So much cool stuff, so little time.
I read Zack Rusin's blog about benchmarking vector graphic APIs... then I see a comment mentioning Antigrain. Then I check the antigrain examples, and they are gorgeous, and pretty fast! Even on a lame Sis630!
Then it hit me... I am never going to do anyhting with it (or with Qt's Arthur). Maybe I am getting old, but I see a swirl of cool software... dparser... asymptote... txt2tags ... (and those are only the ones I saw in the last week).
All of them are about something that interests me, but I simply can't do anything. I mean, would it be cool to write a vector-app-for-kids with antigrain (or Arthur?) Sure!
Would I like to implement this shell-style language I have floating in my head for a year using dparser (or pyparsing?) Yeah! Would I like to hack a Trac plugin using txt2tags (or restructured text?) Sure!
But when can I do that? I have my business, my wife, her pregnancy, my other projects... maybe that's what happens when you become old. You gather enough baggage that you can't lift any more backpacks in your trek.
But what can I do with all the ideas swirling in my head? Really! What?
I think you should just give in, pick one up to do some half-hour hack and see what happens. Because if you are anything like me (and I like to flatter myself by thinking that you are), it will drive you crazy until you do.
OTOH, a project into which I sunk two unpaid years has been languishing incomplete for want of QGraphicsView for over a year, so I might just be a little different. :)
(followup:) ... and now that Phil has released PyQt snapshots that implement QGraphicsView and the rest of Qt 4.2, there's even less excuse not to give it a whirl. I submitted a talk for FOSS.IN (http://foss.in/) about QGraphicsView with the assumption that this would be available by the time I would have to write my slides, and Phil didn't disappoint!
Learn as you live for ever,
Live as you will dead tomorrow.
in the while, be happy and hack.