Dev Log for Aug 2024, Week 35:

Lofty Goal:

While I’m bringing this section back, I think the goal itself is a simple one: Get back into the game dev rhythm. I’m mostly shaking the dust off after a long Def Con this year.

Post Def Con through the end of August:

DC itself was pretty good! I deployed my display stand project in our village, which people seemed to like. There will be more enhancements to come, but I’m pretty happy with this first version. It was great catching up with everyone, and I’m slowly getting closer to my goal of spending most of my time at the event instead of running around and getting shit sorted.
I did have kind of a shit end to the festivities though, as someone walking by our hotel mistook my ride for a Boba Tea and decided to drill a hole in my gas tank. To make things better, they apparently also hit the components that signal fuel levels, so while I was able to get it “fixed”, I will need to replace the tank and sending unit to get back to normal. That’s going to hit me for about a grand. But, I’m staying aware that this isn’t a Def Con issue, but a Vegas issue.
After I got back on Tuesday, thankfully without con-crud or the ‘rona, I took the rest of the week to chill and reset after fitting in a years worth of socializing.
So I decided to work on some split keyboard projects I had backed up, as well figuring out what to do about my ride. The latter was way more fun since I had ordered a soldering hot plate on prime day, which means I can get that stuff done WAY faster now. I also got back into the groove with diet and exercise, two things that took a back seat in the last roughly two months.
With all that sorted it was time to get back into the game dev groove! This presented two distinct thoughts for me to tackle with:
One: I was worried about jumping back into Deck and Balls “dry”, as it were. To state this a little plainer, I was worried that a few months away from programming would make me sloppy and end up with me adding shit code into the repo. Considering how new I am to all of this, this essentially being my first few months of taking it seriously and all, I think this is a fair concern?
All of that led into the second thought: Just work on something small to knock the dust off, then pick up on Deck and Balls again…
… So I did that. Care to guess what happened then?
Fuck me I think I like this new project more. Like, a lot more. Also, in a short amount of time I’ve made considerable progress on it, from my vantage point anyways. I’ve been working on it about two weeks now, with no immediate signs of slowing down. Shit.
So now I have to figure out what I’m going to do about these projects. My whole-ass-soul is telling me to work on the new jam for a bit, which I think I will do up to the Proof Of Concept point. Then I will have to see what’s up between the two. Maybe I hit POC on both of them, then have a vote on Itch.io or something?
Anyways, I’m writing this from the last weekend of August, which I will spend doing a little dev, a little soldering and possibly some 3D printing. I should be getting back to normal dev logs after that, which means I should be back into a normal dev cycle.

So how did it go:

All in all this was a pretty good way to slide back into it. I have a couple of side projects I’m wrapping up, and development in general is going pretty good, even if I now find myself juggling two projects. I’ve got some fine tuning I need to do to my lifestyle in general, but I’m already getting that done.
I’m hoping in the next log or two there is enough meat on the bone to start putting up images, regardless of which project.
Okay I’m going to get this posted, I’m technically a day behind (not counting a couple of months.).