2012 so far
Mar. 9th, 2012 09:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
same_differenceSo it's been a good long while since I've written an update, and I think I probably should.
This year feels like it's been busy so far, and because of various things I've committed myself to it's only going to get busier. I'm really going to have to focus to get everything done on time. I also like to be in a position when I can come larping again, still hopefully I'll be able to make at least the last three campaign games.
So it's been busy. Work has thankfully had me in Bath which is good, but i really need to change job. This is not helped by the fact I still haven't managed to get my CV written. I just need to sit down and get it done, but I keep finding more interesting or more pressing things to do instead. It's been hard to sit down and write anything at the moment even LJ entries I mean to write get to put to the way side and forgotten about.
January went to a mixture of weekends busy seeing people or having people over, though I can't remember exactly what that was. A lot of my free time when I had energy, and no pressing chores to do, went on development team work for NexusClash. The last iteration had gone live just after Christmas, and with the pre-Christmas holiday to Disney land, low energy levels and then Christmas I hadn't done as much testing of the new skills as I wanted. The coding for the game is all a one man effort, as he doesn't really want to share the code with anyone at the moment, but I put in at least 40 odd hours of largely black box testing, and a certain amount of time spent organizing things. It's paid off this iteration is less buggy than the last, and it's nice to help with something I care about, but I can't help wondering if I should have made use of the time to do something else. I was really motivated to doing it, which was good, but there were definitely days when work had been a struggle to stay focused and be productive, but I'd then come home and do 5 hours of solid testing. If I could only find that same engagement with work or actually writing my CV to get a better job, I'd be sorted.
As an aside I've also managed to get a couple of people to play NexusClash which is good. Considering this is effectively the fan remake or the original, and between the two this'll be the sixth year I've been playing it's good to have real life people to talk to about it. It would be good to get more people playing, but I recognise it has both a somewhat steep initial learning curve, and also just won't be everyones' cup of tea.
And an aside to the aside, the creator of the original (now defunct) game Nexus War is involved in a new project: Stellavitae, almost no details beyond the existence of the website, and some details of the lore hidden in the source of the webpage. The creator Brandon Harris you might recognise as the Heavy Metal fan/angry hippy looking guy from the Wikipedia 'A personal appeal' banner adds (vaguely interesting fact: his banner out performed that of the founder Jimmy Wales's banner) from what I've seen is work is a very good programmer, the other guy I've never heard of before, but going by his website/CV appears to know his stuff, so I'm deeply curious to see just the technology used in this latest endeavor.
Aside aside, February while initially slated to be less busy, ended up being largely dominated by the need to reseal and re-grout around the edge of our bath tub. For the grout between the edging tiles and the wall tiles around the bath had cracked as the bath had settled under the weight of water, etc, when it was being used. This had occurred some time ago, and while annoying wasn't hugely critical as the bath was sealed behind it, so I felt I could wait for a theoretical good week when the house was largely empty to get it done. Of course in use water got into the cracks and behind the edging tiles, then eventually worked it's way around the seal and starting leaking into the plaster of the wall. As soon as that was spotted, off came the edging tiles and what followed was a fortnight of careful baths, with the first week left for everything to dry, and the second week for the main seal around the bath to fully go off before the edging was replaced. It's ended up not being the neatest job, but it'll do for now, and ought to both last a while and be easier to redo next time.
February also had a day out at Bristol Zoo for the delayed birthday celebration of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ailsa_chan followed by an ice cream party, as well as a caylithe visit on the same weekend. Not being aware of Bristol football matches and unhelpful Bristol to Brighton trains meant we had caylithe with us for longer than she originally planned, though I can't that was a bad thing in my eyes.
January and February also saw us watching Dollhouse with Joe, Ailsa, Marcus, James, Leena and Nikki, with us hosting it once every three weeks. It's definitely not Whedon writing to his strengths with the premise, but he does manage to build up that character interaction he does so well. We've just started watching the darker toned second series, but are taking a break of a couple of weeks as everyone is getting busy at different times.
March so far seems to be taken up with making costume for Minami. I'm annoyed at myself for once again not starting earlier, but I think from now on I just need to plan my time a bit more in advance rather than dealing with the most pressing matters for the week.
So speaking of planning, here are my milestones for this year, till about August.
This weekend is working on and all being well finishing one costume for Minami, and going to watch my brother and sister run the bath half marathon on Sunday. So no larping this weekend.
March 16th-19th is Minamicon, so no larping that weekend. Still I'm looking forward to the con even though quite a few people won't be able to make it this year for one reason or another.
The week following then, I'm going to get my CV written, and start the job hunting. I'm also going to take advantage of the somewhat lighter evenings to tackle and clear some of the garden before the spring growth really begins in earnest, I'd like to start gettings things set up to have a herb garden. If I can spend an evening that week working on larp costumes and a present to keep in the habit of sewing that would be good. I also need to work out an exercise regime for the kettle bells I bought a few weeks ago. My reward for spending time on these things will be playing Mass Effect 3 in small doses.
CV hopefully written the week of the 26th March, I need to be preparing the next session of my D&D campaign for the weekend long meet up with my old friends at Easter and formalising the rules document for my card game for more play testing. Making sure the house is all sorted for people staying over at the end of the week, as Saturday 31st March is Mike and Amber's wedding and wedding number one for 2012. All this while continuing to job hunt and sew.
That leaves me the 4 day week before Easter to focus on job hunting, sewing and any other urgent jobs.
With the Easter weekend over I've got 6 weeks till the end of May, in which I need to have completely planned and preferably stated the high level 36 hour, as well as made regular process on my costumes for Amecon. The weekend of the 21st of April is the 24 hour, which I would like to make if possible too.
June I need to focus on getting props made for the 36 hour and working on the Amecon costumes. Hopefully by this point I have a new job, and I'm working things around it. The 13-15th of June is Lou and Paul's Wedding (wedding number 2) which will also be a nice break down near Brighton, and the last weekend in June is the low level 36 hour.
July then has got to be working on costume, getting everything finalised for the High level 36 hour. Costumes, props and the larp will ideally need to be completed and ready to go by the end of the 29th, as there is no time for anything afterwards.
August is when things get extremely busy. The 4th of August is Rachael's sisters wedding (Wedding number 3). The weekend following is a long weekend for Amecon from the Thursday till the Monday, then Friday of that week is the High level 36 hour. Which is why everything needs to be ready sorted and largely packed and ready to go by the end of July at the very latest. The final bankholiday weekend in August might end up being a meet up with my old friends, as it's probably going to be the next date I can do, which means September I think I can maybe take a break.
Hopefully changing job will also get me some more holiday. Between the cons, weddings, larp events, and the long Christmas break with the trip to Disneyland, I have a day and a half left I can book off before the end of September to cover any emergencies.
So yes lots to do, still if I can build up some momentum and keep things going, I should be able to achieve a lot by the end of the summer, and hopefully make more progress on my longer term goals of getting a game I've designed published, learning to swim so I can go swimming with sharks, and teaching myself degree level physics (probably primarily particle physics and astronomy).
This year feels like it's been busy so far, and because of various things I've committed myself to it's only going to get busier. I'm really going to have to focus to get everything done on time. I also like to be in a position when I can come larping again, still hopefully I'll be able to make at least the last three campaign games.
So it's been busy. Work has thankfully had me in Bath which is good, but i really need to change job. This is not helped by the fact I still haven't managed to get my CV written. I just need to sit down and get it done, but I keep finding more interesting or more pressing things to do instead. It's been hard to sit down and write anything at the moment even LJ entries I mean to write get to put to the way side and forgotten about.
January went to a mixture of weekends busy seeing people or having people over, though I can't remember exactly what that was. A lot of my free time when I had energy, and no pressing chores to do, went on development team work for NexusClash. The last iteration had gone live just after Christmas, and with the pre-Christmas holiday to Disney land, low energy levels and then Christmas I hadn't done as much testing of the new skills as I wanted. The coding for the game is all a one man effort, as he doesn't really want to share the code with anyone at the moment, but I put in at least 40 odd hours of largely black box testing, and a certain amount of time spent organizing things. It's paid off this iteration is less buggy than the last, and it's nice to help with something I care about, but I can't help wondering if I should have made use of the time to do something else. I was really motivated to doing it, which was good, but there were definitely days when work had been a struggle to stay focused and be productive, but I'd then come home and do 5 hours of solid testing. If I could only find that same engagement with work or actually writing my CV to get a better job, I'd be sorted.
As an aside I've also managed to get a couple of people to play NexusClash which is good. Considering this is effectively the fan remake or the original, and between the two this'll be the sixth year I've been playing it's good to have real life people to talk to about it. It would be good to get more people playing, but I recognise it has both a somewhat steep initial learning curve, and also just won't be everyones' cup of tea.
And an aside to the aside, the creator of the original (now defunct) game Nexus War is involved in a new project: Stellavitae, almost no details beyond the existence of the website, and some details of the lore hidden in the source of the webpage. The creator Brandon Harris you might recognise as the Heavy Metal fan/angry hippy looking guy from the Wikipedia 'A personal appeal' banner adds (vaguely interesting fact: his banner out performed that of the founder Jimmy Wales's banner) from what I've seen is work is a very good programmer, the other guy I've never heard of before, but going by his website/CV appears to know his stuff, so I'm deeply curious to see just the technology used in this latest endeavor.
Aside aside, February while initially slated to be less busy, ended up being largely dominated by the need to reseal and re-grout around the edge of our bath tub. For the grout between the edging tiles and the wall tiles around the bath had cracked as the bath had settled under the weight of water, etc, when it was being used. This had occurred some time ago, and while annoying wasn't hugely critical as the bath was sealed behind it, so I felt I could wait for a theoretical good week when the house was largely empty to get it done. Of course in use water got into the cracks and behind the edging tiles, then eventually worked it's way around the seal and starting leaking into the plaster of the wall. As soon as that was spotted, off came the edging tiles and what followed was a fortnight of careful baths, with the first week left for everything to dry, and the second week for the main seal around the bath to fully go off before the edging was replaced. It's ended up not being the neatest job, but it'll do for now, and ought to both last a while and be easier to redo next time.
February also had a day out at Bristol Zoo for the delayed birthday celebration of
ailsa_chan followed by an ice cream party, as well as a caylithe visit on the same weekend. Not being aware of Bristol football matches and unhelpful Bristol to Brighton trains meant we had caylithe with us for longer than she originally planned, though I can't that was a bad thing in my eyes.January and February also saw us watching Dollhouse with Joe, Ailsa, Marcus, James, Leena and Nikki, with us hosting it once every three weeks. It's definitely not Whedon writing to his strengths with the premise, but he does manage to build up that character interaction he does so well. We've just started watching the darker toned second series, but are taking a break of a couple of weeks as everyone is getting busy at different times.
March so far seems to be taken up with making costume for Minami. I'm annoyed at myself for once again not starting earlier, but I think from now on I just need to plan my time a bit more in advance rather than dealing with the most pressing matters for the week.
So speaking of planning, here are my milestones for this year, till about August.
This weekend is working on and all being well finishing one costume for Minami, and going to watch my brother and sister run the bath half marathon on Sunday. So no larping this weekend.
March 16th-19th is Minamicon, so no larping that weekend. Still I'm looking forward to the con even though quite a few people won't be able to make it this year for one reason or another.
The week following then, I'm going to get my CV written, and start the job hunting. I'm also going to take advantage of the somewhat lighter evenings to tackle and clear some of the garden before the spring growth really begins in earnest, I'd like to start gettings things set up to have a herb garden. If I can spend an evening that week working on larp costumes and a present to keep in the habit of sewing that would be good. I also need to work out an exercise regime for the kettle bells I bought a few weeks ago. My reward for spending time on these things will be playing Mass Effect 3 in small doses.
CV hopefully written the week of the 26th March, I need to be preparing the next session of my D&D campaign for the weekend long meet up with my old friends at Easter and formalising the rules document for my card game for more play testing. Making sure the house is all sorted for people staying over at the end of the week, as Saturday 31st March is Mike and Amber's wedding and wedding number one for 2012. All this while continuing to job hunt and sew.
That leaves me the 4 day week before Easter to focus on job hunting, sewing and any other urgent jobs.
With the Easter weekend over I've got 6 weeks till the end of May, in which I need to have completely planned and preferably stated the high level 36 hour, as well as made regular process on my costumes for Amecon. The weekend of the 21st of April is the 24 hour, which I would like to make if possible too.
June I need to focus on getting props made for the 36 hour and working on the Amecon costumes. Hopefully by this point I have a new job, and I'm working things around it. The 13-15th of June is Lou and Paul's Wedding (wedding number 2) which will also be a nice break down near Brighton, and the last weekend in June is the low level 36 hour.
July then has got to be working on costume, getting everything finalised for the High level 36 hour. Costumes, props and the larp will ideally need to be completed and ready to go by the end of the 29th, as there is no time for anything afterwards.
August is when things get extremely busy. The 4th of August is Rachael's sisters wedding (Wedding number 3). The weekend following is a long weekend for Amecon from the Thursday till the Monday, then Friday of that week is the High level 36 hour. Which is why everything needs to be ready sorted and largely packed and ready to go by the end of July at the very latest. The final bankholiday weekend in August might end up being a meet up with my old friends, as it's probably going to be the next date I can do, which means September I think I can maybe take a break.
Hopefully changing job will also get me some more holiday. Between the cons, weddings, larp events, and the long Christmas break with the trip to Disneyland, I have a day and a half left I can book off before the end of September to cover any emergencies.
So yes lots to do, still if I can build up some momentum and keep things going, I should be able to achieve a lot by the end of the summer, and hopefully make more progress on my longer term goals of getting a game I've designed published, learning to swim so I can go swimming with sharks, and teaching myself degree level physics (probably primarily particle physics and astronomy).
