Open Source of Agony

I lost Sunday. You need to remember that I'm on Social Insecurity, so open source software has great appeal. My piggy bank suffers from anorexia.

It all started out with GIMP, a Photoshop (and Jasc's Paint Shop Pro) knock-off, a word that I had to Google because it was in a YouTube video on Sketch-Up, also free and a great 3D graphics program. Long a PSP fan, the GIMP terms are familiar, but of course one needs to find the correct tools and do it their way. So far, so good. The program opens with three small windows, so I could follow along with the underlying tuts easily. Dozens of free videos on YouTube and elsewhere.

In the midst of this, I came across KompoZer, for which there are also tuts galore for Web site design. Great because I've always hated FrontPage. The next step will be to see if I can copy and paste HTML code into it. All this, and I have yet to download FLEX 4, apparently the poor man's Flash or whatever it's called these days. (See the Links page for download info.)

And you know how it is. All of a sudden free animated wallpapers and screen savers came my way. Since it's the beginning of autumn here, the beach scene is refreshing -- but I simply had to have the stormy lighthouse because Hallowe'en is nigh.

In between videos, and sometimes simultaneously, I listened to music from last.fm. Is this called multi-listening? It's indeed a good catalyst for paranoia.

My son had come to visit. He and the dog saw the back of my headphones all day. Luckily, he brought along his laptop, so he could play with his new Sketch-Up and chat with his friends around the world, his earphones also clanging with last.fm. He's all for building a shipping container house one day, and Sketch-Up's 3D Warehouse site has tons of models. After he left, I piddled around with this and that until the Google Desktop clock showed 2AM. In dog time, that was probably only 7PM, right? Oh, yes, there might have been a few Desktop gadgets I played with along the way and a new FaceBook gizmo.

So that's how I lost Sunday. I dreamed I was making jewelry with GIMP. The ring designs were pretty spectacular. Is this what a manic phase is like?