June Roundup
It's been a little while since I published anything here, which has everything to do with work, the weather, and various projects circling around. So with that, here's a rundown of what's happening on my side of the fence.
PGA — Tournament season is back in (ahem) full swing once again, and I'm currently working on a big update to the PGA Championship in August, plus some other internal projects at Turner Sports Interactive that encompass everything from product branding to Flash content to CSS/XHTML coding. As usual, plenty to keep me busy there.
SlideShowPro — I've released eight updates to SlideShowPro since its launch in mid-February, and the public response to it has been simply phenomenal. The component continues to market itself -- by word of mouth -- and after four months has yet to show any signs of slowing down. SSP is at the saturation point where I occasionally run across it (just surfing around) on third party sites, which is a lot of fun to see. Development continues.
Vespa — My wife and I are baby-sitting a family member's deco-green Vespa while they're out of town for the whole summer. Part of our duties includes riding it at least once a week to keep it in shape, which we've been more than happy to oblige. The area of Atlanta we live in (Decatur) is thankfully very non-car friendly, so on weekends we've been riding around to area restaurants, festivals, and simply enjoying the warm, summer Georgia breeze. And yes, they're just as much fun to ride as they appear.
Pavilion — Since January I have been working with architect Bill Carpenter at Lightroom here in Atlanta to design and construct a backyard addition onto our home. Last week the design and budget were finally completed, and construction should begin within a couple of weeks.
Dubbed the "pavilion," the modern structure will encompass a car-port, a garden shed, and an indoor/outdoor living space underneath a towering oak tree with seating, overhead lighting, and a built-in fireplace. It's all part of a massive backyard overhaul in an area currently occupied with nothing but weeds and errant debris. Plenty of landscaping and hot summer work ahead. Once construction starts I hope to post some photos.
Apple on Intel? — Okay, I couldn't resist mentioning this, and everyone will know what's up by mid-afternoon, but here's my two cents. Everyone I know that owns and uses a Mac does so because of the operating system and the applications contained therein, and could pretty much care less what chip it all runs on (as long as it's fast enough to handle their needs). As long as they don't slap an "Intel Inside" sticker on my PowerBook, it doesn't make a bit of difference to me. What's most interesting though is Jobs' motive, which is rumored to include everything from DRM-enabled video to directly competing with Windows on the same playing field. One thing is for sure though -- once again, it's a very interesting time to be a Mac user.
