What I've Been Up To . . .

I've neglected the blog for quite a bit, because I've been concentrating on my job search. I've had two face-to-face interviews, but I haven't heard back from them as to whether they want to consider me for the positions or not. Oh, well, I must forge ahead. In the meantime, I've been working on retaining the knowledge of the programming language that I've been working with for the past five years or so, ColdFusion. I've been trying not to let my mind go to rot during these past months that I've been unemployed.

And, I have a need to inventory my yarn collection, as well as my needle and accessory collection. And of course, my math isn't that good, so anything that helps to generate a pattern automatically would be good. So, I decided to put two together. I had worked up a little application, but it was very bare bones and I had not worked on it much in its previous incarnation.

So, I decided to refresh for my personal use, and expand on it, while learning Model-Glue, a ColdFusion framework (don't worry, I won't go too geeky on y'all; I'm simply providing a background info for those of you knitting geeks out there). I got the database schema from SQL for Knitters and made modifications to the database to suit my needs (I use MySQL, and there are other bits of information that I wanted to record which did not exist in the schema). For instance, to the table that holds info for people, I added columns for the body measurements that will eventually be used to generate customized patterns, as well as to be used with commercial and shareware patterns that I have in my collection. I should note that I need to update the copyright note to indicate source of the database schema should I ever release my code to the public.

Here's an snapshot of what the page generally looks like. In this view (see above), Knitting Library Administration, I presently have links where I can add Manufacturers (such as Brown Sheep, Skacel, and Jamieson & Smith), Brands (such as Handpaint Original, Socka, etc.), Fiber Types (I guess by now you can figure this out - wool, cotton, bamboo). These show up in other views as picklist where I can select a value, that will be inserted into a record, for instance, Brown Sheep, Naturespun, sportsweight yarn. I have another admin view, Stash Management, where I can create a record for a particular yarn that I have in my stash, and any colors that I own for this yarn, generate a list of contents for each room, and so forth.

In this "List Manufacturers" view, I have a picklist of all the manufacturers that have in my stash. When I click on Go, I get this view, which lists all the brands that I have, as well as all the colors in my stash. I can click on the paper icon below brand name to add a a new color. Beside each color, I can add a new record for whatever purchases I've made. I've chosen to record all the stats that I can possible do so - weight, how much the ball weighs, whether it's been discontinued or not. Very useful, isn't it? Especially if someone is looking for a particular color that hasn't been made for several years.

So what do I do when I need to generate a list of what I own in my stash? Backing up a bit, in this Stash Locations view is where I can add a record for each new locations. Right now, I have three boxes up in the alcove with labels 300, 301, and 302. I have two boxes filled up with sock yarn that need to be recorded, so later on I'll add the boxes to the list and put on labels 303 and 304, and go through the process, creating new manufacturers and brands where necessary.

To get a list of everything in Box 201, located in the Rec Room, I'll go into Stash Management and click on the "List Stash Yarns" link, select the stash location "Rec Room, 201", and bingo, a list is generated. Very useful, isn't it? I still need to figure how to calculate the total number of balls, total yardage, and so forth. But that's an exercise left for later. Especially as it means making the query used to generate this list even more complex (I had to join 6 tables to get all the vital information . . . I'm sure there has to be a more efficient way to structure this query but I'm not a database expert by any means).

This is the kind of stuff I should be getting paid for, eh? In any case, I'm going to use some of the code sample for my portfolio, since I can't use the code I created at my former job due to a confidentiality agreement that I'd signed there.

Oh, yes, and I'm still knitting. Still working on Hubby's socks, and I've turned the heel of the 2nd twin. Hopefully I'll finish it this weekend.