October!
Hello everyone! Welcome back - it is great to see you. I hope your Tuesday is off to a great start. It is 9:45am over here. I have my coffee ready, so let’s chat about what’s new in mclepke land.
Last week I set up four goals. Let’s start by reviewing how that went.
Goal #1 was to run a 5k daily. The reality is that I ran 4 of the 7 days. Not bad. By the end of the week I legitimately needed days off because my shins were hurting from running too much. Let’s lower expectations a bit for this week.
Week of 10/14 Goal #1 - Walk or run a 5k every weekday (Tuesday - Friday)
So two changes here. First, you can walk or run the 5k. During some of my 5ks last week I ran the first half, and walked the second half, once my shins started to hurt. If that’s all I can do, then that’s what I am going to do, you know? The biggest factor inhibiting my exercise at this point is my weight. I can feel my weight being too high to run as much as I do.
The second change is restricting this to weekdays. Last weekend actually felt like a weekend. I made social plans for Saturday and Sunday, and enjoyed living a different schedule than the weekdays. Also, note that this week is a short week. When it comes to holidays, I simply follow whatever holiday schedule Erika follows, and she does get Indigenous Peoples’ Day off, so I took it off as well.
To start, we have a one-entry table, but let’s set this up and try to update it week by week.
Goal #2 was to work on video game development for 30 minutes every weekday. I successfully did this last week. I spent most of the time working on some animations for two basic enemies. There’s Shadowey Steve, and the Razzer.
So, I had some progress. These aren’t the most detailed enemies I have ever seen, but I am also trying to push myself to make the game simpler and simpler. I am not sure what this week has in store for game dev…I have kind of been winging it. That’s okay though, I am happy to be working on it. As with exercise, let’s set up a one-entry table that we can try to start keeping track of weekly. The goal will remain the same for this week.
Goal #3 last week was related to chores. I did way more chores than I set out to do, and am actually going to repurpose this goal. I have set out to restart my weight-loss goal a few times this year, only to lose steam after a few weeks. Here’s the thing about doing hard stuff though: that’s how it goes. If losing weight in America were easy, half the country wouldn’t be overweight. So, let’s restart!
Goal #4 last week was to speedrun for an hour every weekday. That didn’t quite happen, but I did at least start my new project. I started learning Mega Man 4. I worked on speedrunning three of the five weekdays, twice for half an hour, and once for two hours. It feels like I should bump this goal down to the same half an hour per weekday that game dev has.
Other Stuff
Last Saturday’s movie night pick was made by Teresa, my brother’s wife, and it was Scream, the original movie from 1996. It was a spoopy pick. It wasn’t bad. It kind of had a foot in both areas - it was sort of scary, and sort of campy and funny, but I didn’t think it was notably skilled at either. With that said, it was a fun movie to watch. I wouldn’t mind watching the rest of the Scream franchise.
On Sunday we invited the fearless leader of the Pittsburgh Hound meetup group over for dinner. Erika made a cottage pie, and we had some Trader Joe’s doughnuts for dessert. Podo and Pancho, our guest’s puppo, got to play and hang out all night. It was a heartwarming experience.
In casual gaming, I finished playing Donkey Kong Bananza over the weekend. I got all 777 bananas hidden throughout the game, which is to say that I did an extremely thorough playthrough. I was very pleasantly surprised by Bananza. It had lots of great throwbacks for fans of old school Donkey Kong games. Long time readers of this blog will remember that Donkey Kong Country 2 was the first game I ever speedran, so I am counted among that group. I even played the DLC for a few days. Buying DLC is definitely not something I often do. Good job, Donkey Kong.
I think that’s all from me for now. I enjoyed the process of editing last week’s post during the week with mini-updates, so I will probably do that again this week. It helps keep me on track.
SO - let’s talk again soon! I hope you have a great week. I have faith in you. You can do it.
Wednesday Update
Two hours of game dev are already in the books this morning. I’m working on a new parallax background for the introduction level. Up to this point all backgrounds have been from the dessert themed level, but I don’t think that’s actually going to be level 1. For level 1 I am working an outer space theme. Here’s some partial progress.
Have a great Wednesday y’all. I’m in an uncharacteristically (lately, anyway) good mood. Hopefully you are too. I am feeling capable today.
Coming at you from later in the day Wednesday, 2:30pm. I’ve done three loads of laundry and run a 5k AND gone to the grocery store. I’m rolling today. I am about to do some Mega Man 4 practice. Keep it up y’all.