No parkrun today for various reasons, and I’ve got a lot of (fun) stuff to do this weekend so I’ll keep it short today.
I have very nearly got everything ready for my game release tomorrow! Just one more tester to run it past and after that I need to resist the urge to tweak it further (I’m really busy with Christmas prep tomorrow so I won’t have time anyway). Very excited for the release… and of course the other games I get to play during the jam voting period.
Further updates tomorrow!
It’s been a really productive week! Lots of work and game creation done and another interesting TechUp module finished. I also have a giant pile of parcels from various postal services that need to be opened and wrapped in Christmas paper this weekend!
Next week, if all goes well, I will be taking a bit of downtime. I’m well caught up with work and studying and will be blitzing as much housework and Christmas admin as possible over the weekend. My game is also now drafted and in the testing process, meaning I just need to finish tweaking and finessing it before the jam deadline on Sunday evening.
The main reason I’m going to be trying for a quiet week is that December is going to be non-stop. Mostly in a lovely way (proper Christmas celebrations with family etc.), but I get a bit unsettled when lots of non-routine things are happening, so it’d be good to have some mental recharge time beforehand.
Geth and I have both had head colds this week. I shook it off fairly quickly, but Geth has been feeling fairly rough and has decided on a strictly-indoors weekend in order to try and shake it off before Monday. This means that if I’m parkrunning tomorrow, I’m doing it by myself, and I still can’t decide where I want to go. Might end up making a very last-minute decision!
This week’s earworm playlists:
Saturday
Duran Duran and Chai – ‘More Joy’
Soft Cell – ‘Say Hello, Wave Goodbye’
Soft Cell – ‘Sex Dwarf’
Sunday
Soft Cell – ‘Say Hello, Wave Goodbye’
Soft Cell – ‘Bedsitter’
Duran Duran and Tove Lo – ‘Give It All Up’
Irene Cara – ‘Fame’
Monday
Roger Miller – ‘King Of The Road’
Soft Cell – ‘Say Hello, Wave Goodbye’
Duran Duran and Tove Lo – ‘Give It All Up’
Tuesday
Roger Miller – ‘King Of The Road’
Soft Cell – ‘Sex Dwarf’
Wednesday
Chris Rea – ‘Driving Home For Christmas’
Duran Duran – ‘Anniversary’
Thursday
Arcadia – ‘Lady Ice’
Traditional – ‘Deck The Halls’
Friday
Dr Hook – ‘When You’re In Love With A Beautiful Woman’*
*AWFUL. Get out of my head!
Otherwise known as ‘the one that got away’.
When I followed the London Marathon route on Google Street View after doing the marathon for the first time in 2019 (and photographing all the phone boxes along the way!), I was surprised to find that I’d missed one. I promised myself that I’d go back and rectify this – as it was the closest phone box to the meridian I’d found yet (although doubtless there are closer ones elsewhere in London) – but for various reasons I did not have the opportunity until I was running past it while doing the London Marathon for a second time. It was at this moment that I realised why I had missed it the first time I’d done the marathon.
(Coordinates 51°48’11.9″N, 0°00’79.8″W.)
They put a muckle great marathon sponsorship banner in front of it, that’s why!
My photographing of this phone box during marathon take two was a bit farcical. In my drained state (mental energy in these situations, as you might imagine, is reserved for spending hours telling yourself you’re capable of running 26.2 miles), I thought maybe the banner material would be transparent enough to take a photo if I got right up close to it… and of course it wasn’t, and then suddenly I had a very concerned/sceptical race volunteer materialise in my face wondering what the hell I was doing. The eventual photo you see above was taken after I extracted myself from having to explain and made it a little further up the road.
Anyway, you can’t see much of it, but it’s there. If I ever manage to get back there on a non-marathon excursion, I will take a proper photo and update this post accordingly.
I (of course) still have a lot of ridiculous sprawling text adventure works-in-progress going on, some of which will hopefully be out next year, but as the TechUp course is my main coding focus at the moment I am only allowing myself to work on small, short games that are in less danger of becoming giant ridiculous monstrosities. I really enjoyed making The River of Blood for EctoComp a few weeks ago – coding a game in less than four hours for the Petite Mort category was a new kind of challenge! – and I’ve now finished the initial draft of a short PunyInform game for another jam. It needs to be run past a few testers over the next few days, as I’m still very much a learner with PunyInform / Inform 6 and there will undoubtedly be lots of bugs, but I feel like I’ve at least got the bones of it ready.
I feel like I’m making good progress with TechUp too, and am excited about delving into this week’s module tomorrow.
Of course, I’ll only feel like I’ve truly learnt Python when I can code a text adventure game with it!
It’s a week where I’m not leaving the house except for running reasons (pandemic recovery has been such that I’ve not had one of those for nine weeks 😯). This is a good opportunity to get things done and so far it’s going well – I got lots of day job work done today and have scheduled everything else in for the rest of the week. I even got back to my morning outdoor running after a few weeks of feeling a bit nervous and agoraphobic and over-busy and doing too many treadmill runs as a result. I didn’t have a good run (not feeling too well at the moment) but it does feel better running outside than plodding on the treadmill. I just need to build up the motivation every morning… I am definitely starting to remember why I used to have winter running slumps at this time of year. The daily run streak at least gets me moving every day.
A different reason to be busy every day this week, but at least it keeps things varied!
A fairly routine week ahead in the sense that I’m not going out anywhere, but as ever there’s a lot to do. I’m hoping to get it all done on schedule so that I can have a bit of downtime the week after.
Geth and I got back from Leeds this morning after a great gig last night (review to follow… eventually) and are having a quiet evening in before the weekday chaos begins again.
Being in a town centre felt slightly odd yesterday evening… Christmas is apparently suddenly here! (Or it is in commercial areas, anyway.)
Another crisp day on the Moor! It’s definitely getting colder week by week, but my legs played ball today and I was able to run quite a bit faster than I have been doing recently. While my times are still slow even by my standards, I managed my fastest time of 2021 at Town Moor and my second fastest time of 2021 overall – only a second slower than my season’s best at Girvan Prom back in August. Hopefully I will be able to beat that at some point in the next few weeks!
We may venture further afield next week but not sure where yet…
Geth and I have been up in Edinburgh for a few days to see Mum and Dad and to collect some interesting computer stuff that I will blog about soon. We are back now and I have had some good post through the door today (mainly Christmas-related). Time is hurtling on as ever and it won’t be long now till the end of the year.
It’s going to be a busy weekend as we have a gig to attend tomorrow evening. I need to start catching up with my gig reviews again soon! Another thing to target by Christmas…
Quiet week next week though. Might even manage another Shouldless Sunday!
This week’s earworm playlists:
Saturday
Ava Max – ‘Kings And Queens’
Sunday
Kevin Gillis and Lisa Lougheed – ‘Run With Us’
Monday
The Running Channel – ‘Run With Me’
The Sweet – ‘Blockbuster’
Dead Or Alive – ‘Something In My House’
Tuesday
Roxette – ‘Listen To Your Heart’
Wednesday
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark – ‘Locomotion’
Thursday
Duran Duran – ‘Anniversary’
Cast of The Jungle Book – ‘Bare Necessities’
Marc Almond and Gene Pitney – ‘Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart’
Soft Cell – ‘Sex Dwarf’
Friday
Pixie Lott – ‘Mama Do’
Here’s the other duo on the other side of the arch from last week!
(Coordinates 51°50’55.6″N, 0°08’36.7″W.)
An equally smart set of K2 boxes line the far side of the galleria arch through to London Bridge tube station. Again, they benefit from being under a roof!
More London Marathon (take two) adventures next week.
