Well I'm blogging again - in case it's interesting to anyone - we all have our own styles of work.

I've found that with the Atari, there are a literal sea of choices - and some interesting tricks to get the last bit of performance. But that's actually a problem - too much interesting things - not enough coding.

so I've decided to make some quick choices, and re-examine them only after I have a working demo.

A working demo is important - it means people can use it, and see if they like it.

Without the demo - it must seem like so much blah, blah.

So, in the interest of getting a demo - need to make some choices and start work.

First choice, the demo will be an AtariAge blog reader. Second decision - demo will be working by the end of this month.

Life can get in the way, but a goal is important.

Server side, the tools will be Linux, cUrl and Oracle, specifically I'll be leveraging Oracle's xml db web services.

The server will be hosted on Amazon's cloud. The conversion to something that the atari can use - has to be be done server side. Too ambitious to do that atari side.

Why these choices - lightning fast build out of infrastructure, that's why, I need to knock that out, not get bogged in it.

Atari side - will support Altirra, SIO2PC using APE, and - if I ever get the hardware in, a real Atari using a P:R: connection hooked up to a RS-232 to Wi-Fi converter module.

Yeah - wi-fi, to keep ahead of those Ethernet cart folks. Hehe, no, you can convert your cabled ethernet cart to wi-fi easily enough as well - I imagine, so it won't keep ahead of anyone but, it will represent another choice - so hopefully the wi-fi hardware I've been eying on e-bay works as well as I hope.

The decision on the Atari Markup Language - one could get bogged down for months trying to spec out the ideal solution - I'll kick that can down the road.

For the first demo - will use Graphics Mode 0. Custom character sets, and players in quadruple size. The plan is to use that technique to set the foreground to have priority over the players, so that the players essentially are a way of adding color to some areas of the screen.

The "pages" will be split into header and body sections. The first 6 rows are header, the bottom 18, body. Colors can be set for header and body.

Since atari was keen on having sprites that can extend the length of the screen - at least one will be used for a scrollbar.

Joystick will be used in place of a mouse. Double-fire will select scrolling mode. Long fire press - will disable scrolling mode. On-screen instructions. When not in scrolling mode, you will be in select mode - the joystick will allow you to select on screen choices - in this case its just back and forth between the first screen (select blog screen) and the second screen (read blog screen).

OK, enough blah, blah....will be programming this weekend.