2003-02-13 - 1:49 p.m.

A middling day...

Happy, but a tad disappointed with my performance. Seeing things from the other side.. how to explain?

When I consider my ideal programming environment, I imagine myself seated in a warm sunny room with a comfortable seating arrangement, busily coding and being productive at an even pace, incrementally building amazing projects over the space of months of sustained effort.

When I appraise my recent efforts (at any time, not just this particular one) I see a stab made at some exciting new task. I see the stab starting out with lots of energy and abruptly petering out when the first difficulty is encountered. I see myself hanging off my chair and dawdling, trying not to let myself go lay down in bed.

Sure, I'm painting it in a rather bad light, but it's sure not the hyper-efficient engine I dream of. I think I know that the only way to achieve that smooth operating status is to regularly push myself through tough bits and learn over time to just keep plugging.

I've made it this far :) I'm 27, so that means I've been facing seeimingly impossible programming difficulties for 16 years now. No wonder my main short-term goal is to spend my programming effort strictly on making programming easier. It doesn't need to be this hard.

Anyway.. I'm not doing all that bad. Yesterday I revisited my OpenGL development environment, fixed up some library incompatibility issues (which is far, far harder than it sounds, ack) and progressed to the point where I have a line doing a radar sweep of the window. Much better than just a point :)

Next is either a user-adjustable grid which would get me some practise at quads and quad strips, not to mention viewpoints, rotations, camera angles, lighting and user input.

Anyway, lunch is ready. Time to go :)

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