Product propositions

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

Last week, work on my broader reading app plans continued. Among other things, I checked in with Kars, who made his long-awaited return from Singapore, and with Menno, with whom I discussed product propositions. This is my life now! I also finished the report I’d started last week and sent it off to the Creative Industries Fund NL; it seems to have been accepted, which would close off my research project subsidy there. On to new research project subsidies, hopefully!

On Thursday I visited Two Tribes, where they were working feverishly on a PS4 patch of our shooter/platformer RIVE. I helped with Steam store marketing text, as well as cool stuff that will go into the Indiebox. Most of my work went into the manual and soundtrack, for which I created a track listing. Over the weekend I finished the game on my PS4 at home and it seemed to work beautifully. The game’s out today on PS4 and Steam! So exciting.

In related news, the games of the next Indigo (a games expo here in Utrecht on September 27th) were announced. Both RIVE and Antegods will be there, so come visit if you can’t wait for Antegods or won’t buy RIVE for some weird reason.

Other than that, I…

• Finished my story materials for the new escape room at Get out of here and sent them off. My work on that is basically done now; I’m really looking forward to seeing and experiencing the result.
• Worked on the script for the Antegods comic, watching Divergent by means of young adult study material. (It wasn’t very good, but it was nice to get more grip on some of the genre tropes. I wrote before that these young adult adventure stories are a lot like teenage dance movies!)
• #hobbydevved with Hessel but didn’t actually #hobbydev. I’m a bit afraid of getting back into Unity, I guess…
• Watched the Apple keynote on Wednesday, which started with worlds colliding wildly as Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto announced an iOS Mario on-stage. Pretty sure I caught him saying “Thank you Steve” to Apple CEO Tim Cook, which was simultaneously embarrassing and endearing. What else? It’s always fascinating to see Apple explain controversial decisions like ditching the headphone port on the iPhone 7. They’re masters at this… which doesn’t change the inconvenience for some users. Personally I can’t wait for all the ports on my devices to go away, although wireless (stability, pairing, speed, charging) still needs to get a lot better. Hopefully the new AirPod wireless earphones are a step in the right direction.
• My wife was away over the weekend, and among other things, I went to see Kubo and the Two Strings with my daughters, which we greatly enjoyed. We also saw a version of the Roald Dahl’s The Twits performed by mentally challenged people in the local library. They did a great job, but I still somehow fell into an ironic meta view; here was a bunch of privileged white kids watching mentally challenged people make fun of stupid lower class people. Some of those Dahl books are pretty politically incorrect, and this just took it an unexpected step further.

Average step count per day: 9.476
Average staircase count per day: 10
Average sleep per night: 7:32
Average weight: 87,5