Today's soundtrack is October Falls: The Plague of a Coming Age. This afternoon, I'm starting to put the artwork together for my upcoming game. I made an 80s-esque vanishing point grid box in Google Slides and then applied some filters to it in the Pixlr Editor. I'm happy with the direction that this game is … Continue reading 06.21.2018: 30 Minutes of Game Development
06.20.2018: 30 Minutes of Game Development
Today's soundtrack is Allie X: COLLXTION I. This afternoon's session was spent with a pen and notebook in hand, working through some gameplay design ideas that I needed to sort out before I can start working on the computer side of things. I came up with a working title for the game, redesigned the NPCs, … Continue reading 06.20.2018: 30 Minutes of Game Development
06.19.2018: One Chapter of Nonfiction
Today's soundtrack is Timothy Brindle: The Unfolding. This afternoon, I'm reading the second chapter of Pat Pattison's Writing Better Lyrics, "Rusty's Collar: A Guide to Showing and Telling." Like in the schoolchild's activity of Show-and-Tell, we cannot talk about what we haven't first shown, because "[s]howing makes the telling more powerful because your senses and … Continue reading 06.19.2018: One Chapter of Nonfiction
06.18.2018: 30 Minutes of Game Development
Today's soundtrack is Ghost of the Robot: Pair of Bulls Volume 1. This afternoon, I'm trying out my red bouncing ball in one of the platformer templates in Construct 2. It took me a while to get Pyxel Edit to export the image properly, but once I got it to work, I was pretty happy … Continue reading 06.18.2018: 30 Minutes of Game Development
06.17.2018: One Chapter of Math
Today's soundtrack is Richard Cheese: Lounge Against The Machine. This morning's activity was a bit different from my usual ones; my father-in-law was putting together a math placement test for his work, and he asked me to give it a try. I finished it in 51 minutes. I felt quite confident about most of the … Continue reading 06.17.2018: One Chapter of Math
06.16.2018: One Chapter of Math
Today's soundtrack is The Antlers: Hospice. This afternoon, I'm working on chapter 23 of Basic Math & Pre-Algebra, "Putting Mr. X to Work: Algebra Word Problems." Algebra word problems "bring together a lot of what you know" (p. 311), which makes them a great exercise. The first thing we want to do with an algebra … Continue reading 06.16.2018: One Chapter of Math
06.15.2018: Randomizer
I just wrote a program in Python that tells me what the day's album is and what to learn each day, then set it up to auto-run when I turn on my computer by adding a shortcut of the program to my startup folder (run/shell:startup). I've set it up to read from text files where … Continue reading 06.15.2018: Randomizer
06.15.2018: 30 Minutes of Songwriting
Today's soundtrack is Thank You Scientist: The Perils of Time Travel. I wrote a fun little industrial electronic piece this morning; not sure yet whether it will be an interlude or an introduction to a larger piece.
06.14.2018: One Chapter of Nonfiction
Today’s soundtrack is Thelonious Monk: Monk’s Dream. This morning, I’m reading the third and final part of Socrates’ dialogue “Charmides,” from The Dialogues of Socrates, by Plato. The first part is here; the second is here. Picking up where I left off, Critias had just agreed with Socrates that “the discovery of things as they … Continue reading 06.14.2018: One Chapter of Nonfiction
06.13.2018: One Chapter of Nonfiction
Today's soundtrack is Shiny Toy Guns: III. This afternoon, I'm reading the next ten pages of Socrates' dialogue Charmides, by Plato. Yesterday, I read about Socrates' discussion with Charmides about the definition of temperance. Where I left off, Socrates had proposed to Charmides that the definition of temperance as being "doing our own business" (p. … Continue reading 06.13.2018: One Chapter of Nonfiction
06.12.2018: One Chapter of Nonfiction
Today’s soundtrack is clipping.: Splendor & Misery. This afternoon, I'm reading the first 20 pages of the first chapter of Plato's The Dialogues of Socrates, "Charmides." Socrates returned from Potidaea and visited his friends. He told them about his adventures, then asked whether there were any beautiful young men who were interested in philosophy. Critias … Continue reading 06.12.2018: One Chapter of Nonfiction
06.11.2018: One Chapter of Nonfiction
Today's soundtrack is Childish Gambino: "Awaken, My Love!" This evening, I'm reading chapter 3 of John Calvin's The Institutes of Christian Religion, "The Knowledge of God Has Been Naturally Imprinted In the Human Mind." God imparts a knowledge of His existence into every man's mind "so that no one can plead ignorance" (p. 27). If … Continue reading 06.11.2018: One Chapter of Nonfiction
Steven Mills 