Week 843
- 843 16 maart 2015 EN
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 was rather nerve-wrecking, with three major events I’d been wanting or planning to do for a while and now suddenly became reality.
The first was my story workshop at the HU, on Tuesday. I told a group of students about my plans for the Geometry Girl app novel and about my concept of iterative story development. I then described the storyline to them, and introduced six characters using drawings by Tim Hengeveld; they then developed the characters by thinking, talking and writing about them in small groups. It was an interesting experience that helped me to look at the characters more objectively, and also gave me a couple of new ideas. I hope to do it again, and develop the format further.
The second was another classroom situation: starting last Thursday, I’m teaching a practical writing class to Games & Interaction students at the HKU. I’ve done a bunch of talks, but this was my first real teaching experience; I can’t say it comes natural yet, but I can see the fun of it and I think it went well enough. My classes are every other week, so I have some time to recover.
The third was my interview with Arnon Grunberg. If he’s not the most famous currently living Dutch writer, he’s surely the most interesting, with a unique perspective on nearly everything, a humongous production and fun side projects like brain scanning himself and his readers. We met in the bar of the Hilton in Amsterdam on Friday afternoon, and talked for more than an hour. I’ll share the recording soon, which’ll mark the start of a new (monthly instead of weekly) Hybrid Writer’s Podcast series.
Finally, in the ‘random’ category, I…
- Wrote an article about Mac OS X gaming, as requested by nrc.next. I based it mostly on the experiences of a bunch of Dutch game developers I had brief chats with. The piece hasn’t been printed yet.
- Read my article on the ’toys to life’ games category, which was in nrc.next on Tuesday and in NRC Handelsblad on Wednesday. It’d been in the works since October or November and I hadn’t seen it in a while; I’d say it turned out fine. They sure commissioned a nice illustration! Read and see it here through Blendle (€): Met plastic monsters de virtuele wereld in.
- Watched the Apple keynote. That new MacBook looks like it was made for me. It’s even thinner and lighter than my current laptop and has the higher resolution screen I’ve been looking forward to. The battery should last a little longer too. Let’s see if my financials allow me to get one.
- Met up with Jasper Koning of the VPRO to discuss ideas for a currently clandestine games TV show project. (I shouldn’t be writing this out loud).
- Interviewed 3D printing pioneer Enrico Dini over a crappy Skype connection for an article I was commissioned to write about 3D printed coral reef. Let’s see if I can beat it into shape this week.
- Played Ori and the Blind Forest on Xbox One with Hessel, instead of working on our #hobbydev game projects. I enjoyed it, although it’s not what I expected based on artwork and the game’s intro; instead of a dreamy Studio Ghibli style experience it’s a blend of a Super Metroid style action adventure and a really tough platformer like Super Meat Boy. A Hotline Miami 2 review code was waiting for me too, but could wait until this week.
Average step count per day: 8.116
Average staircase count per day: 12
Average weight: 89,6 kg