vivdunstan

Had a very disturbed night neurologically last night, but on plus spent some very useful time building up some overview boards in Milanote of my next IF game (interactive fiction, in this case parser text adventure). Here's a snippet, hopefully blurred out enough in appropriate places! This is a board showing the 7 chapters side by side, with overview info of each, helping me balance things, as well as links to more detailed boards for each individual chapter. To be honest this is all rather advanced procrastination, when I really just need to get on with writing and coding up more game sections! But it is helping me see the balance, and through structure, and also helping highlight areas where I need to develop things more deeply or in differently connected ways. Milanote has a rather costly subscription model after you've used up the free allowance. But I'm currently finding it useful for brainstorming and developing. It's like having nested digital white boards. And syncs well across web, Mac, iOS and Android. I previously created mood boards in Milanote for both Bad Beer (my previous game) and this new game. But this is my first go properly planning and overviewing with it.

Stepping away from the Big Finish website regeneration today, which is erm *not* going well. And not doing the best for my generalised anxiety disorder! On plus I have emailed them to point out one huge problem that no-one else had reported publicly. Which is potentially a huge problem for people with existing CD preorders - like me. But leaving it now. I downloaded lots of audios to work on the old version of the app last week. That app won't work with the new version of the site, but will continue to work with existing downloads. There is a new app I haven't tried yet, but I've seen screenshots, and it's not very iPad friendly.

(Big Finish produce Doctor Who and other cult full cast audio stories, on download and CD version. I own a lot ...)

Just managed to get my count of unread articles saved to Pocket down under 7,000 again. Pocket is one of a number of ways of storing articles you see but can’t read there and then but want to keep to read later. Not long ago my count was almost 8,000 unread. A few years ago it was almost 10,000 and then I had 2 very ill years, when I saved even more and couldn’t read them often. But it’s dropping well now I’m more awake again. Masses yet to read! But next up - or down! - I’m aiming for the 5000s. This is a huge range of saved articles, many newspaper or online. I shake up the reading by searching for articles that mention specific words or subjects and bingeing them. Martin has about 1,250 unread articles at the moment and is slightly alarmed at that. I give him a look 😜 Note my huge count isn’t any bad mark against Pocket or sign that it isn’t effective. I’m just heavily sedated from my neuro illness and end up saving more articles to read later than I can get through promptly. But it does work for me. I use the Pocket app on my iPad and iPod touch, and it’s easiest to save via the iOS share button to read later. Pocket can also integrate well with web browsers on computers. I find it a great way of managing delayed reading. Now if only I was more awake ...