2022-07-20
Family brunch on Sunday at Imperial Court. Was prompted afterwards to update my
review, likening Phylis to the Soup Nazi of Seinfeld fame. Good dim sum if you
bring a sense of humour and don’t get offended by her brusqueness.
Spent Monday with Jack. We dropped the car off for a service, then caught the
bus to Garbo for haircuts and to sign up for the library at the Melville Civic
Centre, then ate an early lunch at Miss Maud’s before doing a spot of shopping.
Made shaking beef for dinner because the watercress looked so good.
Kids back to school on Tuesday. Had a great bike ride around Bibra Lake in the
morning, and applied for a few roles. Lots of irons in the fire. I’ve even
signed up for some management courses as that’s one skill I feel I lack. We’ll
see how it goes. Traveller over for lamb and red sauce pasta; she regalled us
with tales of a new Marvel TV series, but it’s all hush-hush. Enjoyed a few
glasses of red. Nice evening.
2022-07-16
Returned home from dinner on Thursday night to somehow find Bailey in the
garage, even though I swore I had put him outside before he left. Phone call in
bed the following morning; Bailey was out on the street. So first mystery solved
only to be replaced by another. Had he figured out how to squeeze through the
gate? We tried in vain to get him to do just that, but even his favourite dried
liver treats (crack for dogs according to the veterinarian) wouldn’t tempt him
to attempt the feat. I suspect that Noah, a mischevious boy from up the street,
came over on Thursday evening and again on Friday morning to ask Jack to play
basketball, and had opened the gate and let Bailey out. Might get a camera.
Took a train to West Leederville with Jack to meet Dzung at Besk. Great beer,
and the steak tartare, cheeseburger, gnochi and bone marrow were all top class.
Returned via the city where I picked up my library card and borrowed a stack of
books. Olive Ketteridge and Recursion for me. Bought some Telegram coffee beans
too, and refreshed ourselves with bubble tea before training it home again
(before which Jack walked into a pole while not looking where he was going). Did
some reading in the afternoon after Jack signed up for GoodReads so he can share
his progress with me. Hopefully that’ll spark the bug in him; he needs to
improve his English grades at school.
2022-07-14
Spent yesterday at Treetop Adventures in Yanchep, with family visiting from Hong
Kong and one of their family friends. Lots of fun; the black course was
challenging and I feel a bit worse for wear today. Battered and bruised with
aching muscles. I rely too much on my arms to counteract my poor sense of
balance.
Caught up with Traveller and a few friends for dinner at Long Chim in the
evening. It was great to see her and hear about life in London.
The “Mazes for Programmers” book arrived today, so I’m mooching through that
while looking out at a rain-drenched garden. Wife and kids are out at brunch
with their cousins this morning; last day in Perth for them today before
returning to a one-week hotel quarantine. It’ll be Bun Loc for dinner; a perfect
meal for a wintry day.
2022-07-12
Long time! So what’s happened in the last six months?
- I’m slowly looking for work. Not good medicine for the ego.
- Got MegaHAL back online again at megahal.kranzky.com
- Working on Lazybones (formerly Hacktile) and it’s going well
- Released Sesame with Jack
I also released Gravitas at the end of last year. So feeling pretty productive,
even though I’m not earning a lot of $ at the moment.
Keeping fit and doing heaps of reading; 24 books so far this year. Have just
joined a few different libraries as it’s getting to be an expensive hobby.
New bike has been ordered and will be delivered in September. Looking forward to
it. Managed to dodge COVID; both the kids had it recently but they isolated in
their bedrooms and we kept the windows open even though it was freezing cold.
I’ll try to write more regularly again as I enjoy reading mundane daily entries
from a few years ago. It’s the usual thing; I feel I’ve got nothing to write,
and I always hate what I’ve written until enough time passes. Then it seems OK.
Plan is to release Lazybones soon, build some landing pages to try to get a new
startup idea off the ground, start earning money again in a new job, and
generally avoid COVID and have fun with the family. A simple life.
2022-01-20
Last post before I turn 0x32 on Saturday.
Had a great 2021, releasing 5 projects. Finished and launched “Gravitas” on
Christmas Eve.
This year I’m having a bit of a break in January, spending time with the kids
and so forth, but in the background Beetlefeet and I have been working on coming
up with 100 startup ideas. I did the “Aspiring Founders” startup school as part
of this effort.
I also wrote a Twitter bot to solve the daily Wordle.
I plan to divide by week between 6 activities this year:
- GroupFire
- The Punk Collective
- Untitled Startup
- Fun Hacks
- Exercise
- Reading
We’ll see how it goes!
2021-08-05
BLaTTiX is released! After two weeks of crunch, the game finally came together.
Fifteen levels spread across five planets, with eight enemy types. Not too
shabby! Reckon I spent around 350 hours on this, spread across 129 calendar
days. And now I’m learning to market something I’ve made. Sales are trickling
in, and I’m planning to write and post about the project in the hope of
capturing an audience. But, soon, it will be on to something else.
2021-07-19
Well, here we are in mid-July; kids about to return to school after two weeks
off. We spent some time down in Bunbury, which was nice.
I can see the finish line for Blattix; I have a small list of work to complete
over the next ten days, and expect to entirely wrap it up by the end of the
month. I also released a starter kit
for using Raylib+Flecs, and I plan to use this as the framework for my Deminer
and Noid experiments.
Been somewhat distracted by the NSW lockdown, but deliberately weaning myself
off the doomscrolling and the live press conferences. Must focus on
productivity.
Will dust off Punk / Gumshoe / Hacktile later this week. Also plan to do some
MegaHAL work so I can get a monkey off my back; a MegaHAL fan has asked that the
new implementation be able to load brainfiles generated by the old 1990s
version, and I reckon I can bust that out too.
Wish me luck!