Daily Entry: April 12th, 2017

Wed Apr 12 08:59:18 EDT 2017

I want to start doing end-of-day reviews. And my end-of-day is coming up. I may decide that starting a diary entry when I wake up is more important than trying to stick to normal conventions of a day via the proper date.

Wed Apr 12 09:00:22 EDT 2017

Alarm just went off. I need to call some financial peoples about unlocking my account.

I think I'll put it off until tomorrow. Feeling pretty tired.

No. That's wrong. I should do it. Let me push some my changes on the project I'm working on and then call the peoples.

Wed Apr 12 09:16:16 EDT 2017

Took a break after pushing stuff and communicating with people that I pushed stuff. Now it's time to call peoples.

Wed Apr 12 09:42:14 EDT 2017

Call with peoples went smoothly. Review coming shortly.

End-of-Day Review

Wed Apr 12 09:49:47 EDT 2017

Okay, first end-of-day review time.

I think I can just post scattered thoughts here. I mean, formulization comes later.

Current editor: VSCode.

Future editors/IDEs being considered:

  • Atom
  • Wing IDE.

Current weight: 215 lbs

Exercise of the day:

  • approximately 1 hour of Just Dance
  • 15 minutes of stretching
  • 1 minute plank
  • 1.5 minutes horse stance
  • no pullups :(

Eating habits: snacked throughout day

Watched:

Listened to:

Scattered Thoughts I Remember Having Throughout the Day

Still really glad I set up my desk as a standing desk. I ended up watching Voltron standing at my desk. It's even better than the setup I had at work because there is no means for me to sit down whilst being on this computer. If I really want to sit down and use a computer, I have to switch to my laptop, which has a limited subset of capabilities compared to this computer.

I have gained weight since I have arrived here, but only recently, and only really since I setup my standing desk and started dancing everyday (with more dancing each day so far). I even feel skinnier and feel like I look skinnier. Perhaps I have put on some muscle? Maybe weight loss will follow? I have been eating more, that is true. Something to continue to consider.

I would like to be more consistent about pull ups. I do them some days but not others. I am stuck at doing 2 in a row for a reason.

I would like to more regularly log thoughts into this diary. Specifically stuff that gets lost quickly as it arrives, like my emotion in the moment. Deep Work has a section talking about a study that had people use a pager/smart phone as notifications to capture the moment. Perhaps I should look up that study to further glean their methodology.

I still reddit more than I would like. /r/politics is probably bad for my mind and health, and falls prey to leftist propaganda, which I am very suspectible to, being a hard-left person. I rarely look back on my time there positively. It is an addiction I need to learn to overcome.

I may need to ask for assistance from friends/family.

I have made enough progress on personal project to actual start working on the project itself, and not the foundation on which the website will stand. Exciting. Also, a little bit... "I've only come this far after that much work?", but that's life.

I'm considering moving ahead on other project without person for now, as that person is busy moving. He has given me the gist of what he wants to do, and I feel I could help significantly, and it has given me some ideas I want to execute on.

....

Oh, yeah.

Ideas I Want to Execute On

Wed Apr 12 10:05:21 EDT 2017

Quick break. Arms aren't used to typing this much at a time.

Wed Apr 12 10:12:33 EDT 2017

All right. There are things I want to do or be doing that I haven't done or am not doing.

Which is to say, there are things I can finish that I haven't started, and things that are more of an ongoing process that I am not doing what-so-ever.

Examples of the former:

  • Publishing material on the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
  • Formalizing my thoughts of various video games including but no limited to:
    • Star Fox
    • Portal
    • Half-Life
  • Writing various forms of fiction that have been floating in my brain for forever

Examples of the latter:

  • Learning to draw
  • Learning Japanese
  • Creating a spaced repetition training program
  • Creating a VR demo
    • Exploring the possibility of building muscle memory via VR demo
  • Vlogging
    • YouTube video creation in general

I find myself disappointed at my lack of progress, but am now at the point where at least I feel I am making progress. For instance, some ideas I have had I am executing on:

  • Learning to dance
  • Recording my playing of video games for future use
  • Working on website-related projects
  • Working on game-development-related projects
  • Having a standing desk for my home-office setup (which is currently my only office)
  • Slowly designing my life such that I make the "right" decision naturally

Things are very much mutating in the direction I want them to be mutating in.

I mean, I'm actually reviewing the day here! And it's kinda coming out like a blog post from 2015, but more raw and with less... expectation of an audience with it. This is me exploring how I feel and what I want to do in writing.

Raw.

Even if you are reading this, Stephan. Which I think you are.

Though, if I write enough each day it may overwhelm your time constraint. I've had that happen.

But that's besides the point.

I'm doing things. And I'm improving at doing things. And I'm hoping I can keep that going.

Let's Focus on the Dancing for a Bit

So, I say that I'm "learning to dance". Specifically, I'm playing Just Dance 2017 almost everyday. It would be everyday, but it's actually pretty decent exercise, and a day off from time to time is probably a good idea.

I have recently started recording my efforts (though I may want to change how), and it's too bad I didn't start earlier, because already I feel I've made progress that I would like to verify in video form.

But I'm glad I didn't use my lack of record-keeping as an excuse to not do anything at all.

In any case, I've gone from not being able to dance at all to being really, really bad at it, so there's plenty of progress to capture properly. The first step really is to just dance, and it's good I have a game that's just that.

Dancing has been something I wanted to work on for a while, but never made a part of my schedule. Turns out, I feel quite comfortable replacing running with dancing. I was, in fact, going to do both, but after 30 minutes of dancing I am out of breath and sweating, and that counts as a run as far as I'm concerned. In fact, it's probably better than running (lots of other muscles being used).

I'm a fan of doing things that have multiple purposes. Running has a use in that being good at running can be useful in some situations, but it seems more likely that dancing will be useful more often to me, simply via the nature of my first world existence.

Anyways, I actually felt like the obvious first step would be to watch dancing, and try to replicate it. Even with that thought, and knowledge of what Just Dance was, I never thought to use the game to do just that. Even though I am a huge believer in using games for exactly such a purpose. I don't know where the disconnect was.

I mean, I do kinda dislike Ubisoft as a company, but I don't think it's that.

And now I also have the next step in mind: recording my dancing, identifying where I'm weak, and practicing those bits explicitly. Which is great because today I finally set it up so I record myself while playing Just Dance. It's kinda funky but functional.

....

"Just Dance does just that", and now "funky but functional". Forgot how inclined I am to word-play.

In any case, it further cements how useful an actual game is to my goal. When getting better at various other games, I do the same thing. I record my own playing, and I also watch people who play better than me to learn from them. I mean, this is something that was taught to me in chess team in high school. Why is it not ingrained in my life proper?

Gamifying My Life Has Clear Benefits and I Need to Do More of It

Studying Japanese, coding, memorization of various useful facts. Gamify!

Oh, yeah, I also want to try and make a skill tree, but with real skills and real--what's the word I'm having trouble finding it--prerequisites to those skills being necessary to "unlock" before beginning to unlock the next one.

I haven't really played games with such skill trees. I'm talking the stuff found in Diablo and World of Warcraft. I saw them in passing and I feel they could be cool to use in real-life executed better than how college does it.

I Had Promised to Ramble About Editor/IDE Choice but Have Lost the Spark

I was having an email conversation with a project ally the other day, and he said he was going to use Wing IDE unless I had strong feelings otherwise. I was about to go on a long spiel philosophically before telling him I was willing to try out Wing IDE to help him out, and then I just cut that out and told him the end of it. But I put in a, "I could ramble on my history/philosophy of editors/IDEs for quite a while if you want to read it" and he does, so I said I would.

But just thinking about it up until now has felt... insignificant. I already wrote a lot and thought a lot and now doing it again makes me feel like I'm stating obvious things.

I've heard writers say they come to hate their writing by the time they publish, and it feels like I lose interest on the second go-around.

Something to overcome? I think so. Perhaps I'll make a proper post(s) about editors/IDEs. Perhaps I'll turn it into a vlog while I'm at it.

I Think That's Enough

Wed Apr 12 10:40:33 EDT 2017

Going to play Zelda until I decide to go to sleep.