Week 687

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 I got back from San Francisco. As I wrote the previous week, I didn’t eat for 16 hours before my flight, which supposedly diminishes jetlag. So did it work? Kind of, I guess. I felt pretty good all week and my sleep cycle did not selfdestruct.

I do consider myself a bit of an unreliable narrator here. I’m suspicious of placebo effects and am not even sure how sensitive I am to jetlag in the first place. It’s hard to Know Thyself in bodily matters when you’re mostly stuck in your head.

When flying from the US to Europe, anything resembling jetlag usually kicks in quite late for me. The first few days I may sleep a bit more than usual, but that’s it. Then later on, I suddenly can’t sleep and start waking up later and later. Off goes that sleep cycle. I always felt the way back from America (fast-forwarding time) was way worse than the way towards (rewinding time). But then, I’ve been bad at keeping a healthy rhythm as long as I can remember. That is to say, before I had kids.

This time, on Thursday night while editing a video, it was suddenly 4 AM, and I wasn’t tired at all. Jetlag flashback! The next morning I did get up early though – with kids you don’t really have a choice – and I had no more trouble the rest of the week.

So to be honest, I have no clue whether this worked. The experience of fasting was worth it by itself, however. Normally I always give in to feelings of hungriness. I thought that if I’d skip a meal, I’d feel terrible. But it turns out that bodies just quit whining after a while. I skipped breakfast and lunch on Sunday, and felt hungry for maybe thirty minutes in total. So I’m definitely repeating this experiment next time I fly, and might even apply learned lessons elsewhere in life.

So, what else happened last week? I cleaned up the mess of being away for a week, and not much else.

For one, I wrote a short article for Items about the Dutch nominees of the Independent Games Festival Awards.

On Friday I wrote a column for Gamer.nl, which I think will be published tomorrow.

On Thursday I announced the Bashers Gameclub over at Bashers.nl, our revamped bi-weekly podcast in which we’ll discuss a single game, together with a small audience. I spoiled the surprise here a couple of weeks ago, though the debut date was moved back by one week due to conflicting schedules.

As said, I also edited a video: the interview I did with Jenova Chen of Thatgamecompany at GDC. I recorded it with my iPhone 4 and tripod plus Glif, and recorded audio seperately with the Zoom H1. Sound is still the weak spot, so I’ll add subtitles later on. I have to transcribe the interview anyway, for publication in nrc.next, if they want it.

I’m happy with the video quality: you can get pretty impressive results when the iPhone 4 is stable and lighting conditions are good, though I’m really miffed that I didn’t get the phone focused on Chen. So now the background is sharp and my subject is blurry. Amateur problems…

Finally, on Saturday I went for a ride in a friend’s Toyota Prius. It was like being inside a science fiction movie.