In case you hadn't noticed, there hasn't been much new content on nookkin.com since, well, January. Rest assured, I am still alive and well – I simply had far too many things on my plate to do any serious writing. Now I'm (hopefully) back, and I will talk about some upcoming developments.
NPS Image Editor
At the moment, I am working on NPS Image Editor yet again. Depending on the amount of free time I can find, the next release will either be known as "Alpha 5" or "Beta 1" – the more or less feature-complete beta is looming on the horizon. Again, if you're not aware of NPS's versioning standards are as follows:
- alpha releases are incomplete but useful for testing out functionality
- beta releases have nearly all features implemented but can be slow, buggy, or incompletely implemented
- release candidate releases are almost (but not quite) complete
- and the officially released versions are not known by any specific name.
This closely mirrors Microsoft's standards for Windows launches.
This past winter's release (Alpha 4) focused primarily on things like the color picker and minor bugfixes. The upcoming summer release will focus more on actual image editing tools – things like filters, additional image editing tools, image adjustments, and the requisite bugfixes. If I'm lucky I will finish the two currently most challenging tools: freeform select and text. If you have a particular request for a feature, now is the time to speak up!
nookkin.com and NookkinCMS
This website is in need of a facelift – or perhaps more accurately, a skeletal replacement. I was 15 years old when I built the current codebase for the site from scratch and as codebases go, the various patches and updates over the years have turned it into a mess. It still works fine, but posting articles is a chore as it requires the editing of about 5 files each time.
Speaking of frameworks, the term I use to refer to the codebase of my site is "NookkinCMS" – referring to Nookkin's (initially planned) content management system. The current version never really took off, and while much of the underlying framework is there, I never got around to building a fully functional administration panel since I didn't really need it. Even the few clients who have the panel available never really use it.
Enter NookkinCMS 2.0 – what NPS Obsidian was to the previous patched-together mess that was 2.1. It won't be an instant or drastic change, but with the skills I have picked up over the past 4 or 5 years, I should be able to do much better. My goals are to have a system that's well organized (via classes and the like), easy to maintain, modular, powerful, but at the same time realistic. This will ultimately translate into an easier-to-use system for me and a more fluid and regularly updated site for you, my readers. Perhaps someday I will even release NookkinCMS as a standalone product.
Miscellaneous
In addition to the above major projects, I have been working on smaller ones: an FTP sync program, improved backup (including an online backup service – expect a review soon), some home server management (DNS and Microsoft SQL), and computer upgrades (currently rocking a quad-core Phenom and a Corsair Force GT 120GB SSD).
I have also been working on electrical and other things around the house, and will continue to do so over the summer – nothing is ever fixed, as the saying goes. Expect some reviews of seemingly random products (flashlights and a light switch come to mind), tutorials, and (possibly) literature before the summer is over.
Enjoy your summer!
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