So, I can’t stop myself. I’ve got two current home-grown projects – finishing the new PC version of Inaria and converting Planitia to OpenGL. But I will say that I’ve been able to work on my health as well; my current weight is 363, which is down from my starting weight of 375. I intend to start doing more formal PTFSD entries in the future, probably every Friday.
And what the heck, here’s a screenshot of the current PC version of Inaria:
I need to reprioritize. I’m trying to do too much at once.
So I’m taking a break from game development – even hobby development.
I have to do something about this weight; it needs to become priority one. So expect some Put That Freakin’ Sandwich Down posts in the near future.
I will say that I will be competing in Ludum Dare 19, which will occur from December 17 to 20. Until then, I will not be touching a compiler outside of work.
I’m sorry if this disappoints anyone who was looking forward to Inaria (hah!) But I’m being pulled in too many directions and I need to suspend at least one.
My God, I do not want to come back to this topic, but I don’t really have a choice.
Saturday evening my wife Jamie had a mild heart attack.
She was bringing in the groceries and was carrying too much. The entrance to our apartment goes through the utility space, and she collapsed against the dryer. She had all the classic symptoms: chest pain, tingling in her left arm, dizziness and nausea. Once we got her to the couch I gave her a baby aspirin and called 911.
After doing all the necessary tests on her, the doctors concluded that her heart had blocked 100% for a moment and then cleared itself. If it hadn’t cleared itself she probably wouldn’t have made it out of the utility closet. The damage to her heart appeared to be minor and there were no other major blockages.
In other words, if she had to have a heart attack, it was about the best kind of she could have had. Of course, that’s like saying, “If you have to eat a crap sandwich…”
My wife and I fall under the category of “morbidly obese”. This is our third warning. I’ve had two and now she’s had one. She was lucky it was just a warning; I could easily have been writing her obituary right now.
Expect a renewed instance of Put That Freakin’ Sandwich Down, this one done with a vigor that verges on the frantic.
And I’d like to thank everyone who prayed for Jamie and supported me during this time.
Well…I haven’t been posting here much.
Why? Has nothing happened to me?
Oh, no. Quite the opposite.
But none of it has been good.
I don’t like posting about bad things…but the thing is, I created this blog so I could post about anything…and then I haven’t been using my newfound superpower.
Before you ask, no, I haven’t had any more heart problems.
But I now have some anxiety problems. I’m currently on some mild medication to help, but the thing that would really help is if some of the sources of stress in my life would resolve.
Unfortunately, none of them want to.
The job situation is dire. I’ve had exactly one in-person interview, and even though they really liked me, I didn’t have the necessary skills so they hired someone else. I’ve had several phone interviews – some went well and some went poorly, but none of them have resulted in employment. It’s as if the game development scene in Austin has dried up and blown away. I’ve had dozens of recruitment calls for companies all over the country, but I currently don’t feel like I can move because Jamie’s mother is currently in a nursing home…and David’s doctor is here (he’s supposed to be one of the best in the world).
My son, David, has been acting out increasingly at school. He’s mildly autistic, and something at school is just setting him off. He’s exhibiting behavior there that we never see at home – screaming at the top of his lungs, turning over furniture, thrashing wildly on the floor – and at this point I’m putting him on the bus, waiting an hour, and then getting a phone call from the school for me to come get him because his behavior is already out of control.
I consoled myself with the fact that within a few weeks the school year would be over and while he’d be in my hair, I wouldn’t have to worry about him accidentally kicking his teachers in the face.
And then last Thursday, Child Protective Services knocked on our door.
Now, the things that I hate about CPS are:
a) We cannot ask them who called them,
b) We cannot know exactly what they are looking for, and
c) They have the power to arbitrarily take our children away from us.
This seems a bit unconstitutional to me.
Needless to say, my stress level went off the chart. Now, it seemed like the case worker who knocked on our door was a good guy, because he agreed to an appointment the next day when it turned out my oldest daughter was in school. Thus we spent the next twenty-four hours scrubbing every surface we could reasonably clean in that time.
And then he came, had the appointment, and he ruled that there was no reason for CPS to get involved in our case. Which, frankly, I knew was going to happen…but the uncertainty just killed me for that twenty-four hour period.
And when I’m stressed, I eat. Thus my weight briefly got back up to 330 last week. Thus, no PTFSD posts. I’m currently dieting like crazy to get back to 320 (and perhaps below, if I can keep it up.)
Our financial situation isn’t looking good. Despite help from our wonderful family and friends, we have trouble making the rent and the COBRA payment (necessary for David and I to retain our health insurance) every month. As the month comes to a close and I still don’t know how I’m going to make the payments, again, my stress level spikes. At the end of April it got so bad I couldn’t sleep.
And, of course, the end of May is coming up. But I think I’ll handle it better than April because at this point I’ve been worn down so much that I almost don’t care any more. I’m on autopilot – check for new jobs in the morning, send out resumes, pick David up from school, help him do his schoolwork (he won’t do it at school but he does it fine at home), walk an hour, work on Inaria iPhone, try to eat under my calorie limit, go to bed, wake up, do it all again. All very healthy, positive behaviors that are not helping me one damn bit…but what else can I do?
Now I feel the need to apologize for the above. I’m not going to use this blog to complain about my life (at least not very often) but sometimes you just have to express this stuff to somebody.
Okay, so I went up to Whole Foods and got some shirataki noodles.
The product they offered wasn’t the zero calorie kind – it was this brand. Still, the noodles only have 20 calories per serving, which is more than low enough.
So what are they like?
Well, first, the come packed in water and they need to be refrigerated. They only last about three months, even in the fridge.
Second, they are two bucks a pack…but a pack has two servings. So they cost about ten times as much as normal ramen noodles…but still pretty cheap.
Third, while you do not cook the noodles, you must still prepare them properly in order to get the most out of them.
When you open the bag, you will be immediately hit with a very Asian, fishy smell. Do not panic. Drain the noodles in a colander and then rinse them very well under hot water. Drain them again.
Now comes the most crucial step – you must dry the noodles. Everyone who complains about these kinds of noodles has typically missed this step. Put the noodles in the microwave for one minute, then dry them well between layers of paper towels. You’re almost going to want to wring them out – only by getting the packaging water out of the noodles will they be able to soak up whatever sauce you’re going to put on them.
You’ll notice that the fishy smell is gone. If you taste one, you’ll notice that it…well, doesn’t really taste like anything. You’ll also note that the “unique texture” the web page touts is actually that of rubber. It doesn’t bother me much, but if you’re used to regular ramen noodles…
Add some protein (I use about four ounces of either shrimp or chicken), some veggies and a little soy or Worcestershire sauce and you’ve got a very filling meal for about 250 to 300 calories. I’ve heard they work even better in stir-fries, which makes perfect sense.
I’ll be eating these religiously for two meals a day for the next week. On Friday I’ll report my progress.
Okay. You may have noticed that I haven’t been posting PTFSD updates. The astute among you have probably guessed it’s because it’s not going well. You’d be right! While I have gotten my weight down to 315.9 at one point, my lack of dieting resolve has caused it to rebound to nearly 320. This seems to be a “plateau weight” for me – a weight my body likes to hang around, and in order to lose more I have to drill down to a lower plateau weight.
(This applies only to my dieting. I am still walking for an hour at least five days a week, which I guess I should be proud of…if it were helping.)
The problem, of course, is that I like to eat. And I tend to eat more when I’m stressed, because I don’t feel like starving myself when everything else in my life…well, sucks. So I guess I should be happy that I haven’t gained any more weight (the last time I was unemployed was when I ballooned up to 360).
But I need something serious to get myself unstuck. I have shied away from gimmicks in my diet because, well, most of them not only don’t help, they are actively harmful to your health. Stimulants, hCG, Atkins – all really bad ideas.
But then I found out about miracle noodles, also known as shirataki noodles. What are they, you ask? They’re noodles with a blissfully short ingredient list: water, soluble fiber, and calcium. Which means that they contain no sugar, no starch, no fat, and no protein. They effectively have zero calories. They seem like such the perfect thing to help me that I must either be dreaming or…they must taste like krep.
Have I tried them? Not yet. I went to four different Asian markets yesterday looking for them, to no avail. On a whim I called Whole Foods…and they have them. So I’ll be running up there later today to pick some up. Expect an update later on how they measure up!
Um…yeah.
Current Weight: 320.1
Delta: Gain of 1.8 pounds
Number of days this week I walked an hour: 5
Number of days this week I ate fewer than 2000 calories: 2
I’ve got the exercise habit down. It’s the food thing that’s much harder. I think the hardest part is when it gets late, I’ve been working on my programming, and I don’t want to go to bed hungry.
(For any new readers, PTFSD is short for “Put that freakin’ sandwich down!” and is the title of my personal weight loss initiative. The line comes from a Homestar Runner cartoon, of course.)
And now, drum roll please:
Current Weight: 318.3
Delta: Loss of 3.3 pounds
Number of days this week I walked an hour: 6
Number of days this week I ate fewer than 2000 calories: 5
You’ll notice my weight is a little higher than I reported earlier. I was pretty bad during the week of my birthday and my weight got up above 320, which prompted action. Now it’s coming back down again, thankfully.
Right now I don’t feel like making any projections about when my weight is going to be at what stage. Doing so always leads to disappointment. I’m just going to follow the plan and let it happen.
Being unemployed just causes time to slow…way…down. You spend your days emailing people you’ve never met before while constantly refreshing your mail client and keeping one ear cocked for a phone ring. It is, frankly, an awful way to live, and I’m hoping not to have to do it any more soon.
And because of this, I just don’t have much to talk about right now. Sure, I could make good on my threat to destroy PSRD in a massive post detailing what I think about various subjects but that seems like a copout…and I’m still a bit reticent about using my newfound power to say whatever the hell I want because in the end, far too many subjects have become far too polarized. People are actually deciding that their friends aren’t their friends any more, not because said friends have stolen from them or harmed them, or forgot to pick them up from the airport, but simply because they have different political views. Politics just aren’t that important. It’s a minefield, and it’s one best avoided (though if you diligently search my previous posts you’ll probably get a good feel for my beliefs).
Oh! I’m going to start giving PTFSD updates again. I’m currently at 316, which if you’ve been keeping track means I’ve lost about 40 pounds so far from my high of 355. I’d very much like to be below 300 for my birthday, but that’s not looking like it’s going to happen. Still, I’m hoping to get down to around 275 by the end of the year – that’s just another 40 pounds, so it should be doable. And of course every pound I lose means my heart can take it that much easier.
As for gaming…well, I’ve even less time for it now than I used to. Typically I just jump into 2Fort and do some sniping. I played the Halo Wars demo and the game looks perfectly serviceable…if a little uninspired.
Actually, right now my kids are going nuts over this little game called The Maw on XBLA. Maw’s a purple…thing with big teeth. He’s cute and menacing at the same time. You play as his friend Frank and your goal is simply to progress to the end of each level (there’s an overall story about a spaceship crashing and alien planets but it’s not that important).
As Maw eats the cute little critters on each level, he gets bigger – and he can actually steal abilities from some creatures. For instance, eating a fire lizard on the first level gives him flame breath. The character designs are great, the puzzles are simple but fun and the violence is played for laughs. All three of my kids enjoyed it, even the one who is allegedly grown up now.
Production Resolution: Ship Planitia and at least one other project. I shipped exactly zero personal products in 2007; while I learned a heck of a lot, I can only consider that a failure. Planitia will ship this year with single-player AI skirmish and story modes as well as a two- to four-player network mode. I can’t guarantee that the gameplay will set the world on fire but the game will be available to play by the end of 2008.
For my second project, I will probably do something much smaller and lighter (and probably time limit-based like Inaria was) to cleanse my palate. It will probably be a one-page game.
I will then go on to start on 3D RPG That Really Needs a Name, incorporating everything I’ve learned so far. I do not expect to ship 3DRPGTRNAN in 2008 but I do expect to ship it in 2009.
Learning Resolution: My learning focus for this year will be on two topics: overall game engine design and networking.
To succeed at this goal my plan is to first read and take copious notes on the following books:
Game Coding Complete, Second Edition by Mike McShaffry
Code Complete, by Steve McConnell
Introduction to Algorithms, by Thomas Cormen, Charles Leiserson, Ronald Rivest and Clifford Stein
Now, I’ve read the first two but I have a learning technique that I use when I really want to absorb something, and that is to read a book while taking notes on it on the computer as I read and then marking pages read with a highlighter to track my progress through the book. I’ve used this technique before with The C++ Standard Library by Josuttis and Effective C++, More Effective C++ and Effective STL by Meyers, and that knowledge stuck very well and has served me very well.
Once these books are all complete the next step will be to implement a game engine using the currently accepted design, which separates hardware-dependent code from non-dependent code for easy porting and separates code from data as rigorously as possible for ease of engine re-use. This game engine will be network-enabled. Planitia will use this engine; again, I will work out the kinks with the engine on Planitia so that it will be ready to go for 3DRPGTRNAN.
Weight Resolution: It’s the return of Put That Freakin’ Sandwich Down! My goal is to lose 65 pounds this year, getting my weight down to 295. That will still be well above a healthy weight for me, but it will be a good start and allow me to finish next year. I will do this by eliminating sodas and mayonnaise from my diet and exercising at least twenty minutes and least three times a week.
I will be posting updates on both my current weight and how well I followed my diet and exercise goals every week.
Hmmm…it’s going to be a busy year!
