Blog: Books Read in 2021

Choice. Faith. Overwhelming. Doom.
Family. Surprise. Friendship.
Death. Pain.

I'm on Good Reads

Blog: Books Read in 2021

Unpleasantness. Play. Ending. Gambits.

I'm on Good Reads

Blog Post: Video Games of July 2021

July was a much quieter month than the last few. I'm still working on finding my happy point for balance between getting stuff done and getting stuff played, but generally I was pretty happy. I found myself struggling a little bit with finding a game to play to relax with, but with a little bit of energy Trials of Mana has turn out to be a delight.

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

1. Mario Golf: Super Rush - This has turned out to be a good game to play when I need something to pick up at lunch (as with World Tour before it) and it's been something good to play quickly. It's not great and definitely has a noticeable lack of depth, but the moment to moment play is fun.
   
   
   


2. Battle Brothers - Other than the bit where my PC seems to be having some issues, especially while playing Battle Brothers, this continues to be a great game the play. I'm continuing to learn more and more and the depth required to play well has been really compelling.
   
   
   


3. Trials of Mana (3D Remake) - I've stalled out playing Seiken Densetsu 3 a few times. It kinda lacks the drive of early Secret of Mana and also suffers (for me) from not *being* Secret of Mana, so it results in a lot of huh, that's good but different. The combat in is also, not terribly easy to read. The 3D remake is pretty good, I've enjoyed the combat and I think they've made some reasonable chances, streamlining some of the rough places in the original.
   
   
   


4. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn - This took a little longer to finish than I'd hoped. From my perspective it provides a list of all the quality of life features that were eventually implemented in later games. On the other hand I *like* the story and the characters and compared to the games before it's much more dynamic and interesting. I think it was worth playing through, especially just after playing Path of Radiance, but I'm in a good spot to wait a little bit 
   
   
   


5. Peggle - I've ended up playing Peggle and Zuma when I've needed to get a break without getting up from the desk. (And really I *should* just be getting up from the desk.) Peggle takes a little bit longer to play than Zuma, so it ended up just ahead of it in the list.
   
   
   

Here's my total play time for July:

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

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.