Project Jupiter

This is a program I'm working on in my spare time, a couple of hours a night after work...while Deanne is away, of course ! When she's home we spend all our time together, but when she's out I flex my "independent programmer" muscles and see what I can create. I have almost completed "Mail Room", which is a business application and not really what I want to talk about. Project Jupiter is a rewrite of the Reptile program I wrote at Sausage Software, designed to allow a user to manipulate colorful, moving images of seamless textures. Not much to go on, I know, and I can't post images here, but just giving anyone who reads this a heads-up that this program is coming. I'm hoping it will be used at nightclubs as something cool to watch on a big screen, or perhaps projected behind bands when they play a concert.

It started out as a "sequencer" style of application, but last night it took a detour into more of a "live control" mode - you don't have total control over what it does, but enough to make it expressive and interesting, I hope.

What to talk about today...

Deanne is away in New Orleans this week and she's having a great time sampling the local food and wandering around the tourist shops. I'm keeping the house clean (as best I can, being genetically incapable of seeing dirt), working on the MailRoom and Project Jupiter software I've written in my spare time, taking care of the pets and handling paperwork. The biggest thing is the refinance on the house, which should be completed in a couple of weeks, hopefully. We were on a pretty nasty interest rate, but thanks to careful budgeting ("Don't buy anything ! Eat sand for dinner !") we now qualify for a much better interest rate, which should make life a little more flexible and enjoyable.

I recently burned my first mix CD.

Yes, Brian, the guy who talks about computers non-stop and seems to know at least one web site about any topic, has *never* burned a CD until last week. For some reason, I just never got around to doing that; I ripped hundreds of discs from my own collection, and downloaded plenty of music from Amazon.com's music section and the wonderful Epitonic site, but only last week did I actually get hold of a good CD burning package. I used the Roxio's Easy CD Basic edition (which came pre-loaded on my new computer) to burn a nice mellow mix CD of songs I've downloaded from the net over the past few months. I love it...Deanne's not so keen on most of the tracks, but that's OK :)

I've just finished reading Cory Doctrow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, which is a freely downloadable book that you can also go and buy. I liked it a lot, especially since I've spent quite a bit of time in theme parks lately, up in Orlando, which is where the book is set.

Travel Approaches

After three years in America, we're finally getting to go back to Australia for a visit ! We have to complete some paperwork, in person, for the immigration people and it must be done before October. In a strange little turn of fate, Mum and Dad will be coming to America to visit Keith and Beth in San Francisco, and Deanne and I in Florida around July. By the time I'd told them about us coming to Oz, they'd already started making plans to come and see us.

It's nice how things work out sometimes :)

I have a great new PC at work : 1.8 Ghz, 512 MB ram, 20GB drive, built in GeForce4 440 card. I also bought a new PocketPC which, if the rebates all come in, will only have cost me $100.