Success
The DashUI program is now moderately useful. It runs cleanly, has a low overhead, and looks pretty good too.

At this point, it can swallow just about any window, even complex programs like media players such as Totem. However, one problem that needs solving is selection of which window to swallow. In programs that have unpredictable titles, the window cannot be specified in advance. In others, like gpsdrive, the splash screen gets in the way. Have not decided how to get around this yet.

From using DashUI with a mouse, it is fairly clear that the solution would work very well on a touch screen. Large tabs that are always where they should be, quick switching between applications, and the ability to swallow anything really work. From here on, it should be mostly cleaning up the code, as well as adding configuration file parsing.

Yes, I'm Crazy...
I spent most of the day today drilling little window holes in the model of the Enterprise-D I've owned for the last ten years. All holes are hand-drilled for good alignment. At four holes per window, my hands are quite sore. After drilling, the windows are reamed out using a dremel tool with a dental burr, then the holes are cleaned up with an exacto knife. Once the inside surface is painted black to protect from light leaks, then silver to ensure a more uniform distribution of light within, the windows will be filled with clear resin. A lot of work; hopefully it will pay off. I've seen some amazing build-ups of this particular model.

In other news, the break still feels fantastic. For Christmas, I got a 2005 Dilbert calendar, as well as the much acclaimed Polar Lights Enterprise NX-01 model. With the Enterprise-D just started, this one will not be opened for quite some time. I also went ahead and bought myself a good quality, full-size replica of the boomerang-shaped phaser from Voyager and DS9; expensive, but it should be well worth it. Additionally, I just finished eBay bidding for a decent airbrush compressor. I must be anticipating graduation or something...

With time well spent on models, decent progress on my fourth year project, and an astonishing A- mark in Quantum Mechanics, all but one of my Christmas to-dos have been completed. I still have to clean up the situation with files from my old desktop, my laptop, and my new desktop. The plan is to turn the old desktop into a RAID (linux-md) file server, put everything there, and rsync with it regularly.