Seems? How can you say it is sluggish you haven't even tried it out personally? Or were you just judging the performance based on the videos. I have the prototype and it is extrememely fast and snappy indeed. Even Engadget which is biased towards Apple is impressed

Looks like the lightsaber training ball used by Luke

Just the need to upgrade how Kwin uses OpenGL currently to do rendering. Right now its still using the old OpenGL 1.1 - style rendering (fixed-function rendering pipeline) to a programmable one using vertex and fragment shaders. This way, it'll be easier to port it on embedded devices that uses OpenGL 2.0 by default

I shudder to think of capturing the interest of geeky girls! No more geeky girls for me. When they like you, they tend to like you in a crazy manner! I had the experience of one trying to get my attention in every way. She would always try to understand the software projects that I am working on and even google the terminologies that I put in my blog. This is funny, but she asked me out lots of times, I tried to say no but is really persistent. She once caught me having dinner with friends in restaurant and in a very planned manner, went straight to our table talked to a couple of my friends behind my back and then went to me. She tends to approach love and relationships in a very calculated manner. I am already like that and NO I am not going to spend my life with a person who is just like me (why can't I attract the real girls)? :/

looks cool

FF7 / FFX? :)

From what you are describing, it seems that you hate your workplace/work unfortunately. Still, that is not a reason that fun and work couldn't go together. I am only required to work 37.5 hours / week but still I go the office on Saturdays sometimes because I can't wait to finish that code that I have been working on Friday. Oh, I have a great office: quiet, cool, designer furniture, big glass windows, and a nice view of the sea. And I feel the sense of satisfaction that my code is going to be part of the lives of billions of people around the world. Money is really just the icing on the cake (disclaimer: I work for one of the largest corporations in the world).

here

True. There are cases where working on a secure office is absolutely a must. For example if you're writing embedded code for prototype hardware that your company doesn't want competitors to know about. How are you going to do just that in a coffee shop?

I just went to visit the ruins of ancient Rome last week! I didn't like the smell of candles and old churches though. I also almost got stuck in the place because of the Alitalia strike. Virtual tours should be better solution for those planning to go there physically :)