I struggle with wanting to work on projects that are too massive for me to realistically undertake. DNFWS DNFWS is a game I’ve been thinking about for about a decade. It’s themed around the a universe that lies between other universes. Phenomenon in the world of DNFWS would be things like soul streams which are the connection between a soul in the soul universe and beings in the real universe, but in DNFWS it’s a river that flows up from the ground and the player can fish from it and tend to it. It’s an abstract, complex universe that fun to think about. ...

Based on a journal entry written on August 21st, 2020. Sometimes I imagine a world where I focus on projects for a couple months at a time and build a usable product. It would be a prototype most of the time, but it would be something new. I’d take shots at creating new products at a regular pace. They could be simple game ideas, CRUD apps, CLI tools, or art projects. As long as I would put around 20 hours per week into it, something would form. ...

The film The Lighthouse is a 2019 psychological thriller starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson as two men stuck on an island, manning a lighthouse. Summary Two men arrive on an island. Dafoe plays the grizzled old lighthouse keeper. Pattinson plays a sober younger assistant. Dafoe puts Pattinson to work on various tasks. Pattinson finds a wooden mermaid shortly after landing and masturbates to it. Seagulls around the island bother Pattinson. He kills a one-eyed bird. Dafoe complains that it’s bad luck to kill seagulls. The weather changes the day before they are supposed to leave and they get stuck on the island. Pattinson sees a mermaid on the beach and caresses it until it awakens and laughs at him as he runs away. ...

I’ve been interested in idle games for a while. I’ve played Dragon Cliff, Idlescape, Melvor Idle, Plantera, and plant daddy. This is a genre where the player doesn’t have to pay constant attention or actively do anything for progression to occur. Characters will automatically battle and gather resources. Players can take a more active role to speed things up and optimize activities, but it’s not required. The games are thus quite casual. I’m interested in these games for two reasons. First, it’s satisfying to see progress. Second, they seem like a simple genre to make since graphics aren’t the primary draw. ...

Movdeez is my movie collection and rating website. Ratings The primary concept behind Movdeez is that rather than assigning ratings based on an arbitrary scale, users rank movies against all the other movies they’ve previously ranked. Over time they build a list of what they’ve seen, ordered by which they think is best. A user’s rating is determined by where the movie is on their list. Movies at the top of the list get a 10 and movies at the bottom of the list get a 0, with everything being ranked linearly between. This gives an even distribution across the rating scale and ratings are clearly relative. ...

The film Law Abiding Citizen is not good, especially the second half. The first half of the film has some interesting dilemmas and and makes for an compelling thriller, but the filmmakers stumbled over the ending. The Plot The movie starts with Gerard Butler who lives in a regular middle-to-upper class home with a wife and daughter. Two robbers come to the door and restrain Butler while stealing stuff from the foyer. His wife comes to the door, is attacked, and is raped in front of Butler by one of the thieves. His daughter notices from the hallway, after which she is taken by the same thief and raped and murdered. ...

Based on a journal entry written on August 5th, 2020. I’m reflecting on ways to improve my design skills. I’m comfortable building simple UIs with Bootstrap, but leads to a familiar generic look. It’s convenient, but alternative CSS frameworks could stir something up. Perhaps I should dive deeper into Boostrap itself. Customizing core elements or drawing inspiration from public Bootstrap themes. These could bring more personality to my designs. Past Projects Not all my past work has been generic. The original UX of my app Reiterable featured customizable app sizes on a strangly configured dashboard. While imperfect, these attempts taught me a lot about experimenting with layout and interactivity. ...

Based on a journal entry written on July 30th, 2020. Normally, I’m in favor of adopting some form of universal basic income (UBI). However, after reading some comments on a Hacker News post, I came across some potential pitfalls of implementing it. Why I’m in Favor of UBI The reasons I’m drawn to UBI are twofold: Support for the Most Vulnerable: UBI could help those in poverty, the homeless, and the hungry by providing a basic income to cover their essential needs. Opportunities for Unfulfilling Jobs: A UBI could allow individuals in unfulfilling jobs to pursue personal interests, like starting a business, exploring creative fields, or working on other aspirations. The Problem of Wealth Distribution The first reason is fairly self-explanatory. There are likely enough resources globally to house and feed everyone. However, history shows a consistent pattern where wealth accumulates in the hands of a few powerful leaders. In the United States, the concentration of wealth has increased sharply, with the income share of the top 1% rising from about 8% in 1980 to around 17% in 2015, according to the 2017 Economic Report of the President. ...

Based on a journal entry written on June 8th, 2020. Back in May of 2020, I wrote a list of things under the title of “finding meaning is annoying”. Writing is a stretch, since it is just a list of things that I found meaningful in my life. Happy Reading the list makes me happy. The list has 120 lines, with some headers. At that time I could think up over 100 meaningful things to me. ...