It's hard to believe it’s been six years since I started working on this – I certainly hadn’t intended for it to take so long. For those reading since the beginning, I applaud your resilience. And to all readers, thank you for reading and I hope it was enjoyable.

Man, I’m tired and my legs ache, probably for days to come. Most of the morning and all of the afternoon I helped my father out manning the Hendrick Hamel booth at the boat fair where I live.

I was expecting a boring and wasted day, but one I was willing to waste for my dad, but it turned out to be a pretty fun day. Exhausting, but fun. I had my short story about Hendrick Hamel which I got to tell to a lot of people who were interested in who Hamel was (while also passing out free, and specially made, cookies (I think it was mostly the cookies that did it (yay for nested parentheses))) and it was so busy I didn’t get to sit down, or eat, or drink, all day.  

Today was a big milestone in my life, the graduation ceremony for my Master’s degree. Good ceremony (no surprises there, I’ve visited a few and they’re all the same) and a nice speech from my thesis supervisor.

In a remarkable coincidence (something so improbable as to be next to impossible) two others who got their diplomas were from the same street I’m from. That was a surprise.

Perhaps it’s because I’m tired after what was a pretty long day (several long days in fact), but I don’t know exactly how to feel about this. I’m happy, naturally, but I’ve been swamped with work for so long now it’s odd suddenly being without such a laden schedule – almost unnatural.

What I remember from actual vacations is that it takes at least a few days to adjust again to a more relaxed schedule without feeling that I should be doing something.

Next task, find a job (and have a few weeks of vacation, the first vacation in over one and a half year).

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In other news I’ve finally worked through the writer’s block I’ve had for a section in my original story that’s been keeping me bogged down for a while now. It just wasn’t working for me. Just days ago I was thinking how the story sucked and I should drop it. But I’m enthused again, so that’s great too.

After months of working to prick a date for the next meeting of my group of friends I D&D with that’s also resolved. We’re playing in my campaign since the beginning of the year, give or take, but we’re only two sessions in. I’ve got so much in store for them, but they’re only still in the first dungeon :)

In the last week I’ve made some modifications to my 3D workflow, which won’t go into effect until the next character (I’m thinking of doing an environment first), but which should enhance the texturing process immensely.

All in all, a good day today.

A new day and suddenly I’m twenty-five years old and nearing graduation (okay, two or so more months before graduation, but still). A wholly different year awaits, but before that, a party. Tomorrow I’ll be celebrating my birthday with friends and family. Good times.

Which brings me to this making the interface for my final university program, which is written in C++.  I have no experience making a GUI in C++. I know of some friends that they used wxWidgets for their interfaces. What’s great about it, to me, is that there is a WYSIWYG editor for it.

It’s still annoying, but the editor speeds up the layout creation. With the first tabular pane done I’ve tested integration with the rest of my program. Now it’s just a matter of figuring out a file dialog, finishing the remainder of the layout and creating the button events. Easy, but time consuming and thus annoying.

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Great, ff.net – in its ever pervasive attempts at improvement – has once again updated the acceptable contents of documents.

While I do get that they want things to look as professional as can be and cut down or do away with smiley-faces in chapters or other strange character sequences you will never find in a book, their handling of the situation makes things worse. Every time they update, it would seem.

This time it’s just about all scene breaks other than a horizontal line. Fortunately I’ve been using horizontal lines as breaks since 2005, and most of my stories are dated after that. However, one of them – my first and still ongoing – has many chapters I posted before switching to horizontal lines. In fact I changed it because ff.net was starting with their annoying updates that screwed with just about everything.

Poor Legendary Tamer, a single glance at the early chapters revealed the worst possible outcome. My entire formatting for those chapters is gone, completely. I’d have to go over all of them again and fix it.

As if I don’t have enough on my plate as it is. Thanks ff.net.