post. This post is about where in the hell I spend nearly 60 GB of space in only two weeks, with no music and only about 10 photos. I’ve been asking myself this same thing since early last week.

Read the rest of this entry »

So. Here is a quick, brief update on what is going on here at Ravsonic Towers. As you are well aware, I’ve had this identity crisis for quite sometime here on the site. I wanted Ravsonic to be a forward facing site for m development and design career, but I wanted it to be a blog at the same time. That’s not going to work. Either the blog gets too diluted and looks all corporate, or the business side of the site looks like a joke. Both ways, the writing never gets the attention it deserves and the designs stay in limbo. Fixed it. But it required me to buy another domain.The blog will be moving over to ThisIsLee.com. I’ll get to ramble, rant, or whatever over there. That way this place can stay clean. There will still be a blog up that will announce things or features, but it won’t be like a real blog. This way, I’ll feel more comfortable opening up the Ravsonic site to access to future partners. Also, I’ll be able to direct clients based on the business card I give out. Blogosphere community members will find ThisIsLee.com to be a nice addition to the conversation, while people looking for actual design examples or software work will find Ravsonic more to their liking.  After all, Ravsonic is going to be showcase. A portfolio, if you will.  I do have to get a big boy job some day. So that’s the deal. Coupled with what you already know about Ravsonic.TV, that leaves 3 domains that don’t really fit in anymore. 1 of those I guess can be mirrored over to Ravsonic. One of those is the original .org I bought like 10 years ago. The final one is that black sheep in the corner. Yeah, RavsonicLive. I’ll think of something for it. I know I will. It had too much potential when I was working with it last time. All those ideas couldn’t have just left, could they?Ok, so long from Ravsonic.com. Next blog post you get out of me will be from ThisIsLee.com 

I’m just wanting to make sure that live writer is working properly. For some reason, what I was posting wasn’t showing up. If this is visible, then it is fixed.

I’m running into a little bit of a pickle here. Seriously, did I just say pickle? Anyway.

I’m in the planning stages for Ravsonic.tv, a place where I can share my video reviews, lifecasting, and all around video bullshitting with the world. I am currently trying to decide what technology I want to build it off of. I’m looking at Rails and .NET 3.5.

I like Rails because I know it. I’ve been doing various Rails things since 1.0. I really like a lot of the things in Rails 2 and I’ve not been given enough change to work with them yet. I’ve got a host already that supports Rails and the domain already points to the site. All I need to do is fire up InType on my PC and get to work.  Plus, I plan on purchasing a new portable computer this week. Most likely, it will be Apple flavored. I won’t have any problem coding Ruby on that thing.

Then we get to ASP.NET. In short, I love it. No, it isn’t as blissful as Rails is, but shit if it isn’t robust. I really, really, want to play with LINQ and I’ve got a feeling that I’m going to like the fancy new ways I can expose web services.  I feel much more at home in VS, and VS2008 is no different. I like that my code can be easily portable across other platforms (i.e. if I decide to turn a web app into an offline component, many times its as easy as copying the component’s DLL over.)  The only drawback is that if I get my Mac, I’ll be running bootcamp or parallels to run VS. Has anyone really run VS2008 in Parallels yet with a lot of success. I should probably look into it. I don’t have a .NET host yet, either, so that would be one more hosting related bill a month. Joy.

I really don’t know which I’ll choose. It really is almost a toss up at this point. I want to play in .NET, but I can get this done quickly in Rails. Decisions, decisions. Who knows, maybe I’ll switch over to Django again. That didn’t last very long last time, so probably not.

Wow, that was a lot of rambling. Sorry about that.

It is so horrible to say, but I don’t like to make my own themes for Wordpress though I call myself a web designer. I will hack around on them enough to suit me, but I never can sit down and make my own. That’s not to say that I can’t or haven’t. I have no problem creating them for clients. There is just something about you own site that makes it a little more difficult. Partially, I think it is because of a need for perfection. If I make my own, I will screw around with it forever and it will never get done. Download a premade, edit it slightly, and I’m good to go. I break this habit during summer break usually, but right here in the middle of the semester I simply don’t have the time.

That being said, the theme will look a little funny as I complete my modifications to it so it fits my branding. This is mostly so I can focus on actually building ravsonic.tv (which is and will be my own, from scratch). I see no need in wasting precious time on a blog theme.

You know, it seems like once every six months, I’m writing a post like this. It usually follows a similar pattern.

* I apologize for my lack of posting for the last 5 months.

* I promise a million posts a day from here on out.

* I explain the magnitudes of improvement and scaling the blog/company is doing.

* I blog for a couple of weeks.

* Radio silence for 5 months.

Rinse, repeat. But, alas, here we are again. I’m not promising anything. I’d be lying if I did. But I hope this year will be an actual start to my online presence. It, after all, was my sole resolution for the year.

So let’s get this show on the road.  I’ll post a little more later. I’ve got some physics homework to attend to.

I know I told you that I wouldn’t mention RavsonicLive until it was done, but I think I technically have to since it isn’t going to work at all for a bit. I’m moving development over to .NET for that particular project, which means a host move. RavsonicLive will be down while it moves over. Once it is complete, I’ll place some kind of header info up.

Note that based on the results of the new .NET project, Ravsonic.TV is also a potential move. We’ll see.

Since Ravsonic has turned into mainly a blog lately, and since that blog had a four month silence, many (some, one, none probably) may wonder what has been going on in the development side of Ravsonic. Here is an update.

A new Ravsonic main business portal has been under works. A portfolio, if you will, of what Ravsonic can do for you. A blog isn’t a very efficient way to portay a business, so we’ll be killing it on the main page. A blog will still be up for the Ravsonic itself, but not as prominent. The content will be different, but more on that in a moment.

Ravsonic.tv is in the middle stages of development. What you have grown to love, hate, or tolerate on Ravsonic (both this iteration and on old servers) will live there. Live video streams, blogs about everything and anything, and file and photo sharing. Not all done by us though, that would be inconvienent. Feed it with what you want: Flickr, Twitter, etc. It will be open just because it can: it is mainly designed for me as a personal site.

RavsonicLive. Ah, there she is. The long-in-development vaporware I’ve been rambling about for years is still thinking about something. It’s gone through format changes. It’s gone through technology changes. It has never really had a real purpose though. I wanted it to be an outward facing application for Ravsonic; something the world could grab onto. Over the past few months of non-coding, I’ve been able to focus a little. Find the inner whatever it takes on these issues. I am still wrestling with the technology, between Ruby on Rails or something like CakePHP (or even raw PHP for sheer power). That doesn’t keep me from designing the user interfaces and database models, so I’ve started there.

But that’s all I’m saying about it. The next time you hear anything about RavsonicLive from me, is launch day. Promise.

Okay, thats the update. For now, I’ll keep you posted on Ravsonic.tv and anything that goes on there. This blog is still the personal one right now, so you’ll get all my random blabbers about games and gadgets. You can follow me on twitter (twitter.com/leeadkins) or pownce (pownce.com/leeadkins). Add me, I’ll probably add you back.

I just finished putting the code in place and fixing the layouts to allow users to login and comment with their OpenIDs instead of having to sign up for a Ravsonic account.  One of my biggest pet peeves is having to attempt to remember a million different logins. Hopefully, this will prevent some of that. If you do not have an OpenID and wish to sign up for the blog in the traditional way, you still can. However, I do encourage you to go ahead and get an OpenID. You can get them for free from most places and you may even have one now that you don’t know about (Wordpress.com, Livejournal, etc users all have OpenIDs already).  By going ahead and getting one now, you’ll make life easier as Ravsonic rolls out more features across the network (At some point, I very well may make OpenIDs the de-facto standard for Ravsonic authentication. 

If you simply don’t feel like going anywhere else to get an OpenID, you will be able to get an OpenID through Ravsonic soon, as in, probably tomorrow morning, once I get the server setup. I’ll blog about it.

 EDIT 11:49PM : I’ve completed the construction of the OpenID server. I ran into a few snags that help me up for a bit, but after getting those ironed out I’ve successfully created a couple of OpenIDs and authenticated with sites like LiveJournal, Zooomr, and this one. Word.  However, it is still pretty ugly, so let me finish prettying it up and then I’ll let you know the URL.