Entries Tagged 'personal' ↓

If you’re one of the 20 or so regular readers, you noticed that the theme here just changed. I went with something a lot simpler than the other theme. Hacking on the previous theme became tiresome, I’ve switched to the much more generic copyblogger that is known for it’s clean code and therefore is easy to bend to my needs. Another mistake I made with the previous theme was not keeping my changes in revision control, so now all my changes are in a bazaar repository. If you have any trouble with the new site post a comment here and I’ll take a look at it.

I also wanted to take a minute to plug Steven Jackson’s blog here, which has been added to the blogroll.  I should have had this on here earlier, he’s one of the developers I correspond with the most, and someone I run ideas by constantly.  Most of his content is gamedev/gamedesign related.  I know Steve from my sordid past as an member of the amateur game development community, he’s a freshman in college but has a pretty impressive skill set, and is one of the most determined developers I know.

As he mentioned on his blog I was working with him on an entry in PyWeek 6 which I’m sure even though it was my idea was somehow his plan to get me back into gamedev. Neither of us ended up having the time we would have liked to complete our idea, but we’re still talking about following through on it.  It gave me an excuse to learn Pyglet and Cocos, two excellent python libraries.  Most likely something (whether it’s our initial game or not) will come out of my having picked them up.

(This would also be a time to give a shoutout to his indie gamedev shop, Snowfall Media, that he’s set up with one other developer.)

Popularity: 6%

Ok, I feel like there are a few posts that are almost required on a blog of this kind and it’ll help me get in the habit of posting to start with a few of them. So here it is, the obligatory tools post.

Hardware: My laptop is a PowerPro J 10:15, which is a Compal IFL90 sold by the great people at PowerPro. I bought my first laptop from them years ago and it served me amazingly well, and when it came time last month to replace it, I went back to them (I’m not a huge fan of their site, but once you get past that they have a well deserved great reputation). One of the most important things for me was that I could buy it without an OS installed, but their service and support is amazing, and the IFL90 is a nice looking notebook that has been performing amazingly well.

My mp3 player is a iRiver IHP-120 which has served me amazingly well for the last four years. It’s probably the oldest gadget I still actually use, but I use it constantly and despite looking pretty beat up it works about as well as it did the day I got it. Actually even better since being loaded with the rockbox custom firmware.

I also have a 22″ widescreen monitor that I got at an extreme discount but never actually use. In theory it was a second monitor for my laptop but in practice it sits unplugged in my room since I never got in the habit of using it.

OS: Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) I’ve used every edition of Ubuntu since 4.10, and it has been my primary OS since 5.04. When I got this laptop I left some unpartitioned space in case I decided to install Windows, but on my old laptop I hadn’t booted into the windows partition in about a year, so I’m not really sure if I’ll ever even bother.

Browser: Firefox. Notable extensions include Greasemonkey, Firebug, and the Web Developer Toolbar. I also use the Gmail Notifier, del.icio.us toolbar, and ForecastFox.

Development: For quick editing, I use GEdit or vim depending on the context. When I’m working on a real project lately I’ve been happy with Komodo Edit, the free version of the Komodo IDE. It has great Python support and is simple enough to be usable as opposed to a full blown IDE like Eclipse/PyDev. When I was using Java I did use Eclipse, but I feel that lightweight languages deserve lightweight editors. I also find Meld to be an invaluable tool, both for examining local files and using as an aid when dealing with directories under revision control (an oft-overlooked feature)

Media: I do actually still buy CDs, which I then rip with ripperX seeing as it just works where sound-juicer and others either aren’t flexible enough or take far too much configuration. I tag/organize things with easyTag and then play them with the terrific KDE music app amaroK. VLC is a must for playing videos/DVDs. On the rare occasions where I’m creating something I either fire up the old standby Gimp, or use the SVG drawing tool Inkscape, which has allowed me to make things that looked nice with my severely limited artistic talent.

Everything Else: I use Pidgin to stay in touch with people. From time to time I still fire up OpenOffice although I have been transitioning to Google Docs. When I’m writing things for school I prefer to use LaTeX and I typically do my editing in Kile, a superb KDE LaTeX editor. Google handles my email/calendaring needs (but I do have my GooCal imported into Evolution for it’s nice Gnome integration. Gnome Do, Tomboy, and Compiz’s window grouping plugin all deserve a mention here as well.

Popularity: 4%

This post is more for my own thoughts than anything else.  This is probably good considering the fact that nobody knows about the site yet.

I’m hoping that polimath will be a useful site both to me and to those who visit it.  In addition to putting things I learn or discover out there, I’m a strong believer in the value of two-way dialog and hope that the eventual visitors to my site will be of use to me, both in finding direction in my work, and in bringing new knowledge and viewpoints to the table.

The first order of business is getting the site to have a bit of content.  There are a few older projects of mine that it may be ok to reflect on, both to have a log of important lessons learned and to put a few posts in the archives.

After this is done I’ll have to decide what I want the site to look like, and begin writing on my current pursuits.  All of this is done with the hope that publicizing my attempts at work will make me more dedicated to it, which is a pretty big gamble.

And so, the experiment begins.

Popularity: 3%