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Weekly Update: A good start into the new year

One of my new years resolutions is to write more regularly on my gemlog, so with this I intorudce the first weekly post where I update you on my life. These will not be interesting at all and mostly serve just as a way for me to diagnose repeating patterns and keep track of the plans I made in my previous post [1]. So here is my progress on those:

Play more video games

I'm trying to put more variety into the games I play (meaning something other than Elder Scrolls). So I following the whole-hearted recommendation of one of my favorite YouTubers, Brian David Gilbert [2], I bought Inscryption. I have never played a roguelike before and have actually been wary of the genre (the concept seems unappealing to me), but it turns out I really like Inscryption. It is a deck building roguelike with an interesting story and a very unique style. I'm not done yet, and have no idea how much of the game is left, so I can't give a full review. But check it out if you like any of the qualifiers I listed, or if like me you want to try something different for a change.

I also began playing the final Dark Souls 2 DLC with my brother in coop mode. This is the last piece of Dark Souls content that I have never played before and it's pretty cool. Also I'm surprised we still get invaded - why are people other than us still playing Dark Souls 2 (the DX9 version, not Scholar of the First Sin Edition!), in an optional area?

Both of the games mentioned work flawlessly in Proton on Linux for me.

Make more video games

I cobbled together the beginnings of a Doodle Jump clone in Godot. So far I have a jumping player character, manually placed platforms, and a score count. All that's left for a minimal version is procedurally placing platforms as you go higher and motion crontrols for Android. After that I could throw in some distinguishing game mechanics to make it actually fun and challenging. Also assets other than scaled versions of the Godot logo would be nice.

Screenshot of the game

Art

I managed to draw a few pictures. But not original works - I use artwork from other people as reference and try to copy it as best as I can. I know this is not the best way to learn, especially when the artwork is stylized, but I find it fun to do! It's also a good motivation boost to have proof that my hands can technically produce pictures that I like. I'll put them in my art gallery soon, with image descriptions and links to the references - I have plans to overhaul that section but that will require some work. For now I'll just put them here:

Amane Suzuha

Okabe Rintarou

Makise Kurisu

These are all characters from my favorite anime, Steins;Gate. I plan to draw the rest of the cast too.

Physics

Despite the dangerously cozy winter break, I managed to overcome my procrastination and work on my thesis for a bit. Somehow I managed to avoid path integrals until now, but it seems the time has finally come that I need to seriously try to understand that concept. And not just the "regular" QFT path integral, but gravitational path integrals. So far I managed to get a glimpse of a shimmer of understanding, which is better than nothing.

I also started writing a gemlog about entropy, hopefully I'll finish it next week. Still have to decide on the scope of that article.

Cleaning

Doing my best to clean the kitchen in the evening instead of leaving work for the morning. So far so good!

Write more

I made it much easier for me to publish posts here by overhauling my server. I use Jetforce as a server (thanks mozz!) to generate some content dynamically so that I don't have to fiddle with too many files when I write something. It would be more efficient to statically generate what I need once on publishing, so maybe I'll switch to such a method at some point. But it was fun to program it like this. I plan on writing what and how I'm doing things here in a future gemlog. As mentioned before I have a physics article as a draft, and I also have one more post planned about something nobody needs to hear but I want to say. So writing is going as planned.

Exercise

This might be one of the best changes I made in 2022: Every day this year I have taken a walk, ranging from 30 to 90 minutes. I decided I'll try to walk to uni instead of taking the train, and also without looking at a map. It wan't difficult to find my goal with just my internal navigation abilites, but I have no idea how close I am to taking the optimal route. I'd like to experiment with different paths and see which ones are quicker, and more importantly which ones are nicer. I live in such a beautiful city and really should have begun exploring it more intentionally on foot sooner. I strongly feel it in my legs, so should be some good exercise!

Here is a photo I made on the way (The Danube canal on a sunny day)

Closing thoughts

So with regards to what I wanted to change in 2022, the first week has been surprisingly successful. If there is one habit I want to keep going forward it would be the daily walks. The theme of the past two years has been isolation and stagnation, so just going outside for the sake of being outside every single day is the best counter measure I could come up with.

I also hope to keep doing weekly posts consistently. Throughout the week I kept thinking about what I would write today, there were so many thoughts. I'm sure I forgot some but this post has already gotten longer than anticipated anyway.

Thanks for reading, and see you in a week!

References

[1] My vague new years resolutions

[2] Brian David Gilbert's video game / cookie recommendations

Posted 2022-01-09

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2022-01-10 | exercise is so good for your brain! i really need to do more :p - phoebos