Notes to Myself

You have to be firm.

Eng has gone from the buyer paying it all up front, down to 70% up front. I have to give him some encouragement to not let the conniving cattle rancher push him around.

Journal

An Offer I Couldn't Refuse

Today I got a business proposal from Eng Emmanuel, regarding a $2 million sale of cattle vaccine in western Africa. What could possibly go wrong?

Journal

A Sad End for Ms Monica Jose

Well, it's Thursday, and I've had no reply from either My Dearest Aunt Monica Jose (a Swedish), nor from her niece and maid, Ms Elsa Karlsson (who is not a

Program Notes

Lesson 5 -- Separation of Concerns, MVC, and Templating

Separation of Concerns, MVC, and HTML templating all in one go! By the time we're done, you'll have built your first app: a snack dispenser. Yum!

Journal

Letter Lost

It appears my previous message was lost in cyberspace, or perhaps my case has been assigned to a new handler. In any event, here's the latest from Elsa (who is not a princess):

Journal

Not a Princess.

I had been hoping we could do the whole princess thing, but as it turns out, we're not going there. Instead, I'm leaving for an adventure in the United Kingdom.

Journal

Are you a princess?

Elza seems testy about my confusion over who is writing the emails and wants me to read the Bible. With a temper like that, how can she not be a princess?

Journal

Monica! (Or is it Elsa?)

Monica wrote back, proposing we enter a long term relationship, but I'm beginning to wonder if she's really who she says she is.

Journal

Mrs Monica Jose

Quarantine has come to this. Today I got this email from Mrs Monica Jose and decided to write a reply.

Program Notes

Lesson 4 - Working with multiple files.

Short (trivial) programs like counting to 10 can be done all in one file. But in real-life applications, keeping everything in one file quickly becomes an organizational nightmare. Most real programs are divided into parts and stored across multiple files, each file containing a

Program Notes

Lesson 3 - Operators and Program Flow

OperatorsYou can find a full list of operators and their order of precedence in the manual. They are all fairly self-explanatory. The most common ones are: Math:+ and - (add and subtract) ++ and -- (increment and decrement) . (concatenate - for splicing strings) *, /, and % (multiply,

Program Notes

Lesson 2 - Variables

When it comes to variables, each programming language has it’s own set of variable types, and programming languages generally fall into one of two camps with variables: strongly typed, where you have to declare what type of variable something is (and generally, once

Program Notes

Starting with PHP

During pandemic "time off" my brother Seth is up for learning some programming. Last night, we got PHP installed on his computer. (That was "Lesson 0".)

Program Notes

Adding Image Selection Fields to the WordPress Customizer.

In a real-live project, how to allow site admins to choose images that show as header backgrounds in the WordPress customizer. (Genesis Theme Framework)

Journal

Day 8.

That's counting from the first day they shut down school here, which is as good a day to say "stay at home" started as any. This weekend was the first

Program Notes

Custom Post Types and Taxonomies in WordPress

Every developer will find that happy place between re-usability and efficiency differently. A few weeks ago, I was working on a website for a home builder when I finally landed in my happy place.

Grace Notes

There are only two essential requirements for pastoral ministry

Preach the word, and love the people. The rest is secondary.

Journal

Photo Journal - Poe Dameron's X-Wing

Photo Journal: Building Lego Kit 75273 - Poe Dameron's X-Wing Fighter (761 pcs)

Grace Notes

In Memoriam: Richard Green

Last week he made it home from the hospital on Hospice care. Knowing that he had only days to live, his daughter got married in their living room on Saturday so that he could be there for the occasion.

Journal

You're not going to be famous.

So stop worrying about it. There are plenty of other things to focus on with much better odds of generating a sense of personal satisfaction.

Journal

Resolved

Arriving at this new year, I am allowing myself a cautious optimism. The world is in an awful shambles. If now isn't the time to resolve on making some improvements, when?

Program Notes

The Contact Form is Live!

With another afternoon's work on the contact form processor, it's good enough now to put it up on the site. (And if it's not, I'm going to find out about

Program Notes

A Simple Web Contact Form

This site needed a simple web contact form. I didn't want to use a service like Typeform or Google Forms. Time to roll my own form processor!

Journal

10 Ideas for Blog Posts I Might Write

I'm not saying these are good ideas, or that I'll write these posts. But if there are any you'd be interested in let me know.

Program Notes

New Project: Church Roster

Here's a new project: Create an app to keep track of people in my 2 small churches.