Pages

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

What I do and what I want

So, obviously, I don't want to take away from people looking at my most recent fiction.  I like my fiction, it's what I do.  I'm a fiction maker.  Even if it often draws on other people's fiction, as that example does, and therefore can't ever be sold.

It is not, however, all that I do.  I was surprised at the fact that I've never talked about what I do with puzzles here.  I only realized after I did the post about the new tiny cubes being 2mm larger (in each of three dimensions) than the old tiny cubes and wanted a post to link to to show I'm not exactly ignorant about this stuff.  Couldn't find one.

Here's a page from my shapeways shop.  My shapeways shop where no one has ever bought anything.

I designed and built that.  It's the last thing I built.  See the price tag?  3d printing is still prohibitively expensive.  It has as many parts and uses as much plastic as 3 ordinary Rubik's cubes so, based on what they cost, you'd expect it to run from 24 to 45 dollars.  A lot for a puzzle, but not three fucking hundred.  And that 300 price doesn't include stickers, springs, screws, washers, and a core (a core costs 70¢ so it's no big deal.)

I've been out of the game so fucking long.  I want to do a review of the new official rubik's cubes because they've upped their game like whoa for the first time in my life.

I want to do an image post showing the small handful of puzzles I have made so the unaccountable absence of my puzzle work on this blog can begin to be remedied.

But that's not all I want to do.

I want to talk about my, almost certainly doomed from the start, plan to attempt to make a game engine.

I want to return to stories that languish.

I want to ask people about the possibility of me setting up a patron which might allow me to have a predictable monthly income (if people were willing to pledge.)

I want to know if people think a kickstarter to get my puzzles injection molded, and thus at a decent price, would have a chance working.

I want to do a review of the movie with saber-tooth monkeysaurs.

I want to watch .hack//Sign and bring you along for the ride.

I want to return to the fun of manipulating images.

I want to do so much I don't even know where to start.

I want to stop just surviving and start living a life I'm proud of.

I want to fucking shine.

I want to be able to go in six directions at once and not have the result be six failed attempts at stuff.

I want to somehow convince my readers to make more noise in the comment section.

I want to learn guitar.

I want to do things I've never talked about with images, and things I've rarely talked about with language.

I want to rediscover the joy and wonder of reading books, even as I fear that it is dead, embalmed, and buried.

I want to be able to share all of this with the people who know me online.  The people who have been my lifeline when I thought I was doomed.  The people who have kept me connected to the world when I couldn't make myself leave the house.

I want to finish the index overhaul I meant to do a year or two ago so that you can actually navigate this place.

-

I want to do all these things and more, but I have no idea where we go from here.

7 comments:

  1. Yeah, Shapeways is prohibitively expensive for, well, practically everything. I mean, sure, they have a wide array of printers and materials, but with a rough estimate of the weight of your design selling twelve of them at that price would produce enough profit to pay for a decent consumer-level 3D printer like an Ultimaker as well as the raw materials.

    As far as I can see, most kickstarters that succeed do it because there's a salesman running them, in the sense of someone who feels invigorated by going out and engaging with the public. Other stuff is helpful too, but that's a huge factor.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Excuse me while I hug this post...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Also I think pretty much every line of this could be expanded to an interesting post.

    Plus I am really super interested in 3D printers and 3D pens...

    And developing and publishing stuff...

    And starting businesses or at least planning stuff like that...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Often the best way to get people to comment is to post stuff they think is wrong or incomplete and feel compelled to correct. So it seems like maybe talking more about research and ideas for projects will get people contributing their experience and opinions?

    More activity will produce more activity.

    Probably fewer long-form walls of text would help? Maybe some updates to the site design? And revisiting older ideas in edited, updated posts?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have trouble posting a comment that says just "yay, I liked this". If I know about something and can add on to what was said, or something confused me and I want to ask more about it, I'm much more likely to poke my snout out.

      Delete
    2. Lonespark, you are totally wrong with your argument that people only post to disagree. You are entirely missing the fact that people also post things to hear the sound of their own keystrokes.

      (Ha ha, I'm so funny)

      Delete
    3. Hehe, yay, that's a good kind of wrong!

      I do think more people will post more often to disagree. Maybe specifically to nitpick on stuff they mostly agree with? It's hard for our inner genius superheros to resist the call of someone being Wrong On The Internet...

      Delete