Project 15: 12 Books in 21 Weeks

Provenance doesn't stand up to Ancillary Justice, but it is still a very fun space opera through an interesting universe.

Blog: Video Games of October

I was pretty unsettled in October and jumped between games a bunch. I don't love the feeling of not having something serious to play, but for now I'm focused elsewhere and I'm pretty happy just to get a chance to play when I get a chance.

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

1. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - One beautiful thing about Breath of the Wild is just how much there is to do. It makes it simple each time I turn it on to wander off into Hyrule and find something new and fun and engaging.
   
   

   

   Quite the outcome of a side trip.

   
   
2. Pikmin 3 - I love this game. I could play it forever. There's just so much brightness and charm. The game play presents a lovely challenge of first finding a solution and then optimizing that solution. Every Nintendo Direct, I'm always hoping to see more Pikmin 3.
   
   

   

   Work to do, work to do.



3. Kingdoms and Castles - I haven't bought too much in the way of new games lately, but listening to 3 Moves Ahead discuss Kingdoms and Castles it seems like enough fun for $10 to make it worth while. I've enjoyed it so far, although it doesn't have a huge range of things to do. There's something nice about building a simple city and using it to kill dragons.
   
   

   

   A dragon in the rain.



4. FTL: Faster than Light - I suck at FTL. I've been bad at FTL since it came out. Then I watched Eurogamer play it and thanks to Jonneh, I suddenly understood a lot about how *not* to suck at FTL. Either way, even if you're bad it's still a good time.
   
   

   

   Finally.



5. Pokémon Go - Daily bonuses keep me going, other than that I haven't played too much.
   
   

   

   This ... was a bad idea.

Here's my total play time chart for October:

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

Project 17: #NafYoFuthMo

It's November, so the Social Internet has turned to its habit of either doing or whining about #NaNoWriMo, in which people write a novel in a month. I don't have time to write a novel in a month and I do have a thesis to finish (related points).

via GIPHY

Therefore, I am going to do #NafYoFuthMo, National Finish Your F*ing Thesis Month. I'm not going to be able to finish everything this month, but I have enough stuff that I could do right now that it's a good time to give myself a big push and get closer to the line.

I have 3 big chapters I can finish, I'll consider it a win if I can have significant progress on each of the three. In the smaller scale I'm going to shoot for a new word target of 750 average each day.

I'll update on twitter regularly and occasionally here.

Project 15: 12 Books in 21 Weeks: Update 12

The second volume of Mouse Guard was as good as the first, and possibly even better. I don't read a lot of comics, so while I feel like the pace of the story is a little slow, that might just be par for the course. The art is absolutely phenomenal.

Project 15: 12 Books in 21 Weeks: Update 11

I finished the 10th Anniversary Audio Book version of American Gods last night (staying up way too late again). It was a fantastic read and I feel a little in awe of (and inspired by) just how wonderfully Gaiman writes a story. I enjoyed every single moment of it, I loved the characters, and the world, and most of all I loved how the characters, and the world harmonized with the story.

I also find it really weird (but interesting and cool) how similar Gaiman and Stephen King's stories feel.