Sunday, September 28, 2014

X-Force, issue 007

Just wanted to say this issue is cray cray. It's got some really hard questions all packed in next to each other like kids on a back seat. Cable clones look forward to one day of life and then have to pop themselves or die in agony (presumably) and that's just the start. Privacy vs 'nothing to hide, nothing to fear' issues as well? Man, pile on the issues!

It's the sort of crazy thing that, while I acknowledge as hard to come up with and even harder to consistantly do, is what comics are damn good at and need to keep doing the thing they are good at.

Its an issue with issues. Which is what it should be. I'd recommend getting this one just to be baffled.

Also a neat cover of Domino on the front!

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Clicka Lettuce Seed Idle Game

Clicka Lettuce Seed is an Idle game based on gardening that you can do in real life - I wanted to concentrate on that, as a way of making an Idle game and showing what anyone could do. It shows how you could save money and use that saved money to hit a series of donation goals - and past that, have the savings for whatever you want!

From the general game blurb:
A more true life Idle game, with actions you could take in real life to save money every day! Grow lettuce plants and harvest their leaves to save on buying food. Do it alot! Get through the eleven donation goals and you get to the final bonus points screen and finish the game! Play again to try for an even higher amount of bonus points!

Note: Oxfam is mentioned in the game so as to promote/advertise for them for free - it's not endorsed by them or anything, though.

Controls.
Mouse clicks for everything. Look for the red 'start here' sign for where to begin.

http://www.kongregate.com/games/Noontide/clicka-lettuce-seed

TIPS!

Auto harvest and Harvest Cooldown
With Auto Harvest, when you first buy it it starts out at a 12 second cycle.

This lets you idle and is fine if your Harvest Cooldown rate is above 12 seconds.

But if your Harvest Cooldown is at, say, 10 seconds and your Auto Harvest is at 12 seconds, then your crop will sit idle for the two seconds between 10 and twelve. You could get that crop all the sooner if you upgraded Auto Harvest! And that'll make a big difference over each game day (which, incidentally, is 4 minutes in RL)

So if you upgrade your Auto Harvest to match your Harvest Cooldown, you will be harvesting the very moment it's possible to - thus optimising your harvest and getting it done as soon as possible!

Harvest Rate
At default, whenever you harvest there's a 10% chance you will destroy a lettuce when harvesting from it. The harvest button flashes red when a lettuce is lost.

The Harvest Rate button becomes available once you have 40 lettuce and 1 Karma. Pressing it will reset your Auto Harvest (possibly in future there may be a refund of saved money spend on upgrades) and make your harvesting slower! Yes, slower! But now there is no 10% chance of losing a plant.

This makes it more of a true idle game. You don't have to activate it, you could keep battling against slowly losing crops (and likely gaining far more than you lose, consistantly). But if you don't want to keep battling, normal harvest rate is the way to go.

http://www.kongregate.com/games/Noontide/clicka-lettuce-seed

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Getting things done and how procrastination is kind of a fake term (3/3)

So how to apply it in practical terms?

Well, you need to figure what activities you think raise your quality of life above 60 per hour, how many points above they go and shave off part of them, putting those points/time in store towards paying off doing personal projects or homework.

And realise that your actual quality of life is, if you wish to have some control over what you do in life, lower than you thought it was. Every bit shaved off lowers your average quality of life. And that's hard to face!

However, shaving off just a part can feel like it's just a part - and you are doing enjoyable things, in part, towards racking up more payed off homework/project time. Probably shaving off 10 points/ten minutes from the activity towards paying off homeworks potential 30 quality of life per hour.

Write those stored times down. And when you use, them, cross them off.

You can see how this reverses the traditional 'stop doing fun things, that's how you get homework done' ideology.

Your instinct is to enjoy a certain quality of life, not lower your quality of life for a decade(s) distant goal. The old ideology doesn't cut it.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Getting things done and how procrastination is kind of a fake term (2/3)

It'd be kind of funny if I didn't finish the material on procrastination...! But anyway...

Okay, say your quality of life is at 60 per hour. While doing homework or even doing art or even writing on your blog maybe (!) drops it to 30 per hour, or some figure below 60.

Now it's a question of what raises your quality of life score - perhaps you might rate playing video games or browsing web comics or drinking with friends or a number of other things as higher than 60 per hour. Maybe you'd rate it at 90 per hour.

This is the difficult part - if those things have become your own status quo for how you live, then you have to do those things or otherwise enter quality of life debt.

This is the hard part - to realise that to get homework done or projects you want to do personally (rather than being told by a boss) done, you don't live the quality of life you think you do.

Some segment of that quality must be put aside. An hour at 90? Perhaps 10 points of that need to be put aside towards paying for homework/personal project time. That basically stores 10 minutes of time.

But that'd mean your quality of life is actually 80, not 90.

But to get work done without quality of life debt (which just encourages procrastination, which encourages shame, which causes more quality of life debt) means some of your enjoyment activities must be partly dedicated towards paying for homework hours.

Doesn't make sense? Again, think of it like being payed and having to pay rent. If you're being paid $90 for the hour and the rent is $90 for an hour, you'll equal out. But if you want to put aside $10, then you can't afford the $90 an hour place, only the $80 an hour place.

And if doing homework drops you down to a $30 an hour quality of life, well then you'll want to have stored up a number of 10's (three, of course) to treat that hours quality of life at 60. To do that requires being at the 80 points an hour quality of life - which is the hard thing: Realising your quality of life is actually lower than you thought (IF you want any control over your life).

Still doesn't make sense? Well then you're left dreading homework when you could be playing video games or reading web comics or reading magazines and listening to music. And I've just explained why - because homework is less fun. You get that it's less fun. So you need to pay for that lack of fun, right? If you can't pay for it, you'll keep avoiding your homework because it's not fun!

If it still doesn't make sense, then the question to think on is how do you make up for those homework hours being less fun?

No, it's not by not doing homework! :p

Page 3/3 of this series

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Getting things done and how procrastination is kind of a fake term (1/3)

Let me propose it to you this way: Imagine your quality of life metricised to hourly chunks. Let's just give it a number and say your quality of life is at 60 per hour. Making it a neat 1 point per minute.

Now do you put off doing homework or writing or such? Oh no, procrastination.

But here's the thing, if we treat homework or other tasks as dropping quality of life, then they cause a quality debt to occur. Say each hour of homework is at 30 quality of life. That means you're 30 short for each hour of homework.

Are you going to try and argue the extreme long term "Oh, I'll eventually get a job and it'll pay such great money that this reduction in quality of life will be paid off"

Okay, so...are you doing your homework, or still procrastinating? If the latter, then that argument just didn't really work, did it?

So, what to do? I'll get onto that latter, in another post (lol!)

Page 2/3 in this series