Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Exchange Student

And we're back now. New computer and new resources to get some quality code done. First things, although it's not en vogue to give props to "evil" corporations, I have nothing but props to Microsoft and their awesome Dreamspark program. Once I figured out I can sign in with my verified Dreamspark ID on the main MS site and download .exe installer files (instead of rotten DVD images - my new ultrabook lacks a physical drive - grrr) I'm dandy. I've got C# Express (which I used previously) but also Visual Studio 2010 and 2011. Oh yeah, that's money.
Actually, it's not. Since I am technically speaking a college student, it didn't cost me a thing. From the business side I get it. I learn the software and then when I'm in a position to buy software I buy the stuff I know. It's like the first, sweet digital hit of the goods was free. Then you're hooked for life. Strangely, I'm okay being a junkie for what's I needs in this case. You know who else needs to do this? Every software package that I need to make stuff. Then they needs to talk to each other so those awesome assets import easily - since that sucks sometimes.

-Right, so we're currently in the middle of what I'd call the second Necromancer Saga, but since I've gone through this already, I don't have the same worry/hate as before. I need to surgically extract my old hard drive and copy the files to the new one. Hells, they're even in the same folder for ease. I have started looking at cloud storage solutions, and I wonder if I can automate an upload to Dropbox or something like that. One would think that having suicidal laptop would be the exception, but having this same bloody thing happen to me twice? On 2 separate projects? That makes me want to cry and possible punt a bunny (CID would like to expressly comment that it does not condone the punting of bunnies. Unless the teeth could be described as "sharp" and  also "pointy" at which case punting allowances are on a case by case basis)
Anyhow, I don't have any new code to write about or project updates, which as always, makes me a sad panda. I do have IDE and that's cool, now I just need to score the code that I lovingly crafted and I can be good to go. My code is doubly important, since I wrote so much of it to be explicitly portable. I'd say 80% or so of the code could be almost directly applied to The Star Frog EP, which is nice. Or will be once I get it out of the Shiney.

Speaking of new laptop, I've decided that Windows is just fuggin needy. "Hold on, let me update this." "You have to let me restart now. If you don't then I'll do it myself in 1 hour," like some kind of deadline. Honestly, if Microsoft would make Visual Studio usable in Linux (specifically JoliOS - love that crap) I could ditch Windows like a vestigal tail. Other than software installation (which for Linux is both baffling and archaic) I'm liking the easy to use layout which reminds me quite a bit of my phone.
However, to continue my previous point, my laptop is a dual boot, since I need that vestigal tail to swing through the code jungle that I've grown. Or will swing, once I can get the trees from their old home.

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