30! 1 Jun 98.

Severly hankering over some form of PowerBook. 1400 with G3 upgrade looks like a hell of a deal 
compared to the price of a new G3 PB. Just have my doubts about the quality of the 1400's overall. 
Remember reading lots of "so so" reviews back last year. But maybe that was the 5300 - dunno. A year 
in computers is equiv. to 20 normal years, both in terms of technological advance (Intel excluded of course) 
and those fortunate enough to work in said sphere.
Yes now I come to think of it, I'm sure it was the 5300's that were the dogs of 97 and not the 1400's.

We went over Robs last weekend for a barbie/drinks/chat etc. After the chicken/burgers/kebabs et al,
we ended up at a pub, hanging on the bar, drinking Guinness and talking about games and programming 
in general. Now I have to tell you, Rob is a true lady killer. We'd just got about half way through 
designing the killer game of 2002 when this middle aged "lady", slightly (very) the worse for alcohol, 
comes over and starts hanging on Rob and I.

This would have been fine apart from my wife was just eighteen feet away and this lady was effing and 
blinding all over the place, and generally trying to be friendly (too friendly). I'm mouthing at my Cath "Help!",
and she just laughs back. After about five minutes I start trying to ignore said lady, Rob however was
having none of it, and politely chats away (as you do). By now Cath (and Claire) was in stitches. 
"Embarrasing" is the word.

Ahhh. About once a week I try to take a day off into future land. Just surfing, reading, examining. Looking
for good ideas. Last week we got a cracker and I got all excited. Actually it was Rob's fault, he lent me a book
from the previous weekend. I whipped up 7 examples and a StuChat and was all ready to post. Did the usual 
thing and phoned Rob to ask what he thought of it. And that was the end of that StuChat. 

Luckily Rob has far more "industry" awareness about him than I. Ok, so it doesn't happen very often - you 
hit upon an idea that seems so obvious. And then you go searching for info on the idea and it seems like 
nobody has ever made the connection before! So, we're busy right? But we manage to get another day on it, 
and some more thought into it. It looks like it's going to be useful to us. So, next step, check patents and
stuff. Now I always thought the Patents Office was some kind of public service thing - you could search
from the comfort of your own browser. Nope, these people are crooks. No two ways about it.
They want four and a half grand just to do a conclusive search! 4K5! How much hardware does that buy! A lot.

In my humble opinion, we pay enough taxes that this kind of service should be free. I don't see how four and
a half grand is a trivial sum of dosh. It isn't is it? Talk about stifling creativity! Well I felt completely
compelled to bang off an email to Big Tony. 

Dear Mr. Blaire,
Did you know it costs four thousand, five hundred pounds (that's 450,000 pennies) to do a search at the 
Patents Office?
Now 4k5 is not a trivial amount of money for someone coming from a working class background as I'm sure
you'd agree, or for anybody from any kind of background for that matter! We're not talking bags 'o shite here,
we're talking Queens Head. Don't you think that charging that kind of money might be stifling creativity and 
inventiveness within the ranks? If not, wouldn't you agree it does kind of limit the ability "to Patent" to 
those that are either pretty rich, or alternatively willing to suck up to some lazy bastard investor 
wishing to make a fast buck off others' work?

Please either reduce the cost of Patent Searching considerably, or make it free, whichever introduces
less beaurocratic burden. If not, don't count on my vote next time.
Cheers me old mucka,
Stu.
Stuart Ball,
Lightsoft.

That should do the trick methinks!
(No reply as of this date, BTW)

So here I am, sitting here at 0130 in the morning writing this. Do you ever get completely, mentally 
exhausted? I do. It's happened now (which is why I'm scribbling this rather than coding). When I get
tired, it's also easy to get a tadge "heavy", like you feel you you have the whole world on your shoulders.

I know this kind of thing happens, specially to creative people working on long term things. I think it has
something to do with sheer energy neccessary to continually invent and manage ways of doing things. It's not
like manual labour, where you have a pre-defined task, and you just bang away at it. The difference is
defining the tasks in the first place and then having to implement them and then insuring that what you have 
implemented won't fall down with the first strong gust of wind. It's always great to see people using what you 
have produced, and finding novel uses for things you never dreamed of. People write to me and say this feature 
is like really a cool feature, and to tell you the truth, it's news to me! This all stems from writing and
designing in a way that tries not to specify too heavily what the likely outcome of a given action should be,
and of course proofing around most forseeable likely outcomes.
This may be confusing, but let me give a solid example. Anvil's little pop-up labels menu at the bottom right
of a source window. 

Someone wrote to me and said that the fact you could omit labels from this menu by
missing off the colon from the label was "way cool". Now I didn't know that would be useful to somebody! 
I knew that if there was no colon, it [the label] wouldn't appear in the menu, but I hadn't equated this 
to any usefulness. But at the same time did nothing to prevent it happening as it was "harmless" (label 
definitions in Fantasm don't need a colon BTW, so it all works just fine).

I have no idea where this discussion is going, so please excuse any lose of thread here. But anyway,
what's happened is along the way, the result of tweaking a design, but not breaking it, over a long
project has resulted in a benefit not immediately envisaged. We have two rules - 1: Fantasm allows labels
either with or without a colon, and 2: the label pop-up code requires a colon for the label to be valid,
providing a useful benefit for somebody, and it all stems from Fantasm's flexible label handling code.

Hmm, I'm not sure if that explained what I was trying to get at. Ok, so as any coding type person will
tell you, it's work. No two ways about it. Rob for example has coded two solid days this weekend, and that's
not 9 to 5, that's 7:30 in the morning till 10:30 at night. I'm sure most other people also code similarily
long hours - it's just so engrossing. Anyway, when you couple this with the fact that you have to run a 
business as well, and eat, sleep (ha!) and look after a million and one other things, it's a hard life.

But it's a hard life with a pay off. There is money in software, but unless you're really lucky it won't
happen over night. It takes development and development takes time - time when you can't do anything else 
to earn money, which is important, cause you need that to buy food and pay the mortgage/rent etc. But at the 
end of the day (or night), you can go to bed knowing that you did what you wanted to do. You didn't do what 
anybody else wanted you to do (i.e. make money for them, which is what generally happens). And that's a good 
feeling. And it's even better if someone has written to you and said "Hey, I think [insert your software here]
is great.

I'd guess the other thing you need [to make money writing software] is a complete and utter determination. A certain
arrogance if you will (coupled with a brain like a sponge). I remember a few years back people were saying 
the days of one man/girl and his/her computer writing a killer app were well gone. Well, you can make what you
want out of that, but it's not a line of thought that I subscribe to. In fact, it's complete horseshite.
Of course you can write a killer. Look about you. It's all the same isn't it? Stagnant? Dunno, but there
hasn't been a breakthough either in general apps or games for many a year.

And another is to [and I hate to use this phrase] Think Different{ly}. Don't just follow the herd. If you ask
"What do I need to do this", when you get a reply, examine it and look for "Why" or "If" that is the absolute 
answer. Why is a good word to keep repeating. If after asking why you get "Because that's the way it's done.",
something should twig. Ask Why again. E.G. "What do I need to do ABC"? Answer "XYZ". "Why?". "Because that's
what everybody else does.". A more practicle example: "What do I need to learn to do 3d?". Answer" "BSP trees".
"Why?" "Because it's the fastest". 

Is it? Of course it isn't. It can't be. Think about it.


Caths Mum is severely ill. Off to Wales tomorrow, Cath and Jess are staying down for the week
(with her Mum) but I'm back to work Tuesday. I like Wales though, and wish I could stay for the week. 
With this news I figure we'll be in Wales a fair amount over the coming months, which is nice, hence the 
increasing desire for some more portable form of computing. To be honest I could survive with just an 
editor, I don't really need to build anything. Just bang code in. There are lots of good 040 based PB's 
for a cuppla hundred quid, so maybe I can talk "the boss" (Fluff :)) into one of those. I like the Duo's. 
So light compared to a full blown PB and very portable. I know the G3 PB's are incredibly fast, but at the 
end of the day there's a hell of a difference between 3300 and 300 pounds. And then there's the IMac. Is it
any use to me? None whatsoever. Do I want one? You bet! What a sexy machine. I'd have three at least given 
the chance. Imagine sitting on the toilet, reading Byte (umm, maybe not. I can't believe what the "idiots"
have done there! OK, MacWorld then), watching it just glow to itself :)

Oh well, time for bed,
Till the next time,

About Stu. Stu has been working at Lightsoft for about four years, and sometimes feels it neccessary to let the world know what's on his mind. Stu welcomes you comments and feedback