Forever Odd

This idea came to me one day while I was sitting in my math class waiting for it to start.  I had arrived quite early so I cracked out my PDA and started playing solitaire.  Then I got to thinking, wouldn’t it be neat to create my own card game in which I could make [...]

Unfortunately this isn’t anything new, but I would like to create my own text editor, that can do the basics with some enhancements.  The following is what I am thinking of initially:

 open and saving files
 cut
copy
paste
undo
word wrap
font choices (maybe)
syntax highlighting (if I can figure out how to implement) for Java, C, HTML, PHP, XML
word count
current line
find and [...]

The following could probably easily be considered three ideas in one, but because the protocol idea seems to ‘bridge’ the other two I decided on an all-inclusive post.
I would like to write my own application-layer protocol that would allow me transfer the data, whether it be text (for chat) or something else relevant to my application(s). 
The following idea [...]

I read somewhere once that for ideas you should look to what monotonous tasks you can automate, which is how this idea started to formulate.  A co-worker, Bill, and I are putting in multiple trixbox based phone systems and are coming across allot of tweaks as we go that need to be pushed across multiple servers.   By [...]