Just to catch up

With these weeknotes I publicly track and archive whatever it is I spend my time on.

Last week I had a couple too many meetings in too few days, got really tired and then decided to focus on a single project: the new version of this website, which I’ve worked on intermittently for more than a year. I got a lot done, but didn’t quite finish it. (I’m trying to push myself to finish things and probably will get this one out the door later this week.)

Here’s who I met up with, in chronological order:

• Tim Hengeveld, in ’s-Hertogenbosch (just to catch up)
• Dick Grinwis, in Rotterdam (to discuss the Antegods comic book)
• John-Alexander Janssen, in Amsterdam (to talk hybrid writing)
• Lex Hubert, in Leiden (for a plan I may be able to help him with)
• Maurice Sibrandi, in Rotterdam (to talk Geometry Girl prototype planning)
• Stefan Popa, in Utrecht (just to catch up)

Both Codeglue and Two Tribes were in GDC preparation mode, finishing up demos and creating trailers for Antegods and RIVE, respectively. If I’d realized early on that both major game studios that I work for would have a significant presence in San Francisco next week, I might’ve booked a ticket.

What else? I…

• Worked on the upcoming talk that I still can’t talk about. I threw away my entire setup and went back to what I had earlier, but with a new twist. It’s slowly getting better.
• Had lunch at Two Tribes, where I discussed marketing and other business stuff with the two founders.
• Got going in David Allen’s Getting Things Done again, focusing on the many inboxes in my life. Allen’s simple but powerful advice: have as few inboxes as possible (meaning places where new stuff enters your life). I counted more than a dozen and will now see whether I can do away with a couple. Furthermore, I looked ahead at the part about project management and shook up my Dropbox folder system.
• #hobbydevved with Hessel, finally, incredibly, fixing that one weird bug I talked about before. Again, I have much to thank Hessel for, as he showed me how to use some of the Game Maker debugging tools. I then tried to rebuild one of my shooter/puzzler prototype’s attacks, but only half-succeeded.
• As the kids were at my mom’s place last weekend, my wife and I had a Saturday Night Movie Extravaganza starting with London Has Fallen (which was terrible, a real disappointment after guilty pleasure Olympus Has Fallen) and ending with Room (which was excellent).

Average step count per day: 8.371
Average staircase count per day: 13
Average sleep per night: 7:10
Average weight: 86,2 kg