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2021: Year of Transition

On the most recent episode of OHAC, Mikhail, Jack, and I talked about our yearly themes. You can head over there to get links to other resources, and listen to our takes on each of our themes. This post is to summarize my own theme, and try to have something clearer in my mind after a lot of talking through it with Jack and Mikhail.

My theme for this year is the Year of Transition. Its focus is twofold: acceptance of the changes happening in my life, and leveraging the progress I made in 2020 to capitalize on those changes.

I’ll be moving from San Diego to San Francisco this year (and potentially moving once more within San Francisco), causing an uprooting of my routines and requiring the need to adapt to new spaces. This is not inherently problematic, but it’s something I must face rather than trying to hold onto my past situation. There is an opportunity to reevaluate my working situation, for example. In fact, moving in with my fiancee means everything has the chance for adjustment and improvement.

Regarding routines and habits, I’m focusing on how to dissociate them from a particular location, and let them grow into the new place they occupy. I have created a solid groups of habits to bring along with me, but they have new facets to them. Exercising and eating, something that’s been a solo activity the last few years, will now require me to be aware of someone else. Taking the time to write these blog posts and pursue side projects needs the same consideration.

There are changes coming my way, and I plan on working with and through them to make the best year that I can.

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The Best of My 2020

Tomorrow I’ll be recording an episode of OHAC, where Mikhail, Jack, and I will be discussing yearly themes. That will serve as a nice recap of the year and a starting point for 2021.

To wrap things up on this blog though, I figured I’d go back through my posts from 2020 and select one or two favorites from each quarter, and maybe write a little bit about how I view those posts now. I don’t often revisit my expository writing, so I think it’ll be a good exercise.

Continue reading “The Best of My 2020”
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Remote Christmas

I’ll be spending this Christmas away from family for the first time ever.

I’ve been left trying to make the best of the situation. I’m not alone: I’m spending Christmas with my fiancee, and we have been decorating her small San Francisco apartment with lights. Our parents have sent us cookies and gifts, and we have a small tree on the table. 1

I think the biggest difference is that this is the first year where I don’t have a distinct build-up towards Christmas externally pressed upon me. Until I graduated college, there was always winter break. The last two years, flying home for the holidays was a clear marker where I was now working remotely for a couple of weeks, surrounded by family and trying to see all my friends who were back as well.

None of that is available to me this year. I’m not going anywhere, and working from home is no special deal. Hence, decorations everywhere except the bathroom. We have a home automation set up called Christmas Time that sends our lights flashing and Christmas music playing. We made mint cookies this weekend, and decorated sugar cookies my mom sent us. I’m happy with how we’ve adapted.

  1. The apartment is less than 250 sq. ft. so there’s limited space for anything more than the 2-foot tree we chose. ↩
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Advent of Code 2020

A coworker told me about Advent of Code last week. It’s an independently run site that provides an advent calendar of programming puzzles. Similar to sites like Project Euler, they are of varying difficulty and not designed to be completed in any particular language.

So far, the puzzles have been clever and fun. There is a central plot for the entire month of needing to get a currency of star coins to pay for your post-Christmas vacation. I take it not as tone-deafness to the pandemic, but more of wishful thinking for a better 2021. They’re cute premises.

Anyone who like programming puzzles will enjoy these; I highly recommend them. I came to it a few days late (and if you’re reading this post, you’re behind too!) But it’s reasonable to do two in a day, and you’ll probably want to!

Of course I’ve been using Python for all of them so far, but I could totally see myself using the puzzles as a way to learn another language; they’re overall more accessible (and engaging) than Project Euler.

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Text Adventures Part 4: The Document

A text adventure would not be useful to me if it was not written down. Particularly when the goal is to have an unfeeling, strict parser doling out commands only when successfully prompted, it’s important to have a reference that is clear, contains maps and explanatory information, space for notes, and everything the “computer” needs to say throughout the game.

With the exception of Recurring Nightmare, I write every text adventure using LaTeX. Over time I’ve built up commands and formatting to make this process simpler. For Recurring Nightmare, I tried my hand at InDesign since I had received a license from work. That license no longer exists, and it’s easier for me to edit a .tex document than an InDesign document, so LaTeX continues to be the way forward.

In this post I’ll talk about some of the decisions I made for formatting my document, how I make maps, and other bits of trivia that come to mind.

Continue reading “Text Adventures Part 4: The Document”
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Perfect Shot (NaNoWriMo 2020 Story 1)

Although I’m not doing a complete take of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) this year, I still wanted to put in some concerted effort writing some pieces that weren’t blog posts or text adventures. So, I’ve committed to writing at least 2 short stories this month, a medium I find beautiful and incredibly tricky to nail down.

This first one is particularly short, only about 3 pages if printed, and the idea comes from a post on /r/WritingPrompts.

Continue reading “Perfect Shot (NaNoWriMo 2020 Story 1)”