Will - that was a good posting, and it is interesting you "check out" your cmake build system with downloaded example files!. I may some day follow in your foot-steps and explore. Until now I just have found cmake complicated and find it annoying it cannot do "make uninstall"!
Building cmake with the flag --with-qt should result in a small graphical interface perhaps easing the pain when that time comes
And apropos growing older - I also from and then find it more difficult to recall facts and things from memory formerly immediately available - it may now take a few seconds, or I consult my phone where I regularly store notes, names, passwds et.c.
We are born with a fixed number of sensors in eyes and ears, and the numbers of neurons in the brain peak in our early twenties (I believe). From the it is a downhill walk
Luckily I myself still is employed even if my surroundings must find me terrible old - today a co-worker with talent for storytelling spoke about working years in Saudi-Arabia - fun, interesting and much better than when reading about such things!
My vision is not the best any more and from and then I make errors when using our advanced and detailed computer system at work (font size 10 or 11), something that did not happen in earlier days, and still not very often at home, I think.
But I now realised I compensate (or mitigate) at home as good as I can by 1) mainly using one of those big Windows Vista era laptops coming with a huuge display 2) maximizing my xfce4 root console (running Midnight Commander) by launching MC with "gksu xfce4-terminal --maximize --execute mc" with the terminal font set as size 16 and 3) by increasing the font size in apps, as exemplified below in "Sayonara" beeing a nice audiobook reader sporting bookmarks and adjustment of speed and pitch.
So for me nice to meet a fellow in the same boat as onself