Through the digital cable the picture quality is outstanding. I’m, very happy with it. So happy in fact that I just wanted to play videos all day while in my office (a temptation I avoided, obviously). I love the irony of displaying the Linux shell on it. The letters are so big you can probably read them on the pictures here. They sure are sharp letters though!

I think I pretty much have everything sorted now. Maybe some would say over-sorted since I have more kit than I would ever be given in a permanent office job. Bear in mind that this is what I do for a living before passing judgement! As a friend once said to me (when I was fighting my conscience over buying the MacBook), you wouldn’t expect a professional photographer to only have one camera. Having said that they probably don’t feel the need to upgrade every year (though I imagine digital cameras have started to bring that about).

I’m sure everyone who works in (and enjoys) software development gets that comment about ‘playing with computers’ from friends, relatives and probably even partners from time to time. My advice would be to just ask them why they think that – you might be able to put them right (in a nice way, obviously). If you get too defensive (like me) it just sounds like you have something to hide!

But, in terms of a fully functional blog site I was never going to be able to reproduce something with this level of technical ability without some serious time commitments. And it’s not like anyone was going to pay me to do it either!

So far I’m very impressed with WordPress, and its plug-in framework means it can easily be expanded to suit other needs. I think that when I come across a client who wants a blog-style site then this is where I’ll be starting in future. It’s easy to set up, well supported and I can save the innovation for the unique features they require!

Also I just wanted to expand my knowledge a little by moving across to a new platform, at least part time. This way I still have the security of my big-beast-of-a-Dell laptop whilst keeping my private life on the MacBook. Oh yes, I’m a sucker for iLife and I look forward to getting all of my music and photo’s onto it. Once I’ve fixed my network that is since I had to rebuild it just to get the Mac to use the wireless access. Apart from that everything just seems to work…so far.

The built in camera is a revelation. I wish I had more friends (or at least friends with Macs) so I could video conference!

Which leads me on to my next purchase, a Wacom Intuos graphics tablet. It’s only just arrived so I don’t know what it’s going to be like. It’s sat next to me at my desk right now, taunting me…

draw with me, draw with me…

I even added Google AdWords which you should be able to see to the right. I don’t expect to make any money from it, it just helps add some extra interest to the site and it’s another thing I can help people with in the future if they need it for their own sites. Just the fact it is relevant to my site content makes it an advertising medium I’m actually quite happy to have around.

Anyhow – time to get back to work.

Obviously I forgot.

But here it is about 7 years later than promised. As with most things I do get there eventually:

Artificial Intelligence Software Development Kit

The only thing I do ask if you go on to do something useful with this information is that you perhaps consider linking/referencing it/me. You never know, someone might find it useful and then go on to create the best thing in video-games since Doom. That would be a good thing.

You can probably ignore the details directly related to the software I wrote unless that kind of thing turns you on. If it does I have the code somewhere still so let me know if you want it rather than cutting and pasting from the documents. The first chapters should give you a fair bit of information on basic path finding though.

I’ve still to tidy up the web version over the next few days (make it look nicer, add a proper index page, etc.)