Work continues well. I love being paid to write computer programs after all these many years as a hobbyist. I continue to have fun making things with Qt do things and stuff. It's great.
No game dev whatsoever, no time, no interest. Free time programming is currently spent on doing the fun bits of the work application that are out-prioritised by less fun things during working hours. I'm a sad case but an employer's dream in this respect. I like to sit in Costa with my laptop in the hopes I will score chicks. It hasn't happened yet but I refuse to let the last 20 years experience destroy my hope. I am tenacious. I will not be thwarted by facts and evidence.
Oh, bit of fun, I need to learn Delphi so I can maintain some legacy software we are stuck with for at least another year and make it interop with our new product. Had the deep joy of running Delphi 6 for the first time today. Took me back to my wilderness years with Borland C++ Builder. Horrific times. Thought I'd escaped forever. No such luck. Thankfully my boss supports the idea of writing tricky stuff in C++ DLLs using Visual Studio so it could be worse.
So Christmas break plans are:
- Write a thin DLL to wrap some SQLite3 stuff so the Delphi product can get info from the new database
- Develop some Qt stuff to parse some seismic QC files whose 80 characters per line standard betrays their age
- Investigate QScript as a means to reduce exe patches in the new Manager
- Begin development of a system to describe bar charts in XML and reconstruct to Qwt charts to avoid having to sync large SVG files from vessels with dodgy internet
Mad though it sounds, I find all this far more rewarding than writing stupid computer games because I have actual end-users now that are paying actual money to use the software to make actual money. This is all new to me and still a rush. Bitter, cynical veterans feel free to comment about how quickly this will fade and how hateful my life will become in time.
A very Merry Christmas to you all and Happy New Year. Catch you on the flip-side.
