Most of this week has been spent working on my secret new application. It is coming along well and I think I have a realistic timeline in place. I have started using Redmine for managing features and timelines. It is very cool, much better than trac. I haven’t managed to get SVN intergration working yet though.

I also spent a day playing with Alice. I was using it on Ubuntu and could get everything set-up but I couldn’t get playback to work. So I ended up using it in a windows vm which worked ok. I am not sure if it is the best introduction to programming though, it is kinda cool to see objects move around the screen and to change camera angles but it is quite a bit of work to get that going and I am not sure if that is suitable as an intro. I have come across another game building app called Game Maker so am going to give that a go. Also I think Alice might be a bit abstract. There doesn’t seem any real purpose for it, whereas with Game Maker it seems pretty clear that you are going to build a game. I think purpose is important here and I am sure building games will appeal to teenagers!

Other news is that I found out my tax bill is going to be a LOT less than I initially thought. This is going to give me a lot more freedom and I am going to have to have a rethink about how I approach the next few months.