SLog

The forum is dead for now... and to be honest it has been more work than desired; php updates, spam, software updates... hasn't really saved time as planned. But that isn't the point for today. I just wanted to make some random rants about my current work. I was going to use the forum, but... anyway so for now I'll go low tech and just add pages to my site.

Yeah SmEdit v1.9 done at last. We're several weeks behind at this point so we'll be naughty and up the release cadence. Hopefully. Slam is looking likely and it's rather simple so surely that won't be an issue...?

Oh my gosh it has been a nightmare here. Had SmEdit all lined up for a release, but kept finding new bugs. But we use it all the time so it is well tested? True, but we don't change the settings so much, and the options is where all the major changes are. Sigh. It's still the plan to be released, so it will be next regardless. Should be this week... On top of this we've found an interesting bug with Break which could be just a file corruption, but it shouldn't cause an issue in any case. Sigh. But we've worked around that one thankfully.

So no release today. Decently sure of it. And... We'll probably be, if we can get back a backlog of ready releases, releasing at a faster cadence. We'll probably not do simultaneous releases, but we might drop the week wait for 5 days or less. Anyway, back to work...

CryptIt v1.9 has been released, which was not the plan but that is OK. Also the last of the 1.9 Betas have been added; TomeBase, SmEdit, BrickCol and MaxWords. So where does that leave things now? Well until all of the planned 1.9 releases have been released the 1.9 rebuild project lives on for better or worse. Mostly better as it gives us a constant stream of updates, but there is a lot of mundane changes that has to be done to each program so it is all a bit dry. From now on any Beta updates will just be done in the background on the Beta page, unless they are new. We will probably try to do a rebuild of a few each week as the underlying libraries have changed a bit over the last few months.

So what is next? Well we have slipped a bit in time due to... issues... but the priority is to still get released our main progams. Stuff like GigAlarm, Egg and Secs. These programs do require a lot more testing however so they cannot be rushed out. Thus we have more easier releases to do if need be. For example LotaMath, QWave, Slam... The good thing is that we use most of the bigger programs everyday so they become more tested over time. SmEdit, for example, is still what we use for primary MASM32 development. So it is hard to be sure what will be released next...

We will however try to get back to the day earlier release... and we might be naughty and do one or two double releases to get those weeks we lost back.

QWave is late. Things have been ultra busy and weird lately and so when some odd bugs were noticed with QWave (in short it does not seem to work at all!) it was un-releasable. We decided to instead just release Versus but things have been busy. We were pretty sure it would happen this week, but it did not. I could be tomorrow, but it may not be. So to break the silence we are late. Will be back soon.....

...time passes...

Just released Versus.....

Obrut v1.9 has been released as planned a bit late... but that was planned too. Last week was a busy day and last week was a busy week and so is this one! But the release was done. Looked like we were going to not make today so the dates are for tomorrow, unlike this one, but we are not going to change this now. Noticed while doing this release that out new Guiltware implementation was not properly implemented. Thus the Versus bugfix. But that is the point of the whole 1.9 process. There is a lot of changes to what used to be base concepts so bugs can slip though but since they get checked again and again they should get picked up... Anyway, QWave and Versus will be released next, which is only a few days but it is a simple program and a simple bugfix so yeah, it is alright. No Betas, but there are not many left so the rest will probably be done the following week.... which is next week kinda. Sigh. Confused.

On the subject of being confused it seems Download.com is not a crapware pit anymore so we might go back to linking to them. Weird...

XorIt v1.9 has been released at last. It has been so long that it is hard to be sure why some of the changes were made. We will look into this later. Had a busy day so, cutting to the chase, probably Obrut will be released next and some more Betas, probably Ute, Volt, TwinSeek and QWave. More after.... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz......

JukeBx v1.9 has been released. This should be a gateway to a new long-term beta of JukeBx. To be honest we didn't get much done this week as there's a bit of a diet thing going on. Sigh. Anyway next week probably the much delayed XorIt release and some more Betas, probably Obrut, Secs, Slam and Stims. Really we want to get all the alphas moved to betas ASAP.

jFolder v1.9 has been released.... yay... and as predicted Chop v1.91 has been added to the Beta page. Also, as predicted, there are other new Betas next week; CryptIt, JukeBx, CPUSpy and LotaMath. So a release and some 1.9 betas and a new beta? Yeah. This is a pretty active week for the site. We could have dragged this out three weeks but we have months of content already so we will be speeding things up where practical and possible. What is next? Mostly due to compressing three weeks into one we are not sure actually. It will be a release, XorIt or JukeBx. Neither progam is excessively publicly popular, so there is not much risk really, but the docs probably need work...

Chop v1.9 has been released.... and as predicted Break v1.91 has been added to the Beta page. The temptation was there to add a Beta of Chop the same day as the release but this was a bit error prone. But there should be one next week. We will be starting a few new Betas now, some with a quick release planned, others could be months. We should also be bringing in a few new Betas next week, CryptIt, JukeBx, CPUSpy and LotaMath are the likely ones. JukeBx is also a likely fast release; it is very well tested, not terribly popular, but much loved here so loads of tweaks are planned....

Break v1.9 has been released. So what else is going on? We've been reworking a lot of the site, mostly trying to bring in stuff when we compressed three sites into one. Still loads of missing images and links though. Sigh. On a more positive note though, this is a nice release to get out as we want to expand Break but it was a bit of a pain to do so while there was a pending Beta. There should be a v1.91 of Break soon-ish, probably in under a month, same story for Chop, which is targetted for a next week release....

Break Beta, Chop Beta, Egg Beta and GigAlarm Beta are now on the Beta page. Yeah, plans were changed. We are pushing for a Break release next week, so a batch of Betas made more sense than jFolder, a progam no one really cares about. (Sorry jFolder, just being honest.) If we can get some serious testing then Chop will be the following week, if not jFolder will be a suitable place holder... perhaps. Exciting! Who knows what is going on around here?!!

Versus v1.9, as planned, is the second release. Less exciting this one... and the next, jFolder is little better. The better programs need better testing... Anyway, as a random rant it has been surprising how a lot of the old Shareware haunts are full of ghosts. Tucows, Association of Software Professionals... a lot has changed. We will probably stop using the Register word soon. But it sure is weird. Clearly the decision has been the effort is not worth the reward. Sad. Anyay, I am off to make for more efforts. Til next week....

iTimeSync v1.901 has been released! Excellent! So this is also kinda the end of the 1.9 project... but maybe it is when we make a 1.91, where we gain the advantages of all of this work? Are we constantly shifting the bar? Kinda. Anyway, we have decided the schedule will be to continue with the releases, and Versus, jFolder and XorIt are next, so that is the surprises all un-surprised early. Sorry? We were going to do a batch of Betas, then a release, then a batch of Betas.... but really the first batch of Betas were chosen as they were the most release-able so we should just do it... More later!

iTimeSync Beta, jFolder Beta, Versus Beta and XorIt Beta are now on the Beta page. Where is the promised BrickCol? Pushed back. iTimeSync is more ready than expected and at this stage it is looking to be released next week. I am getting ahead of myself? Probably! But it is pretty good news so why wait? Other interesting news is we needed to re-design things a bit recently as we have changed the planned plan of assembly being replaced by C++ releases. As a result we have double betas for as few programs. A temporary solution has been done and we will probably look into it more when we start updating the program pages... next week!

SmEdit Alpha, Ute Alpha, Volt Alpha, TwinSeek Alpha, QWave Alpha and TomeBase Alpha are now on the Beta page. That is it. No more Alphas to publish. This doesn't mean that any of these Alphas are ready to go, but it does mean that we can get more specific rather than holistic at last... and we'll probably have a non-Beta release in under a month, hopefully in about two weeks. There were a lot of changes over the last few month; so much so that the poor git server we run had issues merging the 1.9 branch. Funny stuff. Hopefully we will never have a branch that big ever again. To be honest we have got a ready release schedule still for the next month so our focus will not be the next few weeks but the next month where we hope to release iTimeSync 1.901 so we can get onto ASAP working on an improved version of this. (Just to clarify, most of the 1.9 versions are meant to have feature parity with the previous version. But the underlying libraries have been updated so they should be better in less apparent ways.) iTimeSync is interesting in that nine years ago (sigh) it was the pilot program for the library update, so while it is a complicated program it should be mostly ready. So nothing exciting next week. The first Beta releases is the plan; jFolder, Versus, XorIt and BrickCol. Moving to Beta doesn't really mean than much at this point. The cadence is too fast for good testing so depending on how the iTimeSync work goes we might slow down a bit. Monthly updates is the minimum, weekly is the maximum. We are still good for a month or two of weekly updates, but more meaningful updates would be better long term. Till next week...

Secs Alpha, Obrut Alpha, Stims Alpha and Slam Alpha are now on the Beta page. One more than planned, one less than hoped... but all of the alphas are now done and it took more time than planned as the job was done better. In many ways this is the end of the 1.9 project, but it's kinda also when all the Alphas are on the site as they all get an extra check for conformity before they are archived, but it's kinda when the first one is released.... It never ends. For what it's worth internally it'll be when the alphas are all on the site; this is on a branch on our git server and we will for each new release create a new branch. The 1.9 project was more about unifying so when they are unified it is done. Going though this Slog it took under a year. Which is longer than desired but not too long. As expected once momentum gathered and the common issues were found it wasn't hard to get ahead. So next week it'll be six; SmEdit, Ute, Volt, TwinSeek, QWave and TomeBase. Next? We will go straight onto releasing Betas, probably four at a time, and releasing the easy to test programs ASAP. The speed that this happens will depend on how big the buffer is. Right now we are good for a month or two of weekly updates....

LotaMath Alpha, jFolder Alpha and LunaBase Alpha are now on the Beta page. We are still quite close to finishing the Alphas... still do-able this week. We have been spending time however re-doing some programs early. These will not be uploaded until they are made Beta however. Other slight changes is we have decided not all programs will be labled 1.9; mostly un-released programs. As a result IPScour versioning has been ret-conned. Anyway, hopefully next week it'll be five plus... otherwise it'll be three programs again, Secs, Obrut and Slam.

Egg Alpha, iTimeSync Alpha and CryptIt Alpha are now on the Beta page. Caught up a bit this week, if all goes well all the Alpha conversions will be done in two weeks. Hard to be sure, as somethings do not go as planned. For example while WhatFile has been updated it will not be uploaded as it is in the middle of an upgrade and reverting it would be a waste of time. Thus uploading a more Alpha-ish version to replace an existing decent Beta would be a bit silly. So it'll come later. Other issues are caused by extra work being done now rather than later. But it is all going well... So what's the predicition for next week? One day later than usual, three programs, LotaMath, jFolder and LunaBase. See you then!

JukeBx Alpha and CPUSpy Alpha are now on the Beta page. Did not get further ahead this week, pretty much are in the same place, so Egg will have to wait. Do not want to lose the buffer... So yeah, expect that and CryptIt next week...

Chop Alpha is now on the Beta page... oh and MaxWords Alpha too! As we said last week, there should be some much needed release acceleration going over the next few weeks. Famous last words? Nope. Actually we've already got 9 potential Alphas. Why not release them now? Well we are trying to have a regular schedule, so getting a buffer ahead is the best way. Delays happen, as the SLog highlights. So what is next? JukeBx, CPUSpy, and maybe Egg

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