Long laundry list of home coding projects that have been on hold as work has been very busy for three years or so. Trying to list them and then get things rolling…

Probably more here as I think about things. One reason for this item is to provide a spot to accumulate the items on the docket. Probably going low tech as well with some cork-board and index card setup at home.

I’ve had lots of things on the list for a long time but getting them moved consistently forward while work intrudes on a regular basis has been challenging.

• MongoDb work in C++.
  Done plenty of MongoDb work at home in C# but some things are better done in C++. Built the drivers with some messing about yesterday afternoon. Now time to try to do some stuff with those drivers.
• MySQL refresher.
  I’ve done lots with MySQL (MariaDB these days) in the past. I’m looking at some networked stuff where PHP/MySQL would be the most appropriate persistent store option. Headed that way I need to do some refresher work.
• Learn some Powershell programming
  On windows old school batch files are incredibly hard to use when building robust processes. Jenkins and other such want interactive scripts to drive activities and powershell seems to provide a .NET compatible scripting engine that would make things much cleaner.
• C# Refresher
  I do a lot of coding in C# but mostly stick to the simpler parts of the language. Time to come up to date with version 10 and some of the more powerful features.
• C++ 17 and 20 Refresher
  C++ has been my coding environment for a long time but the last few years I’ve been sticking to C++11 or earlier as the systems my work has been targeting are older and use older compilers. There is quite a bit of interesting looking stuff in C++20 and I want to come up to speed on that.
• PHP programming
  My web hosting is PHP based and so anything I want to do that uses this hosting as a central point of contact will require PHP coding and back end into SQL. I have done a little PHP work but there’s lots to do on that front.
• Javascript and WebUI coding…ThreeJS, Angular, React
  I’ve done a bit of Angular some time ago but now I’m looking at that or react as possible frameworks. Adding in a bit of ThreeJS and I’m hoping I can build some interesting things that run in the browser but have interesting display rendering. Again, lots to learn here.
• Unity on a flat screen
  I’ve done a bit of unity coding for VR and found it to be a very nice environment for building 3D code. I have several reasons for wanting to put together some 3D games on 2D screens and that is a bit different and the focus in in a different place. I’m thinking of starting off with a simple space invaders clone in 3D mode and move on from there.
• Unity in VR. Quest 2 and Vive
  I’ve done a bit of Unity VR coding several years ago using the Vive headset in my basement. I bought a quest 2 a while ago and want to get some coding running on that as well as the Vive. I am very interested in what VR can do for UI capability and ease of use as compared to flat screens and so this is on my list.
• More file indexing work using C#, C++ and MongoDb
  I’ve been indexing my backups and archives to MongoDb using a C# based tool. This tool also handles duplicate removal in simple ways. I could use more tools on this front but the C# code ends up with some very, very messy PInvoke stuff to get to the Win32 API calls that aren’t available and getting MongoDb working with visual studio 2022 C++ will give me some interesting options.
• Unity based space invaders on a flat screen
  As mentioned above. Simple exercise in doing some flat screen based unity work.
• Space conquest game using PHP hub and VR UI
  This is the game I was looking at some time back but probably adapted a bit. Making it work in VR and flat screen would be interesting and making the back end to PHP/MySQL happen become important.
• VR render of classic D&D random dungeon layout
  I’d love to be able to generate a classic D&D random dungeon layout and then see what it looks like from a VR headset perspective. Might go somewhere further but mostly just a toy idea.
• Win32 ACL/ACE and ownership issues
  I keep running into archives where rsync has messed up the NTFS file ownership and the paths are very long too. Breaks takeown and icacls at times and I want more control over that so I’m looking at writing some C++/Win32 code to walk very long file name paths and then manipulate file ACEs and ownership along the way. Running as admin the process token should be able to enable rights that will make it possible to do what needs doing.
• Win32 UI to display pdf files on screen and manage indexing
  It should be possible to launch a pdf viewer and manipulate the position of the resulting window(s) on screen and then record information in MongoDb based on user input. Needs some experimentation with windows C API functions and process management. Adds in registry stuff as CreateProcess is a better choice than ShellExec for this so the code needs to dig out the appropriate application and run it. Add in some screen probing as I run multiple monitors and would like to place the viewer app on one monitor while running the control UI on another and this gets interesting.
• Python refresher/step up
  I’ve long used perl as my preferred quick script language across platforms. Python seems like the better choice these days so, while I use it now and again I could use some time to make my python better for those things that need a quick script.
• Kotlin/Android coding
  It would be very nice to be able to put together code that runs on my phone (or those of family members). Kotlin seems nicer in many ways than Java (which I know pretty well but don’t particularly love) and getting some simple things working on Android would be nice.
• Test target system setups for PHP/MySQL on Linux and Windows
  I’ve used XAMPP on windows in the past to host test code in PHP and local wordpress instances for various purposes. I need to get back to that and set up a test target that I can run debugging on (Jetbrains tools should enable this) and then transfer that code to my web hosting for public facing use.
• RESTful interfaces to PHP code
• PHP Debugging. Set up and get familiar with.
• Javascript/Typescript debugging. Set up and improve familiarity.
• Python to MongoDB work
• Python, C# and C++ interface to MySQL/MariaDB
• Programmatic interface to my GoDaddy EMail account
  GoDaddy changed things from IMAP to Outlook and I need to get back to figuring out how to replace the code I had previously to manage my email account that expected IMAP with something similar that works with whatever network interface outlook provides.
• More? Probably more to be added here before I’m done…