Well, the quarter’s over. What do we have to show for ourselves?
Final critique went amazingly well. I’m fairly certain we impressed a great deal of our classmates with the Asteroids3D project. In addition to that deliverable, we’ve added a case study to highlight the major parts of our project.
Illustrations coming someday.
It’s just about the end of the quarter here for me. Since I’ve now gotten all my major coursework out of the way, this morning was time to clean my hard drive and start fresh. Windows runs much better if you start from scratch every 6 months or so. 
While doing just that is nothing to write home about, I tried something different this time. I’m now running a dual-boot system. On one partition is my reliable XP 64-bit Edition workhorse, supporting a full 8GB of RAM. On the other, shiny new Vista Business Edition.
After a day of playing, I really can’t find much to complain about with Vista. In all seriousness, the only reason I’m not switching over entirely just yet is my current installation DVD is only the 32-bit edition of Vista.
Granted, I do have a pretty awesome machine – so the graphics and transitions and nice things on Vista run the way they were intended to. What most people complain about is Vista running slow, and the whole “Are you SURE you really want to install this?” prompts are a little aggravating (but you CAN turn them off if you choose to!).
Considering all the bad hype Vista’s received, I was expecting a POS OS. Instead, I’ve got something that looks really pretty, functions no better or worse than Windows ever did, runs peppy, and makes me wish I could support all my RAM.
Windows Vista is a next generation operating system. If you don’t have a next generation computer, don’t complain if it doesn’t run the way it’s supposed to.
Next week’s goal is getting my hands on a copy of OS X to try and install on the third, currently vacant, partition of my hard drive. We’ll see how that goes…
As part of my Deaf History course, I’m doing a research paper on ASL Illustration. One of the particular illustrators is the late Frank Allen Paul. He was the go-to guy back in the day for ASL illustrating!
Trolling the web for information before going to the library tomorrow, I happened across SignWriting. SignWriting is the practice of writing out American (or other) Sign Language on paper. Michael Everson went and created a TrueType font, which, upon finding, I promptly downloaded.
If you know ASL, or AS 3.0 (preferably both), you may find this picture interesting:
Yes, I did. I’m thinking about keeping it that way. It’s not like anyone else needs to read my code! 
Besides, their own machines will use their own preferred font.
For more information on SignWriting and Sutton US, go to: http://www.signwriting.org/