Danns.co.uk

On Friday I decided to bite the bullet and install MacOS X 10.5 (Leopard). In fact, most of Friday was spent backing up all my files and settings. Parallels took 80% of the time, since I wanted to back up both Windows and Linux installations and had little space to back them up onto, which meant bzipping them. Then I discovered that SFTP (I was backing up onto another machine) isn't happy with files over 2GB, so I had to split the huge 17GB file into smaller chunks, and the uploading wasn't quick either. Anyway, Leopard is up & running now and I'm glad I didn't have to install Windows & Linux in Parallels again, so it was worth it.

The problem is that I enjoy trying out new and cool software, and having installed Leopard, it's difficult to get back into the grind again. Granted, I can't really complain about my job --- I make Firefox extensions for a living. It has its ups and downs. I'm getting pretty sick of doing the same things ad nauseam. So after the Leopard install I used the opportunity to write a couple of patches for QGit. Firstly, I wanted to start using MacVim as a diff viewer. I've been using it as my main editor for several months now, and I figured it was time to learn a few more things (mostly after watching this very cool video whilst waiting for my Paralells disks to be backed up). The problem was that QGit didn't like command-line arguments in the external diff viewer command, so that was patch number 1. The second gripe was the "SmartBrowse" labels that appear at the top and bottom of the viewer. They tended to look ugly when text was underneath:

So I gave them an semi-transparent background, which I think came out rather well:

It was after I'd done the bulk of the work on the SmartBrowse labels that I discovered that there was already an option to turn them off, so I'm not going to see the fruit of my labour day to day :) Anyway, those are the first two patches I've contributed to an Open Source project. I've been assured that they will be merged this weekend.

And now back to work :( You know, I've been thinking of going back to Uni to do an MSc. I swore to myself that I'd never go back into academia, but I wonder now if that's exactly what I need. I know I'd appreciate it far more now, having gained some real-world experience. The problem is that we're pretty skint as it is, so I don't think it's going to be an option for a little while at least. Anyway, I trust God has a plan for both of our lives, so maybe I should quit worrying and spend more time listening to what he has to say :)