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: