What I've Been Up to In June 2022

"Vacation Galore"

As summer started, we got through both kids’ graduation (pre-school and middle school), packed up and headed to Maui, Hawaii for a 10 days trip. It’s a first time for the 5 year old to fly on a airplane (delayed thanks to pandemic) so he was definitely excited yet handled the trip with grace (on the contrary, his old man’s eardrum suffered badly during the landing and was half deaf for a good day and a half :p). After a week of beautiful sceneries, rainbows, sunsets (we couldn’t quite brave the sunrise on Haleakala crater), beach plays, great food, delicious fruits, and plenty of family bonding time, we are now back and rejuvenated.

I enjoyed and appreciated the family bonding time the most, yet I also found myself missing my regular production and consumption cadance immensely.

Here are the things that kept me busy this past month, aside from the day-to-day ‘job’ related stuff…

Creating and hacking stuffs

• Game dev - with M2 released last month, the game now has a single, simple, playable level yet the codes are flat out all over the place, and I will need to put in the structure to scale / enable more depths and levels. This month I have been dialing back to study how to do that with GDevelop’s functions, extensions, behavior systems. Feel free to give it a play and leave comments and feedback!

  

• Drawing - I brought my iPad and books for the vacation with the intention to continue drawing… but that did not happen :D so this month I only have little to share:
  

  

  

• Writing - My book ‘Just A Dream?’ is also available as paperback in addition to ebook! And I have the Amazon author page set up! This month I’ve started a new book project by writing around the drawings I’ve been doing. I want to add in translation/interpretation, my own reflections on the poem and on my drawings, and it will eventually become a book.

  

• Merch Store – yeah… still no update here, but please do check it out…

Consuming Stuffs

• Reading - finished book 1 of the Chinese history epic ‘帝國前夕’ (東周); finished audiobook ‘After Alice’ by Gregory Maguire, started ‘Proto’ by Shane Drummy.

• TV/Movies - Watched Obi-wan Kenobi; Stranger Things Season 4 (it’s great, but spoiler alert - it’s not over yet!!); Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (maybe 6 out of 10…? it’s pretty entertaining yet the story/characters could use more depth). During the vacation we also found ‘Big City Greens’ and ‘Amphibia’ enjoyable for the whole family.

• Gaming - Batman: Arkham Knight @ 25% and a bit of Legend of Tianding (廖添丁); also started Tomb Raider GOTY @ 7%

If you really finished reading the above, I thank you, and wish that my sharing would either entertain you, or inspire you (if you’ve been thinking about your own creative projects).