This Latest Update

This is the way. The way it has been since 2020 since I created this newest go at this home page. I make a few posts and start or continue a few projects. Then, as more projects get brought forward without staging or completion of others and an unwillingness to sit down and write about what’s going on, I simply work on the latest shiny things while not being concerned about putting out what’s going on here.
So here’s what’s been going on, more or less.

Karaoke

I continued to work on the karaoke list. Though it is not a complete list of songs I’d do and is also full of many I could do but would only do under various rare circumstances, it might forever be an ongoing project.

The karaoke list was mainly to do with having a quick go-to for the tracks I could and would sing on the karaoke nights that have become more common on youtube. These nights are another time sink I’ve engaged in. Even though they are fun they have taken considerable time away. So I had to start managing how many of them I would join and for how long. This has now tapered off since there are plenty of streams I don’t get invites to as a regular crowd has filled them or for any reasons I may not be aware of.

Lego or Models

The Lego collection grew. Especially with the zombification and perhaps real death of Eaglemoss, I am looking at a few Lego sets along with collecting parts for MOCs of followed-genre models or Great Ball Contraption machines. With my tracked list on Rebricakable showing over 360k bricks on hand and knowing that’s not even all of it, this became challenging. I built three new Akiyuki/Berthil Van Beek machines as well as a model of a Command and Conquer Mammoth tank (which had several non-Lego pieces). My take on Van Beek’s Akiyuki Ball Factory 3.0 is still not timed to run. After these projects, I planned a bit of Babylon 5 Lego fun with the completion of Captain_Quinn’s Star Fury I collected bricks for this as well as an Omega class destroyer and Babylon 5 itself. The shelf space does not yet exist.

The Site and Various Courses

I belayed work on the WordPress course. The course work is half complete and I have to finish it. I went on a tear with the incomplete conversation script pages in my old Ultima sites and what I had started developing in my wiki, Silverbooks. This broke out of a sequence where at first I was satisfied with the site and was adding limited content to it, get ready… this is a doozy.

I navigated my old site after this and imagined a style I thought would work well across most scripts from the games. I had already started to style scripts in Silverbooks months ago. I wasn’t taken with my first go. I started converting them and compiling the scripting which was still incomplete before then. This was hampered by finding the game save files that were useful in their original order to confirm the scripts from the in-game play. I began work on a new project: a tool to read each internal file title and reorder them to make them easier to work with. This was followed by upgrading my development environment. The upgrade was finishing the available space on my portable workstation. This provided the impetus to buy upgrades and install them. I started this concurrently with a couple of home PCs in which the upgrades were stymied by hardware and software issues that are ongoing. Though the save game program is complete in basic form, I wanted to track changes and update the manager listings in real-time. As I started work on the monitoring code, a threading issue cropped up. Finally, a need to work on my skills with Blender 3D cropped up so after all that I’ve lowered priority on the scripting reformat work in favor of getting back to Blender courses. This all started with pausing work on another course.

And Here I Am

Many stories like the above could be written detailing how my attention on the latest issue and its relative priority interferes with making real progress in many tasks. It is a failure of goal completion and time management. I only ever succeeded in both of these while managing work situations. It’s absolutely necessary to minimize tangents and avoid distractions while against the clock and under the scrutiny of my performance (at least this is how I view work). On personal projects when I answer to only myself, generally, I play loose and free with time and goals. It is also why I attempt to get people on board with understanding how much I can give to enterprises I have no control over or say in and how much I should be involved if you want me to apply myself. Working for others causes personal pride and a sense of fairness and honor to adhere to better time management and goal standardization.

This is life. I figure most have it harder than I do with my first-world problems. There is always the day-to-day grind. Work is harsh in the plant with 90+ degrees F (32+ degrees C) in 70% relative humidity or more. There were a couple of car issues and some basic health care things to manage. All of this with costs on the rise due to inflation and life getting sketchy with things outside our control. So much change to take in stride.

I still hope everyone takes responsibility, does their best, never forgets the important things, and has the best outcome that they can make.

I’m still working on it, even now.