Blog: Books Read in 2020

Chessconomics. Society. Small. Busy.

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Blog: Games of September 2020

September was fairly unremarkable. I've focused on a few games as I've been busy teaching and working on some of the other projects I want to get done.

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

1. XCOM: Chimera Squad - I've really been enjoying Chimera Squad. It's got a lot of replayability, with enough differences between the characters to make every mission interesting. Honestly I'd love to see a few more investigations to take on, since this has been a ton of fun to play.
   
   


2. Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Didn't play quite as much as I have been. Between being busy with work and trying to get more other things done I've been spending less time on my island. I've also been increasingly disappointed with how little there is to do. 
   
   


3. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - This game is so, so good. I started playing again because my partner bought a copy for the switch (inspired a bit by all the time we've now spent yelling at Stephen & Mal). She's been playing and enjoying it and I wanted in on the fun. I'm over 300 hours in at this point and I'm still finding new things. The switch version feels a little better than the Wii U, but generally this is such a well put together game.
   
   


4. Cities: Skylines - Not a game I played a ton of, but being back to work my numbers are a little more focused then they are during the summer. Still I've been watching All the Stations, and I got excited to make myself a city with a really good rail network.
   
   


5. Golf Story - I think the replayability of this game is really good, I just haven't picked it up that much. It could also use the ability to bring your story mode character into the pick-up and play sessions.
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for September:

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

Projects Update: September 2020

My last general project update was in May and I was a bit surprised by how fast May went by. Now, it's September...

Honestly I struggled a bit with productivity over the summer and eventually gave myself permission to just take some time off. I also hit a bit of a complicated patch with finding post PhD employment and figuring out what I want to be when I "grow up".  

In short I'm finding myself myself drawn to a creative career as well as (or in favour of) an academic one. So I'm trying to balance both of those for the next while to see what's possible. I've set myself some goals for the next year to give myself some firmer deadlines and so that I can see what's possible with what I can create for myself.

I am finding it a bit rough teaching this semester. I had hoped to be able to take the semester to increase my creative output but ended up with more teaching duties than I'd expected. This is making it a bit rough to get things done, but I'm doing my best to plug along where I can. Remembering I can take the time for myself has been tough, but I think I'm learning.

Where I am right now:

The Blog (Project 1)

I did give an update as usual at the beginning of August. This trucks along and the reading and games updates are a fun task to take a break and do.

The Roofs (Project 11)

I didn't write nearly as much as I might have, but I did start writing and it felt pretty good. 

I finished around 4000 words in May/June, before getting distracted and wandering away from the project. I managed to get my focus back in August and started a rolling edit to revisit what I had and to tighten it up. I'm trying to avoid doing that again, since I need to keep moving forward, but I'm still feeling like I'm accomplishing something.  

Chrono Trigger Sprites (Project 12)

I finished the Robo sprite a while back. I was able to do it really quickly, but I've been slow to write the project post about it. I have it on my plate to get done in the next few days.

I'm enjoying working on these, but I'm thinking they're a lower priority than some of the other things I want to work on right now. I have 3 main characters left to do from the playable characters, but I think I'm going to tackle them when I have a quiet Sunday.

Robo In Action!

Game Tracker (Project 18)

I didn't get to work much on the Game Tracker at all. I'm feeling a bit conflicted about this because on the one hand it's not a priority for me. I want to focus on writing, making games, Code Click. On the other hand, it's beneficial to teaching and it's been the motivation for me to learn more about developing modern real world software. 

Infinite Acorn Adventure - Bubble Puzzler (Project 13)

As I said, I've spent a lot of the summer thinking about what I want to do and how I want it to sustain me (and also putting food on the table might be nice). One of the things that really came to the fore for me was that making games was a place I wanted to focus. I've also been thinking a lot about how I want to be able to tell stories through games and use games as a mechanism for supporting a good life.

As such, I've been a bit frustrated with myself about the fact that I'm not working on making games and I'm not learning about making games. So I think the solution to that is to make a game.

Code Click (Project 20)

I think one of the roles I fit very well is computer science communicator. I'm interested in making things easily understood and I think generally there's a problem in communicating about computer science. Given that I'm in a state of looking for full time work in some combination of technology and teaching, spending a bit of time working on my computer science communication skills seems worth while. 

For my classes this semester, I've obviously had to move my teaching on-line, so I'm already developing those skills in a university context. I think pushing the science communication skills makes sense, and I think trying to capitalize on Code Click is a good place to start.

Where to next?

My thinking for the next bit of projects is:

• Infinite Acorn Adventure - A prototype in Processing by October 31.
• Code Click - One post by October 31.
• Game Tracker - I'd like to have a google docs back end, working by November 31.
• The Roofs - I'd like to get a finished (but bad) draft by August 1, 2021.
• Chrono Trigger Sprites - If I get to them I get to them, I'm not going to give myself a deadline.
• The Blog - will keep travelling along.

Blog: Books Read in 2020

Angst. Boobeconomics. Wareconomics. Diversions.

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Blog: Games of August 2020

Having taken a good chunk of July off to play video games (and like, vacation, sort of), I started back to getting things done. As such I played a little less and tried to focus a bit more on one game at a time.

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

1. Golf Story - I love Mario Golf, and I'm patiently waiting for a new one on the switch. In the mean time, I watched Proton Jon play Golf Story on his stream back at the end of July and the itch got me. I really enjoyed the golf mechanic, and thought the story was fairly charming. I think I'm going to do a post about it, but its definitely interesting to mix RPG mechanics with non-combat mechanics.
   
   

   

   Victory!

   
   
2. Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Still enjoying the daily grind in ACNH. Feeling a bit sad that there's stuff missing from New Leaf. I'm sure COVID sheltering has affected Nintendo's plans for the game, but the game is wearing just a touch thin finally.
   
   

   

   Fireworks!

   
   


3. Paper Mario: The Origami King - I really enjoyed The Origami King. Conversely to Golf Story I think RPG mechanics without experience griding actually works very well. The Paper Mario games are also extremely well written and this one was no exception.
   
   

   

   Paper!

   
   


4. XCOM: Chimera Squad - I think taking modern XCOM and breaking it down into bite sized chunks works really well. I've been enjoying Chimera Squad more than I remember enjoying XCOM 2. It's not always the tactical game I want, but overall I think it's great.
   
   

   

   Clear!

   
   


5. Octopath Traveller - I *want* to like Octopath, but compared to Golf Story and The Origami King, this is really hard to pick up. That's a bit on the mechanics, it's very slow in the UI and requires a lot of menuing. The addition of very, very slow cut scenes is also not helpful. Finally, while I love the game's combat, if you are low leveled some fights can last up to half an hour for no particular pay off. I'm left wishing for them to use the engine to remake Final Fantasy VI.
   
   

   

   Victory!

   
   

Here's my total play time chart for August:

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

Blog: Books Read in 2020

Planning. Great-manner. Economist-insert. Strategy.

I'm on Good Reads

Blog: Books Read in 2020

Boomerfic. Great-man.

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Blog: Books Read in 2020

Percerverance. Tradition.

I'm on Good Reads

Blog: Games of July 2020

I took a "vacation" and played video games in the last half of July. I'm not sure that was the perfect way to spend my time, but it was pretty good. I think I'd have liked something incredibly deep like a Final Fantasy to sink into, but since I didn't really have that I did the best I could with what I had.

My top five games (by play time) for July 2019 were:

1. Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Always a lovely game. It's not quite everything I could have hoped for in a "next-gen" animal crossing, but it certainly charming and I think compared to New Leaf, it does a good job of hiding the wires that make the world turn.
   
   

   

   Skye always brings a touch of joy.



2. Octopath Traveller - Knowing I'd need to get back to getting stuff done, I really pushed myself to play Octopath as much as I could. I ended up playing a bit more than I really enjoyed, since the game tends to push to long sessions. Overall however I think the game is pretty good. I'm planning a "Thought's on" post for Octopath, but that will be a little bit in coming.
   
   

   

   You know that thing where the ball gets really big when you're playing tennis...



3. Paper Mario: The Origami King - I liked Paper Mario: Colour Splash, and I think that The Origami King improves on it in every way. I've been enjoying playing through and I really like the pacing and the length. It's been easy to play and I appreciate that I'll be able to finish it in a relatively contained time.
   
   

   

   Come for the jumping and hammering, stay for the chill coffee philosophy. 
   



4. Wargroove - I was getting my butt kicked by Wargroove (I have a terrible condition of loving tactics games but also being really bad at them). I adjusted the difficulty down a bit and found it really fun and playable. I appreciated being able to play how I wanted to play without having to "be at the game's level". It's possible I may have to go back and play at a harder difficulty later on, but hopefully I'll have learned the systems better by then.
   
   

   

   Caeser wins hearts, minds and combat encouters.



5. Xenonauts - I do really love the original X-COM style of gameplay and Xenonauts definitely does a good job of recreating the organization and careful combat. It does stick very closely to the original format, so I find myself thinking about elements I'd want in a new X-COM style game, especially when it comes to base building and organization.
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for July:

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

Blog: Books Read in 2020

Happiness. Understanding. Thunder.

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Blog: Books Read in 2020

Loyalty. Morality. Leadership. Expectations. Strategy.

I'm on Good Reads

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.

Blog: Books Read in 2020

Politics. Endings. Identity.

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Blog: Books Read in 2020

Aliance. Plauges. Nostalgia.

I'm on Good Reads