Our baby girl arrived last Sunday. We love her so much.

Created using quickmeme.

Our cat Pete is rather curious:

He decided to investigate this plastic bag:

The plastic bag got caught on his collar, and he ran wildly through the house trying to get away from it. This freaked out our other cat, Bruce, who proceeded to bolt as fast as he could to his safe place – the lower window pane in our bedroom:

Amazingly, Bruce went right through the glass. (We later taped some cardboard to the inside of the window frame to close up the gap). We found him a while later and rushed him to the Veterinary Hospital Emergency at Murdoch University, where he had to get a number of stitches on lacerations to his leg and face.

Fortunately, Bruce managed to get away without more serious injuries (the glass was very sharp and we were rather worried). Unfortunately, he can’t go outside for a few days until his wounds have healed. Poor Bruce.

I came across this marriage proposal video in which Timothy Tiah utilises popular memes to propose to his girlfriend (who is now his fiance; congratuations Tim!):

Meme Proposal | Tim * Audrey from Crazy Monkey Studio on Vimeo.

I quite enjoyed the video (despite reddit’s mixed feelings) because (aside from being sweet) I feel that it demonstrates the participatory and universal nature of Internet culture.

Popular memes reflect shared human experience (that’s why they become popular!), and provide a platform to communicate personal feelings and experiences within that context.

Good memes cross traditional cultural boundaries and are widely adapted and shared because people “get them” immediately and personally. They speak more to the modern human condition than high art or other culturally elitist works, and that’s why I like them… and this video.

Just a few random photos from 2011 that I hadn’t yet posted to this blog.

Last week I audited how I spent my active hours (approx. 9am-7pm) in 2011.

I experienced some fairly major life changes throughout the year, and the report I put together is definitely more characteristic of the last 6 months (when I had settled into a routine) rather than the entire year.

Here’s a diagram illustrating my activities:

And here are some of my observations and thoughts:

1. Only 23% of my time is directly generating income. Hopefully this will change next year as ventures come to fruition.
2. Half my normal work time is non-billable.I spend as much time on tasks such as administration as I do on contract work.
3. My weekends and holidays are not my own! That 25% Personal time should be closer to 30%. (To be fair, this is probably my own fault.)
4. I spend a lot of time on Let’s Make Games Inc. An unsustainable amount really, but we’re becoming much more efficient.

No real surprises I suppose. The audit was a lot more detailed (down to individual projects), but this high-level review is probably the most important.

Overall, I’m rather happy with how I spent my time. I feel like 2011 was about laying a lot of foundations to be built upon in future. Many of those foundations are relationships, and I’ll be depending on a lot of people to help take Let’s Make Games, Hungry Sky, and various ventures forward together with me.

It’s very fulfilling to be working with people I believe in, in pursuit of projects I’m passionate about, and I’m glad that I put in the time to get things started.

My goals for this year are to:

1. Increase Personal time to around 34%. This should come naturally with the imminent arrival of my first child.
2. Reduce Let’s Make Games Inc. time to around 13%. We’re not setting up anymore, so this should be possible!
3. Reduce non-billable hours to around 15%. That’ll make it around 35% of my normal work time, rather than 50%.
4. Start making money from some of these ventures. This isn’t directly time related, but it will help with time justification!

So that was 2011 in pie chart and bullet point form. I’ll be posting some photos from the year as well… which may be more interesting for most people.

I’ve been musing (and designing) a simple role-playing game for quite a while. Mostly as a result of playing Dungeons & Dragons and getting slightly frustrated by how complex and convoluted it can be. (Checking rules interrupts gaming flow!)

My main focus has been on the game design. I made a few presentations and spreadsheets to get my ideas in order. I also had some ideas for how to commercialise it, but hadn’t really worked everything out yet.

Last Friday, everything suddenly fell into place in my head: design, gameplay, technology, market, production, sales. Bam! So I went to work creating a prototype and ended up making this over the weekend (with some support from Ben and Jim):

Here’s what is implemented so far (and shown in the video):

1. A rudimentary web-based multi-touch map editor (written in HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript)
2. A special holder (created using various plumbing and cleaning supplies) for miniature figurines
3. Code to detect the special holder’s position and orientation
4. A simple interface that allows a player to move their character or scroll the map via their figurine

On a technical note, the holder uses similar principles to this device (technical report) that I worked on back in 2006 while I was at ViSLAB. Ah, happy memories.

There is plenty still to come (including editor improvements, basic visibility, and monsters). Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to do some more hacking next weekend.