Whew!

With all my New Years resolutions, reaffirmation to the life of the video game, need for exercise, and quench for reading...I've got a lot of thing on my plate.

First off, resolutions. These are going to change slightly. Now, now...I'm not giving up on any, but I realize that a couple of them are not exactly goals...I was wrong. Ahm, you'll see.

First:

7) Learn Blender.

This resolution was made when I thought that learning how to render 3D graphics would enhance my game development efforts for the cell phone. But I was wrong. In fact, game graphics for this style of video game had another name: Pixel Art. I've reference this in prior blogs, but as of the beginning of the year, I didn't know about it.

So, while I still have interest in learning 3D art, it will not be a resolution this year. Instead:

7) Learn Pixel Art.

This is the new must. Second, my "fitness" goal. My goal for the year was to start building up muscle since I've lost the 35 pounds. However, there are two problems with this.

First, in a year and a half, we won't be doing Bally's anymore. We'll hopefully have a little tyke running around the house, and we'll need to tighten the pursestrings with only me working. So, a Bally's membership will be declined and we'll instead revert to my treadmill and outdoor activity for exercise.

Second, and the above is included here as well, there's no way I can think of maintaining any kind of bulk muscle having said little tyke running around the house, no Bally's, and my game development schedule. So, replacing:

11) Chest press 255 pounds. I can currently lift 150.

Will be:

11) Reach the 175 poundmark.

I'd lost 35 pounds and went from 215 to 181. I've since gained 7 pounds over the last several months thanks to a big work push, and the addition os major carbs back to my diet in an effort to do more weight lifting at Bally's.

I will reverse my goal, and instead of focus on staying lean. By combining the reduced carbs and more aerobic exercise, I will try to bring my body weight down to 175, which will put me in the "Normal" BMI index.

OK, resolutions done.

We're headed to the movies very soon now, so I'll make the rest of this blog quick. I've been playing tons of Pikmin 2 lately, and I solved the first goal of the game this morning which is to earn 10,000 pogos. Now, I have to finish out the game. Once done, we can start Zelda! :-)

As for GBA, I am still playing Advance Wars 2. It is truly awesome, one of the best games I've ever played! I'm not sure if it's the game, which is of VERY high quality, but rather the genre, which I've never played before. My friend Ramons says there are other games, including on GBA, which are of the same genre, so I hope to play them all! Military stratgy, baby!

Maybe I can give a game like this a try on the cell phone? :-)

I'm serious.

OK, time to get ready. We're headed to see "A Series of Unfortunate Events." Michele had read through the first three books, but I haven't touched them. I think I'll go through them as soon as I'm done with Pikmin 2.

Also, a Counterpart update: 17 levels complete! 33 to go. It will be very hard to have all the levels done at the end of this week, but I'll push as hard as I can. There are still a couple defects that need fixing and I need to polish off the end of the game, which will involve some added coding for during the game. If I can't release by the end of the month, it's OK. While I wanted to, I know that the whole core of the game is done and rushing the levels out would just be a disservice for a deadline which really means nothing. Why push the game to failure when it's doing fine and taking it slow is all that's needed?

So. I'll just finish the game code out this week, and then work on levels wil I hit the magic 50 number.

OK, asta!