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Week in review: Week to 31 January
Feb. 3rd, 2025 05:11 pmThis week I made a change to how I do journal entries on 750 Words: instead of writing each entry at night, last thing before going to bed, I wrote each entry in the morning, first thing after getting up. It wasn't a considered decision: I was worn out after a particularly long, hot day, and was struggling to stay awake let alone string words together, so I logged that day as a vacation day and did the entry in the morning when I was more rested. And then, since getting back on track would have meant writing two whole diary entries of several thousand words each in a single day, I just kept doing the previous day's entry each morning. I'm not sure I'm happy with this way of doing it; partly I'm worried that leaving it until after I've slept means I forget things, but mostly it's that first thing in the morning is my good time for getting things done, and if I spend a chunk of it on the journal entry that's less time and getting-done-ness left for the morning exercise and anything else that needs doing. But it is nice being able to decide that it's time to go to bed and then go to bed, without having to wrangle words for an hour first.
(If I really work at it, I may even be able to regularly get to bed at a reasonable time and then get up early enough to get a lot of things done.)
On the public holiday, the board gaming club had one of its long afternoon sessions where people bring out games that are too long to play in the evenings. On this occasion, we played Eclipse, a game involving exploring the galaxy and gathering resources and moving a number of little cubes around on a player mat. I often get frustrated with games that are built around moving a number of little cubes around on a player mat, but I quite enjoyed this one, and even wouldn't mind playing it again at some point, though I don't know when I'm likely ever to have the time.
Afterward, as a shorter, more relaxing game to finish on, we played Fabled Fruits, which is a fun game that's slightly different every time you play, because it comes with a large deck of game mechanics and every time someone scores a point there's a chance of a new mechanic being added or an old mechanic being removed. I won the game, partly because another player who was vigilantly blocking all my opportunities to score the winning point got thrown by the last-minute introduction of a new rule that gave me an opportunity he overlooked.
Apart from the timed reading challenges on StoryGraph, like the monthly challenges I do, there are untimed ones that can be more for keeping track of things like how many different countries or how many years of publication you've read books from. I signed up to a "Read a book from every country" challenge a while back, and this week I added a "Read a book from every year since 1800", which took quite a while to fill in all the years I've already achieved. I can therefore report that I have read books from 9.6% of countries (all the usual English-speaking or Classical culprits, plus a few outliers like Denmark and Kenya), and that I have read books from 71.9% of the years since 1800, with 1896 being the most recent year from which I have not yet read a book.
In XCOM 2, I've got up to the final mission. I reached it late in the evening, so I saved the game and stopped there so I could come at it fresh when I had more time. That was several days ago, and I've never felt any urge to get around to it. I already know I can do the final mission; it's the complicated process of getting that far that was the interesting challenge.
(If I really work at it, I may even be able to regularly get to bed at a reasonable time and then get up early enough to get a lot of things done.)
On the public holiday, the board gaming club had one of its long afternoon sessions where people bring out games that are too long to play in the evenings. On this occasion, we played Eclipse, a game involving exploring the galaxy and gathering resources and moving a number of little cubes around on a player mat. I often get frustrated with games that are built around moving a number of little cubes around on a player mat, but I quite enjoyed this one, and even wouldn't mind playing it again at some point, though I don't know when I'm likely ever to have the time.
Afterward, as a shorter, more relaxing game to finish on, we played Fabled Fruits, which is a fun game that's slightly different every time you play, because it comes with a large deck of game mechanics and every time someone scores a point there's a chance of a new mechanic being added or an old mechanic being removed. I won the game, partly because another player who was vigilantly blocking all my opportunities to score the winning point got thrown by the last-minute introduction of a new rule that gave me an opportunity he overlooked.
Apart from the timed reading challenges on StoryGraph, like the monthly challenges I do, there are untimed ones that can be more for keeping track of things like how many different countries or how many years of publication you've read books from. I signed up to a "Read a book from every country" challenge a while back, and this week I added a "Read a book from every year since 1800", which took quite a while to fill in all the years I've already achieved. I can therefore report that I have read books from 9.6% of countries (all the usual English-speaking or Classical culprits, plus a few outliers like Denmark and Kenya), and that I have read books from 71.9% of the years since 1800, with 1896 being the most recent year from which I have not yet read a book.
In XCOM 2, I've got up to the final mission. I reached it late in the evening, so I saved the game and stopped there so I could come at it fresh when I had more time. That was several days ago, and I've never felt any urge to get around to it. I already know I can do the final mission; it's the complicated process of getting that far that was the interesting challenge.
