Good Deed For the Day

Some people would call me a sucker because I like helping people out. It's one of the most satisfying parts of my job. It's the reason I answer questions on the mailing lists (and last time I checked, I've sent out over 4000 emails in the three years I've been working for REAL Software just to the mailing lists alone). But my activity on the mailing lists is just one part of my day-to-day life. I also answer questions that come directly to my inbox (I usually get about 4 or 5 a day). A few months ago I started answering questions on the realgurus message board, and I've already got over 450 posts to my name there. So I like answering questions. :-P

But that's not the only way I like to help people out. I'm a code monkey at heart, and so I obviously enjoy writing code. That's why I started the Windows Functionality Suite -- there was a large gap in the Windows side of our framework which I wanted to fill as quickly as possible, so I wrote the code. It started out as mostly a collection of projects I put together to help people get things done, and it quickly ballooned into a decent sized project. Now it's up to almost 3500 downloads.

Then there are the side projects which I take interest in. Either because it's a topic that I find cool (such as helping out with the ICMPSocket Charlie has written) or because it's a void that a REALbasic user is trying to fill and just needs a little push with (such as HelpLogic's user interface on Windows). On these projects, I don't take a terribly active development role, but I still sink time and effort into because I want to see them succeed.

So what's my good deed for the day? Frank Condello is another person who likes to help people. He gives a lot of his time and energy to putting out open source plugins and code for people who want to write games with REALbasic. But he's not a Windows programmer, and he relies on others for help with that side of things. One of the plugins he writes which a ton of people use is the Mouse Events plugin, which only supports the Mac. So I spent the better part of my afternoon writing a Windows implementation for that plugin, and I think it's finished. I sent a copy of my changes off to him a little while ago, and hopefully he'll roll them in so that Windows users can now use his awesome plugin as well. Perhaps next weekend I'll spend some time looking into the Display Overlord plugin, which is another major plugin he provides, but only on the Mac.

:: pats self on back ::