Has it really been over 4 months since my last post? Oops.
Well, the project I started on in my previous post has tapered off, as we are waiting for pre-production development hardware (the last batch was very alpha, mainly for enabling code development and pathway debugging). In total, I wrote 10 scripts plus libraries to automate testing various facets of this hardware. The data generated helped us fine tune the development of the new platforms, which we should see before Christmas.
While I wait, I am helping out with other projects, and learning about new technologies, like system level NUMA support (allows a system to assign memory to a specific cpu or for multiple cpu's to share dedicated memory with each other). Very different for someone with a more mobile testing background.
With the onset of heavy rains, my outdoor high-priority projects are now finished to the point that they are no longer critical, so I can limp through another winter while I work on inside projects. One of which has been the maintenance and improvement of Win32 Disk Imager, a project my son did for me when I started at Canonical.
The current focus has been in closing all current bugs, most of which have been fairly simple to resolve. I'm debating whether or not to release another point release (0.7) with these minor fixes or hold off until December when I plan on releasing a 1.0 with added features and improvements (line an installer - wouldn't that be cool). I am also in the process of moving the project to SourceForge as this will give me better control of the project (Git, Wiki, Forums, Web Pages, Statistics, etc). The release process alone was a major headache that took hours for each release. I am absolutely amazed at the total downloads this project has (over 4 million downloads across all versions - 1700 since the sourceforge site was created two weeks ago).
Adding the new features users want to see will require learning yet another language (C++), plus it requires learning the Windows programming interfaces.
Sigh.
