8:21 PM. I’m getting to my journal a little earlier than normal! Here’s the track I’m listening to right now, which is a great track that I have not heard in many years!
I saw STS9 live at the Gorge. It kinda sucked compared to what I have heard on youtube. The were an opening band and it looked like they lacked most of their crew, so it’s understandable.
That was a lonely Gorge Amphitheater adventure. It was during that trip that I decided that I wasn’t going to do solo adventures anymore, and that I really needed a friend to go along with me and share in the experience.
I’m going through whatever music is on my hard drives and I’m deleting old tracks that I don’t care to hear ever again. Straight to the trash. There’s no reason for me to be a digital hoarder for things that I might need in the future. If it’s something I care about in this moment, I’ll hold onto it, otherwise it has no business on my hard drive.
I realize that I had a shitty taste in music when I was younger. I’m not opposed to any genre per say, I’m just apposed to music without a good rhythm. I seemed to collect a shit ton of dance music with a four on the floor, “thud thud thud thud” beat that really just hears my ears now.
Rhythm or GTFO!
I did yoga several times today, walked to the mailbox and did 21 laps around the campfire trail, and rode around the block on my bicycle. It was a great active day and I felt really productive today!
I listed 34 cards on eBay, and made progress on sbtp-loyalty. I had my second “standup meeting” with myself which wasn’t really a meeting at all. I just went on my github kanban board and I cleared off last week’s sprint, and created a new one for the next 7 days.
I like these weekly sprints! They give me a visual indicator of how much progress I made the last week, and allow me to set goals for the next week. I like how there’s no real requirement to finish everything in a week. Things that don’t get finished just get rolled over to the next week.
It’s like stretch goals on Patreon or Indiegogo! I set things that I would like to do, but probably won’t have time to in the coming week. Eventually, that goal will roll over into a week when I do have time.
This week I have three items to work on. I want to get the profile page implemented to the point where I can input data such as–
- Mailing address
- Birthday
- Special day
I added a special day because I want SBTP.xyz to be a fun place that gives you lots of rewards for being a member. The special day for me would be Miku Hatsune’s Birthday, August 31, because that’s the weebiest important date that I could think of.
My suggestion on the special date form is actually, “ex: Waifu’s birthday”
The idea is that I will send out special gifts to customers on their birthday, and their special day.
After the profile page gets squared away, I am going to work on the customer inventory. This is the component which shows how many points the customer has, and their coupons.
From the customer’s inventory, they can do actions like redeeming a prize from points, or adding a coupon to their inventory.
I don’t know if I’m going to work on the inventory after working on the profile, or after the third todo item which is the Card generation page.
The card generation page is an administrator-only feature which will let me generate the unique redemption codes which I will be sending out with orders.
The idea here is that I have a physical box of cards and stickers that are considered prizes. There’s still some details I have to work out, but I’ll add each prize to the database, and for each prize, I am able to generate and print a unique SBTP prize code which gets mailed to the customer.
These prize codes expire after a year, in case the customer never redeems them, or redeems them and doesn’t do anything with it. Anyway, that’s a minor detail. The main point is that the card generation page is the page that I used to get the code and render it on a page which I can print onto cardstock and cut out.
The card generation page is going to take some time to implement. It’s going to require first going into GIMP and creating an appealing promotional card which matches the dimensions of Weiss Schwarz or Precious Memories cards. I’m not sure if I’m going to make a background image similar to how Prememo or WS have a consistent background image, or if I’m going to do a card with two sides that both contain unique information.
I’m thinking that I could make a SBTP card game that can be played with all the cards that customers collect, but that would take an extra amount of work that I’m not sure I want to invest.
Here’s an example of a promo card from a game I know nothing about.
I received four of these cards in my latest Buyee order. One of the sellers used them as insulation for a signed STEINS;GATE card that I received. I’ve seen a few other cards like this which were contained in past orders.
My assumption is that they come from either an arcade game, or a mobile game. I assume players are able to scan the QR code with either the arcade game, or their smartphone, at which point they redeem some sort of in-game items or points.
That’s very similar to what I’m trying to accomplish.
The challenge here is to design a card that is aesthetically pleasing, so customers want to hodl onto it and see what it’s all about.
It’s a simple enough design. One side has an art piece with a fully illustrated background and basic stats, the other side has an art piece with a CGI background, full stats, and prize redemption info.
Here’s what I came up with after about an hour of work. I found a Sakura Miku image which was listed as CC BY-SA 3.0, but I think that’s a bit questionable since I found the actual original source didn’t list a license.
I think the ideal goal would be to commission an artist to make me a Chibi Sakura Miku, with a commercial license agreement. I found a good artist via Fiverr who could do that for me for $27.
It’s a start!
Snek time
I finished my leftovers from dinner, with roasted almonds and raisins for dessert.
I had a thought while I was eating. What if I made an HTML card designer that I could use for both sbtp-loyalty, and the trading card game that I want to design during the upcoming ludum dare?
I would want it to be as simple as possible, because it would not be used much. It would be used once per every card template. It would generate some JSON configuration which would be fed into the card generator.
The JSON would specify card dimensions, and the positions at which the various text would be rendered to the canvas.
This would allow a .csv file as input with all the cards in the game, and because of the JSON file, each field would be plotted precisely onto the canvas, right where they should be.
The JSON file could also specify font faces, and font sizes.
That would be pretty cool!
The idea for ludum dare is to work with my brothers on the project. I know D. is very creative when it comes to this sort of thing. He has created multiple worlds for D&D, short stories, etc. If I could create a toolset for collaboratively creating a card game, I know he would really take it to the next level.
The components
- Data spreadsheet (cloud based)
- Card designer (could run on heroku)
I used a cloud-based collaborative spreadsheet software in the past, but now I can’t find the website. EtherCalc was one that I used before, but I think it’s down. There was another one more recent than that, but I can’t remember the name! It had a nifty API that let me quickly download the sheet as a csv. No passwords or logins or anything, just a unique URL for the sheet.
Hey, here we go!
https://cryptpad.fr/sheet/#/2/sheet/edit/HP5DKSly2RAG8COFlwP80ZbE/
Looks like a FOSS project. Just what I need!
I can’t find a way to export to CSV though.
Here’s a good alternative that I just found– https://sheetsu.com/
This way, I can use a Google spreadsheet, then use sheetsu to export the data to JSON– Perfect for ingestion into a card designer!
I’m tempted to work on it now, but I’m pretty tired. I worked hard today, so it is not wise to work right now.
Time to chill and do CoDA!
But first… a quick break
I bought another Bakemonogatari starter deck for $8.32. Easy money!
CoDA 30q #26
Re-read Step Three pages 37-41. Are you willing to decide to trust God to care for all you consider precious and important?
Not really. It’s a shared responsibility between myself and god.
Are you willing to rely on your Higher Power to provide you with peace, happiness, and well-being?
Yeah, I think so! Meditation is a superb way for me to center myself and feel at peace.
What energy will now be available when others are no longer responsible for your happiness & well-being?
I don’t remember reading anything about energy becoming available. I think it just said that I can gain serenity.
Are you frightened to allow God to take care of you and the other people in your life?
Uh, yeah! That’s why I think it’s a bad idea to allow god to do all the protecting and I am only deciding to share that responsibility.
What are the crossroads where you are standing?
I’m at the crossroads of being less dependent on my family, but still dependent on my family…? I don’t really understand this question.
Fuck that CoDA question.
Onto gratitude and affirmations and then I’m outta here!
I’m grateful that drivers shared the road with me today. I’m grateful that I was patient and I let the queue drivers pass me on the narrow road home.
I’m grateful for Lewdcast. It was hella self-censored and I hope they consider finding a new streaming platform so they can be themselves, but it was overall a decent episode with some really hilarious moments.
Fuck! I’m only at 1700 words. It’s late and my ability to focus is near nil. NIL!
I’m browsin’ Ironmouse clips.
I’m prob gonna watch a vod before I got to bed.
Or maybe I’ll do Hanjusan and go to bed? Fuck Idk
idk idk idk
I’m grateful for clips and vods on twitch. I’m grateful that Twitch exists.
79. I am not the only one who struggles; I choose to be kind to everyone I meet.
80. Yesterday was a bad …
I think I already did these affirmations in the past few days, but I didn’t check them off on my affirmation list.
82. While I wait for the storm to pass, I will choose to dance in the rain.
83. I am loved.
84. I will remember; often difficult roads lead to beautiful destinations
I’m grateful for youtube-dl and ffmpeg! I used youtube-dl to download the clip, and ffmpeg to shrink it’s filesize so it wouldn’t take up too much room on my blog.
I’m grateful that one handed keyboards, and ergonomic keyboards exist. I’m glad that there are people out there who put a lot of effort into creating devices that interface better with the human body.
I didn’t receive a reply from the guy who said he was selling his in10did keyboard. I wonder if it was not actually a guy selling, but a guy who was trying to gauge market interest by posting a fake review with his e-mail?
Or it could be a guy who actually sold it already, and now he just set up an e-mail filter to delete any e-mails with the keyboard keyword in the message body.
2000 words bye
