From the Brain of Matty

erm ..? (18.05.04 6:32 pm)

Greetings.

I think I was going to say something, but I can't remember what it was. Actually, I'm not so sure I ever actually was going to say anything. So I don't know why I'm trying to write it. Oh who knows.

Last night Matt M (aka Golliwog) came round to the flat with his blue bass (as in guitar, not fish) to pose for some folio photos for Shelly. 'Twas generally good fun. I finally tuned my accoustic guitar down enough that the E string plays an E!!, and I can hold chords without slicing my fingertips open. 'Tis much more funner playing the guitar when it takes a long time for one's fingertips to start bleeding.

I think there were some usable shots out of it all, too.

Sod high level design. Today I started doing some GUI design for my project. I need a completed High Level Design and Quality Assurance Plan by .. er .. some time next week. But the only way I can start doing design is by.. doing design. That makes no sense. I have to get my hands dirty in order to see what it is I'm going to build. Like an architect playing with Lego before he starts with the pencils and paper.

What a crap analogy. I'll do the QA Plan some time, too. I'll have to steal it off someone else, I think.

In about an hour I have to go off and play Touch Football, and lose drastically, and give myself cardiac arrest, and overheat my head and then freeze it off in the chilly winter evening air. Should be good fun. I accidentally wore a New Zealand All-Blacks jersey today, which is good because our team colour is supposed to be black, and rugger jerseys are good for running around playing silly buggers in nippy weather.

The best way to achieve total modularity in a PHP/postgre web-database is to write an opaque layer between the modules and the actual DBMS. The opaque layer, or the backbone, would require its own standard API. It would need a set of common instructions that any module can use to access allowed parts of the database, without ever actually touching the database directly, creating a safety blanket of abstraction. Additionally, it would require some kind of private data storage system to keep track of and administer the various modules. This system may require the development of a simplified query language, or complex parameter definitions, to allow modular flexibility. However I don't believe this would be a very difficult thing to achieve. Further, the entire system could be written with a general goal in mind, so that a database written for a business management system - for example - could be geared towards human resources, with certain nonspecific details built in to the backbone to aid those modules that deal with HR.

That's an idea I'm developing. I should think about getting something down in code. It might come in handy some day if we ever decide to upgrade (or rewrite) TOAD.

TOAD doesn't have a name yet, we just call it TOAD because that was the original idea. Total Office Admin Database. Other names are TOD, GOD, GOST, and BAT. None of which are quite right. Stupid marketing.

I want to find some H.P. Lovecraft books! I want to read them! I want to see what everyone is always going on about! I hate being on the outside with something like this - something I'm interested in! Grr.

If I had a lot more money (more than none is 'some') I'd go buy all the damned books I want, such as the Lovecraft set, or Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber, or the WoT, or the golden torc thingy lot by Julian May, or the Uplift thingies by that David Brin chappie. I want so many books. And I can afford exactly none. Buggerit.

I've ranted too much. I must needs shut up now.

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