I'm still a 5 bit entity

Posted on Mon 16 August 2004 by alex in general

I think I will just have a quite birthday, mainly because I can think of anything cool to do. There are also a bunch of other gatherings coming up including stag and hen type things so the social calender is feeling a little crowded. Still next year will have to be a big one as I'll be 20^*.

So what have I done since I got back:

I've done a load more work on the Bitzi code for href="http://gtk-gnutella.sourceforge.net/">Gtk-Gnutella. Its now in a submittable state and can generate GUI feedback on the search list. Some people are worried that I haven't done both interfaces but I'm strongly resiting getting dragged into GUI coding. It not that GUI coding is that hard (although it often works to a different paradigm)

but its mainly because I don't really have the sense for good User Interfaces. I figure if I concentrate on providing a useful back-end people who want a neater UI can code it up themselves. That and I'm lazy.

I used the excuse of all this coding to finally replace the rather old keyboard on my desk and replace it with a swanky multimedia
one. I especially like being able to control my music player from extra keys without having to switch windows. I use href="http://freshmeat.net/projects/hotkeys/">hotkeys to manage the keys which it does well. Anyway, enough of this unashamed geekery!

My bouts of unpaid programming have been interjected with social gatherings of one form or another. The first being Friday night to celebrate Sues birthday. Met up with a bunch of the Radcliffe crowd (and Jo) at href="http://www.fishermansretreat.com/site/index.htm">The Fisherman's Retreat, a place I can recommend, especially if you like whiskey ;-).

The following evening was a little soiree at user="fooldramaqueen">Jenny's. Got to talk to a bunch of the people I've met over the last year's goth outings. Discussion ranged from discussing the finer points of french film to whether the guards in Warlords of Atlantis had heads like a penis. All of this was achieved without the distractions of the flashing lights and booming sound systems usually found in clubs. A most enjoyable evening.

^*Yes that was a geek joke, but hey as a programmer doing everything by powers of two is a natural impulse ;-)