For kicks and giggles, have been playing with making a design for a homebrew app of jrb. He's making a database entry tool for cataloging his (pretty large!) book collection. Its really refreshing to work on a design with a clear target audience, no "noisy power users" complaining on mailing lists pushing the developer around (that should be my exclusive perogative of course), and a small problem domain. Handling the convincing and politics of a typical GNOME design swamps the actual design work; so its nice to be able to just knuckle down and do the thing you're nominally supposed to be doing anyway. I wonder if I should just make designs, throw them out there, and let people do what they want? It might be a lot less stressful for me. It'd certainely be more in line with what I want to do.

Brushed off my Italian book and dictionary. I figured if I don't start excercising my Italian soon I'm going to lose it for sure. I'm not very good at learning foreign languages so it'd be a real shame to lose what little Italian I've acquired in the past year of schooling. Anyway, Marco has obliged me in speaking Italian and I plan to start hanging out on Italian Linux mailing lists or IRC channels: offering support in exchange for having to deal w/ my attempts to speak :-) Anyone know of an Italian speaking GNOME-related IRC channel?