Testing to Failure (plus airships, Aliens, and a carrot) (Patreon)

So, a couple months back I announced that I was doing a three month experimental plan for the show, in an effort to restore past content while still maximizing output. Well, I'm terminating the experiment after two months, the results are already conclusive. It seemed that way for a while, but the fact that I needed to pull an all-nighter in order to get Halo 4 done on time for public (nevermind early access) release, and that the same thing will likely happen with Inquisition says that the plan is too ambitious.

Part of it is the cumulative effect though. If I knew how this week would go, I would have not done any work on Sunday and probably would have been invigorated enough to complete Halo on Monday. Instead I tried to work on both items because, optimally, I should be able to, Inquisition and a film compliment each other, work-wise. But continuing to operate under an assumption of optimal conditions is going nowhere. There's no sense trying this a third month when there is still baggage (both in incomplete work and exhaustion) that will just lead to more failure.

(to clarify: I (mostly) didn't compromise the quality of Halo 4, everything that I always do just took longer, but I never considered cutting corners and not doing something. the only reason I say "mostly" is I just discovered that I completely missed that I didn't edit in the bts discussion of Master Chief's badass jump. I recorded it, I just somehow, after being up for 22 hours straight, failed to notice I didn't put it in. so probably tomorrow i'll post a fixed version)

I'm likely going to drop all my film plans for next month, and also the Stargate marathon (it will go out in individual installments rather than together like for B5. I'll be keeping the Monday and Tuesday plan as it was, but there will be nothing but Trek on Saturday in May.

The number one takeaway for the system is that off-days can't serve as firebreaks. I read a book called Peak Performance which had among other things: "stress + rest = growth", that teaching athletes or high-stakes white collar employees to treat taking days off as a  necessary form OF work allowed a mindset that recognized its role. Someone mentioned something similar on Twitter recently to me too.

So I'm going to start treating this as an Image Comics situation: instead of planning what you're going to make, make it and then announce it. Things should go smoother that way.

So, Inquisition, the review portion of The Last Man On Earth, and then it's time to start righting this ship.

On a personal note, I'm stuck in a complicated relationship with a book called Hell Divers. I love the concept, along with space elevators I like lighter-than-air airships, of a post-apocalyptic world with airships that drop people down for supplies. My problems with it, though, are twofold. First is technical. I used to have an echo dot hooked up to a LineIn jack on my computer, but my technical problems meant they stopped working (even computer experts that make Geek Squad look like a couple of Amish guys were like "you got something weird going on with this girl", only they didn't say "girl" because they're not a lonely man who sits in a room with her for 16 hours a day). 

So instead of going through my surround sound, all my stuff comes out of that shitty little hockey puck speaker. I reinstalled the Alexa app on my PC, but for some stupid reason they have yet to fix the problem that the app takes a crap every time it reaches the end of a chapter, then when you restart, it skips back some distance. So you have to skip to the next chapter to get to where you're supposed to be. I can't believe they STILL haven't fixed this, it's been a problem for at least two years. 

What's also a problem is that the Audible app on my phone is supposed to sync up to where I stopped the last time, but if it automatically starts itself, then it continues where the phone left off. This is a problem because it automatically begins playing when I turn on my car, even if I have turned the app itself off, it will turn on to apparently just screw with where my last place was. 

Between them I have listened to something like twice the length of Hell Divers and not actually finished Hell Divers, which is hard to tell because there's a lot of fairly similar things going on. "Is this the guy who miraculously survived, or is this the guy who died but I'm a chapter before that happened?" "Is this kid still in peril after he fixed that air bladder, or has he not fixed it yet?" 

I want more airships anyway. Like the civilization has been forced to move onto water, and with the coasts picked clean we have airships heading deep over the hostile land to gather supplies or whatever. Give me something like that, world! Airships though, not just planes, it's got to have that sense of adventure, not the sense that I'll get felt up by TSA. 

On another subject I hope the new Aliens game doesn't suck, that would be a novel experience for a colonial marines style game. Funny how the best recent game, in an environment where first person shooters are popular, is the least fps like of them all. An alien ripping off the door of a locker and killing the PC scared the crap out of me, well done. The problem with calling them Xenomorphs is that the natural and obvious fear of them would be xenophobia, which someone has already claimed. It could be Xenomorphobia, but that sounds like disapproval of human on xenomorph action, which I accidentally discovered is a thing looking for info on new Aliens plays. In the words of Sean Lock, "That's a challenging wank."

If you're unfamiliar with Sean Lock's work, here's Carrot in a Box: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UGuPvrsG3E