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12/31/22

(Note from the future - this is a backdated 2022 roundup that I wrote but forgot to post at the end of the year!)

2022, in short;

And in long;

Both kind of a wild year for me and a very stolid one. I traveled possibly the least I have ever done, spending a sum total of 6 nights away from home over the whole year (and all within a few hours drive). That was both because of some personal goals (find joy where you are! stop driving away depression through novelty!) as well as the general needs of running a farm. Still, novelty found me plenty.

Work-wise, I had a good year. Saw the back of several projects that (while small) feel among my strongest. 

In April I released Anonymous Animal, a 15 minute durational... poem? experience? game? that runs every hour, on the hour. You can ask someone to meet you there at :00 to take a walk on the internet together. There's been some link rot since April but it is mostly still together.

In July I made ravel, a tool for making unfolding texts out of the details tag. 

In September (and then again in November, with the print edition) I released World Ending Game, a tabletop game to end a campaign in any system. This was without a doubt one of the biggest projects I've ever produced from a collaborators and budget perspective. Unbelievably gratified in how beautiful it turned out. Still unreal how many folks I was able to work with on it.

I broke even on production cost about a month and a half ago, which has also been gratifying! It was a big risk, and you never know.

November also saw the release of The Barnacle Goose Experiment, a body-horror abiogenesis idle clicker for the browser. Man, this game.... has not released its hold on me. I thought it was done but I've been having ideas (and people play it in ways that I wasn't anticipating). It wants for a little technical work, but also... eh, we'll see.

Otherwise, I've kept up maintenance of my various resources (tiny tools directory, big artist opportunity list) and personal logs (screenshot garden, the rss).

Over the summer I wrote an essay/book chapter for Pioneer Works on tools, silicon valley techno-optimism, and Ursula Franklin that has yet to see digital publication but it was a ton of work and I think it turned out well and I look forward to sharing it someday. 

I also have been doing some contract writing on a truly bonkers game that I can't talk about but rest assured it's a wild one.




Considering that all of this happened while continuing to gut and fix my house and literally start a farm it feels like a productive year. I planted a dozen more fruit trees in 2022, as well as vines and bushes. I now live with eight sheep (soon to be 15?? lambs eminent), 6 ducks, 4 geese, 2 dogs, several barn cats and one indoor cat, and a donkey. 

I learned masonry and sheep husbandry, as well as brushed up on past skills in fence building, carpentry, plumbing, sheet-rocking, roofing, and tiling. I installed two woodstoves and built a corral and a poultry coop. I read 61 books and played half as many games. I watched some really great movies. I made a few drawings. I learned a lot about hay. 

I felt close to death (or serious risk) five or six times this year, including:

Equally matched by the good:

My goals for 2023 are mostly hedonistic because I am tired of simply staying alive, I'd like to remember through and through that I'm alive. 

That said, I've got projects on the docket in a major way and a community here that I feel ever more enmeshed in. I'm excited for lambs and my work and my garden and my friends. I couldn't ask for more - I wish the same for all of you.

Happy New Years.








11/28/22

Well, It's winter. Writing this on my back porch where I'm catching an hour of the brief afternoon sun. Even with the freezing nights- and they have been freezing, early this year- there's a bit of every day where you can still enjoy outside. I suppose that's why all the snowbirds gather their RVs in southern New Mexico, despite my frozen water troughs every morning. 

Since I last wrote, I've seen the backside of not one, but TWO games. World Ending Game, the tabletop RPG meant to serve as the last session of a campaign in any system is out in both digital and print format, and I've mailed all 900 books that saw preorders. That leaves me with about 100 left in my office, which I'll slowly mail out as people buy them. My poor postman has got a thank-you pie headed his way. 

I also released The Barnacle Goose Experiment, an abiogenesis bodyhorror idle clicker where you play as a researcher locked inside of an experimental dome and tasked with generating a working environment out of their own body. It's a weird one, fiddly and mechanical — and free to play in the browser. You can find it in the sidebar.

In my own life, I've been caught up in the animals — fencing for the sheep (8 now, with that many lambs again due in January) and coop construction for the waterfowl (ducks and geese, both wonderful sets of weirdos). The dogs are doing their jobs dutifully and so am I. One benefit of winter is the vastly reduced watering schedule as the fruit trees and vines go dormant- a big change from the constant watering of a spring growing season in the desert. I'm still working on spring-flow irrigation and I am hoping to have a less labor intensive system than buckets from the pond by next year. 

Otherwise, I'm processing the summer's amaranth for my hot cereal habit and working on the garden plot, trying to get the soil up to snuff (it's rocky here by default and takes some amending — a task the sheep and geese are certainly helping with, as they create fertilizer everywhere they go). 

Over the next month I'll be playing catch-up on some job-job work, as well as some overdue winterizing on my own house and the always-present digital tasks (website update, I'm looking at you...), but also hope to pick scrubjay back up and do some work on that weird thing.

Cool bugs are nil, as the cold weather precludes them. Unfair we should still have some uncool bugs (flies...) but if that isn't life. 

Till next time,
E





9/12/22

Two months of summer gone since last writing. The days are shortening and the nights are cool. In the mornings it feels like fall, and I've found some motivation to return to my computer and inside work with that coolness. The cottonwoods have started to change color.

I am now a shepherd— 5 sheep, 4 ewes and a ram, with beautiful wool and wise faces. There'll be lambs in early spring— earlier than i'd intended truth told, but I am excited nonetheless. The dogs are getting accustomed to their working duties, as am I. 

The fruit is about done for the season, but I'm still getting grapes and melons, and the amaranth is resplendent— 12 feet tall and covered in grain. Next month I'll harvest that grain, keeping half for cooking and half for sowing. I wll be growing the amaranth in the field next year, not just around the house; drought-tolerant and self-shading with edible leaves and seeds, it is a nice alternative to hay or corn for both livestock feed and for myself. 

World Ending Game has been taking up the bulk of my computer work time, but it will be out in only a few days now (print books to follow next month). I cannot wait for it to be released! The Cloister now has a print zine edition. I've also returned to work on the biosphere game for a November release, and writing on [NDA] continues (and is extremely fun, what an odd project).

The day to day here is repetitive but also simply good, and cut by strange bright moments of beauty and terror: catching an owl in the beam of my flashlight. Watching a lightning-struck tree burn to the earth. Finding a stray kitten up a sapling. Getting in the creek during a flash flood. Learning so much about how things are made, and then making them. I am moved by the world of material doing. 

Today I will chop wood in preparation for winter and (with luck) I will approve the final print proofs for World Ending Game.

E





7/10/22

Hiding inside from the heat as the ground bakes back to hardtack from its monsoon sweetness. Hopefully we get some more rain before all is said and done, but the new purslane shoots from the wet few weeks have shriveled back to where they came and you can feel the leaves and grass tightening again. Ah well. That's desert.

Because of the heat, I've been indoors more and I am only working outside for a few hours in the evenings. A lot of my time is spent simply weeding in monsoon season; the plants here are adapted to almost impossible growth when gifted water. Because the local nightshade variety is a problem for domesticated animals, I'm attempted to nip this year's crop early, before it can set deep roots or go to seed. There seems to be a limitless supply from last year, though.

I did spent some of the last week or two putting up the sheep pen (posts are sunk and walls are going up, roof I will need some extra hands to get on). Sheep are delayed in coming but that's fine, I could use the extra time. 

Figs came in (pounds and pounds and pounds!) and peaches are next, followed by grapes, a dozen or so pears and finally, a scant few apples. That'll be it for fruit this year. Next year, trees better established, should be pretty remarkable. 

It's also COOL BUG SEASON! We've got tarantulas! We've got vinagaroons! We've got huge helmeted beetles! We've got cicadas! We've got sphinx moths and big red dragonflies for days!! And also a bunch of flies and cockroaches but we don't need to dwell on that.

And, as promised, MY DOGS ARE HERE and they are perfect. Enormous. Blessings both. We're learning sit.

In work news, check out ravel, a small tool for making interactive/unfolding texts entirely out of the details html tag.

If you haven't seen theindie bundle for abortion funds, go buy 1122 games for a minimum $10 donation. It's running for 3 more days. I both helped organize and have work in.

World Ending Game is in playtests. Work on [NDA] continues. The days fill. It sometimes still amazes me how time soldiers on and takes us all with it. And even on the days where it does not amaze me, it still continues.

Well, till next time,
E





6/20/22

Wow, already a month and a half passed by. It's been a busy period, good and bad. Since last I wrote here, I had friends come to stay— tasted the first apricots off my young apricot tree—watched a meteor showing during a lunar eclipse. We've also had a 325,000 acre wildfire burning not 10 miles away for over a month now. Just yesterday, monsoon season started with a violent downpour of a storm and the smoke that has kept my windows shut all summer has abated some. Everyone is praying monsoon puts out the fire without causing flash flooding down the burn scar. So far, the prayers seem to be working.

I love monsoon season, and this one feels particularly sweet after a month of smoke and heat. We hadn't had rain since September of last year, and it is amazing to watch the plants unfold so quickly into softness. It is 3 am and I have all the doors open. The cicadas are humming in the trees.

The big work update is that World Ending Game, my tabletop game written to end a campaign in any system, is up for preorders. This is a big project for me, approximately one million moving parts. 24 illustrators! Unique layouts per page! A print edition! 

I'm in playtests now and I'm very pleased to say that while there's always polish to apply, the game mostly just… works. It'll be out in September and if you know you want a copy, it'd mean the world to me if you preordered it. :)

Other things I've been up to;
> Published an older piece of writing about (somewhat ironically) GANs and wildfires. Link in the sidebar
> Fencing the upper pasture for the sheep, delayed because of fire
> Saved up for a circular saw so I can stop using my chainsaw to cut lumber to build with lol
> Starting on the sheep shed/shade structure next week 
> Cut a huge firebreak and cleared around the old cottonwood, with help from friends
> Some NDA work I can't talk about but that is buck wild you're just gonna have to trust me here
> Indoor feral cat has become my friend. His name is Saint
> Finished mortaring the back orchard wall and now I'm on to the front orchard wall
> Writing a book chapter on tools
> Been playing the piano a lot
> One new apple tree. One new mulberry tree. A new grape. Raspberries and blackberries.
> I'm adopting TWO HUGE DOGS next week
> Cool bug sighting: tarantula 
> Cool not bugs: horned toad, nighthawks
> Reading: the Ursulas, Le Guin and Franklin





5/3/22

The big change and the reason you're seeing this;
I finally added an RSS feed to my website. Yet another excuse to use to < pre > tag. Yet another weird file to manually update periodically.

Other things;
> Screenshot Garden had an update
> Anonymous Animal came out
> Work in a few group shows, links in the sidebar
> World Ending Game is coming along in a major way. You would not believe the illustrations I'm getting back already. Some truly beautiful stuff; cannot wait to share more come funding in June.
> Been back at work with scrubjay, the weirdo bookmarking / website making tool which people seem... excited for? Better release it someday, but worried about its stability / ease of use (currently pretty chaotic).
> Mortaring the orchard wall
> Apricots and apples set on the trees
> Working on springwater routing and cutoffs for the lower garden
> Sheep coming home as soon as I can get fences done (late May?)
> Cat count; 1 housecat, one (indoor) feral cat hiding in the laundry room, 3 outdoor feral cats who eat on the front porch
> My best friend is moving just a few towns over next week!!!!
> Weather: getting warm but still very nice and breezy, frankly the best time of year even though it Will Not Rain (they apparently just approved cloud seeding a few counties over the drought is so bad right now)
> Cool bugs: sphinx moths! In the honeysuckle
> Reading: utter trash, mostly Agatha Christie