Update on Projects Projects Projects

Last November I posted about some ongoing projects, went through through the various projects and gave a bit of a status report on them, and I mentioned my goals moving forward. Today’s going to be a breakdown of what happened between then and now, and what’s in store for the future.

First Things First

So… what happened? Well, it was a combination of things. I had a string of bad days (more about “why” in Sabbaticals, Reflections, and Changes), but I managed to at least post. Then, still feeling a bit low-energy, I made the “mistake” of taking up the invitation for company and sitting on the couch with Rayeste and Arcaidius and watching The Great British Baking Show while trying to type out a post on my Surface Pro. While the company was good and the show was fun to watch, I never quite got the post finished and posted.

I’ve generally consoled myself by saying that a couple days later I probably would have stopped anyway. While on sabbatical I’ve been working retail sales, and Black Friday prep, Black Friday itself, Christmas shopping season, and a series of other work events took up quite some time (earning some nice OT too) from mid-November through the middle of January. Then in February I transferred to a different part of the company and I’ve been working on adjusting my schedule. I think I’ve got a handle on what I can fit in now. Here and there I’ve made some progress on a couple of projects, and I’ve got some good news in there too.

While that sounds reasonable, and I almost left it at that, I confess that there was more than a little inertia involved. And being “at rest” was awfully hard to overcome again. Especially as the gap grew from my last post grew.

So, using the same list as last time, but front-loading what I’ve actually worked on, here we go:

AnonJr.com

I did a little bit of tidying up around here. Changed up the nav bar a little, added some links (and now that I’m looking at it, missed a couple), updated the project pages, added a proper Favicon, and a few other bits and bobs. I’ve got more I’d like to do, but to be quite frank I suck at being both the client and the designer…

Part of the problem is I don’t have a clear vision for what I want. Yet. In the spirit of moving forward instead of stalling I went ahead and went with the new Favicon design, and added it to a bunch of the accounts I run. I know I’ve missed a few, and I hope to have them squared away over the next week.

I’ve also put a new header/banner up on my new Twitch, Mixer, YouTube, and other accounts. The references in the by-line will be explained in the next two bits.

As much as I love the current background, I’ll probably switch it out for a photo I took on a trip to Arizona not too far back. I still need to switch this over from Pretzel to Jekyll, and work out a smoother deploy. I did get that special feed built though.

CoffeeCraft.us

One of the items on the aforementioned by-line, CoffeeCraft is where the bulk of the work has been this month. To recap, it’s a small survival Minecraft server that my sister, her husband, and I have been playing on. Inspired by HermitCraft, we’ve fired up a fresh world for “Season 00” so we can get used to working together in a way that works better for making videos and live streaming, and actually get used to streaming and making videos.

As you can tell by the links in the last paragraph, we’ve got some … lightweight profiles together, a design that’s a little more “us” than “template”, and the stubs for content. Over the next week or so I’ll start adding content so I can make sure the various pieces all render like they should. Hopefully by mid-April it will be good enough to tag as version 1.

Also: I’ll be doing my first full CoffeeCraft stream on Monday March 25th at 7pm EDT (UTC-4 at the time of posting).

I’m using Restream.io to simultaneously stream to Twitch, Mixer, and YouTube (where I’ll also have the video available afterward). I did a test stream earlier and everything seemed to work well, though I’ve still got a few things I’d like to figure out and set up on XSplit. I am a little worried about the chat - Restream.io is supposed to cross-post all the chat messages so everyone sees everyone else’s messages, but I’m wondering how moderation is going to work.

Some other game streaming

Now that I’ve got the streaming set up (well, mostly) I plan on going forward with two more streams: “Games Revisited” and “The 47%” (the last two items on the new channel header).

Games Revisited is going to be once a week, live-to-tape (as it were), trip through some old and old-ish games. A nice chance to revisit some favorites and go through some games I missed back when they were first hot. Streams will be archived on my YouTube channel. I hope it provides some nice nostalgia for those that played the games when they first came out, and I hope it exposes others to some games they never knew existed. I’ve got a few contenders in my Steam library, and in the next week or so I’ll start with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. It was released in 2003. While I’d always intended to play it, I never actually got around to it.

The 47% is going to be done the same way, but it’s going to be World of Tanks. The name is a bit of a riff on the fact that most people have a 47% win rate, and quite frankly I’m not that good. Of all the projects I’ve got on my slate, this one might end up getting cut. There’s a bit of ambivalence about Wargaming (the company that makes WoT) and the tenor of the community of late. On the other hand, I do still enjoy playing the game. And I could whine about the community or I could try to engage and encourage better behaviour. So we’ll see how that goes.

Bible By Example

Bible by Example has been on hold while I get the streaming channels up and running. I made a few minor updates to the site repository, and got it set up with HTTPS. As much as I really want to get this one going, I’d rather make the streaming/recording mistakes on my gaming bits than this show. So, this is going to sit on the back burner for another month or two.

Wayward Son Developers, D20 Project, and ASP-Ajaxed

These projects have also been on hold for a bit. Once I get the CoffeeCraft and Bible by Example sites finished and settled, I’ll update Wayward Son Developers and make it a better portfolio type site. The others I’ll start picking up shortly thereafter.

Wrapping it up

I really feel like I’ve forgotten something, but at this hour that’s not surprising. Tomorrow I’ve got one or two more post drafts that I plan on finishing off, and I’ve got to do a little more prep for Monday’s live stream.