About the Author

I've been developing open source applications since 2001, for both Windows and Unix-like operating systems. Computer programming is my passion, in which I'd like to turn into a career, without ruining the love for it.

I used to be an artist (of many kinds), have been for most of my life. In fact, computer graphics is what turned me on to computers in the first place. I later became a computer geek, Linux geek, and finally a programmer (the geek of geeks).

Outside of computer programming, I like to spend time with my wife, play video games, and going skateboarding. I am also trying to develop my own indie video game in my spare time, which involves writing, drawing, graphics, 3d modelling, and of course programming. Sometimes I also develop modifications and design levels for the hit game Unreal Tournament 2004.

Other Works

Here is a list of some of the open source projects I have developed. They are all licensed under the GNU GPL, with the exception of Unreal mods, which are under the LGPL.

UMark and UMark Online
http://unrealmark.net
Project Description: Software which benchmarks your computer with the popular video game, Unreal® Tournament 2004. UMark is available on Windows® and also on Linux. This software is also partnered with an online database, UMark Online, in which users may submit and compare benchmark results.

gUnrealTools
http://gunrealtools.sf.net
Project Description: GUTS is a single program which provides the following GUI (GTK+) tools for Unreal® Tournament 2004 in Linux: a cache manager, a umod unpacker, a uz2 compressor/decompressor, and a dedicated server launcher.

Unreal Mods
http://damnclan.com/evil
Project Description: A web page containing a collection of my various works that add content and new playability to the popular video game Unreal® Tournament 2004.

Web C Plus Plus
http://webcpp.sf.net
Project Description: A cross-platform utility software which converts programming source code into highlighted HTML code. This program supports over 30 programming languages and runs on Windows® and many UNIX variants, including Linux.

CgiBlast
http://freshmeat.net/projects/cgiblast
Project Description: CgiBlast is a CGI interface to NCBI's Basic Local Alignment Search Tool, giving widespread access to the genetics search tool.

Python Rant

Over the years I've learned many languages and toolkits. I've previously used C++ (mainly), C, perl, php and Unix shell for production work, and used countless other languages including python for trivial purposes.

It wasn't until just recently before I started on EveryGUI that I discovered how simple and time efficient programming in python was. I've always came accross pygtk examples when looking up GTK+ documentation for the C language while porting (mostly rewriting) C++/MFC applications to Linux, and I always thought it looked a hell of a lot easier.

Shortly after releasing gUnrealTools, my fourth GTK+ application, I really felt a need for change as I was not productive enough with GTK+ in C as my past projects would take me weeks or months to get things done. I tried GTK# (C# bindings) for a little bit, but the simplest examples weren't working and I lost patience for it. Then I remembered how simple all those pygtk examples looked.

After finding proper examples, tutorials, documentation, and a libglade wrapper (by Padraig Brady), I started on my first pygtk-libglade project: to port WebcppUI to Linux. Although the project was a complete rewrite (originally written in C++/MFC), it only took me under 3 days to develop a fully working version (and it took me about 30 minutes to port back to Windows). Shortly after, it took me another couple of days to complete a second small pygtk project. By then, I only had a week or so experience with pygtk before I started work on EveryGUI, which was a much larger project than the first two. I ended up with a working version in under 2 weeks, part time.

And although I haven't really mentioned the technical details of why python is more productive, I think this story speaks for itself.