I put cheese on everything. (Well, not anything sweet cuz that's disgusting. And sacrilege). 

Mostly cuz any food that's not sweet (except cheese) is gross so adding cheese makes it less gross.

I found a piece of colby jack in my cardigan pocket today. It was partially dried out.

I thought perhaps I had a problem. Though in fairness, this is the first time this has occurred.

And I didn't eat it, so clearly I'm good. 

What is the name of the fictional language in the novel 1984 by George Orwell?

What Belgian artist painted The Son of Man in 1964?  [Not pictured:  nerdsholmferret with his face obscured by an Apple]

What is the name of the chemical reaction between amino acids and sugars that gives seared steaks and toasted marshmallows a distinct flavor?

What Norwegian explorer led the first expedition to reach the South Pole in 1911?

I hadn't realized it, but aside from the sketch I did the other night of the blacksmith, I haven't done much character art for some time. Since I made some headway with Caravan! last night, I gave myself the 'treat' of doing just that.

The game is pretty focused on some 'coming of age' themes, so characters will likely be young by default. This image will go in the 'heritage' section of character generation, which gives a sense of what equipment they start with. So our heroine here is using hand me downs which could maybe fit a bit better.

She'll get cropped a bit in the rulebook, but you lucky dogs get to see the whole image (which I did because I didn't like the idea of cropping her to start).

The gameplay is still perplexing to me, but card creation feels very natural.

George Maciunas, "One Year" 1973–74

Today was another good day for games. I started the day working on replacing the image that Brad had been using for Maze. I'd forgotten, but he pulled the image from somewhere on the web as a 'placeholder', but he doesn't own the rights to use it. So I went to work figuring out something to put in its place.

Then, I headed down to King of Prussia, and an event at (of all things) the Wegman's cafe. I'm not sure if there was name for it, but it was a game designer meetup. Met some new folks, and one or two (of the half dozen I met) really seemed like great connections in the community. Both knowledgeable and had a clear desire to help.

In addition, there was one young guy who was clearly new to game design, and was asking a long list of questions. I was thrilled to be able to help answer a ton of art related questions.

The whole thing had a great 'people helping each other do what they love' vibe.

After discussing the thumbnails above with Brad, we settled on a base concept and I got to work iterating some possible options.

The original placeholder, the base design I'm working on, and the 'hero / move' token as a sample of the other icons so my medusa will have enough of the 'look and feel' of the others as to not stick out in a bad way.

So resolutions: is that still a thing? It's Ephiphany already so guess I should get mine out there.

I don't really have resolutions, I more do goal setting. 

Goal 2026.1 - See the milky way with my naked eyes. This means finding a place with minimal light polution on a moonless night. There are darksky maps to aid with this. I have not planned a trip for this, I'm simply stating this as a 2026 goal.

Goal 2026.2 - Read the following books

1. Yi Sang - The Wings + Crow's Eye View << this on in particular is proving hard to source. I might have to settle for something else by him
2. Johann Wolfgang Goethe - Faust, a tragedy in two parts
3. Miguel de Cervantes - The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha
4. Ryunosuke Akutagawa - Hell Screen
5. Albert Camus - The Stranger
6. Cao Xueqin - Dream of the Red Chamber (also known as Story of the Stone)
7. Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights
8. Herman Melville - Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
9. Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment
10. Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy
11. Hermann Hesse - Demian, the Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth
12. Homer - The Odyssey

Franz Kafka - Metamorphosis is also on the list, or lets say crossed off this list as I read it last month. 

Why these particular titles you might ask? Well, my kid got me into this video game and the main characters of the game are the characters from each of these books. (Except Yi Sang, who is the writer. Maybe he writes about himself? I guess I will find out.) 

I mentioned to my bookish fam this list about 2 months ago. And the books started showing up. This is about half of them - the rest are scattered about the house. An item of note not shown in the photo: CM Adams gifted my kid the almost complete works of Hesse and they are now ensconced in her bedroom. That "The Age of Goethe" book I found in my garage and though the commentary is in English, the Faust (errr, UrFaust actually) is in German. So that doesn't help me much. 

I anticipate a number of future posts will be about progress on this goal. 

Potential Work

So a friend directed another friend to me. The third party is offering (what sounds like) real money for the project - between $1k and $2k.

They sent me an early edition of the book. It's a collection of magic items. Between 3 and 4 / page. There's about 100 pages. And they would like a full color illustration for the front cover.

So the math breaks down to about $6.66 dollars / image if I assume only 3 images / page AND they go the full $2k.

And that's without a cover illustration.

*le sigh*

I (sincerely) appreciate that laying out a couple grand out of your own pocket feels like a lot. Hell, it is a lot. But the amount of work he's asking for...

More info as I have it.

In the meantime, the gooder news:

Caravan!

I'm working pretty hard at a game I'm creating and I'm currently calling Caravan! The idea behind it is really pretty simple:

Create a simple character, who agrees to join a caravan that's going on a 30 (or 31) day trek to provide support of some kind. Use random tables to determine a daily prompt and then write ~1,667 words on that prompt. Do that every day for a month. It's like a hybrid of NaNoWriMo and some of the journaling games I've been seeing that seem popular right now.

It all evolved from my efforts during the NaNoWriMo of 2022.

I'm pretty stoked about it. It's a very simple concept, but I feel like it has a lot of potential flavor without a lot of crunch. I'm not a crunch guy.

How about you guys - what are you working on?

At 4:17 a.m. the National Weather Service sent us an Emergency Alert Snow Squall Warning for about one sixteenth of an inch of snow.  Okay, reduced visibility is a road hazard, but could we save the OMG WAKE UP noises for something like a tornado that might kill me in my sleep?

• Justin Bell, Eternal Journey: more atmospheric soundtrack-quality pieces, this time not attached to any video game.
  
• Madison Cunningham, Ace: this is not your typical singer-songwriter album.  Cunningham started in the praise music genre, and has left that behind and also divorced her husband.  There's some real weight to the lyrics, and the song structures and chord changes are captivating.  Some are making Joni Mitchell comparisons which, eh, kind of a stretch.
• Die Spitz, Something to Consume: i have been sporadically checking out KEXP on YouTube and Instagram over the years; i saw the first 30 seconds of this and was hooked on their gritty, punkish energy, plus the rhythm section is solid.
• Florence + the Machine, Everybody Scream: she released it on Halloween and you can feel the spooky, witchy energy.  The lyrics for One of the Greats are so good.
  
• Kaki King, Tutto Passa (EP): amazing breadth for an EP, acoustic guitar to soundscapes to loud electric guitar.
• Kaki King & Tamar Eisenman, SEI: "Kaki King and Tamar Eisenman have co-created SEI, a full-length performance piece where guitar movement takes over the entire stage." The album is very good but the performance looks amazing, wish i'd've seen it.
• Kaki King, Stop Sometime (EP): more acoustic guitar from King. 
• Sarah McLachlan, Better Broken: another solid release, this features her daughters doing backing vocals on a couple of tracks.
  
• Mogwai, The Bad Fire: the Scottish post-rockers are back; saw them live this year and THEY ARE VERY LOUD. (mistakenly put this in 2024)
• Nation of Language, Dance Called Memory: remember synth-based New Wave? These folks do.  Another KEXP find.
  
• Vernon Reid, Hoodoo Telemetry: the master guitarist with another eclectic collection of songs, some featuring members of Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber.
  
• Sphinx Virtuosi, American Mirror: the selections for this album focus more tightly on underrepresented contemporary composers.
  
• Steel Beans, Steel Beans: this guy went viral three years ago and somehow turned that moment into becoming the opening act for Tenacious D, and then Tool.  He'd been doing his own thing for over 15 years (he has over a dozen albums on Bandcamp), but suddenly caught fire.  I bought the EP that contained the viral song, enjoyed it, and waited to see what the next album would be like.  It does not disappoint.
  
• TAKAAT, Is Noise Vol. 1 & 2 (EP): like Garfield Minus Garfield, TAKAAT is Mdou Moctar minus Mdou Moctar.  Two short EPs featuring Tuareg rock originals and covers.
  
• Takénobu, Cosplay Karaoke コスプレカラオケ: another set of cello-centered chamber pop, this time with all lyrics in Japanese.
  
• veg., Defenestration: the instrumental metal grows in complexity in their first (short) album.
  
• zbs.fm, Tell Me Who You Think I Am: chill, downtempo electronica from the kid of a friend of a friend.