Month: April 2023

Race Review: This Girl Can Newcastle 5k 2023

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Not the best title. The ‘This Girl Can’ event isn’t a race, not being timed or having winners or anything. Also, it took place nearly a month ago now, on International Women’s Day on 9th March. I am really behind with my blogging (watch out for two years’ worth of gig reviews coming soon…ish…possibly). Nevertheless, I wanted to get this ‘race’ review out now, before my next race this coming Sunday. Hopefully I’ll be quicker to blog about that one!

I had heard about the annual IWD ‘This Girl Can’ 5k on the Town Moor years ago, but had never run it before. I don’t tend to do fun runs or non-timed events because I’ve traditionally been quite result-focused (I may be a slow runner but I do care about these things 🙂 ). However, a few people in my running group were doing it this year, and it seemed like a nice thing to do with friends, and it was a free event, so I decided to sign up and give it a go.

TMBR at This Girl Can
With the rest of the TMBR girls who were doing the run. Photo from Chelsea at TMBR.

The half marathon I’d done at the beginning of February had been a real knock both mentally and physically, and in early March I was still struggling with the same spondylitis flare-up. I’d only been running short distances in the intervening time, and I knew it would just be a jog round on this occasion (I was quite pleased with 34:08 in the circumstances, even if the course was a bit short!). Still, it was lovely to be running in an event again and to feel part of something.

They were giving out a choice of either a cotton t-shirt or a tote bag at the start, which was nice for a free event! Our group managed to snag the last few t-shirts, and then at the end they were trying to get rid of the tote bags as they had some left over so I ended up coming away with both – win.

It was a lovely atmosphere and I would absolutely run the event again. I’ll probably be back next year.

A belated game-making roundup post

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The main reason I haven’t been blogging much this year (other than needing a small but necessary break after I decided to stop posting daily) has been that all my creative energies have been going into my game-making. I’ve had a prolific start to the year and have lots of exciting plans for the rest of 2023 too. However, I’m largely taking a break from it during April, because in both 2021 and 2022 I burnt myself out in the first half of the year and I don’t want that to happen again. I’m proud of what I’ve done so far this year and have been involved in some great jams and comps.

Desert pixels
Evidence Sweet starts her tomb adventure.

The year kicked off with the SeedComp Planting Round, where participants submitted seeds for other people to turn into games in a later round. I submitted the Adventuron demo Frozen Lake, which was later used as one of the seeds in KADW’s Twine game Cozy Simulation 2999. It’s really interesting to see what other people do with your ideas!

Next up was PunyJam #3. I hadn’t made a PunyInform game since PunyJam #2 in November 2021 and was really keen to get back into it! I made Lucid Night for this jam, which was based on a collection of dreamlike ideas I’d had combined with the jam theme of starting the game in an airlock. I’m still very much a beginner with Inform 6, but I really want to keep improving my knowledge of it via PunyInform (and have since made another Puny game – see below!).

A couple of days after the PunyJam deadline was the deadline for the SeedComp Sprouting Round (that was a mad week!). This round was for games made with the seeds from the first round, and I had chosen Rovarsson’s In a Tomb with a Donkey as the basis for my game. I originally planned to change the seed name for the eventual resulting game, but came to fall in love with the original and so In a Tomb with a Donkey it was. This was my first full Adventuron game of the year, but I’m certain it won’t be the last…

Most recently (in the last week) I submitted another PunyInform game, Marie Waits, to Spring Thing. Spring Thing is one of the biggest IF competitions in the calendar and I had been meaning to enter for a few years, but it never quite worked out until now. Marie Waits is a sequence of scenes towards the end of the story started in Pre-Marie, which I submitted to IntroComp 2020. I’ve been working on the main game (Marie) on and off for nearly three years now – I’m really hoping to release it sooner rather than later, though it might not be 2023!

So much more to come this year and so much I’m excited for. I’ll try to be a bit more punctual about posting releases (and possibly even dev musings) on the blog!

parkrundays: Jesmond Dene #96, #97, #98, #99, #100 and #101

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It’s been a while since I blogged about parkrun – the last few weeks have been really busy and I haven’t had much time to write – but I’ve been enjoying my Saturday morning volunteering. I was originally doing it because running parkrun didn’t fit into my marathon training plan: that plan went kaput a couple of months ago, when Geth and I decided to defer our Manchester Marathon places to next year (which eventually turned out for the best as he’s since had a complicated TLDR injury that has put him out of the running game for now), but I’ve continued volunteering anyway. I’m planning to keep doing it till the end of April and then switch to alternate weeks running and volunteering, as it’s been something I’ve really enjoyed.

Jesmond Dene parkrun pop-up sign
Jesmond Dene finally has a new pop-up sign, much to the joy of both volunteers and tourists. The original ‘mysteriously disappeared’ last year (multiple theories abound).

The last few weeks I’ve continued doing finish area roles, variously finish tokens, barcode scanning, timekeeping and funnel managing. I like all of these as it’s nice to be at the end when people finish. I always find the roles a bit nervewracking the first time but it’s fine once I get into it, and it’s been so much more interesting than just marshalling all the time.

It’s been a cold few weeks for standing out for an hour (especially when doing the phone roles!) but it is gradually getting warmer now.

The 100th event on 25th March was a highlight – there were some Benchies (folks from my social run group) in attendance and there was cake afterwards. Event 101 this last weekend was interesting too as I was funnel managing for the first time – lots of running back and forth (possibly even more than I did on my short run earlier that morning!).

A bit of marshalling this coming weekend for the first time since January.