The Gimp is a prime candidate for intentional programming. Its menus are often three levels deep so being able to hit Alt and type White for white balance saves a lot of mousin’ about. But every time I hit the HUD, the Gimp’s image window looses its focus. Want to do two menu operations in a row? You’ll have to “click” back in the window between them, to re-focus it. Has Scott Gilbertson actually used this in anger?

And what about the Dash? The tool tip pops up and obscures the input area. Pixel perfect or partially perplexing?

Finally, the icons have been missing from Inkscape’s menus for three Ubuntu releases now. My bug at Inkscape dev has a few “me toos” and I live in hope. I wondered for a moment if this would be solved by the icons appearing in HUD. I use Inkscape’s menu items to tell the difference between Path Division and Cut Path. Is HUD for people who think in words? Where does that leave us Gimp and Inkscape users?

Enter Compiz desktop graphics system and, in particular, the Brightness, Opacity and Saturation plugin — accessible from CCSM — which lets me adjust the opacity of the whole MyPaint window with the mouse wheel and a modifier key. So now I can quickly trace over whatever is in the window underneath.

• traditional computer games need to challenge and engage the player, while alnowing them to make progress and get value for the purchase price

• online gamers get addicted to a sense of personal development that keeps them paying monthly fees

Online gamers like to learn, says Oscar. I pictured online gamers: up all night at their computers, intent on learning stuff; suddenly I saw myself.

I’ve rarely ever played computer games for more than a few mnnutes, but I frequently stay past my bedtime trying out new software tools. Despite a new baby, and a full-time job, in the last week alone I have installed, tested and geeked out over:

• audio editors to crop MP3s for the wedding playlist
• duckduckgo search engine (browser plugin and android app)
• tools for managing the plugins in my geeky text editor
• a file manager plugin for my text editor
• tools to integrate Skype with Unity desktop

I used to feel somehow virtuous about my tool-learning and evaluating time. It wasn’t “wasted”; I was becoming more productive. Now I realise I was just playing. My online games are Ubuntu Software Centre, Google Play, and GitHub. And I’m hooked.