Blog: Books Read in 2018

Cat

Good Reads

Blog Post: Books Read in 2018

Sand

Good Reads

Project 18: Video Game Play Tracker

I've been tracking the video games I play for the last few years now. It started out as a move to help me remember what I actually played over the course of a year and how now become something of a habit, as well as a good way for me to be more mindful about how and what I play.

Thus far I've been tracking what I've played in a Google sheet (actually 3 of them at this point). This works pretty well for the most part and it has a lot of nice "analytics" features (by which I mean it has nice pivot tables). I'm finding though that the Google sheet doesn't scale as well as it could and it's a little limited in terms of visualization options (especially 3 years into tracking).

At the same time I've been feeling a bit behind on some practical development skills. I'm not practicing as much as I'd like and when I do I'm messing with my behemoth PhD system.  (A story for another day.) I also don't play with as many dev tools and services as I'd like to.

Combining those things along with spending the last 4 months teaching novice Java programmers and I've decided to give myself *yet another* project. Generally my goal is to: make the Game Tracker work, make it work with Google Sheets and take advantage of anything that seems fancy and cool. Also get a little practice in working with a good git workflow and taking advantage of the tools GitHub provides. And most of all not to let any of this get in the way of the other things I need to be doing.

The goal here is to keep it small and keep it simple. For Phase I, I'd like to get the basics set up: a text menu system to track games and play sessions and save and loading to file. I'll check in next on May 15, 2018.

(And if you find yourself wondering what happened to those games he was talking about, I'll get back to those, but this (right now) seems like it's going to be more compatible as a project that I get to work on after all my other work is done for the day.)

Blog Post: Books Read in 2018

Phenomenal

Good Reads

Blog Post: Books Read in 2018

Humanity, Power and Price.

Good Reads

Blog Post: Books Read in 2018

Two different ends of the world. 2018 in a book update.

Good Reads

Blog: Games of January 2018

I'm pretty happy with what I played in January. If you've been following for a while I suspect you can guess which games are going to show up in my top five. I've been busy with work and pushing on my thesis so I haven't wanted to game for adventure, instead I've been gaming for relaxation and comfort. At the end of the day I've enjoyed another month of games.
My top five games (by play time) for January were:

1. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild  - So I'm moving in on the end of my 100% Master Quest play through. I have most of the shrines finished (I think I'm at 97 right now) and most of the side quests done (no idea how many, but a lot). I'm still loving every minute of it. I think this has been the right game for me at the moment, because it has so much depth I've been able to come back to it again and again, which works well with my plan to stay focused on my thesis as much as I can.
   
   

   

   A fine mountain stroll.

   
   
2. Europa Universalis 4  - History talk enevitably brings me back into EU4, as does spending too much time sitting at my desk and cold weather. So I've been back into EU4 trying to rule the world as the Ottomans (and trying not to get crushed but Poland and Austria).
   
   

   

   A fight for Cairo

   
   


3. Stardew Valley - Again on the deep winter gaming tip, I've been playing more Stardew. It's another great game for that regular returning and short play sessions.
   
   

   

   An event in the night.

   
   


4. Ogre Battle 64 - I am ... almost done. I started this play through in November 2016 and I think I'm going to finish my favourite game for the 2nd time. As I've said before I love this game, even though it has some really significant flaws. I think it ties into my theme for the month, it's a comfortable game and one that's easy to come back to time after time.
   
   

   

   A showdown of friends.



5. Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival - Again good Animal Crossing charm and good friends to play it with.
   
   

   

   A plaza of fun (and dry cats).

   
   

Here's my total play time for January:

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

Blog Post: Books Read in 2018

Wow. Woah. Yikes.

Good Reads

Project 15: 12 Books in 21 Weeks - Wrapup

That was fun. I've been really bad about reading over the last few years and I wanted to kick myself to do a little more. And I think I did that, I read 18 books, some were comic volumes or graphic novels and a lot were audio books but I'm happy. I read several books I really enjoyed, particularly The Nameless City and American Gods. The Laundry books also scratch a lot of my nerdy itches even if they do sometimes leave me wanting just a little more.

I'm happy to wrap the project here, although I think I'm going to try to keep a list of my reading updated as I go (like the Lee and Miller's books read list) which will look basically like the project updates did. I've also challenged myself to read 32 books in 2018 in the good reads reading challenge.

Blog: Games of December 2017

I didn't get quite as much time to relax into over the holidays as I'd hoped, but I did still get to play a bit of everything.

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

1. Stardew Valley - Stardrew Valley is still beautiful. I wanted something soothing to play while I spent most of my time marking, this fit the bill. It's also nice that it comes in bitesized chunks. I started a new play-though and now Amri is building a very nice farm.
   
   

   

   Welcome to Old Man's Farm

   
   
2. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Still deep and I haven't even played any of the DLC story missions yet. I'm about 20 shrines short and my plan now is to finish those and power up the armour as much as I can and then tackle the DLCs.
   
   

   

   Always a new vista.



3. Pokémon Go - A pokéstop a day keeps the streak up and the game going.
   
   

   

   It's a new generation, and a new electric rodent.

   
   
4. Ogre Battle 64 - Cold winter nights and a game that plays itself, what else could you need? Whiskey is a good addition actually.
   
   

   

   This is like the second to last battle in the game and the first one that actually feels tactical.

   
   
5. Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival - I got this for my friend and I have thoroughly enjoyed Amiibo Fest. If you like Animal Crossing, you might too. It brings a ton of AC charm and is a nice light game, and it has a really nice set of mini-games to play too. (We may have spent a little bit too long dropping cats in to the ocean ... I mean by accident).
   
   

   

   Welcome to Charmingville. Population, however much you're willing to spend on cards.

   
   

Here's my total play time chart for December:

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

Blog: 2017 in Games

I wasn’t really planning to keep tracking the games I played after 2016, but somehow on New Year’s Day I kept track of the games I was playing and then it just seemed natural for the rest of the year. I think it’s been interesting to track what had my attention when and I think tracking my games played has helped me make better choices about the games I play.

This post is a wrap up of the year, including a look at what I’ve played, what I’ve enjoyed and some thoughts about games I had this year.

The Blood Moon Rises, and I still have many miles to go.

Top Games by Time Played

In total I’ve played 53 different games in 2017 and played for a total of [667] hours. The game I played the least was The Perfect Tower on Kongregate. Sunless Sea is in the middle of my pack at just about 5 hours and I don’t think you’ll be to surprised that Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is my most played game at [211] hours.

By play time, my top 10 games of 2017 (in hours played) were:

• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 216
• Hearthstone - 48
• Marvel Puzzle Quest - 45
• Civilization VI - 41
• Pokemon Go - 29
• Mario Kart 8 - 25
• Cities: Skylines - 21
• Stardew Valley - 21
• EarthBound - 19
• Ogre Battle 64 - 15

I think seems like a good description of me and my year in 2017. It is interesting that I stopped playing Hearthsone and MPQ midway through the year, but they’ve stayed high up on the list. Also despite having played PoGo most days at least in the second half of the year, it isn’t as high as I feel like it might have been.

If you’re interested, here is the my total time played for all games in 2017:

Top Games by My Rating

At the end of last year and this year I’ve sat down and rated each of the games I’ve played on a 10 point scale (0-5 by half steps). I didn’t look back at my ratings last year, but I’m thinking if I keep this up for several years I might find an interesting evaluation of either myself or the games I’ve played over time. For the time being, this year, I really liked:

• Bastion
• Earthbound
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
• Pikmin 3
• Rakuen
• Sunless Sea

He's the WORST!

No real surprises here. A bunch of solid games that have really held up over time and a couple of new ones that, as I’ve already said, I really liked.

Thoughts

So I think 2017 was one of the best year for games. As my game of 2017 post says, I didn’t get to play that many, but I think we’ve seen a general switch (pun marginally intended) in the industry to deeper games that have more artistic integrity and that acknowledge their players are real, intelligent people.

First hand I can tell you that Breath of the Wild left me feeling empowered as a player to explore the world. The creators clearly sweat the small stuff, putting detail into every corner of the world, but at the same time, there’s nothing in the game forcing me to look anywhere, so each discovery feels like my own.

I can also tell you that Rakuen, a much smaller indie game, has that same attention. It may not have the same depth of game-play, but the creators again trust you to manage the depth of the story and to deal with the fact that life can be sad and happy all together and in turns. I think we’re also going to see much more mature stories coming in the next few years.

From games media and YouTube I’ve been really struck by the depth of other games such as Mario + Rabbids, which seems like a real stream-lining and strengthening of the XCOM model mixed with the attention to detail that shows up in most Nintendo products. I feel like Assassin's Creed: Origins similarly streamlines and strengthens the pieces of the series that people loved.

For myself, I think I’ve been happier with the games I played in 2017 than I have for a long time. While I’ve definitely had times where I wasn’t sure what I wanted to play or played something that was not as satisfying, generally I was able to make good choices and spend my gaming time well. Zelda provided some of that since I didn’t suffer from: that was a tremendous experience, what do I play now? but I think my relationship with games was strong this year and I was good about playing good things.

I mean, he doesn't, but this game is still so open and free.

Hopefully I’ll keep that up for next year. I’m trying to pay attention to what’s fun or interesting and making sure that I get a good mix of both. I’m thinking early 2018 is going to be dedicated to some older games (Beyond Good and Evil and Breath of Fire II) and getting better at some other games (Civ VI and EU 4). Then, whenI get my PhD finished, I’ll get a chance to dive into the wide world of Switch.

2018 Resolutions

I haven’t made a post like this before, because I usually feel like how I’m going to live my life is really my own business. This year, I feel like I’d like to be a bit more public since, as I’ll talk about later, I feel like the way we’re making use of social media needs some improvement. I also think as a university instructor and a grad student we often keep quiet about how we’re doing, and I think being a little more open we can all make our lives a little better.

via GIPHY

So here are three general resolutions I’d like to work on for next year:

1. Monotask More - I don’t multitask well and inevitably when I set out to do several things at the same time, I don’t get any of them done the way I’d like. My goal for next year is to do that less, I want to pick one thing, do it as well as I can and then go on to something else. In particular I’m going to try to set aside specific time for twitter and email so I don’t interrupt myself. 
2. Hold Fewer Opinions - At some point this year John and Hank Green decided that we all hold too many useless opinions and I think I agree with them. I think I’m already alright at this, there are often times when I feel like it’s not worth getting excited on a particular topic. At the same time, there are points where I get upset over things that don’t really matter and I’d be happier if I could just move on. My goal for next year is to see when I don’t need to hold a strong opinion and if I don’t need one, I’ll try not to have one. 
3. Act More - I think this ties in with both of the previous resolutions, but I often avoid getting stuff done, even when there’s nothing really holding me back from doing it. I’m going to try to cut down on the size of my todo list to make it easier to see what needs doing and to push myself to get more stuff done. 

And I have a few specific things too:

1. Finish my Thesis - this is the year.
2. Be more Engaged on Twitter - I like Twitter, or at least I like how Twitter was in the early days. I don’t know how to fix all of the problems that Twitter has now, but I think trying to talk more with cool people about cool things is a decent way to go. I’m going to try to reply more and retweet less. 
3. Read More - I don’t read enough, so next year I want to buff that up. (And I’ll be making a project to that end soon). 
4. Make More Stuff - I want to write more, draw more, sculpt more, program more. I think I feel best about myself when I’m getting something made, so I want to do that. 
5. See More Things - I have an amazing flexibility in where I work right now and I should make better use of that to go and see cool places even while I’m working. 

I hope 2018 rises to meet us all as we rise to meet it.