Tomorrow is a big day for us. It's the release of Multiplicity which we've been working towards for over a year. It's one of the most useful programs I've ever used and we made it! Hopefully with a trial version of it available, people will be able to see why it's not the same as some open source program or whatever alternative one might imagine. We'll see.  I'm using it right now to do this blog. I have one machine that doesn't have hardly anything on it (not even WindowBlinds) which I'm using to test things and then this one which is my "work" machine which is currently running the Dream theme update.

Spent a lot of time going over Galactic Civilizations II's alpha. Lots of good stuff but we have our work cut out for us. Luckily we have time but as a very lazy guy, I lament how much work is in store for me and the team to get through.

Hopefully tomorrow afternoon we'll be able to hand out betas of DesktopX 3 to key developers.  I've been trying out different things today to see what can be done.  I think one of the biggest features is the ability to have preferences dialogs in your widgets (and no XML is needed to do this). 

Personally, I wish more of the samples used JavaScript. I positively hate VB Script. It's so..yucky. But I'm biased since I come from the C++ world of things.

I got a new internal build of ObjectBar 2 to play around with. The Mini Skin editor for it is ready and I'm going to try to reproduce the OS/2 Control Center exactly - pixel for pixel.  DesktopX 3 widgets/gadgets can be seamlessly embedded into an ObjectBar bar.  And ObjectBar 2 can export its bars as EXEs as well.  So you could make your own Longhorn bar or Mac Finder bar or whatever and then have it be a program you can distribute with the user only needing the ObjectBar run-times to use it (i.e. you don't have to load up ObjectBar and fish for the .obtheme).  The combination of being able to use DesktopX 3 widgets and being able to export its content as a program should hopefully be pretty compelling.

Imagine it - instead of people having to write complicated plugins or wait for the "bar developer" to come up with some feature (RSS feed, MP3 player, weather, etc.) like you do with other bar programs, you can just stick in there a widget. Widgets, in essence, take on the role plugins do in other programs except anyone can make a widget.  And it's a lot easier to "Skin" a widget than it is to make a skin for some bar program.

The final touches on ObjectDock 1.11 and WindowBlinds 4.51 were finished up and we're just waiting to catch our breath to release those. We also have a fantastic new skin pack from Essorant that is about to be released. Same as the others, we're just waiting to catch our breath. March is going to be crazy.

My wife had a scrap booking party. Those primitives with their paper and scissors. Canon bundles (or used to anyway) this wonderful program called "Photo Record". Has both Mac and PC versions (I have both) and it's just fantastic for creating your own photo albums.

Of course it doesn't have the social aspect of scrap booking parties or the tactile satisfaction of actually making stuff. But I still find it pretty neat to use and the results are fantastic.

I have a bit over a month to find a new car. No luck so far.  I currently have a Bonneville and they've discontinued that. So I'm off looking for something else. Want something with GPS, adaptive cruise control, and heads up display.  Not terribly price sensitive on the issue but I'm pretty cheap.

Speaking of being cheap, Stardock is going to be moving to a whole new office this May.  It'll have twice the square footage as what we currently have and we'll own it (we currently lease).  But the interior decorating bill..oye.  We're looking at around $150k to do what we want to do.  So we're going to be cutting out some things. Quite a few things.  Note that this doesn't include carpeting, wallpaper, acoustical ceiling tiles, natural lighting, and all the other fancy stuff we're doing to make our new office really slick.  The $150k range is just for the desks and other furniture.  We're going to get rid of some stuff that was mostly cosmetic and hopefully by the time we're done we'll be closer to $100k.  We want to get everyone new furniture since what we have now is kind of falling apart except for the central development lab furniture which we're keeping and the WinCustomize team will upgrade to that.