The Storm Before The Calm

I found myself in an all too familiar place: Ready to implement my functionality, but instead taking a detour because of some non-standard system integration. Conventional wisdom dictates not to stray at times like these, but I knew my enthusiasm was going to suffer if I didn't take care of this now.

After the Maemo tutorial disappointment, it was time to see what the community had been up to. Sure enough, the Advanced Backlight (AB) project was in a mature state, and at first glance it seemed that they had already solved my problem. Whew!...Saved!...Not! It so happened that AB was frustratingly stuck exactly where I was; they had been for months. And where was Nokia in all this? Not to be found.

One bright side was that I didn't know GTK, and based upon its growth rate and installed base, now seemed like a good time to learn it. The dark side of course was that I was getting further and further away from where I really wanted to be. But maybe I would enjoy the ride? Or maybe the solution would come to me from a Google search? I didn't and it wouldn't. About 10 long, dead-end days passed. I was burnt and ready to throw in the towel. But just as I was packing up my things, Murphy decided to take a vacation...