Mad bloom lighting

With these weeknotes I track and archive whatever it is I spend my time on. They’re public so you can keep me in check.

Last week, I made my long-awaited appearance on literary audio zine Overcast. As this photo proves, writer/podcaster extraordinaire Dennis Gaens was in my kitchen and summoned mad bloom lighting. Besides his interview with me, or actually about a third of it, the show includes an older short story I recorded.

Otherwise, I focused on Two Tribes’ shooter/platformer RIVE again, writing a bunch of new story bits, but not implementing many as the systems were in flux somewhat (I did spend some time getting older stuff to work again). I also tinkered with the game’s website, which is launching officially soon, updating the press kit and even working on a simple logo for yours truly. And I upgraded my Two Tribes work setup at home, connecting the PC to my old TV, which should help me test the game. Finally, I had dinner with Two Tribes’ Collin to talk about next year.

Then, my app novel research project Geometry Girl re-entered the picture as I met with Hoog + Diep in Rotterdam. These guys will develop the app for the next month or so, as subcontractors for my engineering partner Codeglue. So I dove into the project’s documentation again, figuring out priorities (and as always in a new phase, checking whether what we figured out last time is still sensible). So far, the programmer is asking the right questions, and in general I’m just thrilled by the rising momentum!

Otherwise, I…

• Got together with the brand spankin’ fresh Digital Literary Projects committee at the Dutch Foundation for Literature to prepare for the first round of proposals. As this page attests, I’m officially on the foundation’s board of advisors now. It’s exciting and also a little daunting, as I join a bunch of smart and experienced people.
• Taught my writing class to third-year Games & Interaction students at HKU (second run, session 4 out of 5).
• Made a final few tweaks to Free Birds, the iOS museum game about freedom for children by Hubbub, just before it went gold.
• Met with Dore, the ArtEZ creative writing student I’m coaching for her graduation project. She’s working on interactive fiction that just took an unexpected science fiction turn, and I’m into it.
• Prepared and got coached for an upcoming talk that I can’t be more specific about at this point.
• #hobbydevved on Tuesday night, getting somewhere with my puzzle game, as Hessel worked on a Unity prototype with a quadropod platform hero, and I was somewhat surprised to find myself thinking about ways (and feeling the urge) to get a four-legged creature to work in Game Maker. That’s something I couldn’t have imagined having ideas about when I began playing with this software a couple of years ago.
• Attended Revolutie, the interactive theater play by Sytze Schalk of De Wentel, on Sunday night in The Hague. After the test run a while back, the smartphones had been exchanged for good-old paper. Needless to say, the technology worked without a hitch! It was fun to see the play unfold, too, and to observe the rest of the audience.

Average step count per day: 11.978
Average staircase count per day: 19
Average sleep per night: 7:27
Average weight: 88,3 kg