This past week was quite interesting -- I participated in the NA-MIC summer projects workshop at MIT. I know I didn't get a third as much out of it as I would have if I had been more familiar with our code and how it utilizes their tools (entirely my fault for focusing on the NIREP website goals - which looks like they may have had a large shift if we move our data to a local XNAT server).

I am going to talk with people about the possibility of delaying the interpretive/comparative web interface until we've got a decision on the data storage, as XNAT would give a mechanism for uploading/downloading the data (and associating names with access) and then, I would just need to write something to ping the XNAT server to access the data and compare the results. Since the XNAT API has built in methods of push/pull data from the server, our executable code can be adapted to push the results to our XNAT server, and the web code can be adapted to pull it - which is simpler than me having to write both mechanisms and then wrap it into typo3. Worst case scenarios with XNAT, I think, are that I may need direct access to the database instead of using the more graceful API, or I'll need to write a PHP wrapper for the API.

Anyway, the most mind-blowing part about the week (aside from the after workshop bonding with some of my coworkers) were the revelations on CMake and its close friends, CPack, CTest, and CDash. I think they've changed my life forever. I'm going to talk to my section head at RMS about them, because I think they fit into things we are trying to do and things we should be doing. In any case, I may start to molest the CDash code, as I think there are many changes that need to be made to it (mostly for security, some for sanity). It's highly regulated, so the best I can do is make changes on a test install, and submit them to the repository since our main is synchronized via SVN to their nightly build. That said: I was pleased that my first fix to the code (fixing how they generate CTestConfig when the project name involves special characters such as spaces) made it into the nightly build already.

...
As far as this website goes, I'm undecided what I shall do with it. I am integrating into it my foodie blog, because its blogging software died when I moved here, and once I do that, I think I may do start using the front page as a proper blog, instead of a vague State Of The Site thing.