Project: Yellowcake, some statistics and the story behind the name!

02/05/2008 12:36 AM by Chris Toohey

16ms...

16 milliseconds!

Google took 78ms to load... and it wasn't--

-- but I digress...

I've spent the past three days hammering away at Project: Yellowcake, and I've gotta tell ya - it's been well worth it! I mean, sure -- I crashed a server (once), but that was testing; that's what testing is for!

And a lot of people have been asking me "What is Project: Yellowcake?". I don't think I'm ready to give away too many details on the project as of yet, but some people that I really respect that I've bored with the details discussed this with or even gave a preview, seem to be all-in with the idea. I mean, with statistics like that (16ms!!!)... well, I was amazed myself quite honestly! Maybe they'll feel free to comment on this blog (and they can feel my pain of wanting to shout it all from the rooftops while also understanding that it's not really ready to be discussed in public just yet!!).

While I won't go into exactly what Project: Yellowcake is, I will give you the story behind it's name.

Mike, Tim, and I were standing around chatting while at Islands of Adventure on the Wednesday evening of Lotusphere 2008. In the middle of swapping manly geekly stories...

• Me: (feeling obligated to prove my geekiness amongst Mike and Tim, despite them being two of the coolest guys I've ever met - maybe it was their matching outfits?!) I did X-Y-Z once!
• Mike & Tim: Oh, that sounds really cool. (basically - they're really supportive like that)
• Me: Yeah, would make a great product if I could just weaponize it!
• Mike: Weaponize it?!
• Me: Yeah, right now, it's hacked together. I'd have to give it a go and make it completely configurable to the admin/user...
• Tim: Weaponize - What're you going to do, enrich the Lotuscript?!
• Me: (laughing) - Yeah, we'll call it Project: Yellowcake!
• Me: (few seconds later, grabbing the Blackberry to write this post) ... Hold on a sec!

Wow, my memory must be going - that conversation, despite having only had Diet Coke that evening, is a little fuzzy. It could be all of the coding I've done over the past few days. I think after the three solid days of coding, testing, coding, testing, killing a server, re-coding, and testing some more, I just need some REST!!