Why am I supprised?

I'm new to the world of Mac, but for some reason I imagined everything in the Mac world to be shiny, user friendly and work out of the box. It is however occurring on me that Mac's and PC's aren't that much different at all. Now I've moved around a few keys and got the desktop laid out how I like it I often forget I'm on the Mac. The similarities became more obvious today when I had to replace the Mac Mail app with Thunderbird. I use Thunderbird on PC. I like Outlook a lot but it doesn't handle IMAP that well and it is expensive so I've grown to love Thunderbird. I didn't even think of using it when I switched to Mac, I just used the inbuilt Mail app and without even thinking about it assumed it would fulfil my needs. I found out today though that it hadn't been storing my sent mail on the server. After much messing and reading of forums it turns out it doesn't handle it that well either. So that's Chrome and Thunderbird instead of iExplorer / Safari and Outlook / Mail. Yep, Mac's and PC's are a lot more alike than either side would admit. I think anyone who ever joins in the Mac vs PC argument  should be forced to do their job on the other machine for a few weeks. This would give perspective and I imagine, if my experiences are anything to go on, make them realise they're are a lot more similarities than differences. One thing still bewilders me though. How on earth can Mac users live without a global shortcut to open Finder? Seriously guys!

So, today I found I had a lot of bugs. Unfortunately they're not the ones I can fix by stepping through the code. I've got fleas! Well technically the house has fleas but they are biting me! The cat's moved out a month ago in preparation for the move. They're living with my Girlfriend. Since I've been working at home I've had the heating on a lot more than previously and I guess they've come out of hibernation. I'm going to have to bug bomb the whole house at the weekend. It's driving me mad!!!

I did a lot of tidying up today. Got everything moving smoothly and put a lot of the little things in that make the game and the levels flow. I also added the final game modes where you have to keep away from certain blocks and get other blocks into the vortex's. I've got to start on the font system tomorrow. I'm not sure if I need a full font system or just numbers and do all the text as graphics. I think just numbers and graphics is by far the easiest way. I'll do numbers first and see how I feel after that.

One thing I expected but didn't really think about too much was how much system code I needed to write. Essentially I'm writing an entire system from scratch. OK the drawing is being handled by OpenGL and the input arrives via a callback but virtually everything else is written. Now obviously I knew this but it's just more code to write that I've been so used to being there for you in the engine. I've worked with engines for a long time now and when you've got a good engine you spend little time working on it and most of your time writing for it. Don't get me wrong, I love the engine code stuff. It's just that it takes so much time up that could be spent on the game.

I'm going to put a bug database in place to log bugs. It may be a bit of an overkill but it's sensible. Especially if I'm giving out test versions. It's far easier if they can just log the bugs. I must also get a task list together. I keep thinking there's loads of small things I need to do but keep putting off because of all the big things I need to do! I've never had much success with task software so for now I'll rely on the old pen and paper to schedule the remaining 2 weeks of the project. I move in 10 days time which will lose me 2 days work while I physically move and then clean the house I've just moved out of. I guess It'll also eat up time settling in to the new place. So I'm calculating I've only got 9 working days left before submission. I'd better get a move on!!!