Well, I had thought that I was going to go with JSF due to popularity and such, but I have had a change of heart. Partly due to my own devices, but mainly cause I am not worried about what is popular, but what works best. Instead I am going to go with Wicket.

Wicket may not be the most popular framework, but it melds with the way I think, and since this is code that I am going to write and maintain, well I am going to go with something that I like. If I wanted to get it done super quickly I would go with PHP, but then when it comes to maintainability I would be lost. There are people out there that might disagree, but for me and my way of thinking Java works better. This is not to bash Microsoft’s .NET implementation, but I do not have those tools or services at my disposal.

So far, I have not even had the chance to get started on this fun little project. Hopefully here soon I will begin. The main problem is that I have to get other projects done prior to beginning work on this one. The funny thing is that none of those other projects are Java projects. Instead they are all in Perl, Bash, sh, or ksh. In addition to my regular work, I also have a fun little Power Point Presentation that I need to pull out of thin air. Hopefully soon something will get going.

Oh man, I had something I was going to write about, and then this classic movie Weird Science came on. Classic movie from the 80’s that got me completely distracted. Now, my wife thought it was kinda silly and stupid in some spots. Overall I think she liked it.

That was not what I was going to talk about. What I was going to mention was the state of a certain section of the site. One thing that I do way to much is read. While I tend toward the Fantasy and SciFi stuff, almost any book will suit my fancy. The problem is, I want to be able to share these books that I read with others, by reviewing and listing them. I am sure that it will take me a good 15 – 20 books to review before my English gets to a point that is worthy of reading, but I will try.

Only issue that I have is getting those pages organized. It could be as simple as throwing it up there and then putting links. The issue is long term maintenance and organization. Normally the best time to get a good design installed is at the beginning. So all of the time that I am spending now is so that I do not have to rework everything in the future. If I was not sick all of last week I might have been more productive. Bear with my while I work on testing these changes that I have cooking in my head.

Another word that I am going to throw out is that I am probably going to be putting up an advert or two. I am not going to bombard anyone with an overwhelming number of ads, but I was just going to throw that out. Hope you don’t hate me for it.

For that last couple of days I have been sick. Not sure how to classify it other than to say that I have had a fever and body aches. I made it to work on Wednesday, but yesterday I ended up staying home. So much for going to work while being sick.

The funny thing is that I would have thought that if I was sitting home sick, maybe I would get some stuff done on the site or on some of the other projects that I happen to want to work on. Haha, that is a very funny thought. To bad my head is pounding so much that clear thought is not always possible. Heck, even looking at the computer screen is sometimes a painful experience.

So instead of getting any work done, I am sitting on the couch, trying not to cough, and generally just feeling miserable. I did feel better yesterday for a bit, and was trying to work on planning a vacation to Disney World. Shortly thereafter my fever spiked and I was back to laying around and doing nothing. Well I have been trying to read, but mainly to keep myself entertained.

Today, I yet again woke up with a fever. Never fun to wake up in the middle of the night with body aches and such. Hopefully whatever is attacking my body will go away soon. Even if I am sick all day today, I am going to attempt to get some work done. Just because I demand it of myself.

As I move forward with the design, more issues pop up that have to be dealt with. Not all of them have solutions. In an ideal world (my ideal world) the software that I want/need would be readily available, and would do exactly what it is that I want it to do. If this were the case, I think that I would either move onto other projects or would quickly grow bored with computers and never touch them again.

That being said, initial configuration of a site can be an awful drain on a person. It probably does not help that I have been sick the last couple of days with a headache that is not severe enough to send me straight to bed, but bothersome enough that there have been times when I could not stand to look at my monitor for fear of being sick. Even if it was not for that, I am sure that I would have issues with the layout and design of the sight. On the plus note, the design phase has been going much faster this time around, and that is making me glad.

Now if only content would magically appear, then I would be overjoyed. Too bad that is not going to happen. No need to remind me to backup my database (which I still have not done). Overall I think that I like the dark theme, but I am looking at trying out some lighter colors just to test the waters. A person can handle only so much darkness without wanting to scream or run away into the dark. So do not be shocked if this site iterates through a couple of changes for the next couple of days.

Some of the pages on the site might also appear and disappear. This will be due to trying to get things arranged to suit my needs. As a result, some of the information will be moved or morphed as I progress forward. Considering how little content is currently on this site, I would be shocked if anyone is upset about any of the changes. If they are, then they have a strange opinion as to what is meaningful content.

In the process of switching hosts I failed in all of my planning to pull down the database that contained all my nifty articles. Well crap. What is a guy to do?

In the name of giving things a go, I tried out a couple of different Content Management Solutions. None of them were any easier to maintain, so I opted back to an old favorite. So now I am in the wonderful game of putting everything back together. Found a nice template to start with, lots of configuration options. There are also some different plugins that I am looking at adding.

Gotta Run.