It's been a little too long since I've posted an update here, mostly because I haven't really got anything cool to post. My game development has been hampered over the last week or so by a couple of factors. Firstly, I've been feeling exceptionally drained of energy of late - not sure if it's some sort of annoyingly mild yet persistant illness or it's just all in my head (psychological difficulties; worst ones to overcome [grin]) - which means it's hard to start focused on getting things done after I've spent a day working on research. Secondly, and much more importantly, a whole bunch of previously up-in-the-air factors to do with my Ph.D. research timetable over the next few months are being finalised, and it seems I'll be spending some time overseas visiting conferences and labs. This means I really need to concentrate on my research work as a much, much higher priority over game dev for a while, so my effective hours available to game dev have decreased dramatically.

I still think I can meet my goal of having an "easy to prototype and build with" 2D engine (with sample game) by around August/September, but I'll have to use a different strategy than naively relying on pure enthusiasm. Given the change in my timetable I'm going to have to switch to a more sensible plan earlier than I hoped for (darn shame; the silly plans are always more fun [grin]). With the reduction in available hours I think it's best to try to devote an hour before heading off to the office to doing targeted work towards building the engine. This seems to work well for a lot of people, and ties in really nicely to the end of daylight savings here next week. If I like I can devote any extra "hobby time" after work that I find that I have on all the fun stuff such as concept art and music without having a guilt trip that I'm not really making that much useful progress.

I'll post another journal entry when I've progressed a bit further than unexciting things such as background reading and top-level architecture stuff. Hopefully I'll also have shaken this feeling that my head is full of cotton wool.

One quick question though: I'll probably need to get a laptop of some kind in the near future, to act as a mobile work computer while I'm away from my desktop (so for word processing, presentations, programming etc.). I've been thinking about getting an iBook with a 12" screen, since they seem reasonably priced for an Apple (especially if I can get an educational discout) and could also give me a taste of cross-platform Mac OS development. However I'm pretty unexperienced with both Macs and laptops, so I was wondering if any of you have done the same thing or could offer me any advice about whether this is a good or bad computer to buy.