These days I seem to mainly use this blog for once-a-year announcements of what I'm up to, which is useful as record for myself when I need to reflect.

So here's where I'm at, as 2015 begins..

Some time ago, in summer 2012, I announced that I was focusing on end-user programming of virtual worlds in Android.

I called the language Cyrus at the start of 2013 and swore I'd stick to it. Well, that was obviously a dumb choice, since she got in the news that August, doing all kinds of embarrassing things.

I spent the second half of 2013 playing with Minecraft modding in Cyrus, followed by a year-long exploration through 2014 of using Augmented Reality to interact with the Internet of Things.

Core Goal

So now I'm back to that core goal: end-user programming of virtual worlds in Android, but now with a splash of Minecraft, a sprinkling of Augmented Reality and a pinch of the Internet of Things.

Of course, any virtual world today feels like it came from the last century if it refuses to acknowledge the tactile accessibility that was discovered by Notch in his world-sweeping game.

Android is an ideal platform for all this, because it is clearly AR-native, plus it can be used as a Thing - especially with sensor-packed, Bluetooth-enabled Android tablets and phones becoming such a cheap commodity.

I want to make the language more accessible to normal people by bumping up the number of dimensions used to access it: from my one-dimensional text format (which I still think is pretty clean and nice to read) to a two-dimensional graphical or visual interface.

Names

So, while I wait to see if "Cyrus" is actually viable in the longer term to name the language, this year's names are back to the Object Network and NetMash. I'm also still using "FOREST" and "Functional Observer" to describe the architectural style and programming model, respectively, if anyone asks.

But since I'm focusing my energies on end users not technical folk, I'm not expecting anyone to ask..