WOTAN Vaporware?

So it is official. I haven't updated the blog in a couple weeks and I have decided to officially name Project WOTAN to WOTAN FOREVER (reference).

OK, not really, however I have had an interesting development lately in that I have become gainfully employed. I swore it wouldn't happen again, but who was I kidding? What this means, of course, is that my already-precious time just became even more precious and scarce. Which means that Project WOTAN will not launch this month as previously planned.

I am by no means giving up on it, however. But now we are looking at an ETA somewhat down the road. Perhaps December, perhaps January 2011, but I highly doubt it will be sooner. So I do not fault you, dear reader, if you consider WOTAN as vaporware. I probably would also if I were you.

But it is not! This past weekend even, I was hard at work on the continued refining of my template system. Like I have said continuously, Project WOTAN is very much a learning project for me and so I frequently go back and update the code to reflect new techniques I have learned or optimize newbishly-written methods.

No doubt, though, that on the whole WOTAN's codebase is still quite a newbish affair, however I hope to minimize that by adhering as strictly as possibly to the MVC pattern. I have to admit, though, that my other commitment to creating a highly-normalized database structure is leaving me a little befuddled when I find myself sorting through my fast-approaching-50-some tables.

I have no doubt, that WOTAN will also be better for the extension. Part of my recent effort to refine my template class and system has involved a lot of rewriting class methods to return arrays (rather than strings) in order to future-proof them for eventual use with JSON and thus AJAX.

So, yes, I hate to admit it, but I was not quite hitting my August release mark to begin with. And now with the advent of working a full-time job with a two-hour-each-way commute (I am a proud patron of Portland's public transit system), that is essentially guaranteeing I will not make my August deadline.

But I have already sworn an oath to finish this monstrosity, so you know it is going to happen eventually. Hopefully this year even!