Month: October 2018

Same plan today I guess. I’ll keep making these updates until I feel comfortable with what I’m doing. I’m going to get my day job stuff done and work on CC hopefully around 3 or 4pm this afternoon. I refactored the CarCodeProgram class yesterday so it’s much cleaner and easier to work with. Still working on being able to move instructions by dragging them around. I also had the idea of being able to full-screen the editor in case the screen is too small to make a very specific change. Hopefully I can get the drag and drop reordering working. I’d like to be able to have the
CarCodeProgram class reorder the list when the array itself changes but that’s all dependent on the same code (I would still use the code I’m writing now although things would be organized a bit differently), but it would make things easier if I start adding new instructions later on. Also, I should use actual icon images and not font awesome for the instruction icons… anyway, that’s for later. My next update won’t be until Monday unless I have time over the weekend to work which is doubtful.

Yeah, um, balance… well, what does that mean? I’m thinking that first, I have to setup a basic schedule/plan each day, but then I’ve got to make sure there’s some down time in there. Seems simple enough to me. So, start out with some basic reading and surfing until say 10, then day job until say 4, and then work on CC. Actually, I need to check emails first. That always has to be done first thing so that nothing sits there while I’m just doing whatever. 

I’ll check in tomorrow and see how that went? I’m working on the code editor in CC adding in some usability features like dragging instructions to reorder them. If the editor isn’t easy to use and intuitive (I think that means it’s easy to understand) no one will bother with the game. I need to get this right or it won’t have a chance at being successful. 

Right now, you can drag instructions to delete them but that’s it. I need to refactor it a bit to make it easier to program on too.

I’m ending my experiment today. After two months I can see that taking the, “when I feel like it,” approach yields nothing. I worked on some projects maybe twice and very little was done. Mostly I just played games when I should have been working on something. 

I’m not going to pretend I haven’t gone the other way either. I’ve ran this same experiment far more times than I would like to admit, and the results are the same. I feel this tremendous amount of motivation, work very hard for a few days, and then get so stressed out I end up sick or seriously depressed.

I have enough evidence to conclude my experiments. I have to find the grey area here between these two polar opposites. If I don’t schedule time to work and have a plan describing what I need to do, nothing will get done, and if I try to do everything at once I won’t be able work at all. That’s it, I’m going forward with my findings so no more binary work ethic. 

I’m thinking that I’ll have some time, maybe 30 minutes to an hour, later in the day to work on Car Coder sometime after 3pm. I still don’t like that name.

EDIT: I just wanted to make a note about the release date. If I keep working on the project regularly I’ll finish it, but I can’t work with hard deadlines right now. If I was working on this full time maybe I could do that, or have a better estimate. Honestly, I don’t think this project will be ready by the end of the year, but I should know when it will be done by then because I’ll be able to track my progress/productivity as long as I keep making updates here. If I keep breaking down the work involved and work regularly I should be fine.

That’s what I’ve heard at least. If you wait until you feel like doing something, then you’ll never do anything. In my experience, I have certainly felt like doing things, but the feeling never lasts long enough for me to actually get ‘er done. Typically, I feel really interested or engaged with a project ending in betrayal later with nihilistic feelings of hopelessness. I’m starting to realize that this back and forth has had a big impact on my overall sense of self-worth. I feel cheated, but then I can only blame myself, right? Nah, I’m too creative to rule out demonic influence. However, I need to make sure I see the difference between this conflict and simple apathy because answering a serious question that’s been holding me back most of my life is not indifference or lack of action, but rather it is an achievement on its own.

Continuing my experiment, I’m considering the keep it small approach, where you only do things that are easy or simple enough to get done in a short amount of time, but none of the ideas I come up with interest me. I do whatever I think is fun or interesting and when the nice feelings go away I stop. So far, I have some assembly code that prints a string to the console (pcjs), and I believe I worked some on Questr which needs a new name now that I have found another game with the same moniker. I’m feeling the familiar burnt out feeling I was talking about earlier.. ugh. I am both dreading and looking forward to the last three months of my experiment when I’ll change my strategy to ruthless discipline.