Week 748

What’s this? I’m blogging about my work on a weekly basis – a simple way to track and archive whatever it is I spend my time on.

Last week, for the first time in a while I set aside some time to think about my next couple of books. The deadline for grant proposals at the Dutch foundation for literature closes on June 15, and I want to make sure I send them solid plans for Sexy Sadie, the large-scale novel I worked on from 2005 until sidelining it for De verdwijners, and a non-fiction book about games.

Other than that, it was business as usual. On Monday, I wrote a column for nrc.next, about my work on experimental writing game Your Daily Victory Boogie Woogie. It was published on Tuesday and can be found online, too (in Dutch): Gamen met Mondriaan.

I also played the interesting puzzle game Thomas Was Alone, which breathes life into colored blocks by way of a narrator, and wrote a short review for the paper. However, like the review of Soul Sacrifice by Rogier Kahlmann, which I edited, this hasn’t been published yet.

On Tuesday, I spent some time at Hubbub to work on Ripple Effect. I also finished a retro column for the Dutch Official PlayStation Magazine, about alternative racing games like Burnout, helped Shan Poon at Two Tribes with her blog post about the making of the Toki Tori 2 trailer, and worked on some marketing copy for Automobiel, the car app for kids by Little Makuzu.

On Wednesday, I visited game developer Martijn Zandvliet to research the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, which was recently sent off to those who participated in Oculus VR’s Kickstarter campaign. This would turn into an article later on.

On Thursday, I published my latest contribution to Your Daily Victory Boogie Woogie, Kosakowski’s ommezwaai. It was interesting to see follow-ups to my piece by Edzard Mik and Dirk van Weelden.

Finally, on Friday I wrote a new edition of Recess!, Immediate response.