Still game-tweaking with just under 26 hours to the deadline. It’ll be a late one tonight but it feels like there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
Looking forward to a head-clearing run at some point tomorrow!
Category: Diary
Tick tick tick
Another nice productive game-making day (and also a new Monkey Island trailer, which I was very happy about). The amount of work still to do over the next couple of days feels a little bit overwhelming, but I’m getting through the list fairly quickly so hopefully it will all get done.
Enjoying catching up with various triathlon and athletics coverage on the iPlayer in the evenings this week. It’s very good background noise for when I’m fiddling with code!
Eyes on July
Back in Newcastle – again! – after a weekend visiting the in-laws. For the next four days, I will be almost totally focused on finishing my game before the competition deadline on Thursday night. Next weekend will be extremely quiet – it’s been a very busy month and Geth and I will both be glad to collapse on the sofa with videogames, I think!
There’ll be a bit of dashing about in July as well (summer gonna summer) but on the whole it looks like things will be slightly quieter.
Quietly diagnosed
I had a fairly long-awaited appointment at the hospital this morning. It’s been nearly a year since the eye consultant I was seeing about my uveitis said ‘you know, this HLA-B27 gene you have is probably why you have all these lower back problems as well’ and referred me onwards.
Following a two-hour process of tests, having stuff measured, long discussions with consultants, more tests and a trip to the X-ray department, I have begun the long and experimental process of finding a semi-effective treatment for my ankylosing spondylitis. I officially have ankylosing spondylitis now… I think. Doctors never seem to out-and-out state ‘YOU HAVE X’ these days. But I was given two booklets about it and a prescription for the first of the many treatments that can be tried in the effort to mitigate it, so it looks like they’re fairly certain.
I’ve had this chronic pain for about twelve or thirteen years at this point and having it finally taken seriously is an incredible relief. It might take a while to find something that helps, but at least I’ve got the ball rolling now.
Slightly feeling the crunch
I’ve still got quite a bit to do on my game before the deadline next week, but hopefully the transcript-reading will speed up soon. Once you’re a few testers in, they start (mostly) repeating the same already-fixed bugs 🙂
Will try to get out earlier for tomorrow’s run as today’s was a bit hot for me. I like the idea of summer weather but I’m not very well adapted to it!
A regular day
A nice normal day at home, including properly starting my GNR training! I’m doing three targeted sessions a week in this block, in addition to my rest day streak savers. All the runs on the plan have particular average paces I need to hit, which is a new thing for me – usually I just follow one that says ‘slow’, ‘easy’, ‘tempo’ etc. and go by feel. It went okay today so I’m quite excited about it. I also got back to my full-length strength training session now that I’m back home with all my equipment.
After work I was then able to get a good chunk of game-tweaking done. There’s only nine days until the deadline and I’ve still got a lot of testers’ transcripts to go through, so I’m really glad this week is fairly quiet and I can get on with it.
An even quieter day tomorrow 🙂
Flying!
Flying visit to Dublin in both senses! We flew out yesterday morning, enjoyed a wonderful Duran Duran gig in the north of the city (review to come soon) and flew back this morning (a lot later than intended but let’s not dwell on that). It was really strange at first to be on a plane again after four years, but it felt normal again very quickly. I’m finding that with a lot of things.
With yesterday’s flight, my record streak of time spent without leaving the UK came to a welcome end. My new record is 1,418 days: I did not leave the UK between arriving into Edinburgh from Toronto on 25th July 2018 and leaving Newcastle for Dublin on 12th June 2022. I do not wish to break this record again. While home is far and away my favourite place, there are lots of far-flung things in the world that are worth poking my nose out for.