I picked up my MacBook Pro from the repair today, but I’m not sure it’s fully fixed. The original problem seems to be gone; the screen back light is working now. However in my test run this evening I’ve had my laptop freeze up once and reboot twice for no apparent reason. I haven’t a clue why it would be doing this, so I’m worried it might be a hardware short. It could possibly be overheating but I’ve had it act weird soon after bootup when I’m not doing that much.

I’m debating whether it’s worth testing it some more and possibly risking further damage, or just contacting the techs again tomorrow morning.

To my annoyance, it looks like there’s a fair chance I’ll be without my MacBook Pro over the Christmas break, which means I won’t have my digital research notes and won’t be able to work on Flash games until next year. Grrr.

I checked my MacBook Pro into the local Mac store for servicing. Taking into account the shipping time to the repair shop and waiting for parts and labour I reckon it might be away for a week. I could have shaved off a day or two by taking it to the repair shop myself, but I’m feeling mildly unwell today and don’t fancy driving to a place I’ve never been to while my head is swimming.

It’s a royal pain to not have my laptop for a week, as nearly all my work and hobbies either depend on it or work better with it. My note-taking software is all Mac OS only, and so is my Adobe Creative Suite. I’m considering getting an iMac in the New Year so I can have a Mac compatible desktop as well, but for now I’m back to my old tools. At least I don’t need much more than a text editor for writing documents, and I’m still happier using Inkscape than Illustrator so I can spend some time working on vector art. I haven’t been using my WinAMD desktop (what is the AMD equivalent of Wintel, anyway?) for more than a DVD player for a while, so I might be a bit rusty on things. I seem to have gotten used to having the menu at the top of the screen for starters.

Incidentally, while the Mac keyboard I bought for the weekend was expensive I found it really nice to type on. It might be because I haven’t tried many keyboard styles other than the standard ten year old model I’ve been using for my PCs since I started buying them, but the thin line keys work rather well. I can get a really zippy typing speed using it which I can’t match on my old Windows keyboard right now.

Now I’d better see what I can salvage from my backups off my laptop and see if I can get some work done today on this old thing.

It seems my MacBook Pro screen is going to have to be repaired again. This morning as I was checking my email I got up to get a cup of coffee, and when I headed back the backlight in my laptop monitor had gone. I’m not sure if it’s a software problem or the backlight is blown, but I’m probably going to be spending a significant chunk of next week trying to fix it - which isn’t time I can really afford. I really need my laptop at the moment as it’s got all my research notes on it. I have backups of my thesis draft all over the place but I’ve been entering my notes last week into VoodooPad, and it’d be a real pain to have to re-enter them. Not to mention it’s annoying not having a mobile computer.

For now, I headed into the local Apple store to check the problem and will be back on Monday when their resident tech expert is in. I’ve bought myself a Mac keyboard so I can use my laptop like a desktop over the weekend. Although the Apple keyboards are a bit overpriced by my tastes it’s handy to have a spare Mac keyboard around, particularly if I get myself an iMac sometime soon.

In another act of negative karma, I found a parcel from Amazon as I was heading out to the car to go to the Apple store. Due to my general cluelessness I managed to drive off with the parcel on the roof of my car. It managed to stay there for about a kilometre or two before falling off; thankfully I heard it drop and saw it in the rear vision mirror. No harm ultimately done except for my pride.

The books themselves were for cartooning, in particular on writing. One of them is a specific writing book: Make Your Words Work by Gary Provost. I realised I didn’t have many general writing books, which is a hole in my library when I’m writing up a thesis and occasionally other things. The other is a specific cartooning book: The Everything Cartooning Book by Brad J. Guigar, which I had recommended to me as a good general purpose book for comic strip creation (as opposed to comic books or manga).

I’m hoping that the problem with my laptop can be fixed swiftly so I can keep using my MacBook Pro. I’ve built up a nice collection of software over the last few months that I need a Mac for, and it’s going to be a real pain for nearly everything I do not to have it.

Just back from the tally room. Some friends called me to say they were going, so i decided to turn up. It was kind of fun to get swept up with the election and looking at the back of the heads of famous celebrities that most of the nation were watching on TV. I got swept up in staring at the massive tally board with all the updating numbers. I’m such a stats nerd.

Oh, and it looks like we’ve got a new government too. I guess I was part of the moment.

It’s Election Day in Australia, and I’ve already done my civic duty as mandated by law (voting is practically compulsory in Australia; technically all you have to do is get your name crossed off the ballot sheet but you might as well vote while you’re there). The queue was massive, and due to the nature of Canberra there were an equal number of interstate voters to make things interesting for the officials.

I’m debating whether I’ll rock up to the tally room later this evening, but I’m doubting it. While it might be fun to drink in the presence of political celebrities and get caught live on multiple TV stations, it’s been a heavy week (I’m in the office right now on a Saturday) so I might collapse in front of the TV myself. I get a kick out of watching election day special reports; it’s like watching a hard core strategy game with endless stats - and the fate of a nation is at stake!

I’ve been meaning to post an entry here about the new research building I’ve moved into, but I couldn’t find the words when sitting in front of the computer. So instead I’ll repost the entry I stuck into my journal over at GameDev.net to stop my old journal from dying from neglect. I won’t bother changing it too much since it’s pretty much the same as what I wanted to post here, except that it has a slightly more game oriented feel from the combination of stuff I’m posting over on my site. Anyway, onto the cut and paste:

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I’ve been neglecting this journal so long it slipped off the page. I feel guilty when that happens. Unfortunately, I feel more guilty that I don’t really have anything game related to post. I’ve hardly had anything to do with games in the last few weeks - making or playing them. But I feel obliged to keep my smiling little avatar on the journal post, so I’ll post the sort of things I post over on my own blog in both places for this week until I have something particularly gamey to talk about.

At the moment game development has slipped to a fairly low pegging in my priority list, which currently stands as follows:

1. Settle into new research building

Last week my research group moved into a brand new building on the other side of the university campus. It’s a pretty nice place: good view, good equipment, nice orange paint scheme, great coffee machine, closer to where I live. It’s got some downsides too: it’s only one and a half blocks from the closest pub, which is a fair walk compared to the old building (one block) and where I live (right next door). Plus the great window view means if the air conditioning is off then you need to strip and douse yourself in ice water to survive.

All in all I think the new place is a step up, but at the moment since everything is brand new nothing really works properly and it’s going to take some time to get back into the groove. Which is annoying, because I’ve got stuff I’d really like to do. As shown by task 2:

2. Move a few steps closer to finishing this PhD

According to my enrolment information I am meant to be wrapping up my studies in March next year. Unfortunately the research work I’d like to complete would take me until 2014. I am told that every PhD student feels this way at this stage, but it bugs me that I am such an expert procrastinator I spend more time writing elaborate work plans during the day then actually implementing them.

Lately though I feel I’m making progress, but the day calendar doesn’t have very many sheets left in it for 2007 so I feel the necessity for spending a few extra hours and a Saturday here and there in the lab. Plus a fair few hours at home too. Next year this will be number 1 and 2 on my list. Possibly 3 as well.

3. Get a webcomic started

I may have mentioned this before, but as well as working on games I’ve had plans to make a webcomic. It’s a relatively recent dream - only started a couple of years ago - but it’s pretty strong none-the-less. I even listed it on my 2007 New Year’s “List of Stuff to Do This Year” that I create in place of resolutions. I’m doing pretty well this year: start a website, create a game (Brixtar counts, but only barely); both checked off. I’ve still got “finish the first draft of my PhD thesis dissertation” to do - touch on wood to finish.

And then there’s “Start a Webcomic” - which is both extremely easy yet hard to tick off the list. I mean, I could just throw anything old thing together, post it on my website, and call it a webcomic. But the whole purpose of me wanting to start a webcomic is to have a vehicle for practicing art and creative writing, so I want it to be as good as I can reasonably make it. Something that dies in the first month isn’t going to cut it.

So in the interests of making something adequate I’ve been doing some preparation. Or more accurately pre-preparation: I realised I don’t know a lot about webcomics or what’s out there. I’ve been branching out into webcomic forums and reading a variety of what’s available. It’s the latter that’s been the biggest time sink - have you seen how massive the archive of webcomics like Sluggy Freelance are? Sheesh.

At my current rate I don’t think I’ll launch before January next year as I’ll need a dozen or so strips for a decent lead time, but I’ll consider it a success if I’m making the strips in 2007. This is still a possibility, although it might be over the Christmas break.

4. Variety of Social Activities to round off 2007

If you hadn’t noticed from the calendar and my mention of it at least twice already - it’s almost the end of the year! This means there’s a whole bunch of stuff you need to do involving other people - end of year parties, farewells for people heading overseas, greetings for people coming back from overseas, buying gifts for Christmas, general celebration of summer (note my home hemisphere northerners), and so on. The undergraduates have all finished their exams, so they flee the city like the simple minded migratorary species they are. Us postgraduates rule the campus, and we celebrate by drinking beer. Admittedly we also do that during semester too, but at least we aren’t now surrounded by youngsters who think the experience is novel.

5. Vegging Out

Been doing this far too much, but it’s getting hot and I haven’t listened to all the directors commentaries on my Futurama DVDs yet.

6. Develop another goddamned Flash game, you slacker!

And here we get to game development! At least it’s on the list. Unfortunately I haven’t mustered the energy to actually do anything - I’ve been saving that for one of the higher ranked items. At this rate, I may have to wait until the Christmas break before I have the time and lack of cares to actually get the ActionScript neurons firing again.

I’m hoping once I get settled in to the new building I’ll have the ability to plan something in as I really want to get more Flash learning in, but I’m afraid for a little while it’s still going to be second to comic skills (and very third to the PhD work). They don’t make free time like they used to.

In a cruel twist of fate, it looks like my brand new laptop screen has developed another dead pixel in the centre of the screen, which is all the more annoying due to the lengthy process and the effort the local salespeople made to replace my old one. Sometimes it seems the pixel gods have some grudge against me. No use crying over burnt pixels in any case, particularly if it’s just the one.

Filing under other minor annoyances, my research group is moving to a new building. I seem to be off the email list so the move snuck up on me - I knew it was coming up but I didn’t know it was this week until admin staff were asking why I hadn’t started packing. This means I’m going to get little done in the office today, and I’m forced not to come in tomorrow. Forced days away don’t seem like a holiday to a PhD student; I’m going to be working anyway, just away from my fast internet. Considering the flexibility of a PhD schedule is that I can take weekdays off at will and come in to work on Christmas Day if I wished, it’s a bit of a downer to have a mandatory day off.

I also doubt I’ll get much done next week while everyone is settling in, although it’ll be nice to check out a brand new office building. Thankfully I’ve moved all my core stuff to my laptop, so I’m ready to go whereever and whenever I wish.

As the comments to my last post have shown, I have been less than successful in weaning myself off the more useless parts of the Internet. It’s hard to muster the willpower when you have a computer on most of the time. But I’ll give it another shot over the weekend, where I can justify not having frequenct email contact to the rest of the world.

I’ve been spending most of my spare time trying to brainstorm ideas for a webcomic, but I’ve been in a creative drought (not a good starting sign). I’ve been trawling through my memories of my life experience to look for good concepts, but that’s been pretty depressing. My memories seem to split into the categories of the mundane or the unbelievable. Mundane would be much of my recent life; most of the day on a computer, working on hobbies at home, sometimes hanging out with friends; normal, everyday life stuff.

The unbelievable ones are even more depressing, because it’s hard to tie them all together. Plus many of them have been done so often they are now cliches, which is totally unfair. There’s a couple of years of my life which needs surpisingly little embellishment to turn into the story of how between working for a dysfunctional game company I helped a ninja, a Japanese exchange student and an eccentric tech-head who lived in his own hi-tech fortress to build a team of cute robots to take on the world - but it no longer seems that original. Stupid internet memes!

I think I’ll put this aside for a little bit; I really want to start a webcomic this year, but it’s hard to make the creative juices flow when you think too hard about it. I also really need to get back into Flash, so I’ll try to whip up that shooter game I was working on before my laptop needed repairs and limit myself to the weekend to complete it. Canberra has effectively a three day weekend with Tuesday off (and I don’t think many people will be working that hard on Monday), so I can feel a bit more relaxed.

I’m afraid I got a little distracted over the weekend. For those of you who can recall all the ramblings I’ve posted over at my GameDev.net journal (which in a sane world should equate to roughly none of you) you might recall that I was thinking of starting a webcomic. Indeed, I listed this as one of the things to do in 2007. Now I’ve got my own web hosting I should have been making more in-roads on this, and it’s bugging me that it looks like I might let this slide into 2008.

I spent a large chunk of the weekend doing prep work running through ideas to see whether a webcomic idea was feasible. Or rather, that’s what I wanted to do, but instead I spent a lot of time reading stuff on the Internet. This has become a common distraction for me, with so much knowledge (and much more pointless trivia) merely a second away. It can also lead to further distractions, like how my “research” led me to rekindle my fledgling interest in typology and font creation. I think it’s progressed beyond mere time-wasting and starting to become an addiction.

I’m a bit concerned I might be overloading myself with all these hobbies. My goal is to become a jack of all trades, and that requires obtaining a fair level of proficiency in a number of fields. However if I attempt too many things at once I’ll just skim over the top of all of them and never progress more than a beginner level. My feeling is that I need to do some triage on my hobbies and make sure I’ve got the time to commit to the ones I keep.

I’m not sure I’ve put enough thought into what I need to prioritise, so I’m not going to drop anything just yet. However I am going to put in a conscious effort to stop spending so much time on the Internet. I can’t really wean myself completely off it; I need the Internet to do my research and to communicate with people; but I can stop myself idling away the day on forums and Wikipedia searches. I’ll still be occasionally checking into places like GameDev.net, but not for as long. I’ll see whether this has any effect on my productivity.

I’ve once again got my MacBook Pro, now with a brand new screen. I’ve done an eyeball scan of the screen and there doesn’t appear to be any obvious dead pixels, so I’m pretty happy. The Mac guys must have replaced the whole screen half of the system, as it doesn’t have the light scratches it had when I bought it. The only negative is that I think it doesn’t close quite as tight as it used do, but that’s too minor for me to care about.

The guy in the store was being very nice with me over the whole repair incident, so I decided to buy a few things I’ve had my eye on for a while. I’m getting a RAM increase for my laptop to bring it up to 2 GB; memory is pretty cheap these days and the apps are getting very greedy for it.

I also plonked down the cash to buy Logic Express 8, the music composition and mixing software that’s the cheaper version of Logic Pro. I’ve been looking at improving my music making ability, and Logic Express seemed the logical choice. I also had it flagged as the last piece of production software I needed to make quality games; I’ve now got premium quality art, music and programming software loaded into my MacBook Pro, and enough hardware to properly get use out of them. The only thing holding me back is my own personal limitations (lack of time being number one at the moment).

I’ve only had a brief spin of Logic Express 8; loading up a couple of GarageBand tracks I’ve been toying around with and seeing what Logic had to offer. So far I like what I see; the music notation view seems to be pretty useful, and from my quick scan of the interface it also looks like a fine tool for making MIDI, which would be great for importing back into making tracker files if I want to save file space. I’ll need more time to really get to grips with it though, which will have to wait until the weekend.

The only fly in the ointment I’ve seen with Logic Express 8 is what appears to be a totally boneheaded bug with the file dialog. It might be that I’m overlooking something, but it appears that in its current form Logic Express 8’s File Open dialog doesn’t actually have the ability to open files. You can see them in the directory listing and you can go into folders, but every file is shaded grey and unopenable including those of compatible formats (such as Logic’s own .logic format, or the project you just saved). It’s not a show-stopper bug as you can still open files by double clicking on them in Finder (and you can open project with Open Recent if you’ve just been working on them), but a few QA people should have their knuckles rapped over such a blatant testing oversight.

Still, I’m keen to see what this puppy can do. There’s an electronic manual as thick as my arm (or it would be if it had a physical presence), so I’m sure it’ll take some practice to figure out how to fully use it. And there’s Flash and Illustrator to get back into too.