Over the last month I picked up a new habit of putting personal tasks on the calendar instead of making decisions day by day. This has made the streak system itself superfluous, since I will now tend to set up a recurring event instead. I am still making progress, week by week, but doing it this way has made it less stressful for me. I'll let the streak run out now and think about what I want to try streaking next, probably going back towards a "creative projects" goal again that lets me show work.
I think just about the only cleaning thing I've done this week is dishes. I think I just pushed too hard on too many things last week.
I had a box of Nintendo stuff that I hadn't donated before. It feels good to put it somewhere where there is a hope of conservation.
I've evolved what I'm doing a bit. I still have plenty of stuff that can go to MADE, and I did that this week, but now I'm getting a little more systematic about it. I'm working with a calendar now and am using that to block out time periods where I should work on this stuff(usually, the morning, right after I get up).
I think working with the calendar will make it possible for me to use my time better. The trick I'm using is to not schedule it too tightly and give myself time to feel like I'm procrastinating.
I hauled the heavy coin jar to the nearest Coinstar and redeemed it for a $106.23 Amazon gift card(gift card = no fee). I still have the shoebox, but it can wait.
I had a box with various games and magazine demos in jewel cases. Gave them all to MADE.
My dad decided to do a bit cleaning earlier this week, so I gave him a hand. Mostly removing dust, tossed a few things and put stuff in boxes.
Also I think the dusting directly triggered a massive flareup of hayfever. Have to remember to shake out the bedding immediately after.
I have been making good on the use of the old Asus netbook so I decided to order an backup battery and AC adapter for it, in case the supply of those becomes rare. As I did that I also got some USB micro cables, two backup batteries for my phone and a standalone charger for phone batteries(apparently preferred to charging cables by some).
Progress on removing stuff has been pretty good otherwise, I am now making a habit of finding a few things to donate to MADE when I go visit there for coworking.
Many of the books I have are a good fit for the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment in Oakland. Since I visit there regularly I may make a series out of hauling over and depositing stuff there. For this week I will run over a relatively small load.
(Last week was GDC and I totally dropped the streak!)
While waiting on some laundry I documented a whole shelf and found some old stuff that could be tossed. Efficiency++
I found a few documents to shred in there. It wasn't full, too! I didn't find the power supply like I hoped. Next week I will document a bookshelf.
I have this tendency to shift time between what I did and what I plan to do in these updates. I was intending to search for that PSU case last week but instead I saw an "Ott-Lite" desk lamp my mom had insisted on getting for me way back when I started college. I basically plugged it in and then never used it - it was just part of a cute narrative she had developed of how I would study hard or something. It was still in the original box, it still had the bulb and everything.
So I decided to quietly remove it and dump it on the street yesterday, in a location where UCSF students commonly pass through, with a "FREE" sign. It was gone within an hour or so of me leaving it out. Perhaps it will go on to realize that narrative she had...
Anyway, next week I want to scale back my PSU search towards just getting into and documenting one of the other boxes I have from college. They're a bit more buried than my other stuff.
I have a PC that I used in college and I made some "creative" modifications to cool it while quieting down the fan noise, including taking off the PSU cover. Now I want to get rid of it but I want to at least find that cover and replace it before I do so.
Confession: Have not done last week's task yet. It's OK.
I have, like, two jars of coins that I'm never going to use with my current habits. I should try taking them to a cash exchanger.
I tend to let things pile up without shredding them as I get them...
There are way, way too many old books in this house. The problem is that this family gets sentimental about them even if reading them is no longer useful, and they're sometimes hard to dispose of in a responsible way. The friction is high, so they don't get moved.
I will attempt to combat this by writing up what books are there, so that I can pick them out for disposal at a different time, in one big batch. This is a fairly large project, so I won't do it all at once, I'll just do one box for this week.
One of the specific things I had on my mind while planning this streak was getting rid of my old feature phones. I have two of them, I think. Maybe three? I lost track. While I finished up with installing the SSD in my netbook last week I managed to pull out some old stuff to trash, with one of the phones among them. My plan is to try to charge them up and then take them down to the EcoATM I've seen in Westfield mall(technology eating technology). I expect to get $0 for them since they're old, but it's annoying to properly dispose of electronics to begin with, so any compensation is a bonus.
I took out an Android tablet and an Asus EEE-PC 900 netbook I had gotten ~4 and 6 years ago, respectively, and charged them up. I want to find a good use for the tablet, but it doesn't hold a charge well. The netbook needed a new SSD when I abandoned it, so I ordered a new 64 gigabyte drive. It will be a writing/notetaking device supplementing the binder that I already keep around. I will also try using it for development, but I anticipate it being a bit too small for that.
The Kha guide is complete and is here. I broke the streak right at the end, just got forgetful after finishing, but that's OK.
Postmortem thoughts
I churned through a lot of ideas in the past few months along the lines of "making game related tools". This forced me to confront what I meant by that and how I could execute on it in a reasonable amount of time, without any meandering.
What Went Right
What Went Wrong
Conclusions
This was a really good use of Streak Club, and I should come up with another streak for next year, with a different goal for stretching myself. Even if I only present blog posts, it helps with habit-forming.
I got sidetracked by holiday-related things. Still, a little bit of writing progress, and the API updated so now I'm going to have to go back and fix the old work.
It's coming along. I have an example game in progress.
I've been working on a guide for using the Kha software framework. It builds on Haxe to provide a highly portable abstraction for games and interactive media application, including graphics, audio, input, etc. The guide will serve as an introduction to the API, and also give Helpful Tips for Game Programming.
Uh, it's not done yet. Maybe it will be by next week! *Hopeful*
I settled on a 2-tap delay running at the same oversampling rate as the oscillator. The first tap is an allpass filter(attenuates its own feedback on output); the second is a comb filter(simple copy of the original signal).
It probably needs plenty more testing before I've sorted out all the bugs, and the best way to do that is to provide some interface to explore the synth. I might make a SFXR clone sometime soon, as I get the graphics implementation together and start making it more of an "engine".
The example is a "dry" signal followed by a "wet" (effected) signal.
