Whew! After several weeks worth of coding and debugging, it’s finally finished!

So here it is folks! Presenting DesktopTweet v1.0!!

Sorry about the wait there; the last version of DesktopTweet  I released was back in July of last year. With work and other higher priority commitments, it’s taken this long to finally push out a new version.
But I’m hoping it’ll be worth the wait.

I had a lot of great suggestions on how to improve DesktopTweet over last time, and I did my best to try and add as many new features as I could.

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Way back in ye 2007 after I arrived back in Perth from Japan, I did some looking around for a job. One place I got an interview with was Perth’s ‘flagship’ game development studio Interzone games. The position was a junior programmer and the pay rate was going to be an epic 13 bucks an hour. Slightly small I know, but it being games programming, I didn’t care.
While the guys were all cool and they were impressed with my demo of RPG-X, they told me that without being awesome at Python scripting, there’s not a lot I could really do for the company. They said I could come back later after I’ve learnt Python and try again, but the very next day, I got a job at Tourism WA (which paid a LOT more) so I let it rest.

Turns out I dodged a major bullet there.

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This is a little follow-up to my hospital escapade. After this, I’ll let it rest. Honest.
It’s something I was thinking about in my last day in hospital and I thought I’d share it with you.

So, as much as I’d like to sugarcoat it and pimp it out, I really can’t;

Being in hospital is boring as hell.

Aside from watching daytime TV (*shudder*) or staring at the ceiling, there’s not much else you can really do in there.

To that end, I am very, VERY happy that I made sure to take my Nintendo DS along with me, and I can probably justify the integrity of my current sanity to the fact I was able to play on it during that time. 

On the last day of my stay, I had a thought. How many other people younger than me were in hospital, going through the exact same thing as me, but didn’t have access to anything like I had? How many other people were in hospital for reasons beyond their control, and were just silently tolerating it without any fun at all…?

So my mind started to wander towards Child’s Play (@CPCharity) and I thought, the stuff these guys are doing are a blessing to all people in hospital. They must be bringing so much happiness to so many people who started off with very little. Video games are a great thing to kick back with and enjoy, and their relative immersion factor usually means you can even forget about your predicament for a few hours, and just, have fun.

So if you haven’t already donated to Child’s Play, I urge you to please do. A couple of DSs and maybe a Wii in a hospital can definitely bring more joy than most people realise.

I’m also hoping that one day (or if I can even help it along), we can get a Child’s Play branch here in Perth as well.

I did a lot of thinking on whether I should write a blog post about this, but after the behest of several friends, I figured what the hey.

After the cryptic statements in my Twitter, Facebook and MSN, some people are slightly aware that I spent a week in hospital in December last year. It’s a pretty long story, so I haven’t really elaborated on it at all beyond those comments. But since quite a few people have sent me messages asking WTF happened, I’ve decided to come clean and write the whole shebang here.

Just for the record, if you’re squeamish about surgery and blood and graphic detail and all that, you may want to skip this one. I’m not holding anything back here, and some parts might be a bit icky. 

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