OK, so I haven’t written here in a little while. Not nearly as long as some of my writing dry spells. But I’ve been busy! Not in the “so I didn’t have time to write” way, but in the “so I have cool stuff to share with you guys” way.

First of all, I started with Yet Another Blog. This one is going to be mainly active this summer, and then periodically over the next school year—or that’s the plan, anyways. It details my adventures as a Googler In Training (which is a wonderful title I’ve made up for myself; it basically just means I want to work for Google really badly, and am trying to hone my skills so I can). I’ll be learning C/C++ over the summer, and enhancing my skills with Java. I’ll also be looking into learning data structures and algorithms.

If any of you readers know about these kinds of things and would like to teach me even a little bit, drop me a line in the comments, or @ me (@paddycarver) on Twitter. I’ll need all the help I can get.

Besides my over-publicised attempt to get hired at the greatest company on Earth, I’ve been busy with finals. But those aren’t nearly as exciting, so I’m just going to skip right over that part.

I’m working on a QR-based ticket site written in Java for App Engine, basically because it sounded like a cool tool. I’m focusing on keeping it simple. You log in with a Google account, all transactions are handled by Google checkout, and there are no lists of events or searches for events. It’s meant to be a tool, something people link to, not a destination of its own. The basic premise of it is that you can sell tickets to an event, and the user can print them off right from their computer. The tickets have a QR code, an ID number (in case the QR code magically fails or something, you can check from a web interface), and then whatever extra attributes you include. When the QR code is scanned, it checks if that is a valid ticket, reports that it has been used, and then displays any extra attributes, along with the buyer’s name and, optionally, picture.

Again, just a really simple ticketing system for lightweight events. Also working on a way to integrate “on-site” or “at the door” tickets with the system. Think I’ve got it figured out.

I may release that project as open source. Probably will, just because that’s how I roll. Look for it on Github, or I’ll write a post here when it’s ready to actually, y’know, be used.

So there you have it. That’s what I’ve been up to, besides my normal hacking on @spaz and mundane college stuff. Oh, and super-secret Google stuff I’m not allowed to tell anyone about. Like, laws and such. Which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

I forgot to mention that.