The XO Arriveth!
For those unaware, a couple months back I decided to get in on the OLPC G1G1 program, which allowed we priviledged members of the first world two buy two XO units, one which would go to a school somewhere in the developing world, and one that we could keep. The goal of the program was to spur interest in their work while encouraging donations, and let me tell ya, it sure worked on me! As it also did for two of my co-worker. :)
Anyway, I’m happy to report that a couple days ago, my XO arrived! And it’s a fine thing to behold. Compact and cleverly designed, these tiny, kid-focused, ruggedized laptops are a marvel of technology. Darn cute, too.
Anyway, there’s a ton of other pictures and material one these little things, so rather than going on and on about what makes them so cool, I’ll just post a photo and be done with it:
BTW, did I mention I typed this up on the XO? Well, aside from the photo upload, which apparently doesn’t work in the XO browser.
Some Knitting Projects
Well, I finally have some photos of my latest knitting projects uploaded. First, we have Michelles Scarf, which was actually completed and shipped off months ago, but only now have I gotten to posting a photo:
This is, without question, my favorite piece. The cable pattern is reversible, which is very cool, and the yarn Lenore helped pick out looks really fantastic in pattern (it’s got a glossy, satin-ey finish… very nice, given it’s just off-the-shelf stuff from Michael’s). It was also a heck of a lot of fun to put together (I really love cabling).
Secondly, we have Abigails Baby Blanket, which I just recently completed. It’s a pretty simple pattern, just a nice shell-and-cable deal, but it looks great in the green yarn Lenore, again, helped pick out:
‘course, with all the work on NetHackDS, I’ve had little time to pick up the needles lately. Which is unfortunate, as I really need to begin working on a project for our now-quite-pregnant receptionist. Oh well, I’m sure it’ll be done… you know… a couple months after the baby is born. Ish.
Victory is Mine!
Well, I won the battle, anyway, even if the war is still ongoing. Word wrapping appears to work, menu items wrap, larger font sizes are now fully supported. And it looks mighty fine! And so, NetHackDS version 1.10 is now available!
Of course, now I have to move on to the myriad other features on the list.
Slow, Inexorable Progress
Very very slow… or, at least it feels that way. In reality, I can’t really complain. Word wrapping, even nice paragraph-reflowing word wrapping, is in and works quite nicely. Meanwhile, the command window is now finished, and supports snazzy scrolling when it’s necessary (of course, the default font still doesn’t require it, but switching to, say, the map font, which is 8x16, results in four pages of commands). It’s lightening quick, too, unlike the rest of the rendering code (yay large backbuffers and DMA copies). Meanwhile, the menu item wrapping code is… coming along.
Of course, the menu code has been a constant thorn in my side… I’m starting to realize I really need to go back and rethink how the code is designed, but at this point, I just want to get it working and move the heck on. Of course, that may be easier said than done. Currently, the big problem is that, previously, I could assume menu pages were the same size. After all, every item had the same height, so once the page size was calculated, it was basically constant. But now, with items being wrapped, they may take up two or even three lines in the menu, and I suddenly need a much smarter algorithm for determining how to page forward/back through the menu. It’s all quite tedious… which is why, I suspect, I left it for so long. sigh
Update:
Well, in a wave of inspiration, I managed to get the scrolling issues fixed before I left for work this morning (yay for extremely simple solutions). There’s still at least one crasher I’ve come across, but so far things are looking pretty darn good, if I do say so myself.
