Tabulas turns two today. It's really weird to look back when I first started - I had such small aspirations ... initially Tabulas was just for me and my friends. There was an unlimited quota on everything, just because I figured it wouldn't ever take off.

In a sense, it did take off. Two years later, I sit here with roughly 57474 registered accounts (a lot less which are actually active, but such is life in the blogosphere). I have met some really interesting people and have received many compliments (which I guess are really awesome).

Tabulas has had its ups and downs. There are incredible highs (when I stumble across blogs which are well written and take advantage of the toolset) and incredible lows (reference the launch of Tabulas 2.0).

Tabulas 2.0 was supposed to be a move towards a more "professional" product which I would feel comfortable charging for. But you know the truth? I don't really feel more comfortable now. I think Tabulas is an excellent platform for many different groups of people, but I just don't want to commercialize it. There's a certain charm to a site that's still maintained by one developer, and the pressures of having to comform to business models is something I'm loathe to now do.

In any case, I've been pretty relaxed about Tabulas - not having to develop for the sole purpose of making $$$ freed me up to develop cool new features (Tabulas Radio, Tabulas XML-RPC Protocol) which aren't really keys to financial success. But to be honest, I'm very tired.

The toll of working on 2.0 then facing a huge code refactoring of the control panel to be more extensible (for foreign languages) while developing new features has me simply fatigued. There's always a never-ending list of "to-do" things in my mind, and it will never be solved. The perfection of Tabulas, as much as I want to achieve this in my mind, will never ever be reached. It's just too big and too widely used to implement huge changes to the UI or features.

So I'll be largely stepping away from developing for Tabulas now - no new features, no code refactoring, no new developments. I am imposing at least a 3-month hiatus where I will refuse to think about Tabulas code. Short of any glaring security holes or huge bug reports, I will no longer develop another line of code for Tabulas. Hopefully the 3 months away will give me a chance to get a fresh set of legs or get a better idea of what to do.

At this point with Tabulas, I am entirely happy to take a 3-month vacation; there is also a good chance this 3-month vacation will be extended indefinitely. But for now, I'm going to take a 3-month vacation.

However, given the relative incompleteness of several features, I've made one final update to the Tabulas to-do list. I will complete these tasks as fast as possible and then begin my "vacation."

This does not mean I am abandoning this blog or no longer helping with tech support - I expect I'll be dropping by the forum to answer questions and continue to support people. Any problems by paid members will still be answered promptly (I will probably provide an e-mail address for support).

In essence, nothing new will be developed for Tabulas for 3 months. That's the only change. :)

But what does this mean? It means I get more time to pursue some of my other interests - I really want to get Audiomatch back up - the backend work by Neeraj really deserves a fitting front-end. Plus I miss not being able to see what songs I've been listening to :)

I have also found a new project to work on - this is a site that hasn't been developed on the web yet, but promises to be incredibly useful to a very small subset of the population. My goal here (again) is to create a totally kickass user experience. This will be my personal art project - tying in elegant code, simplistic design, intuitive UI tools, and a cool idea into one cool website.

To be honest, I was surprised that I got so hyped up for this project - my work for Tabulas has mostly been lacking this excitement. I guess that's when I really realized that I needed a break ...

And of course, I'll also be spending a lot of time at my new job :) It's the second day, but they're jumping me straight into development. I've slept in two 4-hour segments since Sunday morning, but I'm still really hyped for all this work. As I get more comfortable with the company and what they do (and they get more comfortable), I'll write more about it. For now, given the sensitive nature of their business, I'll keep my trap shut.

So, Happy Birthday, Tabulas! Thanks to everybody who has used it - I hope you continue to use it extensively and tell all your friends about it. Maybe when I come back to development in 3 months it will be flowering and I'll have great new ideas for features to develop :)