Looking Back

One of the benefits of not posting as much as I should or want to, means that reviewing those posts is pretty easy. Most of what I write I find to be fairly cringy- maybe anyone who stumbled here does too. No one comments after all, but that's alright. This blog is mostly for me and I enjoyed taking a stroll through memory lane, seeing early posts about my son (who is growing like a weed!), my attempt at game reviews (not a professional one of those) and now heading into renewed interests in arduino.

I can't decide if I want people to come here, especially those I'm friends with or work with. I've never been truly confident in my writing abilities. I've never really felt comfortable with anything I produce to share it, personality flaw.

Moving forward, it's nice to document things. I have a bullet journal (slight obsession) and the gaming is still strong (how the hell did I forget that I should review Zelda: Breath of the Wild??), the day job keeps me more than busy but I need more. I need my son to see that his mother is more than just a mother. I know for a long time, it won't matter. He won't care. But when he grows, I would like him to look back and know that I did anything and everything for him but that I was still me.

I find myself struggling with a family challenge the last few days, it's sent me on more of an emotional rollercoaster than I was prepared to deal with. In these times of challenge, I've enjoyed telling my parents (my dad in particular) how I hear their voices in some of what I say to my son. Not all of their parenting rubs off (for sure, I think improvement is always good) but little things, especially since he seems to be a little carbon copy of me. I see him struggle in areas that I struggled (shyness, interaction with peers), I see him excel in areas I excel (curiosity, imagination), I see him excel in whole new areas (kicking a ball, riding his tricycle). It's comforting to me that I can try to help him, my parents tried but I can define new ways based on my childhood that may help.

Learning to Code: RGB LED

Next in my Learning to Code series, taking on the RGB LED. First off is a healthy lesson from Adafruit Blog but not for the whole thing! I want to use the Adafruit blog to get my wires set up properly.

The biggest challenge was understanding which pins on the RGB LED belonged to which color. After some helpful diagrams were presented, I learned that I had set my Red to PWM 11, Green to PWM 10, and Blue to PWM 9.

My goal in this challenge is to code as much from scratch as possible, see the outcome and then use the established code for help. But one of my pitfalls so far has been coding from scratch. I feel fairly competent reading code (or at least have a general understanding) but mastery of any language requires doing.

With my breadboard set up for one RGB LED (270 ohm resistors leading out of each pin and the ground attached to the longest wire), time to start coding.

So, then this happened. And failed. I seemed to have been doing ok, I defined all my PWMs, set-up each pin for outputs and tried programing in basic colors. Off to visit the blog at this point to determine what I did incorrectly.

[code]
// RGB LED code- @thatgamingmom with credit to Adafruit https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-arduino-lesson-3-rgb-leds/overview

int Rpin = 11; //Define PWM for red pin
int Gpin = 10; //Define PWM for green pin
int Bpin = 9; //Define PWM for blue pin


void setup() {
  pinMode (Rpin, OUTPUT); //Define output for red pin
  pinMode (Gpin, OUTPUT); //Define output for green pin
  pinMode (Bpin, OUTPUT); //Define output for blue pin
}

void loop() {
  setColor(255, 0, 0); //red
  delay(1000);
  setColor (0, 255, 0); //green
  delay(1000);
  setColor(0, 0, 255); //blue
  delay(1000);
}

void setColor(I didn't define anything here!!) {
  analogWrite(Rpin, red);
  analogWrite(Gpin, green);
  analogWrite(Bpin, blue);
}
[/code]

Made the fix to void setColor and it's still checking my code and telling me that I'm the worst! Ok. Save my file, import sketch written by adafruit to see if it yells at me.

Ok, so my code sucks, got it. But the light isn't working so I guess it wouldn't have mattered... back to the wiring... which I did wrong, then maybe did right but it still didn't work.

My very patient friend reminded me how breadboards work (thank-you!!) but the end result is my LED still doesn't work.

Then I sent some pictures over to VPF (very patient friend) and while he figured out what the fuck is going on with my life- I drank some.

This will need to be a part II, from what we can figure out, this should work and I stole the code, so I don't think it's my shitty code.

Learning to Code

Now for a different kind of post, one on truly learning new skills. I attended Arduino Day 2017 in a nearby makerspace. The day was particularly invigorating mentally for me, as it was not only my first time participating in any sort of coding oriented day in a live community setting but was also the first time I stepped into a makerspace.

The space was gorgeous and they had more 3D printers than I knew existed! There's one that 3D prints paper structures... paper! Anyways, part of the cost of the class for Arduino Day 2017 covered an Arduino Uno, some resistors, jumper cables, servo and a wealth of knowledge that I'm still trying to understand and learn.

For a while now I've screwed around with codeacademy, done the "Hello, World!" sort of early coding at least 6 times, but I never know what comes next. What do I do next?

If you ask friends of mine, you'll find that I'm prone to aiming to overachieve which leads to some failure. Sometimes I get frustrated but overcome (see my retropie set-up) and other times I fizzle out. This behavior is a bit of a personality flaw, seeing as how it was present in my yearly review at work as well.

Regardless, Arduino Day 2017 was great as it kickstarted that thirst for new skills and knowledge. Although electronics is such a different mindset for me, I really have to focus- my dad seems to think that had I just "kept up with it all" it wouldn't be such a challenge now, maybe he's right...

Despite the fact that I tend to overreach, I'm very excited about furthering my abilities. I'd love to document this process as well, so there may be more of those ramblings here.

Kickstarter Campaign: An Intro

I've been working on some ideas lately and one of these has gained a lot of popularity with my close friends and family. I'm pretty excited to work on it and hope to blog some of the progress.

Obviously there will need to be a balance between what I share here and the kickstarter campaign start. For now, I'll just give the hint that I'm working on a type of book, but not a traditional novel or anything.

One of the things I need to do to make this idea get off the ground is to look into publishing. The first part of this is researching self-publishing companies and comparing general costs. I am also contacting these companies separate of their websites to ask if what I'm looking for can be made and what additional costs may be incurred.

Writing More

No, this isn't a post about how I suck at generating content for this blog (although it should be!) instead I just want to mention with a little more detail what I spoke about on twitter the other day:

Writing prompts.

I used to write so often, but never let anyone see my stuff. This in turn, I suspect, caused me to stop writing as much and lose whatever skill I had developed.

Recently, I've decided to not everyday, but whenever I see one that strikes my fancy, to follow a writing prompt on Reddit, my hope is that through getting some creative outlet that doesn't involve small beads my child will choke on or needles he will inevitably find and leave to hurt himself or me, that this will serve as a nice little creative invigoration.

Wish me luck!

Review: Firewatch

I managed to get some time this long Valentine's Day weekend to purchase and completely play through Firewatch. I'm going to try a new format for game reviews. For those of you who are wondering about the game without having to read everything I wrote...

Gameplay: 10
Soundtrack: 10
Graphics: 10
Replayability: Medium (for dialogue)

Should I buy this? My thinking is yes. I purchased it for 20 dollars on Steam after reading some reviews that suggested the PS4 version may have frame-rate issues that I didn't want to deal with. Jokes on me. I had to deal with them anyways.

The game is gorgeous, my MacBook Pro couldn't handle all the gorgeousness despite having a better graphics card than recommended and more memory than necessary. I turned the settings down to Low and the game was still beautiful but I think I may have been missing out.

In terms of plot (spoilers ahead), the game really reminds me of Gone Home, another gorgeous and interesting, story-driven game. Similar mechanics, except the critical difference between Gone Home and Firewatch is that in Firewatch, you're actually speaking to someone. Or at least, I'm pretty sure you are. You never actually meet Delilah in person, which was both an exciting choice and a little bit of a bummer.

The game had me in such suspense over my 4 hour play-through that I had knots in my stomach. Severe spoilers ahead:

You get your characters backstory, it's sad but realistic. It's refreshing how much it's a believable story. Due to the representation of Delilah, I also didn't mind playing a male protagonist. Both Henry and Delilah are human and as such they are flawed individuals. You start out easy, walking around, having some short conversations with Delilah who is your superior. Her tower is easily visible from yours but is one heck of a hike.

You make observations about this beautiful piece of land you're watching, you find a cave early on that is locked to entrance but plays an important role in the story. You see two teens skinny dipping in the lake. All you do is pick up their beer cans and tell them to stop setting off fireworks but they get irrationally mad at you and ransack your tower.

Later on, the game goes in a completely different direction and you're not sure who is messing with you but your dialogue is being recorded and documented and it's suspenseful and pretty scary (for me at least!).

The game took me about 4 hours to beat and I think I'll play at least once more with different dialogue choices simply to see what (if anything) changes.

I'm excited to take my time and breathe in the environment and the gorgeous music (which I desperately want to play).

Firewatch is a beautiful game, reminiscent of Gone Home's focus on environment and storytelling. There's a good reason for all the internet chatter that's been focused on this game!

Making a Legacy

So, after my last post about content, I ended up having a long and stressful drive home with Blizzard conditions (gotta love New England!). I got home, heated up my lovely meal-prepped lunch (beef stew over rice with some roasted broccoli and brussle sprouts) and decided to get playing some Sims 4.

I haven't had a ton of time to play The Sims, especially lately but I've been a devotee from the very beginning. I remember trying to get downloaded content and mods onto my sims computer which didn't have internet.

Today though, I have my own MacBook Pro that I bought for graduate classes and my copy of Sims 4. With my son passed out for a nap during the snowstorm, a little Legacy Challenge seemed to be the game of the day!

I can't quite recall when I started playing the Legacy Challenge, I know for a fact I played several rounds during The Sims 3, I suspect though that I started during The Sims 2.

Regardless, the facts are these; you choose an heir, select your rules and randomize the heck out of your game. The goal is to make a Legacy family where you pass down the (hopefully) ever growing house from nothing to a mansion. You can basically play how you want but it also gives some guidance to make the game a little bit more challenging.

I play my Sims games in phases. Sometimes I just want to make lots of sims in Create A Sim and set them out briefly into the world. Othertimes I want to stretch my creative limbs and make a house. I used to be far better at making and designing houses, The Sims 4 definitely has some solid tools in order to do this, but my roofs always come out looking slightly odd.

Have any of you done the Legacy Challenge?

What's your favorite Sim to make? I always seem to favor sims who love to cook food!