Update bits
I'm sick. I think I got it from Derek. Speaking of which, seems like everybody in the TIGSource community is really excited about TIGdb. Derek and I came up with some cool ideas to help make it self-sufficient, support indie developers financially, and hopefully expand the indie game community. We'll have to wait a few sprints before we can get to these particular ideas though.

Mailhook.org is being renamed to MailHooks.com and a few people are using it now. Joel at PBwiki is experimenting with an email to wiki feature using it. I started talking with a guy in the Google App Engine community that built something similar because of the rising need for it there. We might combine forces at some point. I've almost got everything working... headers are still breaking stuff, so I don't pass all the raw headers, and attachments mostly work if you send more than one. Kind of weird. And Andrew and I are trying to settle on a new layout he put together.

Today I went to help David Weekly with his Learn CS project. I was supposed to help put together visual aids to complement his lectures, but apparently because of recent feedback he's wanting to change formats to more of a workshop. We decided to go through the process of building Connect Four online, eventually as a Facebook app. So instead of working on visual stuff, I ended up doing my own implementation of a web-based Connect Four alongside David. He did his own version, which he got done faster because he was less concerned about starting elegance and I got stuck getting the win condition check algorithm done (I haven't used PHP in a while, but my lower level algorithm foo has never been super great). Mine isn't over engineered or anything, but it is more than a single PHP file like David's. Nevertheless, we both got working, playable Connect Four games done in a couple hours.

I really liked his talks and wished he kept the lecture format, but in the way we had discussed on the phone the other night. The idea was Monday meetings would be discussion about the lectures which would be available online to watch at one's convenience. I was looking forward to putting those together with David, but maybe we'll come back to that later.

I think I also picked up a student from the Learn CS group. I haven't been talking about it much, but I've been offering one-on-one lessons for programming in Python and Ruby. She wasn't happy with the way Learn CS was going so I offered her lessons. Given she still wants private lessons instead of the new group project workshop format of Learn CS, I'll have my first student starting in July.

I'm also doing a metal version of Weezer's Say It Ain't So with a friend, so I'll probably be working on finishing the drums for that tonight. \m/