The Blog - 2024

Um hello! I'd wish you a Happy Belated Blog End and Start day, but that was a while ago... Did anyone one get the licence plate of that August? I'll be picking calendar shrapnel out of my brain for weeks!

If you're new here, welcome, good timing. The next sentence I'm going to write is weird, but it'll be a whole year now before I write again. My rule is to never start a project without an idea of how it ends, so I never set out to blog for more than a year at a time and the beginning of August -- actually mid July, but honestly nothing here makes that much sense -- marks the end of the last year of blogging, and, since I feel like continuing on, the start of the next year.

I noted last year that I wanted to cut back on quantity in favour of quality. I've certainly achieved reduced quantity, quality isn't quite where I want it but you know, things are coming along. I guess my goal of this year is now to increase the quantity of the quality.

I'm proud of the two "Things about Games" posts I wrote (Sea of Stars and Unicorn Overlord) and I enjoyed the things I wrote about reading and rereading. I also had fun rebuilding the way I record the books I read and the games I play. Games especially aren't quite there yet, but my over engineered mail merge is fun. 

Do I know what I'm doing next? Nope. I might blog more. I might finally move off blogger/blogspot. I might just hang out and write another August post here next year feeling like I'm almost where I want to be. Still I'm working on getting the "shoulds" out of my life and just doing. 

I'll see ya'll for the New Year's navelgazing. In the mean time I hope we can have a little adventure. Hope you've found a nice seat. 

Ten and Three Years Blogging

Well, it’s August again and I get to wish you Happy Blog End and Start Day.

If this is your first Blog End and Start Day, welcome! This is the day when I “wrap up” my blog and then also the day when I start a “new” blog for a new year. This is the tradition because I always find it hard when long running projects fade away and so I don’t want to take on anything that doesn’t have a committed end date. So every August I start a new season (or edition, or volume) of the blog.

This is somewhat complicated by the fact that I tend to actually make changes to how I’m blogging in January, but I publish my first real post on … July 24, 2011… wait why do I write publish these these on August 1? Aaanyway, this is my yearly update to the Blog as Blog (writing about things, as opposed to project updates).

The biggest thing that’s different this year from last year is that the actual number of posts is way down. I’ve gone from averaging 5ish posts a month to more like 3. Most of that is changing how I keep track of the books I’ve been reading, and going from a list to a monthly infographic. This has generally made me happier because it cuts down on trying to keep track of the books and having a constant need to post and honestly making the monthly infographics has been fun. In light of all of the AI nonsense going on right now, doing things by hand feels worthwhile and entertaining and satisfying.

I’ve also been trying to put less stuff on the blog so that I can focus more on projects, be that [writing] or other stuff. I also want to write more better blog posts, I really want 2023 to be the year I set myself as a writer in my mind, and writing more meaningful posts is a part of that, so I’m trying to put less filler on the blog.

Since April I’ve given myself the objective of writing two meaningful blog posts each month. One is supposed to go on here, and the other is supposed to go on my professional blog Learning and Technology. I should be at eight posts so far, and I’m at five, but I feel like I’m moving in the correct direction. (It is the nature of blogging that all posts are made while moving in the correct direction because when you’re falling around not doing things, one of the things you don’t do is blog.)

I think I’m happy content wise with what’s up and I feel like I’m doing things I like doing in a way I like doing them.

What I’m increasingly less happy with is the platform. I’ve been on Blogger for a while and got very close to quitting a few years back when they suddenly modernised a bunch of stuff and it got easier to use. As a platform blogger is okay, but it isn’t exactly doing what I want. The biggest (and maybe dumbest) thing right now is that it still limits you to 200 characters of tags per post. That’s fewer characters than I generally need and it breaks the way I want to be using tags.

The other thing is it’s past time that I consolidated my digital footprint outside of Google’s infrastructure. Especially with issues coming up around AI, the time feels right to move on, but also just in general if I want to advocate for doing things the right way online I should probably do things the way I think they should be done.

So I’m going to start looking at moving the blog over to my own infrastructure. I’ll post lots of updates as I get things set up, but you may have to move your RSS feed when the change comes. A while back feedburner had a fit, so I took it off the blog, but then it started working again, so if you follow on RSS and have for a while, migration should happen automatically, but it may not. It’s 2023 never trust a corporation, or software, or anyone, or anything. Maybe move to the woods and help restrore the environment...

Cough. I’m not 100% sure what tech stack I’m going to go to, but figuring that out will give me more things to blog about, so it’s a win all around. At the moment, I might lean into wordpress, but I also think, given a lot of what I want out of the web, I may go towards Hugo and try to keep things as flat and dumb as possible.

Anyway, that’s your update for another Year of the Blog. Take care and I’ll see you in August 2024 (plus hopefully lots of days in between).

Project 1: Blog 12 - Update

Happy Blog End and Start Day (Belated)

I’m late. Later than usual, but I like to take the first of August as a day to wrap up what I’ve written on this blog in the year before and look ahead. One of my original ideas with the blog was that things shouldn’t go on forever, so this is my time to look at what I’m planning to do for the next year.

I suppose, as I always do, I should point out that I’m doing two things at once here (because I’m bad at being straightforward about things). The first thing is a project tracker, where I keep track of all the things I’ve worked on for myself. The second, one of those projects, is a blog where I … write … things.

This is my second attempt at writing this post. My first came out quite angry with myself and felt rather bilious when I looked back at it. In short, I’m a little frustrated that I haven’t been moving forward with creative projects, including the blog. I haven’t done a lot that’s really interesting with the blog this year, but I do have posts which I quite like on set similarity and Java Preferences. Also, while they may be deeply boring, I still enjoy posting the regular updates tracking the games I play and the books I read.

I want to do more creative things, and I want to give myself more grace that the things I do don’t have to be perfect. Maybe I'll write more here; maybe I won't. Maybe I'll write more somewhere else; maybe I won't. Maybe I'll dance the funky chicken; maybe I won't.

Thanks for following along and I’ll see you next August.

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.

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!

Project 1: Blog11!! - Update

So, a decade of doing this blog thing huh. I may still not have any idea what I’m doing but I’m moving ahead so that’ll have to be good enough.

This year I’m not in the garden because 

• a) the smoke is in the garden and I’m tired of the smoke and 
• b) I’ve picked up a full time job and it does take up all those in the middle of the day hours. 

I may not have been out that much, but the rose is happy this year.

I started blogging in late July 2011 and usually take the first of August as Blog End and Start Day. I'm a little late, but I mentioned that full time job thing. You may also be looking at the list of posts (way down at the bottom of the page) and be thinking to yourself, but TJ, you started this in February and then sat on you butt for several months, and to that I would say, yes, but I’ve found a way to make it more complicated as that.

The “blog” is a project tracker where I’m supposed to keep “the world” updated on the things that I’m doing as a form of self-accountability. That doesn’t work as well as I’d like, but that’s the idea. The *trick* is that the first of those projects is a blog where I practice writing … and keep track of interesting metrics about my life, so Project 1 of the blog is a “Blog.” Other projects are updates, but for the “Blog” I also post the posts here.

If that’s not confusing enough, Blog End and Start day is the day where I finish writing the “Blog” for last year and start writing the “Blog” for this year. Clear as mud? Excellent. The basic idea stems from how frustrating it can be when a long-running project falls apart because the creator isn’t into doing it any more. This way if I decide I don’t want to blog any more, well you wouldn’t have expected me to do it past August anyway.  (If you were somehow sitting there with baited breath for a new blog post to come out.) Between now and next August is my 11th year of blogging.

By far, I’ve spent this last year using the blog to keep track of games I’ve played and books I’ve read. In fact, aside from last year’s Blog End and Start Day post and my new year resolutions posts I only wrote one in-depth post (on Paper Mario: The Origami King). This was more or less on purpose, because I wanted to focus my time on creating novel stuff (well, new stuff, not just the novel…), so I’m happy enough with the blog this year.

I like keeping track of what I’ve read and what I’ve played because it feels so easy at the end of the year to look back and have no idea where your time went. Instead I’ve felt like everything I’ve played and read this year has mattered. It’s helped me to read more and it’s helped me to enjoy the games I’ve played.

Looking forward, I want to write more. So, I’m going to try to write more. I’d also like to document more about my thoughts for teaching and the things I like about programming. My day job involves a lot of writing and not that much teaching, so this feels like a great way to build my writing skill while keeping in touch with my teaching. No guarantees, but I’d like to write two posts a month. I’ll update my other projects in a bit and I want to get some progress on them too (as I always do).

Google has managed to clean up enough about blogger that I’m content to keep the blog here for now. I am still considering options (and the day job calls for more word press), but moving the blog feels like a ton of work if I don’t have to.

2021 is definitely bringing new and different things for me. I’m learning and growing and hopefully another year of blogging will help with that.

Once upon a time, the skies were blue and we were happy.

Project 1: 10Blog - Update

Well, happy Blog End and Start Day again.

I've returned to my garden (actually I've been doing a thing called "vacation" for a few weeks so I've been here a lot of the time) and it's time for that annual end of the blog post. And as I usually do it's also time to start another year of blogging.

The garden does not look nearly as good as it did last year, but it's a learning activity.

I generally prefer things with a defined start and end date (much as I'm bad at hitting them a lot of the time), so I find breaking the blog up by yearly volumes (sessions, editions?) helps keep it from feeling like it goes on forever. This is also traditionally the time where I reenforce my distinction between the blog as blog and the blog as project tracker. Effectively, I created this to keep track of projects I'm working on, but one of those projects is to practice writing and getting this out.

The last volume(?) of the blog covered an odd period of my life (I mean it included spring of 2020, so it's been an odd period in everyone's lives). I was fairly stressed in the fall and winter semesters with my day job, and trying to figure out how to live life when not doing a PhD. I'm slowly making progress on that front but honestly it's been a rough year in general.

For the most part the blog itself has been ticking quietly along on series of posts about the games I've played and the books I've read. I've been enjoying tracking those, so I'm happy enough with that. Aside for that I've written a few project posts and I feel like for the first time in a while I'm getting much better traction on the projects I'm working on. (Look for a project update shortly).

I am interested that the only thoughts on post I wrote was for Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival.

Overall a quiet year for the blog, but as I wrote in my update last year I wanted to focus my energy elsewhere, so I guess I've done alright.

My total posts per year, highlighted by month. You can see more on my Blorgress Page

Over the last few months I've wanted to improve my writing and I think my project focus for the last half of 2020 will be on writing the novel I've been thinking about and on writing a manual of interesting coding. That could also include more writing here, but that depends a bit on what I want to write about. I definitely have thoughts in mind on Ocotopath Traveller and on Paper Mario: The Origami King.

I'm also considering moving the blog itself off of Blogger/Blogspot. I've been generally unhappy with outsourcing hosting to Google as a provider for a few years now, as we've seen power on the Internet being consolidated and algorithmic filtering affecting how people are able to access information. I'm also exceptionally unhappy with the recent interface update which has really increased the length of time it takes me to make a post. The tag system has always been bad as well and finding a solution that makes me happier is becoming more important.

I haven't made a decision about what I'm exactly I'm going to do yet, but things muttered on the internet sometimes come true. I am planning to look at Hugo for Code Click and if that goes well there might be a change.

In the mean time, generally, you can expect to see a continued series of updates on books and games, with an occasional update on other things or thoughts I feel like I want to share.

With that, I hope you have a good August, a better end of 2020 and a much, much better 2021.

Projects Update: May 2020

What happened to May?

Just at the end of April I finished the coaster project and I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. I didn’t get quite through everything I wanted in April, but I was pretty happy. Then it was halfway through May and I had no idea where I was or what was going on. I will say I’ve been enjoying spring for the most part, although there’s been some quarantine weirdness kicking around my brain as well.

I'm really happy with the new coasters.

I haven’t made a lot of progress on the game tracker and I’ve found it pretty hard to sit down and write, so I’m behind on both of those for now. I’ve also picked up an academic thing I need to finish fairly quickly, so I’m thinking about that too.

Since I haven’t made much progress I’m just going to slide my goal for the game tracker back to June 30. The goal is to have remote storage of data working by that point (along with having tutorial myself on various build systems and remote storage solutions.

I also want to push forward on my Chrono Trigger sprites so I’d like to get Lucca finished by June 15.

Project Updates: April 2020

It’s pretty usual for me to get to April and realize that I’ve lost track of all the things I was excited about. I’m still working on balancing my teaching so that I can be creative and productive and a good responsible teacher as well. It’s less usual to have that April realization fall in the middle of a global pandemic where suddenly everything has gone weird and suddenly I’m stuck at home, as opposed to being a little out of work for the spring and stuck at home.

Anyway, once I finish marking I want to do … something, so I’m going to “circumwork¹” and see where my projects on this blog are at.

Projects I am "actually working on"

One of the problems with maintaining the blog is that I have a list of things I “should” be working on even if they’re not actually the things I want to be working on. I try to avoid that by keeping my timelies short and achievable (yes, I know I’m bad at that) and by keeping the number of projects I’m working on at once (yes, I’m not great at that either).

Currently I have on my list:

• The Blog (as Project)
• I’m not 100% sure where I’m at with the blog, I’m enjoying tracking games and books. I don’t know that it’s a really productive thing to be doing, but I’m enjoying it. I also find that I don’t really want to put that much out there in terms of thoughts, because I’d rather put my time towards making something.
• Covert Action in Space
• I got a little held up because it turns out that randomly generating meaningful floor plans is a little harder than I’d figured. I still love the idea, but this isn’t at the top of my list.
• Game Tracker
• I’ve been teaching first year Java again and I wanted to get things rolling here again. I also taught a senior programming course in the fall which involved using online services and mobile interfaces, both of which my project needs. I opened it up a few weeks ago and couldn’t quite figure out where I left off, but managed to get it mostly on the path again.
• Pong
• I wanted to be way further ahead on this and have my AtariST version done ahead of my students, I managed to work along side them, but then completely lost the thread when the “transition to on-line” teaching happened. Hopefully I’ll have cause to get back to it.
• Code Click
• I already spend quite a bit of time thinking about how to share that moment of joy I get out of coding, and while I haven’t got that much done, I still think about code click a bunch. Transitioning to on-line has also pushed me to think a lot more about how I want to teach and the resources I want available when I’m teaching.
• 
  

Projects I have “on hiatus”

There are a bunch of things I started out and then put aside, some of them are things I want to be working on so I think it's worth listing them all out too.

• SNES Coasters
  • I’d like more and bigger coasters and maybe to spend a bit more time working on perler stuff.
• Space Station Game
  • I keep thinking about this one. I’m still not ready to really set down and work on it, partly because I’d like to build up my skill working on some other projects first. I've been playing quite a bit of EU4 which has definitely provided some feeling for how the game should work when I actually get to it.
• Action RPG
  • This is another one I’m not ready to work on yet, but I have a lot of ideas and I’ve been developing my drawing skills.
• Sci-Fi Novel
  • The problem with having sat with a story in your head for 20 / 25 years is that when you think about writing it, it feels pretty trite. There’s a lot of things kicking around in my head from as far back as when I was a teenager. I don’t really know where to go with it, but it still might be fun to tackle at some point.
• The Roofs (Fantasy Novel)
  • This is the story that sits further in the front of my mind. I’m not sure it makes sense, and it might be missing a reasonable antagonist, but I guess I won’t know until I write it.
• Chrono Trigger Sprites
  • I have the first two sitting in the window over my desk and I love them. It’s time I got the rest finished.
• Bubble Puzzler
  • I think with Pong out of the way this is the place I want to focus building games. It’s a good learning opportunity and I think it’s a great place to get started.

Projects I actually want to work on now

So I’m not sure where I want to put myself for all of the time between now and September. Obviously working on code click is a good idea for professional growth, but the Game Tracker and the Bubble Puzzler also make sense.

I also want to work on more artistic things. A lot of that I don’t think I want to make projects for, but I think that both the SNES Coasters and the Chrono Trigger Sprites. I also really want to get the Roofs written.

In an effort to keep my goals small and my projects limited, these are my near, term projects:

• SNES Coasters
  • I want to finish a set of 4 large coasters, get them fused and backed and then I’ll see what’s next. I think I can get that all done by April 30.
• Game Tracker
  • I’d like to get this working with outside data, either my original plan of google sheets, or with something else (possibly firebase). Either way I don’t want to spend too much time thinking about it, so I’m going to try to have some version of that working by April 30 too.
• The Roofs
  • I don’t know how long it is, or how I’ll feel actually trying to write, but I’m going to give it a shot and try to have a first draft finished by August 31. (And yes, I think I did just put write a novel on a list of “short achievable near term goals” no, I’m not great at planning things)

(and we’ll leave the blog rolling along as it is, since that’s fun).

¹ Circumwork: To do things that feel like work without actually being related to any task that needs to be done.

Project 1: Blog x 9

Happy August! Also happy blog end and start day (belated)!

As of August 1, I've completed the latest year of blogging and I'm going to lay out my plans for another year of blogging. Now, it's time to update the Blog as Project and the Blog as Blog again. Also it's time to sit in my garden and enjoy August.

I finally finished my PhD in 2019, which I hope will open up my time to work on interesting projects and write about them here. The last year was a little thin on those with the bulk of the posts being reading updates, with a few other posts sprinkled in. I'm starting to get some momentum up though and trying to use that to carry through and get things done.

Back in May I set myself a goal of writing 4000 words a month for the blog. This has been pretty largely a failure, but I think the tracking has been good for me. I've probably written about 2000 words a month and I think for now that's ok. My primary focus has always been to try to be doing more things, which means I think I should be putting my time to working on projects rather than writing about stuff.

So for the Ninth Edition of the Blog, I'm planning to get at least one project post out a month (which ties in nicely with my New Year's Resolution to finish a project a month). I'd also like to put in a few more video game thoughts posts, as I've been playing a lot of good games this year.

Let's go make something!

via GIPHY

Project Update: PhD

I thought I should write a post commemorating the fact that I finished my PhD. It seemed appropriate considering I’ve been doing the PhD as long as I’ve been keeping the blog, and the blog has (in a tiny part) been about me getting stuff done (particularly the PhD).

Photo Credit: FotoBart

I had some idea of writing about the things I learned (not 100% sure what those are), or possibly to sum up the project I worked on (don’t really want to do that yet), or maybe to give some suggestions about PhDs in general (which I don’t have). So for now, I'm just happy to say: I'm Done!

I worked a long time, fairly hard, but slowly, and managed to finish, mostly refusing to stop. I’m proud of myself. It may not be all I had envisioned, but it is finished. Someone once pointed out to me that the PhD is supposed to be the beginning of your research career, not the end, and I’m trying to keep that in mind now.

I didn’t get my PhD to become a researcher or to become a teacher. I mostly worked towards it because I was interested in the work. I’m still interested in that work, and some of that work will filter along here in the shape of smaller projects. I also enjoyed the journey, for the most part. There was stress, and I stayed put a bit too long. 

I feel extremely free to take on new projects. To some extent, that’s a statement that practically anything I take on can’t be as large as the PhD, so I should probably be able to do it. I am also enjoying being rid of that stress every time I sit to do anything, that I should be doing something else. It’s not a cure all, that stress is still there, but I feel like I’m more able to compartmentalize my time and stop working when it’s time to stop working.

Practically, I’m pleased to say this caps of the revival of #nafyofuthmo. Project in the books (literally), done and dusted. I’m a bit sad though, because: how fun is it to say #nafyofuthmo. (Seriously say it out loud, naf-yo-futh-mo). I’ll have to find some other snazzy, weird agglomeration of words to say now.

So there. I finished my PhD. I built the software I needed to build. I did the experiments I needed to do. I wrote the words I needed to write. I made the edits I needed to make. This isn’t the end of the road, but it’s a spot I should put a marker to remind myself I made it this far. 

I don’t really know what’s next. I’m a little burned out, I’ve been a grad student since January 2007 and that’s been a while. In the short term I’m teaching and enjoying the parts of computer science I enjoy, and I’m taking a rest. I’ll figure the rest out, but for now I’m glad to be done.

via GIPHY

Weekly Project Update (August 15 - August 21)

Here's the creative projects I worked on this week (August 15 - August 21):

• Monday -
• Tuesday -
• Wednesday -
• Thursday - Blogging
• Friday - Drawing
• Saturday - Blogging
• Sunday - 

Weekly Project Update (August 8 - August 14)

Here's the creative projects I worked on this week (August 8 - August 14):

• Monday - Drawing
• Tuesday - Nothing
• Wednesday - Blogging
• Thursday - Blogging
• Friday - Nothing
• Saturday - Blogging
• Sunday - Nothing

Weekly Project Update (August 1 - August 7)

Here's the creative projects I worked on this week (August 1 - August 7):

• Monday - Nothing
• Tuesday - Nothing
• Wednesday - Blogging
• Thursday - Blogging
• Friday - Blogging
• Saturday - Nothing
• Sunday - Nothing - And I posted this.

Project 1: The Blog, Season Six

Apparently this is the first time I've actually written the post late, but here we are, I'm writing the "Happy Blog End and Start" post.

So Happy belated Blog End and Start!

I've been happy with the "blog as project" this year and I'm happy to do another year of it.

I think this last year has been pretty good, although it was a lot of "Favourite YouTube Videos". I'm hoping to step up the types of things I blog in the coming year and I'm hoping my new plan of "do one creative thing a day" will help with that. (It will double the number of posts on the blog at least since I'll be posting a creativity update each week.)

On the topic of Favourite YouTube Videos, I'm still really enjoying posting them since it gives me a chance to go back through and rematch all of my old favourites (since the series pulls from my own favourite's list on YouTube, remember when that was a real thing?). It's an interesting journey into two years ago and I think at the moment it's going to stay about that far behind with me posting about three videos a week.

I will also be updating the video games I've played this year. I've managed to keep on keeping track, I just need to put the posts together and I'll try to do that over the next little while. I think that's been an interesting project as well and it's made me think a lot more about what and how I play.

"Monthly" posts on what I've been playing also cut down on the number of "Video Game Thoughts" posts I've been thinking of making. There's a lot of games that I won't (or can't) finish and some that I just don't have that much to say about. So hopefully I can cut down on thinking about things that I don't want to spend too much time thinking about. It will also hopefully open up time for me to come at the games I'm thinking about in a different way (and hey actually maybe get off my ass and start making some too).

I've also had fun with a spreadsheet of my blogging "progress".
You can find a permanent link to the blorgress page here.

So, over all I'm happy, the blog is staying nominal and that's about it until next August.

Thanks for reading if you do.

Oh and I also figured out how the automatic scheduler works, so I'm pretty happy.

Project 1: A Fifth Season of Blogging!?

Happy (belated*) Blog End and Start Day!

Apparently, I've been at this for a while now. As a quick reminder this blog is actually a blog in two parts. There's the "Blog as Project Discussion", which is actually the "point" of the blog and there's the "Blog as Blog", which is a project in the blog (Project 1 in fact). (And yes, that it's the most times I've written the word "blog" in a single paragraph.)

For the fourth season (from August 2014, to July 2015), I mostly posted blogs about YouTube. I've posted them because I'm excited to share the cool things I've found on YouTube over the years and it's fun to see old videos again. They're also quick and easy to produce, so they allow me to get a feeling of accomplishment. I also just want to see if I can "finish" the project now, we're down to about a 2 year gap and it is slowly shrinking.

Thoughts about video games, are also fun to make but they take me a lot longer to write and produce. I also like the practice of thinking about how a game works while I'm playing it, although it's taken a little effort to make sure that I'm still actually having fun while I play.

I've wanted to look more at the history of video game making from both a historical and technical point of view. So, if I can spend more time blogging, then you can expect to see something that looks more like that, although those will also take some time to produce.

Right at the moment my PhD work, both the research and the other things I've been hired to do while I finish my PhD are taking up quite a bit of time (it's like it's a job or something). I've also hit a point where I'm ready to get my things in order and finish. So above all of my projects, for the next year, my focus will be on finishing my PhD.

So there will be a fifth season of the blog. It may be sparse or it may be dense, depending on my focus, productivity and how creatively I can procrastinate. In the few months I've decided to try for two posts a week (Tuesday and Friday) even if they're both "Favourite YouTube Video" posts and I will try to keep that up.

Thanks for reading!

* Good work automatically posting Blogger. And actually I, rewrote this post just now and like it better so, thanks for not posting my post Blogger! But seriously, I need to figure out how the scheduler works for any future trips away from the Internet.

Project Update Post

I've managed to get behind on projects again, mostly due to having research and teach commitments that need to get done with a higher priority. Still I've managed to get a bit done and in this post I'm going to update my deadlines to give myself something to shoot for again.

• Project 5 - SNES Coasters and Project 12 - Chrono Trigger Sprites
• I've had to hold off a little on working on these due to house sitting and wanting to make sure that I'm using the same iron while testing.
• The SNES Coasters have been holding mostly steady, but I've decided that I want to build and test one of the bigger size before making others since that way I don't waste quite as much if I don't like the size. 
• I'd like to finish and start testing the test SNES coaster by November 15, 2014.
• I spent a long time going through the Perler bead colours and discovered that I actually DIDN'T buy all the colours and I'm missing a few that might be helpful for the sprites. However I think I have enough on hand to make it through the small scale test.
• I've also done all the colour matching and think I have a plan for which colour of beads I'll use for each of the colours in the Chrono sprite.
• I'd like to finish a test block (just the colours) by November 15, 2014 and the small scale Chrono by November 30, 2014.
• Project 13 - Bubble Puzzle
• I haven't had time to start on this one at all yet, so I don't have much to report other than that I've decided to do a test with Unity that works well enough to shoot bubbles at other bubbles.
• I'd like to finish this Unity test by December 31, 2014
• Project 14 - Flash Fiction
• I also haven't made much progress on this one either so I think given that I'm still fairly early in November, I'm simply going to slide this back a month and hopefully put up my first piece by November 30, 2014.

Project 1: Fourth Season of the Blog

Happy Blog Start and End Day!

Yup, it's August 1st again and that means that the Third Season of the Blog draws to an end. It also means (as you might have guessed from the title) that it's the kick off to the Fourth Season of the Blog.

As a quick reminder this project is the Blog as a Blog part of the Blog. The Blog as a discussion of Projects part of the Blog is a separate thing, which I will post an update about shortly.

For the Blog as a Blog project, I didn't make my goal of a post every two weeks, although I've managed at least five posts a month since May, which I'm fairly happy with. I've also managed to refine my process for producing my favourite YouTube videos posts so that I can make them relatively quickly and painlessly.

I haven't done as well at other posts. I have a backlog of thoughts on video games posts that I'd like to put out there, but this season I only manage to produce two. I also haven't wanted to blog about too many other things since, I'm fairly busy and there's no shortage of opinions about things on the Internet.

Overall I'm happy to keep doing what I'm doing on the blog. For the time being (for the next year) my goal is still to put up two posts a week. Once I feel like I've worked out a system where by I can regularly put up content, then I'll think about expanding what I do.

Project 1: Third Season of The Blog

Happy Birthday!

Well, not birthday. Happy Project Ending Day and Happy Project Start Day. More precisely, Happy Blog Start and End Day!

Today is the last day of the Second Season of the Blog. Today is also first day of the Third Season of the Blog.

The Second Season of the Blog was not all I'd hoped it would be. I wanted to be really good about regular updating, which I haven't really been. I've managed to post in every month of the second season, ranging from 1 post to 11, but not as regularly as I'd hoped.

By far and away I've been best about posting my "favourite YouTube videos", managing 27 of them in total. I've also managed to post 5 "Thoughts on Games", which is fewer than I'd hoped. Finally I tested out "Cool Things of the Week", before deciding that it would be better served living on twitter.

I'm glad I've managed to post as much as I have, although I would like to write more and more regularly. I did manage to finish my PhD coursework and my candidacy during that time, which certainly has more priority.

That being said, I've managed to keep up with the blog for a whole year and for that much at least I'm pretty happy.

The Third Season of the Blog starts now. I'm not planning to change my content that much although I'm hoping to change my schedule/quantity and improve my quality.

Ideally I want to post twice a week for the foreseeable future. This would mean one favourite YouTube videos post, probably on Friday and one other post sometime during the week (hopefully on Tuesdays, but no promises). This other post will be thoughts on video games or something else, if I happen to have a project update (and ideally I'll have more of these than I have so far) then that will count too.

As far as quality, I'm hoping to spend a bit more time writing each post. I also hope that my quality will naturally improve simply by getting more practice.

Hopefully I can keep this up for another year. So the third season will last until August 1, 2014.

Thanks for reading, and keep getting excited and making things.

Project 1 : A Blog - Wrap Up / Update

A year ago I started the "Blog as a Project" project (not to be confused with the "Blog as a Blog") and today is the day I'm supposed to wrap it up.

Let me say first that I'm planning to start a "second season" of the blog, but that I'm still not sure exactly what form it will take.

When I first started out to blog more I had a list of things I thought would be interesting to blog about. I even have a nicely organized file that lists them all. I'll include that below so you can see what I had been thinking about before I started.

Idea	Date Added	Date Published
Intro	06/08/10	01/08/11
Windows Shutdown	06/08/10	-
Thesis	06/08/10	-
We are all going to live in public	06/08/10	-
Thesis Wordle	06/08/10	-
Ad incentives (omgpop vs tetrisfriends)	06/08/10	-
Why everyone should be a polymath	12/08/10	-
Not all collections are created equal	12/08/10	-
Clean Desktop	13/08/10	-
Nerd Fighting / Proactive Nerds	14/08/10	-
My Pockets	14/08/10	-
Black book ToDo List	14/08/10	-
Enjoying Wear	14/08/10	-
Pomplamoose Videos expertise in sound crafting	15/08/10	-
Closet	28/08/10	-
Water Bottle Spigot	28/08/10	-
Garfield / Adding more to the given story	18/11/10	-
I don't really like Harry Potter	18/11/10	-
I don't really like Robots	17/12/10	-
Fan Chants at Hitmen	31/01/11	-
Peanut butter pizza tutorial (Video)	03/06/11	-
"Future" - (Corning Glass) (via Terry O'Riley)	03/06/11	-
Derek K. Miller	31/07/11	13/09/11

So what can we see? Mostly that I only managed to get two posts done from the original list, the Introduction (which I split into two parts, the intro to the "The Blog the Blog" and the intro to "The Blog the Project") and my memorial post to Derek K. Miller. The others haven't been done for a variety of reasons.

By far the biggest reason is that the me of 2010 just doesn't have the same concerns that me of today does. So, while I could write most of these posts still, I'm not sure I'd feel the same push I would have had I not been procrastinating back in 2010. A few of these I have no idea what I was supposed to talk about (Closet? - mine should be be cleaner but what was my point, Garfield? - I don't even know) and some I don't really have anything to say on the topic (Harry Potter, Robots and Hitmen Chants). A few actually require me to learn new skills (how hard should it be to mock up Windows Shutdown Screens? damn hard if you aren't trained in it, it turns out).

Some of them may still be interesting, but I don't know that they match as well with the things I'm thinking about now, nor the things I'd like to focus on. Over all, at the moment, I feel that this blog should support all the other projects that I'm working on (and yes I know I'm not doing much right now, that'll be followed up on in another post). That's why I've been writing (a bit) about video games since at the moment I would like to focus more on learning to be a good developer of video games.

July is really the first month in which I've gotten any traction at all blogging, and that mostly through my Favorite YouTube Videos series. While the YouTube series is not exactly an amazingly deep set of posts, they are fun to write (and hopefully fun to read) and they give me some practice in getting things written and sent out. Given that my career requires (for the next 3 years at least) that I get better at writing and and presenting my work, any practice I can get doing this seems like a good thing.

With a "year" of blogging in hand, I feel excited to keep going (and actually more excited having written this post). As I mentioned, I would like to focus more on blogging about things that support the other projects I'm doing. This means in the short term I'm going to keep posting thoughts about different video games as a primary topic, but I'll keep posting about anything that I think is interesting and slowly flooding everyone with the videos I've favorited on YouTube (incidentally that should take about a year to get caught up on).

As I've said before I think that there should be a pre-determined end date for any project. I'm calling this the second season of the blog and it will run from now until August 1, 2013.