Gimlé

Been quiet for the last few days. The reason being that my computer was out of action. Nothing hardware-related, simply a case of me running too much alpha and beta grade opensource software and running out of luck.

Didn’t lose too much work, most of it is backed up onto cd-rom or ftp-ed onto a remote server.

Hard work to rebuild the system, though.

Everything seems a bit more responsive on the new install, Galeon/Mozilla both improved considerably.

Might be because I went from the 2.95 series of GCC to GCC version 3.2.1 which apparently incorporates both improvements for C++ applications as well as improvements for PPC cpus.

So the irony is that my previous rant on KDE might be proven wrong, the KDE system might gain a significant performance boost from the new compiler making it usable for the first time on this machine.

But I simply can’t be arsed to install it. At least not for a while yet.

Gnome 2.2 looks promising but, again, I’ve given up on it after only a couple of days. WindowMaker was more responsive with GCC compiling Gnome 2.2 in the background than Gnome 2.2 was on its own (slight exaggeration, but it is noticably slower).

I can’t fathom why the hell Gnome 2.2 applications are faster and more responsive under WindowMaker than in their native setup.

Also been carrying on with the current, still ongoing redesign of Gimlé. Haven’t tested it anyware, nor really asked anybody for feedback. Any notes or critiques would be appreciated.

Been busy reading over the last few days. Left the computer compiling/installing Gentoo while I took turns either reading Heinlein’s “The Number of the Beast” or flipping through Lev Manovich’s “The Language of New Media”.

My only comment is that while Heinlein can throw out a good yarn with entertaining ideas, his characters feel about as real as the three-headed bat-winged goat my uncle sees whenever he drinks paint. Heinlein’s characters aren’t human and don’t engage with each other like human beings do.

And most of them are superhuman or borderline-superhuman.

All his ideas on human society and human interaction lose their value as a result.

Thank god, I’d hate to see the sort of elitist society that would result from the worldview—or ideology, rather—presented in his books.

The world is built upon the efforts of daft buggers doing what the enjoyed as well as they could, when they could. Their accomplishments accrue over time until the self-styled genius comes along to the right place at the right time, accidentally, spots the cherry on top and then claims credit for a job or idea that has been a long, generational process.

Pretty much everybody is stupid compared to Heinlein’s smartypants characters (as well as several, self-styled smartypants scattered all over the web).

We might not be superhuman geniuses.

But we get things done.

Baldur,
Clifton Bristol.