suppose my goal is to write a complete expansive exploration of how anyone gets anything done ever - would that help me get things done when i don't want to do things? let's find out. here's a rough outline.

1. my brain sometimes is broken, but i assume it's kinda like other people's brains only more prone to distraction. that is, everyone is susceptible to some degree. i just feel it more keenly.

2. 'to-do lists' are terrible because they don't respect scope. we need better words.

3. break down various types of tasks. 'to-plan'. 'to-achieve-someday'. 'to-forget-about'. 'to-start-and-finish-in-the-same-[minute/hour/day]'. 'to-start'.

4. 'to do tomorrow' is only valuable if it turns into 'to do today' which is only valuable if it turns into 'to do right now'.

5. ???

Regarding Bernard Suits'
"The Grasshopper"

I have never watched this video all the way through., and I don't think I
ever watched any of parts 2 or 3. But I'm rewatching it because Corey Hardt brought up Eureka and Fiero in Paradise and while thinking about magic door games and discussing them with Sylvie I started to wonder if what I'm looking for is the overlap between eureka and fiero. Eurekafiero. It's been a while since I've thought about "designing a puzzle game" because I haven't enjoyed many. I'm trying to figure out why. I want to go design more puzzles -- but not just puzzles; great, life-changing, horizon-breaking puzzles.

Not a thousand good puzzles, or even a hundred great puzzles; I want a game to have ten, or even just one, perfect puzzle.

Teach me how to design one perfect puzzle, Elyot Grant.

In Paradise there is a thread called Tree Climbing where we talk about tree climbing.

Quote from: Corey HardtTrees (climbing them) are great natural/physical game design (route-finding? zk map etc?)

Going to make this game:

first imagine the players
not in a mass but face by face:

eleax,
   who kills for sport
   and ignores every conversation,
   every human word

ameri,
   who keeps a notebook on hand
   to remember those friends
   that feel alive

avrin,
   who arrowlike dashes
   straight toward the finish line
   cut and bled by spurned roses

hyert,
   who dreams of bathing
   naked in the ocean that lies
   forever trapped behind glass

faval,
   who watches like a hawk
   and feels pain
   at every missed opportunity

these players are their own protagonists, all

   the player is your protagonist
   how do you expect them to act?
   how do you want them to?

the changes that occur in their heart
are the lifeblood of this art form
a story told by its own audience.

first imagine the player.

second imagine the game.

i got into the habit of layering sounds on top of sounds on top of sounds in Musagi and, lately, Bitwig Studio. kicks on top of leads on top of a bass on top of snares on top of a hi-hat etc. but . . . then i started playing the Great Fairy's Fountain theme from memory (read: poorly) and it was beautifully simple.

when i think about my favourite music, it's often the work of Kashiwa Daisuke that comes to mind, but i think my real answer would be Geothermal from Cave Story - but played on piano, which is a total impossibility according to the sheet music i tried using. it needed three hands. but there was a beautiful, resonant depth to the parts that i could play.

(here is a bad version of it - bad as in missing some of the lower notes, an unforgivable redaction)

i thought about the iconic 'Zelda's Secret Sound', and how that could be played and recognized with one instrument.

why was i adding a drum beat?

~ linked from The Nature of Order Book 2, on SIMPLICITY and PERFECTION

(sometimes i read an article and i think, this could make a great poem. i thought this about "AI has always been a toy" https://www.microethology.net/ai-has-always-been-a-toy/ which is an article i didn't even read, i just read the title and skimmed it.)

Regarding Yuku Suetsugu's
"Chihayafuru"

re: Robert H. Lustig's
"The Hacking of the American Mind"

re golden krishna's
"the best interface is no interface "

*i took one picture which i don't have the time to transcribe right now. read while sick and not taking notes.

Goddamn it I wasn't going to write a post about this but I actually have some thoughts I wanna record so here I go

I'm like five pages in and I can already tell what a wild ride this is going to be. Great reading alongside The Dispossessed.

archiving my emails will never feel as good as shuffling around papers.

Quote> You don't consider gaming a hobby?

> I see it as a secular activity that has little application elsewhere. The skills or connections you build end when you turn off the console. I'm looking for something more concrete.

> I disagree. If you played starcraft, you would learn coordination, resource management, time management, multitasking. If you played RPGs, it would teach you new words that you wouldn't otherwise see. But yeah judge them all you want. "Secular."

This is an interesting exchange. I feel lately like I can tell the difference between a thing I'm consuming for pleasure and a thing that helps me to grow. Why do I engage in an activity, or with a work? I'm really enjoying reading The Dispossessed right now, but certainly some of my interaction with it is 'unnecessary' in the way that grinding in an RPG is secular, is a thing that ends when you turn off the console.

I wonder how responsible decades of processing/analyzing gameplay is for making me a system nihilist.