July Monthly Projects

Last month's projects

Physical make: Build a model Starfury I have had in the cupboard for literally decades.

This is going fairly well but isn't finished.  I've had some delays waiting for supply deliveries but mostly I've been taking my time over it.

The model has plenty of gaps where the pieces don't quite fit, and a glaring design-fail with the lower gun pieces.  I'm going to keep this one going this month and post photos once it's done.


Coding make: Write a DOS Mode-X tribute to Silk Worm. 

This has involved so much learning.  The sprite code took a huge amount of work, and now I'm writing tilemap code that is going to have to be really fast if it's going to be usable.  Most of the screen is going to have to be rendered every frame if it's going to look anything like the original. 

So I'm keeping this one on for July as well.  I really want to get something recognisable and playable (even if it's not properly complete) before I move onto a different coding project.


Non-coding make: Fantasy-setting card-based RPG.  Dig up my previous notes and try to move this old project forward.

This has been an abject failure.  At no point this month have I actually felt like picking this project back up, so I'm going to drop it for now and try something else.

Over the years I have written the odd short fiction fragment.  I'm not going to pretend I'm any good, and I'm probably not going to share any of it online.  A good friend of mine has been working hard on his writing and finding it quite fulfilling.  I want me some of that.  Fulfilling is good.

I've got some ideas floating around a family's hand-to-mouth existence on a world at the edge of human civilisation.  My friend has also recommended 'The Crucible' as an example of the 'edge-of-civilisation' atmosphere, and I'm looking forward to that.


Reading: Russian Thinkers by Isaiah Berlin.  I'm not going to try and study this one - just read it!

This has been really interesting.  Using sticky-notes to mark pages to refer back to has been quite liberating - I can just go ahead and read without worrying about notes but also without losing track of interesting things.

I haven't finished it, but one of my favourite bits so far is a particular quote from Leo Tolstoy and understanding a bit of the context around it.

"History would be a wonderful thing – if it were only true." - Leo Tolstoy

As I understand it, Tolstoy was a fierce critic of the culture of narrative history, where key historical events were attributed to the skills and wisdom of 'great men'.  I have not read "War and Peace", but Berlin refers to sections of it which illustrate Tolstoy's view that those 'great men' had little to do with (or even knowledge of!) how those events actually occurred.

So I like how the quote illustrates the human trait of creating simplified narratives from history (which is quite possibly just what I've done in discussing Tolstoy's quote).

I'm going to continue reading this into July.



July's projects



Physical make: Model Starfury

Coding make: Write a DOS Mode-X tribute to Silk Worm. 

Non-coding make: Fiction sci-fi fragment about a hand-to-mouth existence on a frontier world.


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