A Little Update

I’ve entered the thesis-writing mode and that means I only allow myself to work on my projects on Saturdays. By projects I mean tasks that usually take a good couple of hours. More often a whole day.

Yesterday I finally did some work on my game. With a couple of thousands LOC it became apparent I have to write some tests, and that’s mostly what I’ve done this Saturday. I’m using TestNG.

I also have to force myself to write some PHP code for a class in the coming weeks. I was avoiding PHP for so long, but it finally got me. At school, of all places.

Linux

Lately, I’m spending much of my time on Linux. Here’s why: my laptop is three years old, but only a couple of days ago suspend and resume started working. Sort of - 1 in 5 times the machine just doesn’t want to wake up, and I have to reboot it. Other annoyances: this PulseAudio bug (pulseaudio -k and using “plain” ALSA drivers fixes it), Tracker, a desktop search app, doesn’t work (but Beagle does, I use it). Oh, and watching video on Linux sucks - I always see huge pixels and sometimes that just ruins the whole experience.

One small observation: I don’t install many apps on Windows these days (I’m not counting various dev tools). I do almost everything in the browser, which really bothers me, because the UI usually is slow etc. But on Linux, I find myself more willing to try out new apps. And some of them are really good or very promising (Gnome-do, Tasque, Glipper).

The overal feel of a modern Linux desktop environment is positive. Not quite there yet, but also not far from where it should be.