I’ve been to the library all week, and turns out the child/toddler event was all week long. So I got to see a lot of cute toddlers running around and being absolutely curious and adorable. 
One even tried to have a conversation with me (it made no sense, but it was cute)
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Managed to tune in for a morning panel of talks at a book history conference not a million miles from me, but I was able to watch online from bed, in my pyjamas. I’ve been asleep for most of the week, so to catch something live was a delight!
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I got a game submitted to ParserComp during one of the busiest, most crisis-ridden weeks of my life. Even if the game is totally broken and awful, it was a major victory to get it submitted.
And it’s an unqualified joy that I’ll have games to play next week when the dust settles and I inevitably get sick. Plus, I missed all of TALP while it was going on, and so I have those games, too.
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One half of a really major coding obstacle has been cleared. Once this other half is cleared, I will know with 100% certainty that my next game will be possible, on a technical level. 
YESSSS!!! A major, hard-fought victory!! 
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We have lactose free milk in the house again, and I had some nice eggs. Coffee has been my saving grace during trying to adjust my sleeping schedule again.
Also, July is Disability Pride Month, so cheers to that.
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i participated in clubfloyd (the ifMUD ‘play a parser together’ group) for the first time!
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I have just finished playing and reviewing (now queued) the Neo Twiny Jam entries 
That was… a lot more than I thought it would be. But so much fun!
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Kids are a lot like cats, (in that they sometimes almost prefer the box to the contents) and I was thrilled when my kid brother loved the little box with paper crinkles and a nice lid from his recent gift’s packaging, as a little vacation home for one of his plushies (he decorated it with the Minecraft stickers he’d been saving for ‘something special’) and today he surprised me by moving it all into a big tub.
He has a larger plushie that’s best friends with the little one, and he proudly showed off them inside the setup to me while explaining “it’s a fish tank like yours!” He even included a hide, (cotton swabs box) as I had taught him our pet betta had a little cave hide for some relaxation time and privacy for sleeping, and it’s the cutest thing ever.
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Munchkin was lounging on the couch while using a stolen hairbrush from my side table to brush his plushie’s fur. I was eating, and said more so to myself than anything “why is it so spicy?!” and he casually commented that “it’s okay, it won’t be forever. You can have some milk. It’ll fix it. I just know that.”
The kid’s pretty curious. He likes to ask me the five W’s and how, about nearly everything: toilets, sinks, dandelions, coffee, allergy medication, cars, ants, monarch butterflies, laundry machines, death, big lakes, thunder- you name it, and I’ve probably sat down with him and explained. If I don’t know the answer, we look it up or ask someone who might, and he’s gotten pretty savvy about looking things up on his own at the school or public library or from the reference books we have on the shelf at home.
So, ‘I just know that’ doesn’t usually pass scrutiny, so I asked him where he’d learned that from, (getting him to explain why he thinks something works a particular way, and then correcting or adding more information usually helps him understand it a bit better, so this is normal for us) and while brushing his plushie and blithely focusing on it’s fluff, he shrugged and replied “from you, that’s how I know it’s true. So, I know that.”
He’s almost cute enough to make up for ransacking my side table for plushie accessories (in his defence, they did look very dashing wearing some scrunchies as ‘ruffs but not like dogs. Like your books.’)
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My husband and I had a flying visit to St Andrews this afternoon, for afternoon tea in a nearby hotel, then a visit to Toppings bookshop. On plus the tea was lovely - so much yummy food! And I got some nice books. But I was quite distressed by how much worse my limb control was this time than last time we were there. I felt very trapped and hazardous when eating. So a mixed bag. But glad we went.
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Despite mainly coding in Java, TADS 3, and C#, it turns out that I’m still competent at making a web server. Only made one because I was running overnight calculations on a Node.js program for my next game, but it turns out I need a front-end to inspect and edit the data that came out.
Normally I’d be doing this with Java, but:
- I already have the stuff for accessing my calculations and reading caches on this Node.js program.
- I should be practicing these skills anyway, and I have an opportunity here.
Every little thing to fight imposter syndrome lol
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The kid and I were writing in our respective notebooks yesterday, and he added in a quick doodle of his plushie capybara devouring a fresh garden watermelon as an illustration ‘like in Inkheart.’
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We went out for an errands run, I spent most of the afternoon chasing the munchkin around the store, and we got treats. I dressed up nicely since it’s a rare occasion I leave the house, and we had a lovely lunch together. His little monkey umbrella came in handy with a downpour. Apparently, he’s also fond of the little creatures, and we assembled the small kit that came with a pack of gum for them. He also shared half of his pocky package with me, which was so cute.
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Yesterday, I sat down with the wife and we had an impromptu writing session. I managed to actually get something down in Ren’Py, which was a first for me. Fun system, too.
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I love writing things with my husb! that’s really sweet
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I was planning to make the 7:33 train anyway (it’s 7:22) and then I pulled up to the station and saw the 7:18 train was there, I ran to see if I could catch it and failed. Net neutral!
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I’ve been recently exploring solo tabletop games, especially the journaling game type, and getting very amused that they are in essence creative writing games. I’m now looking at these long short stories and wondering what I should do with them.
It’d be a shame if I just keep them to myself.
So, I’ve been wondering if I could incorporate them into some short game (not necessarily interactive fiction but a short story game, perhaps?). It’s been a fun exercise for me at least.
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I feel this! I have created essentially a fancomic by playing a solo journalling game and I’m really proud of it. But also I’m torn between “will anyone care about how invested in this story I got”, “this is so good and I wanna show people” and “maybe I played a solo journaling game just for myself and that’s ok”
eta: man it would be interesting to make a branching journalling game wouldn’t it?
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That’s been my thoughts for a while, though it would mean I have to write more different branching scenes. For one ongoing game, I’ve got like almost 5k words and I’m still in the first part of three… I might be writing a novella and I expect the same attention would need to be there if I’m writing more scenes.
Still, a similar solo journaling experience could be interesting as a parser or choice-based game…
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A small handful of things today. The kiddo and I played with one of those tiny candy making kits, and he had fun! Icing my knee from 9PM to 4AM helped slow the bleeding enough to get a handful of restful hours of sleep. I’ve been enjoying a cup of matcha and a cup of coffee. It’s a friend’s birthday, and we sent her well wishes. Also, I had a nice heart to heart with another friend the other day. Yay!
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