I’ve been working off-and-on all month on turning notes for a choose-your-own-adventure book into an interactive game. (Okay, that was redundant. Show me a non-interactive game…) At first, I was just kind of playing at it, moving bits around, trying to determine a structure.

That was fine for the game’s puzzle side, the means of moving through the game. I had that drawn up the first afternoon.

Then I had to turn my attention to the story. I had several notes scribbled about characters, an idea for how the characters got into the story, but no actual plot to speak of.

So, now I’m trying to create scenes (three versions of each scene to match the puzzle side) to fill in the planned puzzles. I’m essentially building this game backwards, and it’s become a rather tedious task.

I may have to abandon this particular game over it.

Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized at 7:53 AM EST

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You may have noticed it’s been a bit quiet around the site over the past few days. This has everything to do with the fact I live in Seattle. We were pretty lucky. We only lost power for twelve hours, but we lost the network for a few days.

It was kind of nice, really. I made some Christmas presents. I started reading a book i wouldn’t recommend to any one. I started working on the storyboard for my game, and achieved writer’s block not too far from the end of that task. I started organizing some information that has gone unmanaged for so long that some of the more critical pieces have gone missing. Oops. (I’ll be spending time this week scouring both computers for it. Thankfully, I’m a bit redundant in my storage tendencies.)

It all made me stop and think that perhaps i need to organize a retreat for myself. Stop for a few days to think about where my life currently is, where I want it to be, and how to best move between the two.

I’m envisioning some sort of strategy session for myself that organizes my professional life, my online life, and my personal life and realgins them to keep myself moving forward more easily.

Maybe I’ll even figure out what exactly I want to do with this web space, and then plan out how I’m going to get there. I have some great ideas brewing for some of the niches, and just need a plan for implementation.

If you have any suggestions of what you’d like to see around here, leave me a comment. I’d love to know what would make this site more useful to you, the readers.

Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized at 6:25 PM EST

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After watching so many people around me do this meme, I was finally tagged by Rosa. So after some thought (and consulting my coworkers), I finally came up with a few things.

For those of you who haven’t seen this meme before, you’re asked to list anywhere from five to ten interesting, not-well-known things about yourself. In this case, I’m only expected to come up with five, but I suspect a certain Eeyore would be sad if I left out some of the ones we came up with. (The majority of it is really themed to my teaching, because at my core that’s what I am.

• I personally view myself as an average underachiever. I grew up in private schools with other very intelligent children. College was a bit baffling for me because I went to a public university with people who hadn’t been stuck in a college prep school for the previous seven years of their life. It was a culture shock that required some serious adjusting in my worldview. I surround myself with like-minded people who are so focused on their interests that they have this incredible body of knowledge locked up in them. I love being around them because I learn so much from them. However, because I’m growing multiple interests, I haven’t progressed as quickly, so I think I’m average or lower. It’s not until I start talking to someone and watch their eyes glaze over as my words go right over there head that I have even an inkling of a clue that I do actually know something. I have many people on my case about this.

• Along those lines, I have no idea what all is stuffed into my brain. Over the past ten years, I have been asked to prepare curriculum and training materials for a wide variety of topics, often with a very short deadline, and I come back with a good, thorough plan. I was known for it in grad school, completely flattening my unsuspecting research supervisor when I completed two complete plans (a traveling trunk and an exhibit-related workshop) in an hour and a half with no resources outside of myself. I’m becoming known for it at my current job. Not only can I create educational material quickly and well, I can also teach just about whatever you put in front of me. In fact, I spend much of my time at work teaching all manner of odd things because I’m the only person in the room who can. Long story short: you need materials created or something taught, I’m your girl!

• Speaking of my weird capacity for teaching, I am quite talented at writing upside down without having to think about what I’m doing. I write words, math equations, etc…all upside down. I can also write upside down and backwards, but I hardly find that as useful. Anyway, I’m often in a position at work where it’s easier to write something upside down to explain it to the student opposite me than to take the paper and do the whole awkward sideways thing. (I can also read upside down quickly, which amazes my students and fellow teachers, but again, it’s so much easier than having to shift the book around for something that will take me less than five seconds to scan and get the gist of.)

• Writing and reading math upside down is a very beneficial talent because it absolutely amazes my students, but not quite as much as it amazes them that the teacher who can do algebra and geometry upside down actually failed algebra herself. Yes, it’s true. I failed at least half of Algebra I. In my defense, I then turned around and aced Precalculus and Calculus, and haven’t stopped doing math since! I like math. I think it’s fun! As a result, I tend to end up with a lot of female algebra students. Somehow or other, the girl who formerly failed algebra has been dubbed a great role model for these teenage girls who are feeling lost in “a boy’s sport”. (We’ll all just ignore that I’ve always been a tomboy. Heh.) The girls think I’m crazy for enjoying math, but they eventually start coming around, too!

• Now, just to show I’m not all about my teaching, I have to discuss one of my lifelong obsessions. I’m actually being gifted with a couple of old hardbacks on Greek Mythology by a fellow teacher because I offered to dump my knowledge onto a student trying to write a paper on the Odyssey. I am completely enthralled by Greek Mythology. When I was really little, I read parts of Ovid’s Metamorphosis, and then proceeded to tell my mother everything that was wrong with my then-favorite movie, Clash of the Titans. I created a mini-Olympus in my playroom, complete with symbols for each god, and a paper fire for Hestia to tend. I took over my freshman English class when we studied Greek Mythology. My Greek Mythology professor in college exempted me from the final because she figured I knew enough to not need to waste my time. I even took an Attic Greek class in college. The quickest way to annoy me is to not be able to keep the Greek pantheon separate from the Roman pantheon.The best present anyone could ever give me is a trip to Greece, especially if it included touring ruins and historical sites!

• I was told I had to talk about another of my obsessions while I was at it. Hi, my name is Rebecca, and I have an obsession with animation. It’s true. I’ve tracked production houses and voice actors most of my life. I admire the sheer work that goes into creating the shortest animation. I miss hand cels, but I’m intrigued by the new computer animation scene. I love analyzing them for symbolism and themes. I love giggling at cultural references. I respect any cartoon that can make fun of itself, or another one by the same production house. I have no artistic or acting talent myself, so I’m content to admire from afar.

All right, there’s six odd facts about me. Sadly, I’m so late in coming to this party that I think just about every single blogger I read has done this meme. So…if you are reading this and you haven’t been tagged yet, TAG!

Posted by Rebecca as Personal development at 8:09 AM EST

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As part of my grappling with motivation issues, I’ve been trying out different applications to see if anything just really resonates with my working style.

I briefly considered going back to Google Notebook, but that thought died as it appeared. There just isn’t enough control over it to accomplish what I want to accomplish. I’ve also tried revisiting using the personalized Google homepage, but it has a similar proble  in that i can’t duplicate modules, even across different pages.
I am currently working on making Pageflakes into something useful. It runs far more smoothly than it used to, but it handles events so poorly that it crashes my poor browser. Not the best solution in the world. On the upside, I do like being able to set up pages for various things and then duplicating modules as needed. I also like the tabbed to-do list. Very handy for quickly looking to see what i have to work on. It has potential, but I’m still really forced into someone else’s box.

Even though EverNote doesn’t precisely meet my every fantasy, it allows me a greater level of control over my workspace. This makes me very happy. I’m actually planning to go through and reorganize my EverNote files to make them into something that matches my own thought processes instead of random groupings of notes (which seems to be what has happened lately).

Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized at 7:37 AM EST

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