Well, sportsfans, I’m keeping busy and working away on my dissertation project and a whole whack of other things.

Since the last time that I wrote, I’ve participated in a lot of events, which is the primary reason why I haven’t been able to write too much here. In between the events, I’ve just needed time to recover, work on my code, and do my chores.

Speaking of code, you can now find the repository for my working-title project Traces here.

What I have discovered after a lot of effort and working with Node JS and etc is this:

— Johnny-Five doesn’t not play well with this NFC shield. I could either get my little LED light to blink using a node server command or I could get my RFID shield to read my NFID tags, but not both. People have been asking for support on this from the johnny-five developers since 2015, but obviously it’s a labour of love and it just hasn’t happened.

— I will have try to use websocket and serialport instead, although I remember there being some issues with serialport and one of our previous projects. Alternatively, I will have to try and make everything happen through the Arduino board (this is not ideal for audio or for using multiple com ports).

Okay, so my last post was written on a Sunday. Then, there was a week of work from there, where I did some writing and a lot of code troubleshooting that I don’t have a lot to show for. On the 8th, I did a Costco run with one of the organizers of GAMERella in preparation for, you guessed it, GAMERella, which happened on the 10th and 11th.

I made a game that weekend with Narf and Catherine called “TAMAGAMEWORKER”, and it’s about unhealthy working conditions in the game industry. You have to try and take care of a tamagotchi gameworker named Tama, while they try to balance their basic needs alongside demands from work and other spheres. You can check it out here – it’s not perfectly balanced and you may have to install “Noto Sans” for the fonts to display properly (I haven’t gotten around to doing web fonts for it yet). I did the programming, most of the art except the tamagotchi animations, the annoying music, and I helped edit the writing. Catherine did most of our writing and Narf helped with programming, did the Tamagotchi animations, and helped Catherine with syntax for the JSON file.

Then, this past weekend (and when I say weekend here, I mean covering the period from the 16th-19th), was the Montreal Mini Maker Faire followed directly by the Maker Cultures conference and symposium. It was four days straight of very intense, long days.

On Friday and Saturday, I was exhibiting. I didn’t realize how tired I was ’til after — it can be really hard to take a break and have someone else watch your booth when you’re the only one who knows what needs to be done and, as the Gamemaster, your skills are a big part of the experience. It was helpful to have to explain Flip the Script! (the game I was showing) to so many people. I was also on CTV Montreal with the project — you can check out the video here (although unfortunately it misgenders me).

On Sunday, it was a day of talks followed by dinner with the presenters, and Monday was a day of workshops and trying to help define this area.

One very serendipitous meeting from this weekend was with Tess and Karen Tanenbaum from UC Irvine. We had met at QGCon in LA two years ago, which Tess was kind enough to help me remember by saying “we haven’t seen each other since…” because I had total face blindness. The Tanenbaums have done some really cool work with — surprise! NFC! That includes a storytelling NFC glove, so I definitely plan to engage with their work as I think about Traces.

Yesterday, Tuesday, I took the day off and went to see Burn The Stage in theaters. I slept in, I ate ramen, I bought art supplies, I watched a movie, I cuddled kitties, I played video games, I wrote with Tom…It was glorious.

And that brings us to today. Today, I worked on some other tasks needing my attention regarding my work as student rep and some other administrative things. I also had the chance to practice Japanese with a dear friend. She is very patient with me — with all that’s been going on, I haven’t had much chance to practice. Oh, and I got a new night-guard and had it adjusted.

I jokingly told my friend today that maybe the reason I was working so much with Time Travel themes (in the tabletop RPG I am running for my friends, for example, and with this project) is because I never seem to have enough of it and I want to make more of it.

As the Pixies say, “I’ve been tired! T-I-R-E-D spells it, spells it, spells it”.

So I’m trying to be cautious, take the time that I need to rest, and keep on keeping on.