The Column
A new Aaron Project™️1 has been born.
Get in to Win
I love clever little things. I like, for example, when a URL includes the TLD2 in a neat way. It makes me happy.
Hence: http://getinto.win
That the name and domain for my newest Aaron Project. Also it is my newest domain name purchase. I now have a handful. Probably going to hold off on others for a while (see just above the Top 10 for why).
I plan to make a few puzzle boxes, and make them generally available for rent online. This is all incredibly early days, still not sure what it even is.
The Vault
The first puzzle box is quickly approaching the playtest phase. Which is incredibly exciting… because it has taken a lot of work already (you may note my whole month without a Column posted). Looking very forward to watching someone actually do it. I have no idea if it will take 15 minutes or 55 minutes. That’s my biggest concern at the moment.
The first one is too big to ship in any cost-effective manner. I can’t quite wrap my brain around how to make a SMALL box feel like is fun and interesting. A lot of the fun of the ‘escape room’ experience is the idea that anything could be in there. When you’re looking at box that’s the size of a toddler’s shoe box… it’s pretty clear there’s nothing large in there. Part of the benefit of taking the half-digital-half-physical approach is keeping the mystique that anything could happen.
Regardless, I’m sure I’ll post again once this thing becomes ‘generally available’, but that won’t be until 2023. I’ve got some stuff to work out.
Weirdly I have more ideas for my 2nd puzzle box than I do for my first.
Other Things
PDW.one
I enabled basic authentication protections on my Personal Data Warehouse project, so now I feel relatively comfortable saying the URL in a public (if totally unread) setting. I’ve been building the 10th iteration of my Life Tracker/Data Journal/Personal Data Warehouse at:
If you go there now you’ll see essentially nothing. Eventually it might be useful to more people. Technically it supports multiple users right now, but you’d have to do an awful lot of playing around just to get a very restricted and buggy form of what you could get easily with Google Sheets/Airtable/Notion/Excel.
BUT IT’S MINE DARNIT.
STEAM
A few years back I came across the term “STEM”, being short for “Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math”. Its meaning was clear and its applications were obvious. Nowadays, I tend to hear a different acronym more often: “STEAM”. Joining the rest is the somewhat vague addition of “Art”. This is where I became confused. What is “art”, really? What does it cover? Just the literal connotation of “the arts”? Or does it also include the humanities? What about history?
Another way to phrase this is: what does “STEAM” not refer to? When people say “STEAM” are they just using it as a shorthand for “all non-physical educational topics”?
I guess they stopped short of including Physical Education and (I’m assuming here) the Humanities because there isn’t a cute acronym for it.
iPhone 14
I got an iPhone 14 Pro to replace my iPhone 12. The cameras are gigantic. The difference between 60fps and 120fps definitely makes it “feel” smoother.
Aside from that they are the same.
Aaron Projects
It didn’t occur to me until after writing the Top 10 below, there are probably too many things there. I’m doing too much. No wonder I feel like I don’t have time to get everything done.
He’s my current problem - Sophie’s choice. I genuinely don’t know what could go on the chopping block. So many of them feel foundational to how I see myself. I can’t not do the Column. I can’t not do the Life Tracking/Personal Data Warehouse thing. The Puzzle Project is my new idea. My notes are awesome. Everything else requires little to no energy to maintain, so killing them feels like a loss without much gain… who knows.
I am in a pickle.
Soon the homepage of this site will lose its links to my General Operating Principles and Annual Reviews, and instead have links to my Personal Data Warehouse and Get In To Win sites from above.
Top 10: Aaron Projects
From inactive toward most active (as of this writing).
10. My Second a Day Videos
Paused for the past couple years. Would like to return to them soon.
9. My Workbenches
These are mostly done. They are on an indefinite pause until such a time as I get bored. Then I will finish up Shirley and paint them. Or not.
8. The We Scene a Movie Podcast
Paused for the past month+. I think we’re returning to this soon for an episode or two (House of the Dragon and probably Wakanda Forever).
7. Wrapper-Lib
A home-grown coding library. Been adding tiny little incremental releases as I work on the projects below and stumble across new feature ideas.
6. The 30 Day Challenges
These have been going on being the scenes for the past many years. They have grown less and less like “ambitious challenges” and more and more like a mechanism of focus.
5. The Creation of the Week
This is meant to be a catalog of the stuff I do for all the other entries here. I like this one a lot. It’s low-effort.
4. My Notes
I just crossed the 1000 note threshold during the writing of this post.
3. The Column
This thing!
2. The Personal Data Warehouse
My Life Tracking Data Journal. Currently it’s 10 iteration rewrite. Using a ton of the same tools and techniques I made
1. Get in to Win
I wrote about this all above.
Quote:
Welcome to life. It’s a big boat with a lot of holes; but we’re all in it together. Rick Sanchez>
Footnotes
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Not actually a trademark. I don’t know what the laws are about using that symbol sarcastically. ↩
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TLD is short for “Top-Level Domain”. The ones you’re probably most familiar with are the “.com” (for commerce), “.edu (for education) and “.gov” (for government). There are ones for most countries, like “.uk” for England, and an explosion of new ones a few years back, such as “.ninja” and “.win”. ↩