Mr. Softwarepants

So, Cthulu, huh?

There's some desktop widget thing that people at work are running on Windows XP, to organize their desktops. I've never been curious enough to ask anyone what it is, and I don't run Windows (except in a VM, for Office) so I haven't needed it. (And prefer to hide icons on the desktop and not store stuff there.)

A random Tweet that flew past lead me to Fences by Stardock, which looks to be exactly what people are using.

It's free, but not open, par for the course for Windows software, but it's actually worse than that:

Fences offers a patent-pending quick-hide feature.

"Patent-pending"?

Fuck that shit.

I do know what kinds of programming I enjoy most, actually, but unfortunately it's not the kind of thing that's easy to get paid a lot of money to do.

Went to an open house today, new construction. The living room was specifically designed to mount a flat panel on the wall above the fireplace, with a media center built in to the other side of the room, with cables run.

Now, I can see that this is a popular thing, hanging up the TV, but I seriously don't like it. Hanging up a TV screams "sports bar!" to me, and I'm not into that.

Also, I tend to need more than occasional access to the input ports behind the TV. Unfortunately, I suppose. And since home theater is already a big enough pain in the ass, I don't want to deal with "and there's no blah-blah cable run from the media center to the TV" in the future, when the next thing comes out.

So far, I'm not thrilled with the new "less Brock, more Hatred" situation.

I'm looking for a HTPC remote, w/ USB IR receiver (though I can get the receiver and remote separate.)

So far both of these look reasonable:
* http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16880121003
* http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16880121001

Not really willing to go the $50+ Logitech route, unless there's a compelling reason. Linux compatibility would be "a plus".

I saw one episode of "The Big Bang Theory" once, and found it unbearably unwatchable. Like most TV. What's the deal with people liking that show?

Watched A Bridge Too Far.

Gyromancer mini-review, based on playing the demo, coming from someone who has played a lot of (A) Bejeweled Twist and (B) Puzzle Quest:

It stinks.

So I follow a lot of people who follow Microsoft. Up until recently, I brought home the bacon doing .NET programming. There's money to be made doing that, so why not be the guy getting paid?

As much as I bitch about Windows and Visual Studio and MSDN and Microsoft, seriously, you can do a lot worse. (Or maybe Eclipse doesn't make me want to claw my own eyes out anymore? Doubtful, if the website is any indication.)

And I think .NET is a good enough platform to code for, assuming you're doing "boring business programming" anyway, and all the line-of-business employees have Windows on the desktop.

But I still have a fairly low inclination to be in on the community there. I view new tech coming out of Microsoft as "oh great another thing to deal with" instead of cool new shit. Sticking with NUnit instead of going to MSTest in the VS2005 days, for instance, good idea.

Aaaaaanyway, the news on the MSTwitosphere today was that someone named Don Dodge got laid off. This was generally considered a bad move on MS's part, but I've never heard of this guy. Granted, I don't pay attention to the "community", but still, the name never floated past. Maybe "...holds an MBA...and a BS in accounting..." has something to do with it?

Feel free to leave a comment telling me that I should have heard of this guy / he's one of the good guys / etc.

Fake Steve Jobs does his thing.

Update: I was informed over Twitter that he was responsible for the "BizSpark" program, which gives cheap MS licenses to startup companies. The analogy here is both obvious and left as an exercise for the reader.

JRuby certainly combines two worlds, neither of which I want to live in.

You all know about the Western Computer-based RPG, and all of its tropes. You are a party (or possibly a lone adventurer) questing the rid the world of an ancient evil.

Then there are games like Dungeon Keeper where you play the bad-ass boss monster at the bottom of a dungeon, and have to keep those pesky adventurers away from the goods.

The though-in-the-shower for today was "Dungeon Keeper meets Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (are dead)".

You play a small party of low-level henchmen. You contract out your dungeon protection services to whoever is paying. You don't particularly like your job, or have done much thinking about the moral implications, but it you're good at it and it puts food on the table, so it's a thing to do.

(And of course no matter how far you get in the game, the bosses never give a damn about you, or even remember your names, really.)

It's quite possible, almost easy, to mis-trigger a left click when you're going for a right click. Much, much harder to do that with physically separate buttons.

I'm liking the Magic Mouse more and more for driving my 15" MBP; less so for driving the 2x 24" LCDs hooked up to the Mac Pro at work. Apple and I have disagree on what the top speed of a mouse should be. Windows and I have an understanding in this matter.

SMDbot = "Social Media Douchebot", those Twitter accounts that follow you if you mention "marketing" or "acai berry".

You turn your back for a second and then pow yet another damn JavaScript library crawls out of the woodwork.

I got a Magic Mouse yesterday. Tried it on my MBP (10.6). Now trying it on my Mac Pro at work (10.5, with 2x 24" screens.)

Question: Why doesn't Apple let you really crank up the tracking and sensitivity (without writing defaults on the command line or using 3rd party software)?

There's a new Git GUI for OS X in the works: http://macendeavor.com/gity

But it's closed-source, for-pay, so my interest level dropped pretty far, pretty fast. For all I know, it will be great, but this takes me back into the area of being uncomfortable tying my productivity as a developer even more to proprietary tools.

If there's a bug, can I fix it? No, there's no source.
If I want a new feature can I add it? No, there's no source, and it will be prioritized by a separate team with separate goals (goal #1 being "add features that make us more money".)

I dunno. Maybe I should get on the ball of writing for-pay tools for developers. Us OS X-using types sure do like our shiny, and sure are willing to pay for it. Except then I'll have to listen to users (like me) bitch and moan all day. I certainly wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of my bug reports.

Dragon Age: Origins

Decide how to handle complex issues like murder, genocide, betrayal, and the possession/sacrificing of children without the security of a good/bad slider to tell you what to do

I don't have a lot of interest in exploring moral choices in videogames for the obvious reason: most videogame "writing" is shit, made even shittier by shitty voice acting.

So for instance, I liked "Fallout 3", but every time a character opened its mouth I had the urge to cram a rocket into it.

I haven't tried "Dragon Age", though, so if it's actually non-shit in the story department, let me know.