Project 1 : A Blog - Wrap Up / Update

A year ago I started the "Blog as a Project" project (not to be confused with the "Blog as a Blog") and today is the day I'm supposed to wrap it up.

Let me say first that I'm planning to start a "second season" of the blog, but that I'm still not sure exactly what form it will take.

When I first started out to blog more I had a list of things I thought would be interesting to blog about. I even have a nicely organized file that lists them all. I'll include that below so you can see what I had been thinking about before I started.

Idea	Date Added	Date Published
Intro	06/08/10	01/08/11
Windows Shutdown	06/08/10	-
Thesis	06/08/10	-
We are all going to live in public	06/08/10	-
Thesis Wordle	06/08/10	-
Ad incentives (omgpop vs tetrisfriends)	06/08/10	-
Why everyone should be a polymath	12/08/10	-
Not all collections are created equal	12/08/10	-
Clean Desktop	13/08/10	-
Nerd Fighting / Proactive Nerds	14/08/10	-
My Pockets	14/08/10	-
Black book ToDo List	14/08/10	-
Enjoying Wear	14/08/10	-
Pomplamoose Videos expertise in sound crafting	15/08/10	-
Closet	28/08/10	-
Water Bottle Spigot	28/08/10	-
Garfield / Adding more to the given story	18/11/10	-
I don't really like Harry Potter	18/11/10	-
I don't really like Robots	17/12/10	-
Fan Chants at Hitmen	31/01/11	-
Peanut butter pizza tutorial (Video)	03/06/11	-
"Future" - (Corning Glass) (via Terry O'Riley)	03/06/11	-
Derek K. Miller	31/07/11	13/09/11

So what can we see? Mostly that I only managed to get two posts done from the original list, the Introduction (which I split into two parts, the intro to the "The Blog the Blog" and the intro to "The Blog the Project") and my memorial post to Derek K. Miller. The others haven't been done for a variety of reasons.

By far the biggest reason is that the me of 2010 just doesn't have the same concerns that me of today does. So, while I could write most of these posts still, I'm not sure I'd feel the same push I would have had I not been procrastinating back in 2010. A few of these I have no idea what I was supposed to talk about (Closet? - mine should be be cleaner but what was my point, Garfield? - I don't even know) and some I don't really have anything to say on the topic (Harry Potter, Robots and Hitmen Chants). A few actually require me to learn new skills (how hard should it be to mock up Windows Shutdown Screens? damn hard if you aren't trained in it, it turns out).

Some of them may still be interesting, but I don't know that they match as well with the things I'm thinking about now, nor the things I'd like to focus on. Over all, at the moment, I feel that this blog should support all the other projects that I'm working on (and yes I know I'm not doing much right now, that'll be followed up on in another post). That's why I've been writing (a bit) about video games since at the moment I would like to focus more on learning to be a good developer of video games.

July is really the first month in which I've gotten any traction at all blogging, and that mostly through my Favorite YouTube Videos series. While the YouTube series is not exactly an amazingly deep set of posts, they are fun to write (and hopefully fun to read) and they give me some practice in getting things written and sent out. Given that my career requires (for the next 3 years at least) that I get better at writing and and presenting my work, any practice I can get doing this seems like a good thing.

With a "year" of blogging in hand, I feel excited to keep going (and actually more excited having written this post). As I mentioned, I would like to focus more on blogging about things that support the other projects I'm doing. This means in the short term I'm going to keep posting thoughts about different video games as a primary topic, but I'll keep posting about anything that I think is interesting and slowly flooding everyone with the videos I've favorited on YouTube (incidentally that should take about a year to get caught up on).

As I've said before I think that there should be a pre-determined end date for any project. I'm calling this the second season of the blog and it will run from now until August 1, 2013.

Blog: Favorite Youtube Videos (Volume 4)

Welcome to the fourth volume of my favorite youtube videos series. This volume is a musical grab bag and another visit to internet history.

• The first video is one of the versions of the Pi song. There are several songs composed so that the digits of Pi inform the music. In this case it dictates the pitch of the note, there are others where the digits control other things, you can see a bit more at Numberphile's video on making a Mathmetal song about Phi. This version is pretty up beat and kinda fun to listen to.
• The next three videos are that visit to internet history. Brentalfloss has become pretty well known for his video game music "with lyrics" series, but did you know that he started out doing simple covers of old video game songs? (You did? Oh for heaven's sake, why do I keep using this device?) Here we see three renditions of Mario Bros. music two on keyboard and one a cappella and you can see a little bit of where Brent is going to go, but I have to say at the time I didn't expect just how cool he was going to become.
• The final video is a funky rendition of Fur Elise by a guy called GovernorWatts. I also found him through some of his video game music videos, but he wandered off into other fields. It's interesting that at the time Brentalfloss and GovenorWatts seemed about the same (both doing "in bedroom music covers" and political rants) and to see now how differently they came out. (And no I'm still not sure about the"son of Stephen Colbert" bit, but I do know that this was going long before the Report came out.)

Yet Another Update

I've decided, given that this is about the first anniversary of the "Blog as Project" part of the blog, to make a couple of simple changes around here. Over all, I'm happy, I feel like I'm getting better and that things are moving along.

However I haven't posted as much as I'd like to and at least some of that is due to the way I have the projects structured. They feel a bit too big to me and like I should have something substantial before I do anything (which is why there are so few). I've also been busy, as you may notice up at the top this is the "productivity" journal of  PhD and that means that I actually need to get some of my school work done as well.

In order to manage the projects better I'm going to add two other categories. The first is "Mini Projects" in which I will include things that are quick to do and will be one or two posts (and I think a lot of "after action reports"). The second category is "Academic Projects" in which I may detail more of the things I do in relation to my degree, these may be quite vague, since most of my work is not yet published and there are quite a few things that I'd rather not spoil on myself. Still I hope that I can keep track of that part of my life on here, all be it in a fairly vague manner.

I've also changed the font for the site, since I discovered that I apparently don't like san-serif body text any more. Hopefully the site will easier to read.

Blog: Favorite Youtube Videos (Volume 3)

This is the third volume of my favorite youtube video series. In this volume we take a break from the video game music for some exciting time lapse videos and take a look at the earliest days of an internet phenomenon.

• The first video is a time lapse of various night scenes accompanied by very beautiful music. Keep an eye out for the LAX landing sequence.
• The second  and third videos are both photo-a-day projects of two guys who recorded a picture of themselves every day for several years. The first at least is pretty well known and parodied but it's still a fascinating thing to watch. The second I think is less well known but interesting in its own right as the man goes through a lot of maturing over the course of the video.
• The next two videos are little pieces of internet history. Yahtzee Croshaw is known for his long running, snarky, fast talking video game reviews on the escapist. But did you know he got that job on the basis of two videos he posted to youtube? (You did? Well ok then I'll just go feel not special over here.) Please to enjoy the slowest talking you will ever hear from Yahtzee.