Thanks for the vote of confidence, Fuzz!
There is also this thread:
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=12534that people can follow, where I post my weekly/bi-weekly updates (depending on progress made)
Another idea that occurred to me that I'd like to implement, if there's a demand for it, is to add a "smart" caching functionality to the bts_proxy RPC server (
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=13143)
As the blockchain grows bigger, there are some queries to the BitShares client that start taking a non-negligible amount of time, and some of those expensive queries could effectively be cached as the result they return does not change very often. For instance, the blocks produced by a delegate only change when the delegate effectively produces a block, which happens at determined time, roughly every 15 mins. Using the caching server, you'd pay for the call only once every 15 mins, and all other calls would basically be free.
I believe this could potentially be useful to sites like bitsharesblocks.com, or even the GUI client, if properly implemented.