Delta Engine Blog

I wanted to blog about many other things (we tried git again, fun of the gold-master stress from the last weeks, fun games like Prototype or League of Legends), but there wasn't much time and after working for 14 hours or more I did not have the energy to blog or think straight for that matter. Hopefully the next few months will be less stressful and leave more time for blogging fun :)

Anyway, let's get back to the issue: For a long time I hated Skype's chatting functions, but in the last few years most of my contacts have switched from ICQ, MSN, etc. to Skype, which made it the most important chat messenger for me nowadays. Skype is great for making calls, but chatting sucks so much, I can't even remember where to begin complaining. Messages are not delivered instantly, sometimes you have to wait for minutes even though both users are online. Even worse, if someone is NOT online the message will not be delivered until you both are online together again (which sometimes can be days and then the context is totally gone).

But most of all I hate copy+pasting. This is especially annoying since we use Skype for copying code or error messages around, group chat is pretty cool with all the programmers, but it would be better if we could actually use copy+paste in a more decent way.

Since I have been using Miranda IM for the last 7 or so years (mostly for ICQ, but also for some other protocols), the natural choice was to try out a Skype plugin for Miranda. This plugin has not be updated for over a year, but it still works, just not very well. Another problem I constantly have with Miranda is the disconnects, especially with the ICQ protocol. The KeepStatus plugin (and others) help a bit, but recently I have gotten more and more annoyed with Miranda just not working as it should (disconnects and stays disconnected). Also Miranda is a nice small program, but in the last 4 years I don't feel it has changed much, maybe it is time to try something new.

Since I am too lazy to search and evaluate all available Instant Messengers I just browsed my server setup files directory for messengers and found the good old Trillian, which I used last in 2002, when it was still in 0.73 beta (wow, 7 years ago). After installing Trillian 4.0 and using a lot of the protocols it already provides out of the box, I was pretty amazed to have all my ICQ, MSN, Google Talk, Skype, Trillian, Twitter, Email, IRC, etc. Accounts wired up together into one slick interface. Remember I only wanted to use Skype with better copy+pasting and I can do all that (the chat interface is nicely configurable and copying text is easy as pie as it should be, and Skype can still be used side by side), but Trillian can do so much more. Not bad, not bad. Will try it a little more the next days and hopefully still like it (don't want to change).

The interface of Trillian still looks a little restarted (I think thats why I stopped using it back in 2002), but at least it can be configured to be less shiny and more useful. After a while I hopefully get used to it. The Ads are also annoying. I think they are only in the free version, they are also not as annoying as in the official ICQ version, that is just monkey business to use and even for monkeys I would consider that animal cruelty. I also had to disable most notifications, the app was constantly blinking around, I want something less intrusive. But overall I am happy with it, maybe I will now even use the other protocols more often (but I don't think I will start twittering, still dislike all that boring chat).