Happy August everyone - July was a crazy month and marked the start of this “nomadic” lifestyle. The early part of the month was dedicated to planning and prepping to be on the move, working from anywhere - and only a month in, I’ve already got a list of things to buy/change/not forget. There isn’t really much to cover in July so this will be a pretty short one - no quick summary necessary.

The first week of the month was dedicated to setting up this newsletter on the new platform and getting it written. Week two was really all about getting things ready for travel. I’ve packed a lot of my personal things up at home since I’m not really sure the next time I’ll be home is - or where that new home will be. Because of that, everything that I won’t be using to travel is pretty much packed up in boxes. Still some stuff to go through and take care of when we are back for the few days in August and September - but pretty much everything that I need is packed with me already.

I also spent some time in week two with one of the minor goals from last quarter - shifting the Jira projects to a portfolio (for better tracking purposes). After some hours of researching and trying things out though, I decided that the amount of time that would be needed to set up and maintain the whole Jira system isn’t worth the benefit I would get from it. I definitely see the benefit for a massive organization where communication is naturally difficult between groups of people and someone can dedicate their entire job to maintaining the system - but for a more personal use/small team, there are better options. It has inspired some ideas to be incorporated into the Calendar app though that I think could make it a more useful tool for smaller teams and individuals.

The last two weeks of the month were dedicated to the Pirate Software Game Jam. Again, a game jam is an event where devs are given a theme and then sprint to make a game by the deadline. The morning of July 17th we received two themes mashed together - “Shadows” and “Alchemy.” The deadline for this game was the morning of July 31st. The original plan when signing up was to do something simple and on a 1-person team, just to get comfortable since its my first time competing in something like this. Additionally, the 2nd week of the scheduled dates I had a lot of travel and moving around planned. But after starting, some buddies expressed interest in joining (Kirby, Colin, Greg, & Phil) and after brainstorming some ideas, came up with something unique that sounded like a lot of fun. There were some big challenges with this idea, primarily the scale and amount of learning/programming it would take on my part to get it done. And unfortunately with the way my schedule kept me moving around, that meant some periods with no internet access. Despite working hard, we weren’t able to make our deadline. This was a pretty sobering miss and reason to stop and think about what went wrong to prevent this in the future. But its important to remember what one of the guys worded perfectly at the start of the challenge - “We can’t lose so long as we learn.” We learned so much in the process - much of it to do with scoping an idea, managing a project, and being sure it aligns with whatever is going on in my schedule. Regardless of missing the deadline, we still love the idea and are going to work to finish it up in the next few weeks. I’ll postpone putting any pictures in this month’s newsletter just to save it for next month when its done.

In terms of keeping myself healthy and working toward my “physical well-being” goals, things are working in the right direction. I think there was a lot of moving around in July and not enough time spent figuring out exactly how we make this work while being on the go. Below is the chart of goals vs actuals and there is still a discrepancy, but we are already tracking better than we were in the prior quarter. Always more room for improvement!

The first two weeks of August will be dedicated to finishing up the game myself and the team have been working for the game jam. Once this wraps up, the plan is to release it somewhere and potentially put a super small price tag on it to just see if we can make a few bucks. The plan for pushing to finish that is below.

As soon as this is done, I’ve got another game jam lined up!! This one is hosted by Mark Brown from the YouTube channel, Game Makers Tool Kit. The jam starts on 8/16 10AM PST and the deadline is on 8/20 10AM PST… Only 4 days… Luckily this time I’ve specifically blocked off my schedule to dedicate my time toward this. But even so, it will be a grind to come up with an idea and get it created in the shorter time period. The team is going to be generally the same for the next game jam. There are some lessons learned with regard to the scope and process - things which will be more important given that the timeline is even shorter than the last. In past years, the themes presented for this jam have been pretty unique and this makes the brainstorming stage a challenge of its own - I’m excited for what’s to come and showing off what we come up with at the end of August.

Goals for the physical well being are the same - just extended out for the next 4 weeks. As long as we see an upward trend toward 100%, then I’ll be happy with the results.

That’s everything for wrapping up July and heading into August. This will be another busy month but luckily the schedule should accommodate nicely.

Thanks again to everyone for the support. See ya next month.

-Zack