Update for 1/8/2017

Project updates

• Project map – I haven’t worked on it constantly, but I can tell it’ll take a long time to think through these issues, so I’m going to move the project purposely to the background to keep from putting off everything else forever.
• Projects – Even though I’m still in the middle of the project map, I’ve learned enough to help me plan this year’s projects. In addition to career stuff, mainly math relearning, at this point I want to focus on inputs and outputs, in the form of knowledge representation (mainly as an aid to notetaking) and communication, mainly through improving my writing, mainly through learning about fiction, though I want to sneak in some visual communication if I can find the time, mainly through learning about diagramming. Entertainment-wise, I want to focus on experimental and weird fiction and comics.
• Bookmarks – I’ve been putting this off because programming takes more work for me to get into than a reading or writing project, but I’m determined to finish this in the next month! Desynced bookmarks are just too annoying.
• Math relearning – This is next in line after the bookmark reboot.
• Nostalgia box – The stuff I mailed from home arrived, so I took the opportunity to collect other things from around the apartment that might go into the nostalgia box, and the next step is to pick things out for this year’s set and put them in the folders.
• Map magnets – Doing the nostalgia box on my intended schedule will mean spending more time in my creativity corner, which will mean staring at my blank mini freezer door, which will mean wanting something there, so it’s a good thing I’ve had an idea for it–magnetic tiles that I can use to create maps. Ideally I’d like to draw my own, but to start with I’ll prototype the idea with a printout of someone’s painted or recreated tiles from Mighty Empires.
• Devotions – I haven’t been keeping up with my Daily Office readings, and I think the best solution is to approximate the lectionary readings with a playlist using an audio Bible I haven’t listened to yet. So I’ll try to get that set up in the next week or two alongside my bookmark reboot.
• Housekeeping – The water leak in my ceiling has become a problem again, and on Friday it apparently leaked through a screw hole above my fire alarm, because when I came home, there was a big wet spot on the carpet under it, and someone (hopefully from maintenance) had entered my apartment to remove the batteries, I assume because it was making a racket, so I submitted another work order about the leak and bought another fire alarm. The possibility of another maintenance visit motivates me to make my apartment more presentable sooner.
• Media
  • Books – When I decorate my apartment, which will be after I move, I want a Steampunk/Surrealist/curiosities theme, and over Christmas I decided part of it would be a shelf of old books, which honestly I thought would never be one of my collections, since till now I’ve always thought of books as storage for information rather than objects in themselves. But I do like the old book ambience, so in addition to the box I got from my mom (see below), I’m going to try to find some early editions of real books, mostly around the Victorian era (to fit the Steampunk theme), but ones I would actually want to read or at least flip through. The first book, which I ordered from eBay last week at a surprisingly reasonable price, will be a 1911 edition of Treasure Island illustrated by N. C. Wyeth, because I grew up listening to an abridged version of that book (a recording I will find again someday! but which for now is a mystery) and because I want to collect some Brandywine art.
    

    From my mom, a box made of fake old books. I haven’t decided yet what to put in it.

    A photo posted by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on Jan 8, 2017 at 12:58pm PST

  • Movies – On Thursday Tim and I made last minute plans to see Rogue One, which we both enjoyed. I’ve seen a tweet or two saying it felt like a Star Wars movie, and I’m not enough of a fan to have a sense of what that should be, but one thing I liked was that the main battle felt complex enough to be satisfying yet clear enough for me to follow, which I’m not able to do with most battles. As I keep telling people, I’m glad Disney bought Lucasfilm, since they’re good at consistently telling good stories, whereas George Lucas apparently isn’t, and I’m glad they have the ambition to release a new one every year, though I hope that doesn’t mean forever, since I think that would get tiresome.
  • TV – I finally finished Luke Cage, and I thought it set things up nicely for a next season by creating problems that feel like they have a solution. If I were following the order of my interruptions, I’d return to Arrow/Flash, but I’ve had these Sarah Jane Adventures discs sitting around forever, so I’m going to finish watching those first, then maybe put some movies next in my queue to watch here and there while I’m waiting to get back to Doctor Who.
• Socializing – I’m going to try to socialize more this year, and I kicked it off today by going to my church’s birthday party for everyone, where we sat at tables based on our birthday month and ate a Korean New Year’s soup called ddukgook, which contained interesting rice cake discs that had the consistency of gummy bears. I didn’t socialize all that much, but I did meet one of our church’s missionaries.