elcome to CodingMonk, my blog.

As it happens I'm neither a monk nor, strictly speaking, just a coder, but while "Game-Theory-Software-Architect-Artist-Lamenting-Protestant-And-More.com" is a bit more accurate, I felt it didn't have quite the same ring as "CodingMonk.com." I trust you'll forgive the ambiguity.

Of Software, Not Religion

The topics I deliberate during the day, and therefore blog about at night, are strongly influenced by my background in computer software. I don't, of course, blog on every subject I spend cycles on. Though matters of faith and moral philosophy do concern me, this is not a forum for hosting these ideas. If your local search engine pointed you here in pursuit of religious-themed discussions, please be aware that this is not the site you are looking for. The posts here relate almost uniformly to software development, a broad and expansive subject in its own right.

Classifying Posts and Locating Your Interests

My attempt to clearly classify postings is reflected in the navigable "zone menu" to the left. These zones categorize a number of topic-flavors, potentially ranging from obscure themes like "Interactive Fiction" to mainstream subject matter such as "Design patterns in C#". As new blog categories occur to me, or the urge to purge comes upon me, this list of zones will change.

Navigating the zone menu is simple. High-level items, such as "Interactive Fiction," expand when selected to reveal sub-categorizations. Selecting a proper entry rewards produces a filtered list of all postings classified under that zone. It's worth pointing out that postings can be classified in more than one way. An article on interactive web controls, for example, might acceptably appear under listings for zone "Intranet controls" as well as zone "JavaScript".

Announcements Page

Superficially, the Announcements Page is like a zone in itself. It might be convenient to think of it as representing a "site zone," but strictly speaking this is not true. While the postings listed upon this page may or may not be classified under other zones, most often, this page displays site-specific declarations, relating more to site announcements than site content. It is the default page for CodingMonk and we can always return to it via the "Home" option on the horizontal "action menu" at the top of the site.

Syndication

The RSS feeds produced by CodingMonk conform to the zone categorizations described previously. As zones are selected, the resulting page contains a small, unobtrusive link to the zone-specific RSS feed in the bottom, right-hand corner of the zone header. From the Home Page, an aggregated RSS feed, covering all zones, appears in this place. For convenience, a list of all CodingMonk RSS feeds can be viewed by selecting the Syndication option on the action menu.

The Action Menu

Across the top of every page of this site is a horizontal menu loosely referred to as the "action menu." Preceded by a small purple arrow, it contains a handful of simple options, two of which have already been discussed and will not be expanded on further: "Home" and "Syndication."

A third option, "Contact" provides a simple mechanism to contact me directly. I find this technique results in noticeably less SPAM than the posting of an e-mail address.

The purpose of the fourth and final option on the horizontal menu, "Login", should be immediately obvious to anyone able to use a computer. The only relevant thing to say concerning it is that interaction with CodingMonk in its current state is open to the anonymous public with no need to login. This option, then, is usable only to the small group of administrators. In the future, this may not continue to be true, but for the moment it can be effectively dismissed.

Conclusion

So that covers the CodingMonk site at a high level. If you have any question, suggestions, or comments, feel free to contact me. I look forward to your input.

Jim Fisher