01 June 2010

Time allocation:	Games Night	5:00
	Watching TV	3:56
	Mundane activities	2:30
	Rayman 2	2:20
	Practicing piano	0:54
Notes:	Now that most of the TV shows I watch are either cancelled or on hiatus, I've been looking for another show to get addicted to. Here that's 30 Rock, which I watched almost 4 hours of. "Mundane activities", for future reference, includes eating, showering, playing piano without the intent of making progress, playing games with no or little long-term progress, etc.. It's not a mundane activity if I'm spending time with other people. Rayman 2 is my favorite non-Mario platformer, a game I've played several times before. When my father went to America to help my grandparents pack up their house, he took some things which they wouldn't have room for anymore. So I had him bring back the MAD magazines and their Nintendo 64. I then bought used cartridges of Ocarina of Time and Rayman 2 off eBay, so that I'd finally get to play them with some controller better than a computer keyboard. So while this isn't the first time I played Rayman 2, it's the first time I'm playing it properly. "Practicing piano" is differentiated from other playing because I'm recording a CD on the 14th and I need to be ready.
Performance review:	This was a disappointing day. Apart from Avri's games night, all my experiences were either passive or overly familiar. There was nothing with the spark of excitement I'd expect from myself. Also, I broke character in not spending any time on The March of Bulk or other such creative endeavors. A very weak start to the month.
Score:	3/10

02 June 2010

Time allocation:	Blog work	5:10
	Watching TV	3:28
	Mundane activities	3:28
	The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time	1:05
	Practicing piano	0:44
	The March of Bulk	0:27
Notes:	I started my day by returning to Ocarina of Time's Hyrule. I've played it at least ten times before, so my priorities are very different than they used to be. I found a quiet spot and spent most of that hour getting better at playing the ocarina as a proper musical instrument. (I could never do that with a Gamecube controller.) I also moved forward a bit with the quest, but the side quests are more of a priority this time. I finished season 3 (of 4) of 30 Rock, less than a week after I discovered the show. It's pretty good. For The March of Bulk I was experimenting with sound effects, but had to cut it short when my family came home and started making noise. (I should have started earlier.) As for the blog, I made this post here and fixed an oversight from my earlier coding and after I was done with that I decided to keep going and write a script to automate the process of updating this post so that I can do it late at night when my brain is not fit for coding.
Performance review:	Definitely an improvement. With Zelda I found some new depth in the familiar, which is fresh and interesting and may lead to a good way to show off later. I'm disappointed that The March of Bulk was given so little time, because it gives the wrong idea about my priorities. But I can't say that I don't come across as a strange creative person nonetheless, because I gave the blog a heck of a lot of time and effort. As usual all sorts of formidable challenges popped up when I least expected them, but I beat them all and am eager for more. All in all, a good day.
Score:	7/10

03 June 2010

Time allocation:	Comics	6:47
	Mundane activities	2:45
	Rayman 2	1:37
	TV (30 Rock)	1:31
	The March of Bulk (sound effects)	1:01
	Piano practice	0:45
	Blog work	0:24
Notes:	The "comics" activity wasn't just reading comics, it was organizing my collection. Most of that time went toward putting the crossover Siege into a sensible reading order, a task which I completed. So even as I was rereading, it wasn't really a passive experience because I was reading with an eye toward making sense of the timeline and all the dramatic arcs between separate comics.
Performance review:	Six hours is still too much time to spend on comics in one day. The organizing is entertaining, but not interesting enough to provide the focus for an entire day. With that said, I would have done the same six hours at some point, even if not all at once. So my objection is really just about pacing. Better to make it a more long-term activity, rather than to do it all in one day.
Score:	6/10

04-05 June 2010

Time allocation:	TV	4:26
	Blog	4:21
	Mundane activities	3:10
	Comics	0:37
	Piano practice	0:32
Notes:	I spent four hours writing half a massive blog post about the TV show LOST, when I realized my argument didn't hold up under scrutiny and I'd need to throw out the whole post and all the ideas I'd built up around it since the show's finale and start the writing over from scratch. As that post was my sole focus for the day, this put me in a miserable mood that persisted through hours of 30 Rock and the latest episode of Stargate: Universe, a mood that only lifted upon watching the phenomenal new episode of Doctor Who.
Performance review:	It is to my credit that I did not continue the post when I realized I was in error. But there were still five hours left to the day, and that meant it could still have been salvaged! Instead I buried myself in the most passive activity I know, in enough excess to overshadow all my effort on the blog. It would have been hard and painful to start that blog post from scratch right away, but there were other options. I could have continued work on the game, or I could have found some new activity to try. I'm not going to be the sort of person who shuts down when he gets to emotional hurdles. I want to be stronger than that. And today, I wasn't.
Score:	2/10

06 June 2010

Time allocation:	Mundane activities	4:28
	TV	1:49
	The March of Bulk	1:48
	Reading comics	1:22
	Rayman 2	1:08
	Blog	0:59
	Bit.Trip Runner	0:56
	Piano practice	0:55
	IM chat	0:25
	Wii Fit	0:18
	Punch-Out!	0:17
Notes:	I finished both Rayman 2 and Bit.Trip Runner. For The March of Bulk I just played around a lot trying to make sound effects and failing. But then I figured out exactly how to cut back my sound-effect ambitions so that I can give the game the right feel without needing to take months to do it. I intend to be fully done with the game within the next week or two. For the blog I started my post-LOST post rewrite; it's not clear at this point whether any of the old post can be used, but I'm not holding my breath. Anyway, this new post will probably be better from every angle. I watched two episodes each of 30 Rock and the original Twilight Zone. I've already beaten Punch-Out! for Wii once, but now I'm playing it with the Balance Board (full-body motion control) for an added challenge. I stopped playing today when I started hearing strange clicking sounds from my left arm, but I'll be back soon. The comics I read were all first issues of current series I'd never read before. "Mundane activities" included my best improvisation in weeks, many less-impressive improvisations, and a 45-minute conversation with myself in which I tried to convince myself that the Spider-Man story One More Day had the potential to be a good story.
Performance review:	I'm happy to see that practicing the music for my CD has become a regular fixture of my day. I'm less happy to see the same of 30 Rock, which is a good show but not deserving of that treatment. I'm looking forward to seeing how I spend my time once I'm caught up, which at this rate will be in a few days. It's a shame I didn't follow through on my blog or my game, though I do appreciate that I've figured out where I'm going more exactly. All in all, this was a fun and lively grab bag of a day. I wouldn't want to make a habit out of being this unfocused, but every now and then it's nice to jump around a bit.
Score:	7/10

07 June 2010

Time allocation:	Blog	4:42
	Reading a blog, listening to a podcast	4:09
	Mundane activities	2:55
	The March of Bulk	1:16
	Wii Fit	0:52
	Piano practice	0:51
Notes:	Dena's been watching the TV show Being Erica on my recommendation, and it occurred to me that I couldn't remember what the flashback was in the series finale, so I did a Google search to find out and discovered the intellectual TV review blog Cultural Learnings, which I allowed to eat up a huge chunk of my day. It wasn't just the blog itself, though I did find the reviews fascinating and got the sense that I could hang around there for many more hours, but it also linked to a podcast where he and a bunch of other people talked about the LOST finale for two hours. (Since I can't multitask, that was all I was doing for those two hours.) It gave me much inspiration for my own LOST retrospective, which is going to be so much more interesting than the other version of the post. It's hard to say exactly how long it's going to be, but I think I'm probably around halfway through writing it. For The March of Bulk, I've created most of the sound effects I need and begun to integrate them into the programming. I stopped early not because I'd stopped enjoying the process, but just because my father had come home and the house was no longer quiet enough.
Performance review:	I was really getting worried when I spent four hours just absorbing other people's ideas. But my patience was paid off when the actual writing was even longer, and in my opinion pretty darn good. I got a key idea for the post an hour and forty minutes into the podcast, so on reflection I have to say it was absolutely worth it. And even with all this time devoted to reminiscing about LOST, I still found time to practice piano, exercise (and have some fun with the skateboarding minigame), and most importantly do an impressive amount of work on the game. The impression I'm getting is of a thinker, who will focus his entire day to organizing his thoughts on silly topics but still make time for doing things. Bravo!
Score:	9/10

08 June 2010

Time allocation:	Mundane activities	5:33
	Watching 30 Rock	4:16
	Blogging	2:59
	Reading the webcomic Sluggy Freelance	1:00
Notes:	I caught up on 30 Rock. I also finished that blog post, though I don't think the second half is as strong as the first half.
Performance review:	Truly pathetic. Just because I have one great day doesn't mean I can then stop trying for the rest of my life. I need to get my act together!
Score:	2/10

09 June 2010

Time allocation:	Games night	5:02
	Mundane activities	3:16
	Blogging	2:47
	Reading comics	1:04
	The March of Bulk	0:58
	Wii Fit	0:50
	TV (Lie to Me)	0:47
	Piano practice	0:40
Performance review:	A solid, by-the-numbers day. With games night taking up the biggest chunk of time, I still managed to hit all my cues.
Score:	8/10

10 June 2010

Time allocation:	Mundane activities	5:28
	Comics	2:20
	Watching TV	1:40
	Chatting with Benjy	1:34
	Programming for The March of Bulk	1:10
	Practicing piano	1:01
	Recording on my cheap headset	0:46
	Composing	0:10
Notes:	The "recording" entry needs the most explanation. A small part of that was making the last of the sound effects I need for The March of Bulk. The rest of that time, I was making a short audio file of my voice with which to try out for a voice acting part in Deirdra Kiai's new game. It took a while because I was testing out a bunch of different voices to see what would work best. So that's what that activity is. I started watching the very first episode of Saturday Night Live (or "NBC's Saturday Night", I think it was called) because I'd heard so much praise for the old seasons of that show (which I'd never seen). I didn't watch the whole thing because it was so disappointingly dull. To get the bad taste out of my mouth I also watched two episodes of the original Twilight Zone.
Performance review:	Five and a half hours spent on not much of anything? Holy heck! That web browser is a dangerous addiction. I think part of the problem might be that I got no exercise- I think I might have more mental energy on days when I play Wii Fit for a little bit, as opposed to sitting in this chair all day. But whatever the reason, that was a tremendous waste of time. Still, that's a bit of a nitpick next to the things I did right. Programming, more serious piano practice than usual, a bunch of new stuff, some decent socializing, even a tiny bit of composition. Haven't done much of that lately. So: lots of filler, but what was there was good.
Score:	7/10

11-12 June 2010

Time allocation:	Mundane activities	3:52
	The March of Bulk	2:07
	Watching the DVD recording of The Matchmaker	1:54
	Piano	1:37
	TV	1:35
	CSS work	1:06
	Art Style: light trax	0:47
	Wii Fit	0:44
	Blogging	0:25
	Reading a comic	0:15
Notes:	I started writing a web page to put my games on. This is the first time I'm writing a CSS stylesheet from scratch, and it's turning out very nicely. "Piano" is actually a combination of a bunch of different activities: composing for 20 minutes, 36 minutes of practicing, and nearly 40 minutes of fiddling around with the innards of the piano (together with my father) to try to fix a broken key so that I could practice. The key's still broken, but it's a little bit better than it was before so I'm calling that a win. Toward the end of the day I counted up my hours so far and discovered that I'd spent a little bit more time on the Matchmaker DVD than on my game, so I worked on The March of Bulk for an extra 17 minutes, pushing it to the top.
Performance review:	Though I moved from activity to activity a bit hyperactively, I approached each one with an impressive confidence and understanding of where it fit into the day. This display of activeness narrowly exceeding passivity is very appealing to me. In the CSS work I found something new to do, in the piano-fixing I found something weird to do, and in the DVD I gained a bit of perspective about the limits of my acting ability. Overall, as interesting a day as I hope all days to be.
Score:	10/10

13 June 2010

Time allocation:	Writing sheet music for Variations on V.O.V.	3:29
	Reading comics	3:05
	Mundane activities	3:03
	Practicing piano	0:53
	The March of Bulk	0:35
	Wii Fit	0:31
Notes:	I'd been putting off continuing the Variations on V.O.V. sheet music for a few months. Today I completed it. The comics were a mix of new series and old series I'm trying to catch up on. This was a shorter day than usual, because I need to go to sleep early to be in Jerusalem for the recording.
Performance review:	With a few less hours to work with, I managed my time so well that it barely mattered. The greater focus (relative to yesterday) was a conscious effort, in order to not fall into an easy pattern of behavior. It was also conscious on my part that the music was given just a bit more time than the comics, because I want to keep projecting the sense of a delicate balance. The expected activities were touched on, the main focus was interesting... I have no complaints about this day.
Score:	10/10

14 June 2010

Time allocation:	Follow-up activities to "My CD-Recording Adventure"	6:42
	My CD-Recording Adventure in Jerusalem	6:04
	Blog work	3:37
	Mundane activities	0:46
Notes:	I went to Jerusalem with my mother, and recorded a CD of my original music. Then I came back home and edited the music for the rest of the day, except for a few hours of blog stuff at the end. Or to be more accurate, "attempted" blog stuff- much of that time was spent trying to create a map of I vs. I, because it would have fit into the latest post. But I failed, because the file is simply too big. It would take many hours of tedious work to fit it all into an image file. The CD-Recording Adventure included transportation and lunch.
Performance review:	These numbers must be wrong... no, it checks out. What a horrible day. Going to Jerusalem to record a CD is a really interesting activity; if I had spent twenty minutes on the game and the rest playing games, that would have been yet another perfect 10. Instead I decided that 6 hours wasn't enough focus in one day, and I ought to spend the entire rest of the day on the CD as well. This isn't me!
Score:	1/10

15 June 2010

Time allocation:	Mundane activities	5:40
	Games night	4:56
	Reading comics	1:21
	Watching Nintendo's annual E3 press conference	1:18
	Blog work	1:01
	Wii Fit	0:51
	Art Style: light trax	0:45
Performance review:	What a dull, unimaginative person I am.
Score:	2/10

16 June 2010

Time allocation:	Mundane activities	4:52
	Chatting with Benjy	2:24
	The March of Bulk	2:13
	Watching the recent Alice in Wonderland movie with Dena	2:08
	Comics	1:50
	Wii Fit	0:49
	CD stuff	0:36
Performance review:	Not bad. Not particularly interesting, and the balance is still a little bit off (Fifteen minutes more of the game work would have been a good idea.), but definitely getting back on track after the last two days. Now I just need a little bit more creation and a little bit more randomness.
Score:	8/10

17 June 2010

Time allocation:	Web page design	4:56
	Mundane activities	4:32
	Blogging	2:21
	Watching the 2002 movie Insomnia	2:05
	Wii Fit	1:19
	Reading a comic	0:20
	Composing	0:10
Notes:	I worked on three different web pages, because I was enjoying myself so much I wanted to keep going. I continued the page that will hold my games (which I started on the 11-12th) by creating an image representing The Perfect Color, I uploaded my CD (after encoding the tracks into MP3s) to a new web page, and then I made a long-overdue redesign of the main TheBuckmans.com page which will link to them. I haven't put that main page up yet, because I'm still waiting for Benjy's permission. (He created the current index page many years ago, a page which is hideous both on the outside and on the inside.) The work I did is good, but normally would not take nearly 5 hours to complete. That's because downstairs for many hours there was a giant party Dena held for her friends while my parents went out to an Elton John concert. I avoided them all like the plague, but that deafening din they produced was burning out my brain cells and slowing me down significantly. On any other day, this work would probably have taken a half hour less. The blogging is a post I actually started before this last one, and I really thought it would be done by now but it's turning out way more humongous than I expected. I think long-time readers of the blog (Yes, there are a few.) will be interested in it, though.
Performance review:	I'm intrigued by this concept, of an activity varied enough in its parts to keep me entertained for five hours. On the other hand, maybe I only felt like it was entertaining me because it was protecting my sanity from the party downstairs. Either way, an interesting and unexpected use of my time. Insomnia had been on my to-watch list for some time, so I'm glad I got around to that. And it's neat that I'm still finding new things to do in Wii Fit. I think that one's going to keep me engaged for years. I managed to make this into a wonderful day, even with the terrible party distracting me.
Score:	10/10

18-19 June 2010

Time allocation:	Mundane activities	6:23
	Blogging	2:35
	Hanging out with Moshe	2:12
	Reading comics	1:14
	Going over my old notes on The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time	1:14
	Watching the latest Doctor Who episode	0:57
	Web site stuff	0:37
Notes:	Moshe stopped by to return my headphones, which he'd fixed for me. We mainly just sat around and talked. I'm not particularly close to finishing that blog post yet- most of this time was spent rewriting what I had to satisfy a whim of how it should be formatted. The first half of "web site stuff" was uploading the new version of the TheBuckmans.com main page. The second half was testing out Google Analytics as a possible replacement for StatCounter, with me ultimately deciding against it. I pulled out some old notes I made about Zelda a year or two back, which were meant as ideas to be used in a future blog/book/project/thing analyzing the game. I meant to play the game a bit, and maybe catch up to where I left off there, but it took me all that time just to go over the many notes and think about them.
Performance review:	More mundane activities than any previous day, and that's kind of a shame. Next month I'll start counting the web-browsing time. But since I haven't so far this month, it just seems inconsistent to start now. This is a good day, but not a day I used to its maximum potential. I could have spent a few more hours on things. I could have gotten a bit farther with the blogging, I could have actually played Ocarina of Time a bit, I could have just gone to sleep after watching the new Doctor Who instead of browsing the web for opinions for an hour. And on a related point, I should have been in bed two hours ago. Still, basically a well-balanced day, between the productivity, entertainment, and weirdness.
Score:	8/10

20 June 2010

Time allocation:	Going to see a play	5:55
	Blogging	2:35
	Mundane activities	2:20
	Watching TV	2:00
	Wii Fit	0:42
	Playing David Shute's new game Unnatural Selection	0:06
Notes:	I went with the Feldmans to Bar Ilan University to see the play Fools, which Harel has the lead role in. (Very enjoyable.) That took up much of the day, which is shorter than most due to my bad sleep schedule yesterday. I was very excited to see that David Shute (Small Worlds) had made a new game, but I only played it for six minutes because it turns out it's crap.
Performance review:	The fact that I'm going to a play, even if it's just because Harel is in it, suggests that my life is a bit less repetitive than usual, and that's welcomed. But I'm starting to miss the game development, which has apparently been pushed out of the way since Wednesday to focus on this blog post which has yet to be completed. It's time to get back to The March of Bulk, one way or another.
Score:	7/10

21 June 2010

Time allocation:	My Duet-Improvisation Adventure	5:20
	Mundane activities	4:12
	The blog	2:07
	Watching TV	1:07
	Reading a good (and long) newspaper article on the web	0:46
	Installing and playing Eric the Unready	0:43
	Reading a comic	0:19
	Art Style: light trax	0:08
Notes:	I went with Eliezer to Tel Aviv, where we and around four other guys improvised piano duets and recorded them on video for eventual uploading on YouTube. I finally finished the blog post I'd been working on for a while.
Performance review:	Going to Tel Aviv seems like quite an experience, I'm not going to discredit that. But the fact that both The March of Bulk and Wii Fit are missing here gives me the sense that I was being somewhat complacent. There's always room for new and strange experiences, but if it doesn't come on top of the basic routine, even if that routine is just for a few minutes, it feels like I'm breaking character. With that said, it's not a bad day even without the adventure. Productivity, newness, weirdness, comfort, it's all there. And I like these proportions. So overall I think this was a very successful day.
Score:	9/10

22 June 2010

Time allocation:	Games night	4:36
	Mundane activities	3:37
	The March of Bulk	1:56
	Watching TV	1:47
	The blog	1:00
	Trying to reinstall the Wii Shop	0:50
	Composing	0:21
	Wii Fit	0:20
Notes:	Nintendo has once again demonstrated how much they hate me, by adding even more anti-piracy filters into the latest (mandatory) Wii update. Honestly, I haven't used any of the homebrew programs in many months, but I was planning on buying a few games from Nintendo's store, and they won't let me in without erasing my programs (which I'm sure I'll get back to someday). So I was trying to update the Wii Shop manually, without going through the official "delete all unauthorized applications" process. The difficulty isn't really in the task itself (which seems quite simple), so much as in getting our broken SD card adapter to work for long enough to get the files I need from the computer over to the Wii. At games night Avri lent me his adapter, so I'll try again tomorrow.
Performance review:	Now that's more like it! The March of Bulk makes its triumphant return, just barely beating out the TV watching, which just barely beat out the blog (which I've been putting a bit too time into lately), which just barely beat out the practical stuff, which just barely beat out the creative activity I'm least drawn to, which just barely beat out my daily exercises. These proportions couldn't have been more appropriate if it were all planned, which of course it is.
Score:	10/10

23 June 2010

Time allocation:	Going to see Toy Story 3	4:57
	Mundane activities	4:42
	Trying to fix the Wii	1:59
	Comics	0:57
	The blog	0:45
	Watching TV	0:43
	The March of Bulk	0:27
	Composing	0:25
Notes:	I went with my mother and Dena to Jerusalem to see Toy Story 3 in 3D, which was mind-blowingly good. When we came home I spent a good hour or so just looking at opinions of the movie on the internet. (I counted that in "mundane activities".) The March of Bulk and the blog were actually not worked on directly: For the game I just read a letter from Kyler and responded, and for the blog I wrote a comment and brainstormed for an upcoming post. I'm including these activities under the usual categories because they are necessary parts of the process. My efforts to restore the Wii Shop channel have so far been unsuccessful, for reasons beyond my comprehension.
Performance review:	The proportions here are all wrong. Flip the entire order, and that's an interesting (if implausible) day. But this one is just insubstantial. Boo!
Score:	3/10

24 June 2010

Time allocation:	Mundane activities	5:28
	The March of Bulk	3:04
	TV	1:38
	Trying to fix the Wii Shop (still)	1:35
	Eric the Unready	0:53
	Comics	0:48
	The blog	0:48
	Wii Fit	0:38
	The CD	0:35
	Composing	0:21
Notes:	I tested The March of Bulk on Lorien and Dena. Neither is a serious gamer, but both seemed to enjoy it. Then I reacted to the parts where they'd been confused by making little edits all over the programming. After many long hours of fighting with my Wii, it seemed that I'd finally fixed it. But no, it turns out everything I've done all this time has had no effect whatsoever. I'm giving up for now, until some time has passed for the hackers to make this task easier. (Nintendo only implemented the update in this past week.) In the meantime I can't pay Nintendo for any of the games I was planning on downloading (such as the new Art Style game), so I guess I'll have to figure out how to get them without paying for them. Good going, Nintendo. The CD is done, of course, and a quick listen confirmed that yes, the edits are noticeable [sigh], but I hadn't gotten around to actually preparing and mailing a copy to the uncle who paid for it. So I did that today. I'm trying to play Eric the Unready old-school style, without consulting walkthroughs and expecting to be massively lost most of the time. We'll see how that goes.
Performance review:	The March of Bulk is on top with a particularly interesting part of the process. Beyond that there's nothing here to brag about. There are no missteps, but also nothing particularly impressive or weird. It's better to have just a few things, where I really take the time to enjoy them, rather than all these different activities each which I give less than an hour. But that preference aside, I'm getting a really clear sense of character today.
Score:	8/10

25-26 June 2010

Time allocation:	Mundane activities	7:46
	Releasing The March of Bulk / blogging	2:17
	Comics	2:05
	TV	1:44
	Beginning design work on a new game, Gamer Mom	1:34
Notes:	A few hours of the wasted time were because the season finale of Doctor Who was tonight: it took me a long time to find a fast way to download it despite the thousands of others also downloading the files without sharing much. And of course after the episode I stayed up late looking at other people's opinions.
Performance review:	I'm going to completely ignore the mundanity, because that's what I've done thus far. Otherwise this was a spectacular (if short) day. One game's development ends, another game's development begins. By the way, the amount of time I spent on this landmark day adds up to exactly 7:40. This was not planned, honest.
Score:	10/10

27 June 2010

Time allocation:	Mundane activities	6:04
	TV	1:34
	Eric the Unready	1:29
	The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time	1:21
	Comics	0:57
	Gamer Mom	0:55
	Trying to install the recent Doctor Who adventure games	0:31
	Continuing design on my upcoming game Angles and Circles	0:31
	Wii Fit	0:29
	IM chat	0:20
	Art Style: light trax	0:14
	Updating comments on blog	0:08
Notes:	The difficulty in installing the Doctor Who adventure games comes from the fact that I don't live in England. I tried (and failed, so far) to get around that. I'm continuing to play Eric the Unready without getting any hints, and I think I'm getting pretty far in it. (I didn't think I could handle an old-school adventure game.)
Performance review:	What the heck is this?! I see a person who hasn't a clue what he's trying to do, flailing around wildly in hopes of connecting with something. Most of these activities are so insubstantial, I might as well have just categorized the whole day under "mundane activities". I worked on two upcoming games, but the proportions are so far off you might not even notice. In fact, I'm going to score less favorably because I started those activities but didn't take them seriously. Who is this person I'm playing?
Score:	2/10

28 June 2010

Time allocation:	Mundane activities	8:12
	Gamer Mom	2:46
	TV	2:34
	Art Style: light trax	0:58
	Installing, running, and uninstalling the Doctor Who adventure games	0:30
	Wii Fit	0:23
	Composing	0:15
Notes:	I got the Doctor Who game to install, but it turns out my computer isn't even close to qualifying for the minimum system requirements. I should have figured that; I just expected that it might work on a ten-year-old computer because (A) it's a free game (in England, anyway) promoting a TV show and (B) I've seen what the graphics look like. But no. I guess I'll stick to DOS games. Though there was much procrastination, I did eventually manage by the end of the day to get Gamer Mom past its nearest competition. I would do 45 minutes or so of writing, then procrastinate for an hour and a half or so (Don't ask me to tell you what I did during that time, because I'm not sure.), then back to writing. The TV shows I watched were The Twilight Zone (the original show), Twin Peaks and The Muppet Show.
Performance review:	A small and unambitious day, but a basically good one. Gamer Mom continues its slow and steady pace, and is showing a respectable amount of progress for being a project three days old. The mundane activities, as usual, will be ignored entirely, because whatever it takes to stay in character should be accommodated. And in the day as a whole, character was maintained. As an observer I see a person who is attacking this new project with determination and enthusiasm, and (for now) that matters more than the specific amount of time spent procrastinating. However, that character is a bit one-dimensional. There is nothing fresh or interesting here, just predictable continuations of past activities.
Score:	8/10

29 June 2010

This was a religious fast day. The longer the day went on, the less careful my note-taking, and I therefore am unable to piece together an accurate representation of the day. I spent over 2 hours on Art Style: light trax, over 4 hours reading blogs, and a length of time watching TV that I do not have a sufficient amount of data to even make an estimate of. There was no particularly substantial activity other than the Art Style game, unless you count 27 minutes writing a letter to Kyler about Gamer Mom. With insufficient information written down and no progress made, I see no reason to even dignify this day with a time allocation table. The score is 0/10.

30 June 2010

Time allocation:	Mundane activities	4:26
	Gamer Mom	2:13
	Rewatching Finding Nemo with Dena	1:38
	Reading the webcomic Sluggy Freelance	1:25
	The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time	1:07
	Eric the Unready	1:04
	Preliminary thoughts on possible monologues	1:02
	Punch-Out! (with balance board)	0:44
	Skimming through a Doctor Who episode from a few months ago	0:33
	Wii Fit	0:31
	Phone call with Moshe	0:09
Notes:	Last night I wrote up a list of things to do which I'd touched on a little bit during the month and could bring back for a fitting ending. The idea was to end this blog post with something that ties it all together somehow, to make the beginning of this experiment feel more worthwhile. I passed one complete "section" from start to finish in each of the games, as well as a complete storyline in Sluggy Freelance. As I was working on Gamer Mom Dena said that she was in the mood to watch a movie, so I let her pick a movie and we watched it together. But as soon as she said she was in the mood to watch a movie, it occurred to me to re-download the Doctor Who season premiere ("The Eleventh Hour"), just in case she decided that she might want to watch it after the movie. (She has shown no interest in the show.) This behavior was obsessive even for me, and I honestly think it was because I was in the mindset of writing "Gamer Mom". (You'll understand what I mean by that when you play the game someday.) I skimmed through the episode after the movie to try to imagine how Dena might react to it (I couldn't.), and once I'd started I just wanted to keep going. I called Moshe because he was on my list, but I had the valid excuse of telling him about The March of Bulk: I had not yet informed him that it was on the web, and he'd been looking forward to it. When The Matchmaker ended, director Erika offered to give me some coaching on "audition techniques" at any time in the future before she left the country. Shortly after I burned my CD, I wrote her an e-mail to arrange a get-together. She wrote back and said that would be great, and that I should prepare two monologues. So I thought about it, read some monologues, analyzed one of my favorites from the comic Midnight Nation by Straczynski (and looked how I might edit it down, as it's long), etc. Lots of pacing around, lots of dramatic gestures, and somehow this took up an hour.
Performance review:	Wow. Now there's the Mory I've been looking for. So much was planned out (and acted out), but I still spent hours just running with whatever popped up. And on top of all of it, some significant work on a game. This day was old and new and sensible and weird and deliberate and improvised and if my family weren't home now (and sleeping) I would stand up after writing this sentence and give myself a round of applause.
Score:	10/10

June 2010

Average score:	6.42/10
The month in review:	I decided privately that a month would only be a success if its average score was greater than or equal to 7/10. I'm not far off that goal, but I have missed it and that means I'm doing something wrong. There's too much complacency here, too much blind accepting of an identity continually falling apart just because that's the way it's always been. That is emphatically not what I am meant to strive for. It's not enough to put on a good show some days; I need to be consistent. It's all well and good that I was happy with some of my The Matchmaker performances, but what was recorded was my weakest day. And so it is here as well: my failures are documented and will not ever go away. So I've got to take each day as though it is the only day that matters. That's the only way I'm can truly fix my performance in the long term. As I stand now, I feel like that last track on my CD where every edit is clearly audible: I'm not a coherent character yet, I'm still just a bunch of ideas shoddily taped together. And to be sure, there's a spark of potential here. But that's not enough. Despite all my recent productivity, as far as this blog is concerned the month of June 2010 was a failure. July 2010 will therefore follow the same rules as June, because I'm not ready to move up yet.
Verdict:	TRY AGAIN