Project 15: 12 Books in 21 Weeks: Update 5

Suddenly back in, I finished The Annihilation Score and The Nightmare Stacks, one of which took me a week or so to get into and the other of which I listened to straight through (basically). I think these are the two strongest in the Laundry Files so far and both were great (if slightly stressful) listens

Project 15: 12 Books in 21 Weeks: Update 4

More Stross, more Laundry. More Vampires? Don't be silly, vampires don't exist!

Project 1: The Blog - Season Seven

It’s August again. Which means it’s about that time that I decide what I’m going to do with the Blog again. So let me say “Happy (Belated) Blog Start and End Day”

As a quick reminder this blog comes in two parts, the Blog as Me Talking About Stuff, and the Blog as Project Report. Every year, on August 1, I wrap up a year’s blogging and decide if it’s worth doing it again next year. This way, there’s some concrete point where an ending can come if it needs to.

Last year, from August to the end of September, I blogged in what I’m thinking of as my “standard mode,” which means that I mostly posted Favourite Youtube posts, and kept track of my video game playing. In January I felt like I wanted to get further ahead on my PhD (yeah, I’m still working on it) as well as increase my focus on other projects, so I tried to reduce the amount of standard mode blogging I’m doing.

Each month since January, I’ve tried to keep up to date on my game tracking and then post a favourite youtube video if there’s some extra time. I’m roughly planning to continue the same way for the next year. Ideally two “non project posts” each month.

I have found the game tracking interesting. By the end of last year I felt overwhelmed, and tired, and didn’t want to do it any more. In particular, I had planned to do a few more posts than I did wrapping up the year. Then in January, I found it hard to stop tracking my play and then found that  if I got off my butt and posted the update post quickly each month, they were not too much extra effort.

For the next, I’m trying to get some more other things up and going. By this time next year my PhD needs to be finished. At the same time, I’m trying to take my other project time to get a few other things done. I’m working on same light game dev stuff, mostly teaching myself stuff I’d like to know how to do. I’m also working on some SciComm practice, I think the way my PhD has gone, I’d benefit from spending more time thinking about how we talk about computer science. Both of those should float up to posts in the next few weeks.

I should also mention that I turned ads on for the first time. I did this mostly as an experiment. I was curious how it would work. Additionally I’m hoping to spend more time communicating in a professional context in the future and it feels like if there’s any chance to offset the time I spend on this then I’d like to take it.

But there we go. Season seven, more of the same. Probably an episode where I put on some masks and pretend to be a bunch of different dead gods… wait, wrong season seven. I’ll check in again on August 1, 2018.

Project 15: 12 Books in 21 Weeks: Update 3

Back on the Stross wagon, with the next in the laundry files.