February 23 Updates
PARTY PEOPLE!!!!!!! We’re back with another weekly update. By the time the next weekly update is posted, it’ll be March. Can you believe it?
Let’s start out with some random stuff. Yesterday was Sunday and Erika and I went to see a local production of Annie, the musical!
I’m not sure if I’ve ever actually seen Annie before, but whether you have or you haven’t, it’s kind of impossible to not know a bunch of the songs. Hard Knock Life, Tomorrow, and N.Y.C. were all songs I knew in some capacity.
Recent readers of the blog will recall that the last musical I went to was Newsies. An interesting bit of overlap between Newsies and Annie is that the Roosevelts are important characters in both musicals, though 35 years apart. At the end of Newsies, Teddy Roosevelt (at that time the governor of New York) is inspired by the newsboy strike and establishes child labor laws in NYC. At the end of Annie, Teddy’s cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt is inspired by Annie, and establishes the New Deal. Honestly, it’s kind of weird. FDR could be entirely removed from Annie and it would be just as good of a musical, but…whatever. Annie made the New Deal happen. Now you know.
Annie also features a dog, which was easily the highlight of the show. They had a real dog on the stage. It looked like it was probably a labradoodle. The actress playing Annie had a bunch of treats in her pocket and the dog did a great job.
Before switching gears, I should share what I’ve been listening to the last few days, including as I type this up. Someone recreated Nevermind using the sound font from Super Mario 64…and I love it. Projects like this give me faith in the world. At least go check out Smells Like Teen Spirit.
Moving backwards through the weekend, Saturday was our second movie night since we rebooted it for 2026. It was my brother Jason’s pick, and he went with Inception, which I had never seen before. While it was a phenomenon when it happened, I can see how I would have missed it in real time. It came out in July 2010, meaning I would have been just a few months out of my college graduation. Getting myself up on my feet following college graduation was probably the hardest time period of my entire life, so I’m not that surprised I wasn’t concerned with watching new movies.
While I appreciate I’m 16 years late to the party, I have to say, Inception was freaking incredible. Easily a 10/10 on the unofficial McLepke media rating scale. Generally, if a movie clocks in at over 2 hours, I cringe a little bit when hitting play. I’m not sure I can think of a movie that has a runtime over 2 hours that I feel actually needed to be over 2 hours long, and 2 hours is just a long time to sit for a movie. Inception is one of the few exceptions though. I was locked in for the entire 148 minutes. Also, now I understand what the Ceaseless Top relic in Slay the Spire was referencing. Bonus.
Speedrunning Updates
Let’s check in on how speedrunning is going. The Mega Man 4 project has been ongoing for a little bit now, so let’s recap what’s gone down so far.
January 30th - First live stream. I set a personal best time of 41:37, which is good for #96 on the leaderboards. PS: Mega Man leaderboards are kept at https://megamanleaderboards.net, which is different from all the other games I’ve ever run, which all use https://www.speedrun.com.
February 3rd - I stream a second time, but fail to set a new personal best time.
February 5th - I stream a third time, and set a new personal best time of 40:16, good for #70 on the leaderboards.
February 13th - After a solid chunk of time spent in the lab looking for improvements to the run, I return and stream, though without setting a new personal best time.
February 14th - Another stream the very next day, which again does not set a new personal best time.
February 18th - My most recent stream, where I set a new personal best time of 39:30, good for #49 on the leaderboards.
SO. What do I make of this project so far? For one, I’m really happy with the way it is progressing. I think one thing that is going well is that I’m taking progress in smaller chunks, and forcing myself to go live and stream once I feel like I can set a new personal best time. This is creating the satisfying series of climbs up the leaderboards described above. I’m not trying to do too much in any one update.
After my last stream bumped me up to #49, I can tell that I should head back into the lab and implement some new strategies to stand a good chance of moving up again. This is the balancing act. You can perfect what you’re already doing, or go learn to do better things. There’s a time and place for both. Right now the benefits for me are in the lab. I could grind more runs using my current strategies and eventually get a new personal best time, but it doesn’t feel like the smart play.
Once you’re appreciably better than you were last PB though, it’s good to cash it in. Going live and actually setting a new personal best time and seeing yourself move up the leaderboards is an important reinforcement to keep you motivated. I’ll probably be shooting for a sub 39 next time out, which would be 30 seconds faster than where I am now. I’m not totally sure when that’ll be yet. I definitely need a few days, so I think the earliest would be next weekend, but we’ll see.
If you haven’t caught the current PB, here it is if you want to check it out:
Game Dev
Lately I’ve been working on connecting some of the art pieces I’ve produced into the game’s code.
So right now, you can enter the lower left house, the circus tent, and all the buildings that do not have the wooden sign on them. If you stand in front of the door and press up, you will enter. The backwards connections aren’t there yet - so you can exit the door and wind up back in the town square, but one step at a time.
The next thing I think I want to do is design the interiors for the three buildings with wooden signs, so we can actually enter every building in the town square. These will probably be pretty rough to start, but I’ll share some updates this week as they happen. I’d like to share a game dev mini update every day this week (other than today, since I’m typing up this bigger update) since my progress has slowed just a touch in the game dev world. Stay tuned!
Lastly, let’s hit the weight update. This is the most sustained progress I’ve had in a little bit. Here’s where we’re at:
This is the fourth week posting an update, and so far our total progress in pounds lost has been:
Week 1: -1.5
Week 2: -1.8
Week 3: -2.3
Week 4: -3.4
Those numbers are cumulative, so you don’t add them up. But hey, after four weeks we’re down 3.5. That seems reasonable to me.
After week 3 I implemented the new practice that I will fast at least one day per week. Last week I actually had two fasting days, which seems to have paid off since we went down a shade over a full pound.
One side effect of implementing fasting is the daily weights have a bit more variance to them. You can see that bigger swings are starting to take place with the blue line above. I’m okay with that. I think it kind of works toward my strengths. I tend to be better at big efforts followed by big parties rather than consistently small, but good efforts. Not saying that’s a good thing, but just that it’s true of me.
With speedrunning for example, I haven’t been playing any casual video games this entire time I’ve been working on Mega Man 4. I tried to continue playing Baldur’s Gate 3, which was my current casual game project, but it’s just not happening. I’m in competition mode. I think once Mega Man 4 speedruns wrap up, I might take a week or two off of speedruns and fully casually play BG3. That kind of reminds me of the mindset with this fasting protocol.
There are times where I’m actively trying hard. Those are fasting days. I’m on my game. Then, there are times where I can be off my game. When I’m eating a small calorie deficit every single day, it sort of feels like I am working non stop at the weight loss goal. Maybe that made sense? Anyway I feel like I’m on a sustainable path. We’ll see if the orange line is continuing its downward slope during next week’s check-in. The walking pad I bought also deserves a special shout out - that’s surely helping.
Anyway that’s all I’ve got for you today. I hope you have a great week. I believe in you! Go go go!