Geeks and GIMPs
A while back, I mentioned that I was searching for a cheap & simple paint program not bent on being God’s gift to the photo editing universe as a free alternative to Photoshop. I settled on Paint.NET the same way an old woman settles on a hemorrhoid donut — gingerly, and with a sigh of relief.
But not without trying a couple other candidates first. GIMP was one such candidate, and I’m finding that it’s aptly named. Like many other poorly implemented Windows applications, GIMP’s uninstaller doesn’t quite remove its massive, blubbery footprint from the operating system, as evidenced by the fact that every time I right-clicked an image file in Windows Explorer, the context menu still contained an item that proudly said “Open with GIMP.”
So, figuring the odds of me being the only hapless prospect out there to encounter this issue, I go searching for a solution online, and once again I’m reminded why most “helpful” geeks irritate the bat snot out of me.
I had to sift through several online forums where the original poster had the same problem, and asked for advice on how to get rid of the annoying menu item. Inevitably, the majority of respondents felt the burning need to reveal their intelligence quotient by calling the issue into question…
“It’s just a harmless menu. Why do you want to get rid of it?”
“Just change the file associations and double-click the image instead.”
“There are other ways of launching an application, you know.”
Why do people do this? What is it about the human psyche that causes vacuous geeks to pull their head from its usual storage area to type an endless stream of worthless, issue-dodging drivel in response to a simple question? It’s not just this particular issue, either. It happens all the time!
Hey Einstein, do I look interested in justifying my question to you? Did I ask for your personal bachelor’s dissertation on file associations or the finer points of launching a Windows application? The issue isn’t about working around the problem — it’s about GIMP taking a big old [expletive deleted] on my operating system and not cleaning up its [expletive deleted] mess when it’s [expletive deleted] told to! If you can’t offer an actual solution, then how about you pour yourself a big, steaming cup of [expletive deleted], and give way to others with brains larger than an average walnut who can actually help?
There, I feel much better now.
Paint.NET FTW
By the way, I failed to mention what I used to draw the paper airplane in my last post.
I considered using the copy of Paint Shop Pro X I bought years ago, which has been my 2-D graphics application of choice since the mid-1990’s. It’s a great tool, but my copy is several generations old now, and I don’t really feel like coughing up the cash to upgrade. Ever since PSP went from a simple paint program to a full-fledged photo editing suite, it’s had a ton of features I just never use in my line of work. All I need are the bare essentials to make graphics around which I can develop software. Anything professional I need, I can leave to an actual graphic artist.
So I went on the prowl for something open source or freeware (or cheap at the very least), and came across a few names that seemed interesting. Gimp sounded like a solid choice that’s withstood the test of time, but I didn’t care for the UI all that much. Pinta caught my eye, but it too seemed geared more toward photo editing than graphic arts. But Pinta did mention that it was based off of something called Paint.NET, so I gave it a try…
…and I fell in love. Very few features proved too vague for me to figure out intuitively, and the tools are very much in line with what I consider essential for a basic paint program.
Thanks for the perk, you guys! I have a feeling I’m going to be using Paint.NET a lot in the foreseeable future.
About
” Learn the code. Live the code. Be . . . the code!”
I’m a very zen sort of programmer. By that, I mean that if I’m not feelin’ it, it just ain’t happening, and that’s all there is to it. I’ve abandoned more personal software projects than David Duchovny has seen breasts, so the fact that this web site exists at all is something of a small miracle.
A while back, I hooked up with an old gang of mine from the Dead Hacker’s Society. Contrary to its decidedly antisocial name, the group (or was it a “crew?”) was really just a community of electronic BBS users whose most clandestine activity at the time included a university campus, a duck pond, one ill-fated plastic bottle and a handful of dry ice. Okay… several handfuls. The shock wave literally set off car alarms in the quad.
Hey, don’t you be judgin’ me!
Touching base with those guys fifteen years later, it hit me how much things had changed since then — how much I had changed. Back in those days, I held such a strident passion for creating software that it never even occurred to me to pursue any other career in life. After all, I had been programming since I was twelve years old when my parents bought me that old 8-bit Atari home computer. While the rest of the neighborhood kids were entering puberty the way Spider-Man enters a burning orphanage, I was busy entering cyberspace with delusions of WarGames and Tron whizzing through my brain. Back then, it’s what made life worth living.
Somehow, once school was over and my career began, everything changed. Software was no longer a hobby to me — it became a job. Programming had always been challenging work, but never had I seen it as actual labor until I started drawing a salary. That spark of pure enthusiasm was lost among the baggage that comes with a career. Imagination and indulgence were replaced by design specs and deadlines. Time spent creating was replaced by pushing efficiency and business value. It took about ten years or so for my passion to fade, and I hadn’t even realized it until one day I looked up and found myself in a place I never thought I’d be.
To my shock, I actually hated software development. I despised it and loathed it with every fiber of my being, and I lamented the days gone by when it was something I considered to be fun and worthwhile.
In short order, I realized what had happened. By taking on software development as my career, I shifted fundamentally from justifying myself based on the results of my work to justifying myself on how and how fast that work was created. Looking back, I understand there was no way I could have seen it coming, but it’s something I regret nonetheless.
That’s what Syntaxus Dogmata is about. It’s my attempt at returning to my roots — to regain that spark of enthusiasm I haven’t felt in over fifteen years. I can’t think of a better way to do that than to revisit the very thing that got that twelve-year-old boy interested in computer programming in the first place…
Syntaxus Dogmata 