When it comes to PHP, more often than not, I only think I know what I’m doing - and realize half-way through that there is a better way, and I’ve been doing it wrong the whole time! hah!  The more I work with PHP, the more it all starts coming back to me though.

So it’s been awhile since my last post.  I’ve been working steadily (read: couple nights a week) on my LotRO web project.  Meanwhile, I see all this other cool stuff people have done, and I wonder to myself, “Am I wasting my time?  Will someone else do what I’m doing better before I can even finish?” Bleh!

I wish I was done already, but my time is so crunched that I have to pick and choose what I do.  Between family time, working on my MBA, working on stuff for…  work, there just isn’t enough time in a day to get it all done.  I end up updating a few lines of code here and there, or working out some kinks in the CSS to make the page look at least kinda cool. (I think so anyway!)  That’s all I really have time for in one sitting.  So it’s pretty slow going.  I barely have time to even play these days.

Despite it all, I’m making progress.  My Character handling code which includes all the functions for retrieving the XML, parsing, storing character and item data in the database, retrieving character and item data from the database, and displaying that info to the page is about 70% done.  With all the error checking, validation, and overall awesomeness my Character handling code is sitting around 800 lines.  Seems like a lot; I’m sure before I’m done, I’ll be able to do some major cleanup in there.

Anyway, It’s late - I need to get some sleep, and I did zero work on my LotRO web project tonight, C’est la vie!