Blog Post: Books Read in 2021

Kindness. Bravery. Summer. Growth. Community.

Blog Post: New Year's Resolutions 2022

I usually start off by being a little reticent to make resolutions since I want to pay attention to my habits and decisions each day.  However, I'm finding maybe just by the nature of a break in December that this is the easiest time to breath and reset. 

I realized all my old year end pictures break after a while. So I made my own.

As I said in my reflections on last year's resolutions, I've been struggling a bit and and feel like some of my habits aren't leaving me the way I'd like to be.

So here's what I want to remember and think about during 2022:

1. Move - I've discovered that while I was never super fit, I've become profoundly weak this last year. So it's time to move again and get back to a place where I feel comfortable moving and being in my body.
2. Read more non-fiction - I'm really happy with how much I read in 2021 and I'd like to keep that up. The one place I struggled a bit was making the time to sit down with non-fiction and read intentionally. So in 2022, I want to prioritize that reading.
3. Do - I've been keeping a journal consistently since the beginning of the pandemic and one of the regular themes there is "Do".  Last year I had a resolution to "Do More" but this year my goal is just to "Do".
4. Learn more about food - in the last little bit I've been thinking a lot about how to find the best food, grow the best food, enjoy food more and cook better.

Blog Post: Games of 2021

It's the future and some how I'm still sitting here playing Nintendo games. I only played 4 games which were released this year, and three of them were by Nintendo. 2021 has been a bit of a weird year in terms of what I wanted to play, and I really haven't felt that compelled by most of the other games released in 2021.

Everything I played this year was "good," they're all solid games you might enjoy, but none of them have really impacted me that much.

The Good

New Pokémon Snap

I don't have a huge nostalgia for the original Pokémon Snap. I enjoyed the new one, it's certainly pretty. I *may* have not figured how how to play it to advance properly, so it felt a little flat to me. Overall, I did enjoy the safari model of travelling through environments and seeing "genuine" Pokémon interactions.

Mini Motorway

I liked Mini Metro, where you have to plan out routes for a metro system and try to keep up with demand as long as you can. Mini Motorways is a nice follow up, it's prettier and the way you eventually fail feels a lot more manageable. It really runs up against the part of me that loves city building and so after a little bit of playing I'm kinda frustrated that some idiot built their house right *there*.

Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury

I only touched the 3D World remake. It's still pretty good, but it really doesn't compare to Super Mario Odyssey. Bowser's Fury was good, it has a real lightness of movement and interesting level design. I also like the idea of Nintendo turning out light weight, smaller games more regularly, so if I could play a new Bowser's Fury sized game every year I'd be delighted. Otherwise Mario games are pretty good if you like Mario Games and Bowser's Fury is a good Mario Game. 

Mario Golf: Super Rush

I think I've said it a ton, but Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour on the Gamecube is one of my favourite games. I spent a lot of time playing it dreaming of how awesome it would be if it was built out to be a fuller, flashier game. Super Rush is *not* the game I dreamed of,  but it is pretty good. It's a well built golf game with fun courses. If that sounds like your jam then you'll probably like it. It has a single player "RPG" mode which I found to be underwhelming and the online modes are okay.

I appreciate the DLC support they've given the game. The big drawback to the game is they introduced a their speed golf mechanic where you sprint after your ball to hit it again as fast as possible. Even when you're not playing that mode, it still dominates the design in a way that's not bad, but a little awkward.

Administrativa: Feedburner Feed Broken

 Just a quick note that Feedburner seems to have stopped working with the blog, so I've turned it off. Possibly "for now" or possibly "for ever". You will need to readjust your RSS reader (assuming you have such a device).

You can find the feed for all posts at the bottom of every page, or through this link.

Blog Post: Books Read in 2021

Anxiety. Whales. Joy.

Blog Post: Looking Back at 2021's New Year Resolutions

I'm not sure how to think about 2021. I started a new position as a Learning Technology Specialist and that's forced me to think about my identity as an academic and a creator. The pandemic has also gone on and on and while that's profoundly wearing, it has also offered me a lot to be thankful for. My life is good and getting better, but it's not the easiest time.

Naively, I wrote some resolutions last year and I have a tradition of checking in on them the following year, so I guess it's time to do that:

1. Relax - Uh... fuck. The entirety of the year didn't lead towards relaxing. I certainly struggled both with the pandemic and personally to really get to a place I felt good. I think I'm starting to build some resilience in my mind now, but it's been a journey to get here.
2. Go on More Adventures - Uh... double fuck. Truth be told I did choose not to adventure as much as I could have, but still this year was not conducive to seeing new things.
3. Read More - Ok, something positive! I read a lot more and I read more broadly (certainly a lot more mystery). After several years of trying to read more I finally feel like I've shifted the reading bar in my head.
4. Write More - I didn't do nearly as much of this as I wanted to, but I did write more than I have in the past. I think I've found a direction and a way I want to go forward with my rather eclectic creative work, so I'm happy. I'm also more focused on the blog than I have been in a long time and that's making me feel good. The future feels bright.
5. Do More - I certainly found my way towards getting things done by small steps. As I said, I've found a way forward, in just prioritizing what I want to have done. I think I can still do better here at finding ways to do things, but *generally* I'm happy.

I'll be honest, 2021 kicked me in the ass in a lot of ways. I feel disconnected from myself in the past and I find it a bit hard to keep a thread constant through my life for more than a few months. There are touch-points of happiness and I think, if nothing else coming out of the darkness I felt a few months ago, I'm much readier to take an active role in my life going forward.

The best light in what's been my 2020 view.

Blog Post: Books Read in 2021

Men. Together.

Blog: Games of November 2021

I don't think I've had a month before, where I haven't played five games. I was pretty busy this month, and my PC is borked, so I guess I got to be focused for November. I'm looking forward to playing a bit more over December. I'm just about finished Secret of Mana and I'm trying to decide what to play next. I've been thinking about playing Legend of Mana, but also Final Fantasy 9 and 12, and maybe Eastward, and the Skyward Sword remake. The Axe of the Blood God is also doing a pantheon/game club playthrough of Chrono Cross, which I was thinking of playing sometime soon as well. So I have no idea what I'm going to do next, but at least I have options.

My top five games (by play time) for November were:

1. Secret of Mana (Collection of Mana) - I think I've played Secret of Mana more than any other game. It's certainly one of the two games I first fell in love with as a kid (along with Illusion of Gaia). I played a bit when the Collection of Mana first came out, but decided when I finished Trials of Mana that it would be interesting to go back to where I started and play again. It's been fun, sometimes frusterating (I've tried to do a more-or-less low level run), and a little weird. There are several things I'd forgotten and a few I don't think I'd ever seen before.
   
   
   
   


2. Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - Continuing to try to "git good". I had a fair bit of fun, although honestly playing ALTTP makes me want to play Illusion of Gaia more often than not. They have very similar game play and IoG is beautiful (and I love it). I started to do a second play through to keep building towards "gitting good" but trailed off as the month got busy.
   
   
   
   


3. Trials of Mana (Collection of Mana) - Playing the original after the remake has been interesting. I've tried and bounced off this game quite a few times in the past. I'm thinking I'll write a combined "things" post about both the original and the remake - and Secret of Mana as well. Overall, I'm glad I played it certainly has a lot of interesting elements. I'm not sure how I would have felt if I played it back when it was originally released, and it does have some flaws by modern game standards, but it's really pretty and fairly fun.
   
   
   
   


4. Super Mario Odyssey - I barely play this, but I finished the "main game" and started on the post game bit and the flow and joy in running around this game has been great.
   
   
   
   


Here's my total play time chart for November:






And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Blog: Books Read in 2021

Loyalty. Meaning. Edge. Relations.

Project 18: Game Tracker Update - 2021

 So it's been a long while since I've sat down and worked on the Game Tracker and it's also been a long while since I've written anything other than vague intentions for working on the project. Fortunately my new focus on creative work has push me back to it.

I was actually pushed by a post I'm writing for the blog that I'll share pretty soon. I've wanted to do a good explanation of Java's Preferences. I managed to thoroughly confuse myself with them and so thought I'd follow the Julia Evan's approach of writing about what confused me. I'd left my project in a thorough mess back in March - the equivalent of the truck sitting in the old bard with the engine out and wires and tubes laid out all over the place - and so in order to show how I was using preferences, I thought it might be a good idea to put the bits back together.

When I abandoned the project, I was in the midst of trying to convert the save system (persistence) to use JSON. That was part of a grander idea to connect to some kind of web interface - Google Sheets and Firebase are the two I've been eying. I ended up struggling to get Java and JSON to play nicely together and after a little bit of cobbling, I discovered that Joda-Time -  which I've used for managing time in Java for *years* - was also making everything complicated. 

I gave up and decided that since I mostly wanted the system up and running so I could finish the blog post - which I've been working on for months. I set up a project - well... took over the one from March - called 2021 refresh and tried to get a minimal set of the Game Tracker up and running. That was more or less fun, I built a CSV version of the data manager and then did all the cleanup I had to do to get up and running.

Game Tracker - Pretty much the same after all these years.

I also realized that I've been keeping the GitHub repository for the project private. I think that's partly based on not feeling like the project was ready for people to see and partly fear about showing off my own programming work. Given what I've been thinking about with creative work and how I want to use my time going forward, hiding isn't going to help me, so I opened the repository to the public and put and MIT Licence on it - not that I think it will be terribly useful for anyone. I found Choose a Licence, which was helpful for comparing licences.

 

I also got to write a readme, which at the end of the day turned out to help me feel better about the whole project and make sure that anyone who stumbles across it will know what on earth is happening. Nothing about the whole project feels at all glossy or cool - like I would like it to - but it's happening and I've moved it a little bit forward. I found Make a README which was a really good resource.

I like that I can return to the idea of small tasks for the project now. For example, for reasons that are beyond me - maybe as a demo for students - I set the game systems to be a Java Enum. This is a terrible idea since for some reason new video game systems have been released in the last few years and I've even purchased some of them. It'll be nice to be able to jump in and work on that for a little bit and then be done.

I also have a lot of other things I'd like to do. I'd like to expand the interfaces to include a desktop GUI, something for my phone and something for the web. I also still want to set up remote data management for the system. I'll get to those at some point, but again my new approaching to getting things done means they'll hopefully trickle out over time.

Blog Post: Books in 2021

Greed. Interesting.

November 2021 Project Update

I recently watched Cathy Hey interview Jeff Walker about building a creative career. While I'm not planning to leave my day job any time soon, I've been sitting on a lot of creative projects without making much progress and this really inspired me to get moving on a lot of these things.

I decided as a starting point I wanted to dedicate a little bit of time each week to working on projects. I set an initial goal of 5 hours a week and I really haven't nailed it yet, but I've actually started to get a little bit of stuff done. 

As apparently has become my wont I set up a spreadsheet to track my time, and so now my life outside of work is filled with colourful bar charts. 

My focus for now has been on reviving some actual posts in the blog. Inspired by Julia Evans (@b0rk), I wanted to start including more about the things I know and the things I'm learning. The first of those is using Java's Preferences. I'm using preferences in the Game Tracker so thought I'd use it as an example and then I realized that a) it's a horrible mess and b) it's not available to the public. Now I'm updating that and my next post will be about that.

So, generally, you can expect to see a few more posts outside of me tracking books and games here. I've made some progress on Chrono Trigger Sprites and I have a backlog to post there. Plus you can also expect more posts about technology, learning and teaching. I'm not committing to any set rates, but "more".

I feel pretty happy approaching my projects this way, so I really appreciate that video. I think I've started on a good productivity groove right now and I'll take it.

I've been sketching more too!

Blog: Books Read in 2021

Gambit. Life.

Blog: Books Read in 2021

Bodies. Recovery.

Blog: Games of October 2021

October was a busy month and I was more focused on doing things than playing things. At the same time my PC has started acting up so any chance I had to play anything on there was a bit of a crap shoot.

I'm at a point where I'd love to find a few games to play on the Switch for short bursts, 15 - 20 minutes. Celeste and -- weirdly -- A Link to the Past have been filling that niche, but I'd love to find something new and maybe something which would have a bit of longevity. 

My top five games (by play time) for October were:

1. Trials of Mana (Collection of Mana) - Trials has been an interesting game. I still think everything in the remake was better but it's been interesting. I think it's not the greatest SNES (a)rpg, but it has some cool features. I think if I'd had it back when it was originally coming out I'd probably have loved it. As it stands, I'd like it to be faster and smoother, and the level grinding is not very much fun. On the plus side, the sprite work is beautiful (if a little hard to read sometimes) and the backgrounds are lovely. I think, especially if the game were a little faster, the variety of classes would be really cool to explore.
   
   
   
   


2. Battle Brothers - If only this didn't make my video card vomit colourful patterns all over my monitor. A little tempted to find the switch version.
   
   


3. Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - Reaching to ProtonJon playing randomizers, I wanted to actually "git good" at ALTTP. It's been fun to pick up and to my surprise, each chunk of the game only takes me about 15 minutes. I'm certainly enjoying this a lot more than the last time I played through.
   
   
   
   


4. Super Mario Odyssey - I didn't play much, but Odyssey is always a delight. It hasn't *quite* been that short burst game I'm looking for.
   
   
   
   


5. Ogre Battle 64 - It snowed. I played Ogre Battle. I'm assuming if you've read any of these before you'll know the tune.
   
   
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for October:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Blog: Books Read in 2021

Changes. Misunderstandings. Activities.

Blog: Books Read in 2021

Threat. Resolve. Retribution. Empower.
Bong.

Blog: Books Read in 2021

Bleak. Uninteresting.

Blog: Books Read in 2021

Living. Relationship.

Blog: Books Read in 2021

Duty. Ugly.