I’m now 4 weeks in to my 90 day challenge.  About 1/3rd of the way done.  Yikes.

Progress report.

1. I’ve fallen in love with heroku.com, and think that I’ll be using them to host the site once it launches.
2. My sleeping patterns are still a little out of wonk. Yesterday for example, I just couldn’t seem to shake that “I need a nap” feeling.  And combine that with some difficult problems I’m trying to solve and my brain sort of feels like a stale rubber band.  I think it’s more work-related than baby-related, strangely.
3. I’ve also fallen in love with highcharts.com when it comes to making pretty charts.  I might still use jqplots as well, but I think highcharts is actually quite a bit more powerful.
4. I’ve sort of solidified my idea pattern for now
   1. A game every month
   2. Minimal design, but colorful
   3. Not necessarily free
   4. Choose your own adventure beforehand
      1. Bet yourself, punish yourself
   5. Play with others
   6. Be sorted onto a semi-arbitrary “team” of people like you
   7. A day is 1 turn
   8. Minimal amount of “work” per turn
   9. Points awarded daily
   10. Points not entirely explained, or based on a semi-complex algorithm
   11. Pretty charts and stats as a reward for daily participation
   12. Semi-frivolous award system for good behavior
   13. Streaks are a central part of the game’s motivation
   14. Some sense of a “meta” game that spans months
5. I’d say I’m about 1/2 way done with the core functionality of the site.  Maybe a little more.  But there are always a lot of little things at the end that need to be figured out.  I’m looking forward to those too.
6. Sometimes I do have that fear, “what if this flops?”  Luckily it’s not an all-or-nothing kind of proposition.  But I’m still not sure that my basic premise is compelling enough to really make a splash.  One comfort is that the basic premise unlocks more premises that I can build on if the primary one isn’t enough by itself.
7. I’ve got to figure out a way to balance home life, work life, and health.  I’ve got a way to get about 4-5 hours of work in a day, which is pretty good if I can make it all productive work, but it has come at the cost of me doing any sort of exercise.  And I can feel my body sort of wasting away and creating pools of unused physical energy that then make me restless and feel gross.  I’m going to go on a run today, instead of working.  It is the weekend after all.

This entry was posted by Buster on Saturday, July 17th, 2010 at 5:59 pm. It is filed under 90 day challenge. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.