I wanted to start this blog off a little differently than normal. I feel, to an extent, bad posting a blog considering how little I've interacted with any of the other ones on here. And more importantly, I wish I could find a way to consistently fix that, to post a comment on every blog that's insightful and witty and gives the poster something back - but for some reason I'm never able to, anywhere. Over the past year I've found myself wanting to say less and less and listen more and more, in an almost selfish capacity that lets me absorb everyone else's stories without contributing any of my own. I feel mine aren't interesting and shouldn't be wanted, and anyone who is interested is lying or deluded :P.

To that end, I wanted to say that there have been some really great posts the last few months - about huge development projects that have spanned years, about small ones made for the enjoyment of creation, about life in general, goofies, etc. and I've greatly enjoyed reading all of them. Many of them (admittedly life ones in particularly) have really resonated with me or brought me enjoyment, and I wish I could write a comment on them - but frankly I already feel super silly writing any of this so that isn't going to happen :P.

Anyway, now about meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-

The last month or so I've been learning two new languages, C++ and Spanish! I've decided I love learning languages (the ones that work on people that is) and want to try and learn as many as possible before I keel over. If any of you have any experiences regarding languages you'd like to share, feel free to :D

My Spanish isn't particularly great - I can read a fair amount, but hearing and forming sentences myself still needs a lot of work. I've been trying to integrate it into the stuff I work on to help speed things up (translation for Shader Sandwich, songs, scripts, etc).

C++ wise, a few months back I was forced by my lack of pragmatism to switch to Linux (I went with Mint Mate for anyone curious…I want to try something else XD) - unfortunately most Linux video editors are pretty bad, and the ones that aren't are too simple for what I want to do. So a month ago I figured screw it! I'll make my own :D - and learn C++ while I do.

C++ is awesome! Coming from C# it feels like all the rigidity and hand holding has been lifted, and frankly I love it. I love being able to copy raw bytes around and manually free memory and work with tons of great libraries easily (primarily SDL2, FFmpeg, GLEW and TinyXML in this case). And my god is it fast. Maybe it just forces me to be a better programmer, or maybe it's just legitimately faster, but yeah it is fast.

So far the interface is rubbish…and doesn't work…but in code I can add clips, resize and reposition them - I've got a command pattern style thing going on so Undo and all that works too. Effects (and exporting :P) will be coming soon. Playback is super fast too, and works in reverse and different speeds and whatnot. So ayad7wdqjkwdqkw

Anyway thanks if you read, hopefully it was slightly lukewarm :).