Strand3: Greg Hewett

Is being creative the same as producing art? What is art? What is being creative? As a software developer I have always said that I do what I do because it is a good paying creative career. I think that like all disciplines, making good art is very, very difficult. Music, photography, painting, and performance are the typical art form. They have the ability to make you feel something that you would otherwise not feel. Looking at good art art moves you. It inspires you. Does my work as a software developer inspire others? I am not sure. Does it help others? yes. My conclusion is that my software can be art, but it typically is not.

My work does require creative abilities, however. For me this is most of the reward for working in software. Software makes me think. Solving hard problems and predicting a user’s expectations are problems that are very satisfying to solve. However, it is not everything. My expression is not noticed by any other is way that may make them feel something that they would otherwise not feel. (expect upset when it does not work the way they want it to)

I hope I can look back at this post in the coming years and be happy that I began to strive to inspire others through my work instead of just making a dime.

I am trying to get started with git because that is what all of the cool kids are using these days. Getting git on my laptop using darwin ports was kinda weird. I am running Mac OS X (10.5.3).

First, you need to know the name of the package, and second, if you want to use import some svn repositories, then you have to add in that capability. Here is the command that I ran to install git on my machine. (Of course, darwin ports is already installed)

sudo ports install git-core +svn

I was concerned that it was going to replace the system ssh daemon, but don’t fear. It will not replace the system sshd. It prints out a message to tell you how you can replace it if you want, but it will not replace it.

Find my projects on github.

On another note, I find that I have some issues with darwin ports sometime. If I am installing something that has a lot of dependencies, I find that the build just stops working. For example, as I am installing git-core +svn my build failed on (sqlite3)[http://www.sqlite.org/]. I found that if I clean the project that failed, and build it by itself, it will build successfully, and you can move on. Here are my commands to solve this problem:

sudo port clean sqlite3

sudo port install sqlite3

sudo port install git-core +svn