I have been having a few issues with the development of Deskcon, however with some fiddling and some help from a number of people (Andrew, Geo, Jaykul) I have managed to make some headway. It isn't ready for general use yet, but I have almost got it to the point where I am prepared to release the first beta version.

To wet your appetites, here is a screenshot and I have setup a forum for you to post comments and feature requests.

A little while ago on the Aqua-Soft forums Andrew (the author of the widget application Kapsules) started development on a little application named Mint. Mint was an application that would intercept the minimizing of applications to the taskbar and instead minimize them to the desktop. However to make it cool, the icon representation of the application on the desktop is a scaled version of a screenshot of the window for the application. Unfortunately for certain legal reasons, he was unable to release the application. To follow the development and progression of Mint, you can read this thread on the Aqua-soft forum.

Dissapointed in the loss of Mint to the internet community, I decided to see if my limited programming skills would provide me with the ability to write a Mint clone. And so far things are looking good. The current build of Deskcon captures the thumbnails of minizing applications. It also minimizes them to the desktop, providing the destop thumbnails with tooltips and system menus, as well as restoring the windows on double click. It has a few bugs and is currently in an early alpha, but if you're keen to test it, let me know.

Oh, and the name Deskcon is only an early internal development name becuase I needed one to start my project and couldn't think of anything better. It will change.

Anyone who pops in here now and then may have noticed I have been away for about 3 weeks now. Where have I been?

Well, I got married on the 23rd of July, so obviously a week after that I was on honeymoon, which was in Spain. Had a fantastic time even though I don't speak Spanish, and managed because the Spanish are very friendly and very willing to help. However I have decided that from now on whenever I go to a country where english is not the main language, I am going to make a concerted effort to learn as much of the language as I can before I go. I think that it would have changed the experience slightly. I have posted some pictures from the wedding, but they are in a protected gallery and are only available to certain people. If you think that you should have access, get hold of me and I'll give you access.

Once my wife and I returned from Spain, we sorted out the house for a few days and then returned to work. On the next weekend, we went to Sodwana bay on a Diving Environmental course. That was great fun as we both love diving and we learnt a lot about the things that you normally miss because you spend your time looking at the huge obvious fish. I recently bought a cheap underwater camera, so I took some photos and will post them when they have been developed (if they are any good :) )

Once we were back from Sodwana (middle of last week), it was a matter of getting back into the swing of things at work, and starting to organise name changes and finalising legal stuff for the marrige.

So in a nutshell, that is my last 3 weeks. Hopefully posts should increase now, as well as development work on various projects that I spend my time on.