When I was a kid in the 1980s, it was quite common for “My friends” books to make their rounds on the schoolyard. These books consisted of two page questionnaires for your buddies to fill out so you could remember them all. One of the more common questions was “What are your hobbies” and I can’t remember when I started putting “learning” in there but I sure did.

Rather early in my life I noticed that learning new things was a lot of fun for me! Reading up on things in my parents’ lexicon collection, trying my hand at various forms of crafting and getting better at them, and of course also learning everything I could about all the technology all around me felt amazing¹. And that never stopped, rather the opposite: Nothing gives me more dopamine these days than going down a shiny new rabbit hole, absorbing new knowledge like a sponge does water, and then putting it to use right away to work towards acquiring a new skill or solving a problem. Lifelong learning, broadening my understanding of the world and acquiring new skills to then use to make or do something myself² are a huge part of who I am.

I think this is why it baffles me that much how readily people will take every shortcut they can to avoid having to actually learn a new skill or gather knowledge about a new topic. Plenty of people are only interested in the results, only want to be able to say “I did this” without actually having to do all the legwork.³ Maybe out of fear to fail, maybe out of laziness, maybe out of perceived necessity in our capitalism based hustle culture.

And while I’d say that the current genAI craze with all its promises to achieve results without having to put in anything beyond a more or less well defined prompt certainly has made this approach to life more visible, it was always there.

In the end, I just have to accept that not everyone gets a rush from learning something new, as sad as I find that. I just wish that the consequence of this fact wasn’t having to drown in a neverending wave of slop 😐

It was annoying me for a while now that my chosen theme PaperMod didn’t also support some kind of all-in-one RSS feed with all main sections. And also that the feeds were called index.xml instead of feed.xml, confusing me every time I wanted to check something on them manually. Also, the feed link title just being rss didn’t exactly help in a feed reader either.

So just now I’ve done some long overdue spring cleaning on this page:

1. I updated PaperMod¹ & adjusted my overwrites as necessary
2. I implemented my custom rss feed template with some more logic to render it with all main sections on home
3. I disabled the automatic inclusion of the section feeds and created my own with proper title attributes ("(All|Blog|TIL) posts on foosel.net"), put into the head of all pages
4. I overrode the default name of the generated feeds to be feed.xml & added the necessary redirects (hopefully…)
5. I also added links to the main RSS feed at two prominent places: in the social icons on the home page as well as in the main navigation next to the search button. While the feeds were always discoverable through the related link tags in the HTML page itself, and there were also specific links on the section main pages, I still got some questions here and there on whether there was a feed, so I hope this makes things easier to discover now.

If you want a look behind the scenes on how I did that, this page’s source is on a public repo, so feel free to take a look 😊

All that’s left to say is: I’m sorry should I have broken something there or caused your RSS reader to push all old posts into your face 😬

For several months now I’ve been meaning to write about my notebook journey. Today the stars finally aligned and I just sat down to tell you about how I’ve been managing my TODOs for almost a year now.

It all started when I created myself a little leather cover for my A5 sized solo RPG journal:

Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

Currently learning how to play #Starforged and as I apparently enjoy the journaling part of it I just built myself a traveler's notebook 😊 Apart from two notebook inserts, this also has an insert for holding my character sheet and my assets, plus a move cheat sheet.

#making #leatherwork #solo_rpg #ttrpg

March 19, 2025, 21:05 (UTC)

I quickly realized that I quite liked writing down things by hand on the 100gsm dot grid paper of the notebook I got, and that I also liked the look and functionality of what I had created there.

That lead to an idea. At this point I was still managing my TODOs in Todoist, but also often ended up writing down the weekly tasks on the whiteboard in my office as I had learned that checking them off physically with an actual pen gave me way more dopamine than clicking a checkbox in an app. And the whiteboard approach quickly fell apart when I was not at my desk - I often ended up taking a picture of my whiteboard before having to work from somewhere else, or putting things into Todoist that felt a bit like they didn’t belong there (small chores).

So I thought that maybe I should just try to go fully analogue with my tasks, in a portable form factor. The A5 size I had used for the RPG journal didn’t fit that portability requirement fully, but A6 would be something that I could easily fit into my cargo pockets. I thus ordered a stack of A6 notebooks¹ and built another leather cover for that size.

Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

After really enjoying using the traveler's notebook I built for #solorpg use recently*, I've just now built a smaller version for regular note taking. While I'm a huge fan of @obsidian, not everything needs to be digital and I want to try some analog brainstorming and possibly journaling again.

* see https://chaos.social/@foosel/114191126595846444

#leatherworking

March 28, 2025, 18:13 (UTC)

Once more I went with a Midori style “Traveler’s Notebook” approach - a simple leather cover with a bungie cord in the middle, acting as both a place where to hang in one notebook from its spine, and a loop on the outside to keep the journal closed. To hang more than one book, additional bungie cord loops can be used to attach two or more books together.

Just like with my RPG journal, I also built myself an insert out of craft cardboard, to hold some of my cards and a slim tracker module, allow storing flat things on the front and back (receipts, tickets, my x-ray passport & dentist bonus log…) and attach a pen loop and some bookmark ribbons to as well.

Then I sat down and thought a lot on how to best go about organising things. I of course had heard about the Bullet Journal method, so I looked up details on that. I quickly learned two things: 1) contrary to what images I found online and what I saw my mom doing made me believe, at its core bullet journalling is way less about fancy hand lettering and page designs but rather about rapidly logging down stuff and b) it’s not actually about TODO lists but rather an approach for helping with self reflection and reaching your goals.

What I got from a) actually helped me a lot, but b) didn’t work for me at all. I do call my little notebook my Bullet Journal, but it is in fact mostly a TODO list combined with some personal tracking, and of course note taking.

I did adopt the symbols however: Tasks that are planned but not yet started get a • in front of them. I can cross that off with an X to turn it into “done”. If a task takes longer or spans across multiple days, I can cross it off halfway / to mark it as started or in progress. With < or > I can signify that a task was rescheduled (forwards or backwards). All of these symbols can just be drawn over the initial • and I find that an amazing way to keep track of more than two possible task states.

Additionally I also use ° for events, - to mark notes, = for mental and physical health related things and » for quotes.

So, how do I use all of this to organise my life now?

My journal contains two 30 sheet/60 page A5 books.

The first one is focused on the current month. I use it to keep track of my running tasks, logging my days, monitoring my vertigo symptoms and mood. It helps me a ton each day to see that I actually did get stuff done (even if it often doesn’t feel like it).

Each month I create an overview of tasks I should get done sometime this month in my Monthly Log, and an overview of the next month and anything later than that in my Future Log.

My Daily Log is combined with my mood tracker. I jot down one positive thing about each day (to combat the constant doom and gloom caused by living in this reality - it helps reading through what I write here at the end of each month). Even if it is just about taking an amazing nap that day, it counts.

Then follows a spread with my Vertigo Log. It’s a monthly log again with columns for the various symptoms and possible triggers I’m tracking, with some space for daily notes as well. Sorry, but I’m not including a picture here as all of that is a bit too personal to share publicly.

The rest of the notebook is organised by week. Each week I start with an overview of my repeating chores in the shape of an Alastair matrix. I have columns for all days of the week. Each task gets its own line, with a • in the column(s) of the day(s) where I need or want to take care of it, and another • right in front of the task that I get to cross off when it’s done.

On the second page of the spread I have my running list of things I need to take care of next week.

The next spread is my running tasks list for the week. I put everything here as it comes up. Like the chores list it’s a matrix allowing me to schedule each task for one or more specific days.

As you can see, I also color code tasks with markers, which allows me to easily filter the list at a glance. Green is work related, light blue are household chores, dark blue are health related tasks and pink are event related things.

I pre-fill the chores and tasks list based on the things I scheduled for this week over the course of last week, the monthly log & the weekly repeated chores.

On the next pages then follows my running log of the week. Each morning I jot down the current date and weekday, take note of the weather (and also keep that updated throughout the day - it’s a vertigo trigger) and then copy over all tasks scheduled for the day from the list of chores or tasks. Whatever comes up during the day gets added too, and also put on the running task list (I want that as a full overview of the week). If something comes up that doesn’t need to get done this week, I throw it on the list for next week, or next month or later, whatever fits.

What I also log into each day’s header are various symbols for habit tracking, and an overall mood indicator - I use that for the mood graph in the daily log.

That’s basically the day to day with the notebook: Jot down tasks as they come, get an overview each day, get sweet sweet dopamine every time I cross something off.

But what about the second book? That is for longer term tracking.

I have an overview of (recurring) tasks throughout the year here that I need to take care of. I use that at the start of each month to prefill the monthly log.

I also use the second notebook for long term work stuff, e.g. here is how I keep track of what I needed to take care of for each bugfix release for OctoPrint 1.11.x that wasn’t already logged in the shape of public issues, PRs or commits, e.g. things I need to mention in the changelog, or not yet published security advisories.

What else goes in there are ideas for various projects, what things I have borrowed to or from friends (and when and whether it was returned yet), what books I read, vacation plans, quick notes, notes about talks I’ve seen … In short, basically everything else. I have a ton of lists (the Bullet Journal Method calls those “collections”), some of which are getting constantly updated, some of which only act as reference.

Some things from the second book get copied over to my personal knowledge base that I keep in Obsidian (synced to my own NextCloud). As an example, I used the notebook last year during two PyCon Italia and EuroPython to take notes during the talks I attended, and those have now gone into my knowledge base (or turned into tasks long taken care of).

Really long term tasks - e.g. future vaccinations, check-ups and such - I still keep digitally in tasks.org (also synced to my own NextCloud). At some point they’ll trigger a reminder on my phone, and then they’ll get schedule in my regular task list.

At this point I can say that basically everything gets managed with the help of this tiny self built journal for almost a year now and that works amazingly well for me.

Needless to say I’ve cancelled my Todoist subscription. 😉 #iDIDit.

Just like last year I’ve decided to sit down today and write my very own retrospective. The year has been difficult in several ways, but whenever I took another look at last year’s post it put a smile on my face, remembering the good things about life in general.

In the hope that this will continue to work, here we go with the same look at cool stuff that I did or experienced in 2025…

1. I started the year with my by now traditional deep clean project, this time taking care of my hallway and the built-in closet. That also included recycling my first ever 3d printer with which everything OctoPrint started - a step I had to do for space reasons, but which still felt weird.

   Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

   Continuing my start-of-the-year clean-up project tradition (for last year's project see https://chaos.social/@foosel/111687404140972445).

   Today I tackled the hallway shelf and the built-in closet. Filled up several garbage bags once more. Ouch, my back 😅

   I also decided to throw out my first 3d printer that was still stored in the closet, as much as it saddens me. It's no longer working & it's taking up too much space for that. But I'll keep the front plate & Pi 😊

   No before pictures for you bw - too embarrassing 😬

   

   January 2, 2025, 20:05 (UTC)

2. I painted all of the (core) miniatures of my copy of “Sub Terra”, making sure to also use a bit of UV colors for some special effects under black light.

   Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

   It's been years since I last painted some #miniatures, and since then several #boardgames have moved in that come with some.

   As I find painting quite relaxing (it allows me to focus on something I'm doing with my hands while making my brain shut up), I recently decided it was time to get back into it. I also wanted to try something new and got myself a set of Army Painter Speedpaints.

   I started with the core game of Sub Terra yesterday and am quite happy with how things are looking now 😊

   

   January 5, 2025, 16:13 (UTC)

   Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

   And since this is a game that can be played in the darkness under UV light, I decided to add a little extra too...

   

   January 5, 2025, 16:16 (UTC)

3. That also prompted me to finally kit up my painting stuff on a small cart that fits into the freshly cleaned up built-in closet.

   

4. As it is also becoming traditional by now, I spent some wonderfully calm days with my partner in the southern Black Forest again. We spent the days taking long walks/hikes through the snowy landscape, and the evenings playing through “Rise of the Golden Idol” - quality time! 😊

   Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

   Spent a beautiful week with my partner of now five years in the southern Black Forest, to celebrate our anniversary by taking a short time out in nature 😊

   While I'm admittedly not too thrilled to return to work again tomorrow, this was the kind of reset I needed and it did a lot in topping up my energy levels 🥰

   Apart from hiking and a wellness day in a spa, we also played through Rise of the Golden Idol in the evenings 😊 #relationshipGoals

   

   January 19, 2025, 19:46 (UTC)

5. Back from that, I finally found the time to frame the bits of my first 3d printer that I kept and hung them in my office - that way it’s not fully gone but taking up way less space than it did before.

   

6. At the end of January, I gave my first talk in front of a live audience since the start of the pandemic, at a local Women in Tech meetup. To say that I was incredibly nervous about this would be an understatement, but everything went smoothly once I got started 😊

   Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

   Another one for the collection to remind me that I in fact now CAN give talks without turning bright red thanks to crippling stagefright 💪 It was a long process ^^

   Slides are now also up on foosel.net!

   Thank you Christian for the picture!

   

   January 30, 2025, 08:54 (UTC)

7. Using my vinyl cutter I created some custom Mass Effect merch! Happy to say that the design indeed held up through several washes now - this thing has become my favourite hoodie and I’m actually wearing it as I’m typing these lines.

   Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

   Took care of a #project I had planned since before Christmas and turned a hoodie off mine into something a tad nerdier. This is now my favourite hoodie on the citadel!¹

   ¹ I just hope it survives the laundry, still my first steps with HTV 🙈

   #MassEffect

   

   February 2, 2025, 12:55 (UTC)

   I also created two more shirts, and another hoodie for my partner:

   Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

   When the world becomes too much, I tend to make things...

   Paragon shirt and Cerberus Normandy SR2 hoodie for my partner, Renegade shirt for me 😊

   

   February 24, 2025, 17:28 (UTC)

8. I finally played through “Dredge” and had a blast doing so!

9. I bought a new vacuum and immediately fell into love with it, so much so that I printed a whole bunch of holders for its adapters 😂 Peak adulting ^^

   Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

   For the record, my new cordless vacuum arrived early last week and I'm really in love with that thing 😅

   And after printing some holders yesterday and today, I now have it hanging in the built-in closet with all the adapters right next to it, ready to go every second 👍😀

   

   February 23, 2025, 16:08 (UTC)

10. I started on my journey to reduce my footprint on US clouds:

    • I switched from Google Drive to a NextCloud instance hosted at Hetzner in a german data center
    • After adding some more storage to my NAS I migrated all my pictures from Google Photos to a self-hosted immich server
    • I switched my homelab’s backup approach from Synology’s proprietary stuff to Borg/borgmatic

11. I started playing “Starforged” and for journaling my adventures built myself a traveler’s notebook.

    Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

    Currently learning how to play #Starforged and as I apparently enjoy the journaling part of it I just built myself a traveler's notebook 😊 Apart from two notebook inserts, this also has an insert for holding my character sheet and my assets, plus a move cheat sheet.

    #making #leatherwork #solo_rpg #ttrpg

    

    March 19, 2025, 21:05 (UTC)

    This in turn led to me starting a Bullet Journal in an A6 sized self crafted traveler’s notebook, and that’s been used daily since. I’ve been meaning to write a post about that, I really need to do this asap…

    Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

    After really enjoying using the traveler's notebook I built for #solorpg use recently*, I've just now built a smaller version for regular note taking. While I'm a huge fan of @obsidian, not everything needs to be digital and I want to try some analog brainstorming and possibly journaling again.

    * see https://chaos.social/@foosel/114191126595846444

    #leatherworking

    

    March 28, 2025, 18:13 (UTC)

12. On Easter my partner surprised me with a self-designed Lego Brickheads kit of us, which I had a blast building together with him.

    

13. I finally bound a book again, creating my first ever paperback!

    Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

    I haven't bound a book in a while but wanted to turn my copy of The Perilous Void into something physical for use on my #Starforged adventure. Originally I planned to go with ring binding, but the printout didn't leave enough space for that so instead I went for a double fan bound paperback. Not perfect, but I'm still quite proud of it 😊

    #solorpg #ttrpg #bookbinding

    

    April 26, 2025, 15:42 (UTC)

14. I upgraded my Framework 13 Intel 11th gen to a new AMD Ryzen AI 300 mainboard. It’s my daily driver that I use for basically everything, and so I also put all the RAM in there that it supported: 96GB, which back then cost me 180€. Given the RAM prices now (the same kit now is getting sold for 900€), I am incredibly happy about this foresight 😬

    

15. During an evening walk through my partner’s home town with him I made an incredible find in a “book closet”: A book about home computers from the mid 1980s.

    Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

    Auf dem Abendspaziergang gerade dieses Kleinod in einem Bücherschrank gefunden und ich bin hin und weg. Das hätte ich gerne als Kind gehabt! Geht richtig tief in den Erklärungen und ist finde ich sehr schön aufbereitet. Ich bin gerade total glücklich über diesen Schatz und werde es in Ehren halten!

    Und ich glaub ich gehe Mal auf die Jagd nach den anderen Teilen 😅

    Ich hab noch keine Jahreszahl gefunden, aber die PLZ des Verlags ist noch vierstellig, also wohl vor 1993.

    *edit* Wohl ~1985 😀

    

    May 14, 2025, 18:27 (UTC)

    The rest of the evening was spent reading through it quite excited, and hunting down some other ones from the series on ebay 😂

16. I went to PyCon Italia - my first conference since the start of the pandemic - and not only went climbing with some fellow Pythonistas but also met Jacopo, who’s been helping me a lot with OctoPrint’s security!

    Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

    For the past few days at @pycon I got to hang out with Jacopo Tediosi, who has helped me a lot in improving OctoPrint's security over the past year. It's always great when something like this happens!

    #pyconit2025

    

    May 31, 2025, 11:20 (UTC)

    I’ve already got my ticket for PyCon Italia 2026 😊

17. The refactoring work on OctoPrint since late 2024 finally paid out and I was able to print from the in progress Moonraker Connector Plugin for the first time.

    Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

    Have been spending the week so far working on a plugin for #OctoPrint's new comm layer that will be part of 1.12.0 & as of earlier today I'm able to print on Moonraker enabled Klipper based printers😁

    This went faster than expected thanks to all that refactoring that I started shortly before x-mas, and I'm incredibly happy that the architecture approach I had worked so well & actually makes adding support for a different connection type this easy!

    Plenty of bugs to fix ofc, but it's ALIVE!

    

    July 3, 2025, 10:35 (UTC)

18. I went to EuroPython in Prague again, and this time even gave a talk! Of course, support plushy Timothy was there too 😊

    

19. In August I went to WHY2025 - my first camp in the Netherlands since 2009. We took the Datenzwerge with us of course and deployed all 10 of them across the camp grounds. It was some very intense but awesome days!

    Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

    Some pictures from #why2025 ...

    

    August 16, 2025, 11:23 (UTC)

20. While at WHY I met Erika Heidi whom I so far only had known virtually through GitHub Stars. We nerded out SO MUCH about tech, bouldering and 3d printing, it was a ton of fun :D

    

21. For my partner’s birthday, I created yet another custom shirt utilizing the vinyl cutter and some HTV, this time with a logo from Dead Space. The design was based on in-game graphics, and weeding it was a bit of a nightmare 😂

    

22. I also got my partner an OLED Steamdeck for his birthday, and therefore also had to create new custom buttons. While at that, I also finally created some green ones for myself, and also created a whole new mold for the digi pad. Now my Steamdeck is also nicely customized 😊

    Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

    Finished my custom buttons and d-pad and put them into my #SteamDeck 😊

    Had to sand the d-pad on the center spike as otherwise it didn't work well, but I think now things are fine. Almost ran out on the rub-on letters too, my last X is now on there 😅 I'm thinking about getting a custom decal sheet made.

    

    August 30, 2025, 20:55 (UTC)

23. During this time, I also played through my personal Game of the Year, “The Drifter”. That also spawned a whole Point-and-Click-Adventure phase for me again 😂

24. Over the course of October I took part in another month long daily art challenge, “Cosytober”. I once again painted 31 pixelart pictures, this time limiting myself to 64x64px and the ENDESGA77 palette.

    Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

    And that's a wrap on #cosytober2025 for me!

    I'm very proud that despite everything I managed to do one every single day throughout this month! And I'm also very happy with the drawings, I think I improved a lot, and am really enjoying doing pixelart!

    Like last year, I compiled all of the drawings of the month into a wallpaper and you can find that below.

    Do you have any personal favourites? I'd love to know!

    cc @RosieSoCosy

    

    October 31, 2025, 11:21 (UTC)

    I also started taking part in the Pixelart Dailies during October and kept that going well into November, when I ran out of energy.

25. During Cosytober I also got myself a used Surface Go 2 tablet off of ebay and turned it into a pen enabled Linux based tablet, perfect for working on pixelart from the couch 😁

    Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

    I've been back to Linux on the desktop for several years now. For the longest time I was wondering how Linux on a tablet would work. So say Hi to this Surface Go 2 that I bought used on eBay for cheap and liberated from the Windows 10 that it came with. 😬 #EndOf10

    It now runs #Bluefin, and pretty much everything worked out of the box. The only a tad annoying thing is entering my password via the touchscreen. Amazing tablet for #Aseprite! 😊

    More detailed blog post when I'm back on my feet 🤧

    

    October 15, 2025, 18:17 (UTC)

    And yes, I know, I still owe this blog post 🙈

26. In early December this year’s hotsauce finally got finished and labeled. The chillies were planted in February and the fruits harvested in early October. As always, it was a project that was in progress throughout most of the year!

    Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

    May I present? The result of our #ProjectHotsauce2025: Firestarter 😁

    We continue our run of naming the yearly sauce after a song 😉

    

    December 2, 2025, 19:28 (UTC)

27. Also in early December, I fell completely in love with the game “Mars First Logistics”, which I can only recommend if you are into Lego Technic.

    Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

    Choooo choooooo!

    #MarsFirstLogistics #gaming

    

    December 17, 2025, 20:03 (UTC)

28. And finally, shortly before Christmas I tried my hand at making Vanillekipferl for the first time, and greatly succeeded!

    Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

    I also tried my hands at Vanille Kipferl for the first time in my life!

    

    December 20, 2025, 17:12 (UTC)

And that’s a wrap on 2025 I think! I probably once more missed some fun stuff or awesome stuff I did or experienced, but reading through all of that written down here it feels like less of a crappy year already 😬

Like last year, this list was compiled with the help of my Mastodon account and my picture gallery 😄 I’ll see that I do one of these again in a year’s time. For now I wish you a happy and safe 2026!

I finally decided to write the following post as every time I have an acute episode of my chronic vertigo and mention it to people, I have to explain my situation and symptoms again. So I decided to write it down here to just be able to link people to it instead 😉. This is not an attempt to get attention or pity, so please spare me that! 😅

I have had a chronic vertigo since fall of 2000 now. It’s not a case of issues with low blood pressure (“blackness in front of the eyes”) or some light-headedness or something like that, but rather a case of the same sensoric input being generated somewhere between my vestibular system and my brain as if I was on a roller coaster or sitting on a merry-go-around. During acute episodes which last hours to days (and sometimes even weeks) this leads to unstable walking, a very insecure feeling when standing and sometimes also nausea and nystagmus, not to mention exhaustion while trying to compensate for all of that. Thankfully, it’s “just” vertigo, my hearing is perfectly fine.

This crap started with a really bad respiratory infection that gave me a high fever and put me into bed for almost two weeks. After the fever went down I had a constant vertigo. This was right during my last two years at school and meant that I missed almost two months of classes and then had to get brought to and fetched from school by my dad for a month while I was learning to cope with this during my day-to-day and it turning less constant¹.

The initial diagnosis was labyrinthitis. When that took too long without the symptoms going away despite treatment, I spent a week getting a full check-through at a hospital in summer of 2001 after which the diagnosis became BPPV and I was taught the usual treatment for that. With that diagnosis I went on with life, doing my prescribed exercises, hoping it would just disappear one day. But when that didn’t happen and was still going on in summer of 2019 I decided to get yet another full check-through and the result of that was basically “It’s not BPPV, but we don’t know what it is, everything works like it should as far as we can see”. Not a hardware issue, no wiring problems nor firmware bugs to see 🤷

So this kinda sucks. Most days I thankfully don’t notice it, and when it hits I can still handle my day-to-day fine in most cases thanks to a sheer ton of training 😬. It certainly helps that I can do my job sitting down 😅

The bad episodes seem to get triggered by sudden weather changes², stress and illness³. I so far haven’t seen any connection to my food intake (thankfully). As I have a history of weather and stress induced migraines, and vestibular migraines are a thing as I learned after yet another lengthy research session, I’m now tracking my symptoms daily (vertigo, headache, tinnitus, nausea, plus stress & weather) in preparation for yet another round of trying to get a proper diagnosis and ideally working treatment for this shit from a neurologist.

tldr: It’s not low blood pressure, it’s not just “a bit dizzy”, it’s not BPPV (so Epley etc don’t help), no hearing loss is involved. It might be a weird version of migraines, I’m currently tracking things in preparation for another attempt at getting to the bottom of this. I won’t die from it and have well working coping strategies but on some days it just plain sucks.

For a couple of years now I’ve had the sneaking suspicion that I’m neurodivergent. And while I still don’t have a diagnosis, there are several things I use to cope with my brain constantly going BRRRRRR, thinking (and worrying) about everything while forgetting important things, and I thought some of those might also be helpful to others.

Thus, here are five of my favourite lifehacks that I’ve been using to cope with the weirdness that is my brain. Some of them I’ve used for years before I ever suspected something, some of them I only discovered after reading up on neurodiversity. Maybe you find something interesting for yourself!

Waterproof post-its in the shower

My daily morning shower is a time I really do enjoy. It’s also a time where I seem to get quite creative from time to time, getting great ideas on how to solve existing problems in my life, or just remembering stuff I need to take care of. Of course, after getting out of the shower, once I’ve toweled off, most of that stuff is forgotten again.

A solution that has worked amazingly well for me here are waterproof post-its and a pencil that I just have stored high up in my shower! So when I get an idea or remember something important, I now just note it down on a post-it and immediately glue that post-it to the shower door. That last step is very important, because that way I have it basically right in my face while toweling myself off, and don’t forget to take it with me when I’m done with my morning routine to take care of it or note it down somewhere else (either my Obsidian knowledge base for ideas, or Todoist for TODOs).

That approach has been working well for me now for quite some years! Before I came across the waterproof post-its though, I tried the same approach with a diver writing panel. But with that I had the problem that I then either forgot that I had written something on it (as it hung inside the shower, not immediately visible while toweling off), or I forgot to clear it again (as I didn’t have an eraser right on hand) and so found it already full with notes when I needed to write something new on it. The post-it approach solves both points, as the notes are way more mobile that way, and taking one off the stack immediately gives me a fresh one.

Something that doesn’t get a post-it though is when my shower gel runs out - in that case I just throw the empty bottle out of the shower right away so I will stumble over it when I get out and remember to put it on the grocery list 😆

Visual timers

I have a problem with timers (e.g. for the laundry) going off when I’m right in the middle of something at work, not immediately able to react to it, and then promptly forgetting about it. And I have a problem with noticing time run by in general when I’m in the flow.

For the longest time this was causing me a ton of stress and cases of “Oh no, not again”, but these days I have that pretty well under control after putting a visual timer on my work desk and one in the living room. And that’s a trick I only discovered after reading up on neurodiversity and learning about time blindness.

Laundry timer just went off but I’m deep in some code, hunting a bug? My hand now automatically just reaches to the visual timer and sets up something like 30min on it. I only want to work on this work item for an hour (time box, follow-up appointment, it’s already 5pm and I really should call it a day soon, …)? Hand out, timer on 60min. I have to wait 10min to check my COVID test? Hand out, timer on 10min.

All of that would of course also work with a timer on my phone, but this works better for me: There’s a physical timer right in front of me, with a physical wheel I can turn to set a time, and I don’t have to parse the numbers on the front either, the amount of time is clearly visible by how much red I see.

Where my phone does come in though is when I know I have an appointment sometime in the day. This causes me a ton of stress for the whole day until the appointment because I know there’s something coming up that I must not miss, and then I’m scared of forgetting all about time again and missing it, causing me to not be able to concentrate on anything else very well. What has helped me here is putting one to several alarms on my phone before the actual appointment, giving me an early warning that the time is coming close, and allowing me to relax until that happens.

Physical callbacks

Another problem I often encounter is having to remember to do something at some point in the near future. My forgetfulness is becoming a bit of a pattern here I guess 😅

Some examples:

• I have a bunch of envelopes I need to bring to the next mailbox the next time I’m out. (Hello OctoPrint Patreons at $10+ 👋)
• We just had a BBQ on the balcony and now the grill has to cool down before I can close and cover it again.
• There are dinner left-overs that need to go into the fridge or freezer, but currently they are still too warm for that.
• I need to remember to do something come monday when I’m back at my desk, which I can only do at my desk, e.g. ordering a new prescription.

For things like that I usually use a quick physical callback.

Something I still have to do before going to sleep, e.g. take care of the grill or the left-overs? I put something in the hallway that doesn’t belong there. Usually that’s my rolled up yoga mat, as that’s a quick and easy thing to do given its usual place. I have to remember to take care of something while out? I put it on top of my shoes or throw it into a bag I hang from the apartment door’s handle. Something I need to take care off at my desk? A note stuck into my keyboard or the empty prescription thrown on my desk work wonders.

Large water bottle at my desk

I tend to not drink enough when I don’t have water immediately in reach. So now I always keep a large refillable water bottle on my desk that I can drink from directly and that can stay open without a big risk of spilling. Currently that’s a 1l or 1.5l Nalgene wide mouth with an OTF cap.

Bottle + glass never worked well for me - constantly having to refill the glass is something that annoys me greatly, plus I tend to forget it (of course…). Smaller bottle also doesn’t work, constantly empty. And a larger bottle than 1.5l poses the issue that I have to take it to the kitchen to refill from the tap, vs just being able to take care of that during the regular bathroom break (which is WAY faster).

The goal here is to make it as easy as possible for me to - often absentmindedly - drink water, and that’s achieved with that approach, allowing me to reach my daily 2-3l of fluid intake.

Sleep headphones & audio books

My brain doesn’t shut up fscking ever, and it interferes with my nightly rest. Imagine trying to fall asleep when your brain is constantly thinking about the latest bug in your code, code architecture, what groceries you need to buy, upcoming elections, that discussion in that issue you had this morning, that email you still have to write tomorrow, …

It’s only when I’m completely and utterly exhausted that I can fall asleep right away, otherwise it’s a long struggle of trying to ignore my brain and coming down from the day before it works.

Thankfully, I discovered sleep headphones for myself a long time ago, so headphones in the shape of a headband with some really flat speakers inside and a bluetooth module or wired connection to your phone or mp3 player.

Those allow me to listen to things without disturbing my partner. And those things for me usually are audio versions of books I already happen to know. The latter is extremely important, as with books I don’t know yet, my curiousity into how the story continues might keep me from falling asleep. I have the same issue I with most podcasts. But audio books of books I’ve already read work amazingly well. I set the sleep timer in my audio player to something like 30min and then just close my eyes and listen. My brain shuts up as I’m keeping it busy with listening and imagining what’s going on in the book, and I often manage to drift off in less than 10min.

So there you are, five lifehacks that make my daily life easier for me!

I decided to try my hand at my very own 2024 retrospective to give myself a chance to see more of the good things I managed to get done or that I experienced. And as the news continue to be all doom and gloom I figured why not do this in the shape of a blog post so that a) it’s more easy for myself to revisit that again in the future whenever I get dragged down and b) y’all maybe also get some positive vibes.

So here we go…

1. I got myself a Silhouette Portrait 3 vinyl cutter (that i can fully operate with open source tooling based on an Inkscape plugin, fsck proprietary cloud sh*t!) and immediately gave it a face. Technically that still happened in 2023, but on December 30th, so I’ll let it count ;)

   Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

   New tool in the house! After circling one for years now, I finally pulled the trigger on a vinyl cutter/plotter!

   It's a Silhouette Portrait 3, only a small one, but the important part is that I can use it with Open Source tooling & local only*, thanks to the combo of @inkscape & the inkscape-silhouette** extension!

   Lots of ideas swirling around in my head about stickers, shirts and such, but for now I've given it a face! 😄

   * Fsck this cloud only subscription crap!

   ** https://github.com/fablabnbg/inkscape-silhouette

   

   December 30, 2023, 13:13 (UTC)

2. I did a deep clean and reorganization of my office, and I’m happy to report that this has mostly held up!

   Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

   Day 4: Desk, electronics area, paper printer (a bit). I still need to take care of the paper waste in a few (we have some containers for that down the street), the e-waste (run to the place for that some time next week) and some bulky waste ASAP, and I didn't touch the lassr material storage after all, but for now I'm calling this done.

   Feels great walking into the office again, which is the best thing considering I'll be back at work come Monday.

   

   January 5, 2024, 16:47 (UTC)

3. I got a new label printer (Brother QL-820NWB) and created scripts to easily print out Deutsche Post stamps with that.

4. I spent some beautiful calm days with my partner in the southern black forest - plenty of snow and walks and games!

   

5. With the help of the vinyl cutter and the laser cutter I gave our Datenzwerge some stylish travel cases!

   Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

   Our datagnomes will travel in style from now on!

   We got two L-Boxes for them now which fit 5 gnomes each. A few weeks ago I lasercut some custom foam inlays for them, and just today finally got around to also put some custom vinyl stickers on them, after my partner turned the logo he created black and white for us 😊

   I'm very happy with the result, and I hope @Romses will be as well once he gets his box into his hands soon 😄

   #DatenzwergLeaks

   

   February 11, 2024, 18:24 (UTC)

6. I also did a deep clean and reorganization of my wardrobe, and that’s also still holding up! No more dreading of sorting the laundry into the wardrobe!

   Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

   Phewwww. Six hours of wardrobe cleaning today, and after doing the same last Friday I can now say the wardrobe is in a shape I really enjoy opening it again.

   Today's focus was the "general household laundry stuff" part of it. The plushies and the sewing machine have their own shelves now 😄

   I've already brought the 3 large garbage bags full of old clothes to the recycling container, & put the 6 actual trash bags into the garbage container.

   And now excuse me while I fall down on my couch.

   

   February 16, 2024, 17:45 (UTC)

7. I learned book binding and got into solo RPGs!

   Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

   Inspired by @stiftnuersel I decided to finally try to add book binding to my skill set and started with binding both books of 2D6 Dungeon (also a tip by @stiftnuersel).

   Especially sewing the paper stacks was incredibly relaxing. I put an audio book on (going through The Stormlight Archive again) and just went for it.

   Decided to go with a soft cover. The cardboard came from some deliveries and the fabric from the left overs of an old sewing project.

   Quite happy with the result 😊

   

   April 28, 2024, 17:06 (UTC)

8. I also got into crafting print-and-play games!

   Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

   I've been in a crafting mood for a few days now. One of the results of that were my recent adventures in book binding #2d6Dungeon, the other was finally figuring out a good way to create custom playing cards for print'n'play games.

   I stumbled across #EscapeFromStation52 in one of my itch.io bundles and that was the trigger: Cards were printed one sided on a piece of 185gsm linen stock, sealed with fixative, folded and spray glued together, then cut. A bit thick but feel & shuffle great!

   

   May 7, 2024, 19:05 (UTC)

9. As a result of that I also built a little tool (running 100% in the browser!) to convert the usual PNP card PDFs into ready to print gutterfold PDFs for easier alignment of the card backs and fronts: CardFoldr!

10. I missed the probably biggest Aurora event of the past decade in Germany, but managed to still get some shots a few days later.

    Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

    I'm still unhappy that I completely missed the aurora from Friday to Saturday (only heard about it the next day and cursed heavily) but at least got some pictures last night. It was only minimally visible by eye, but the camera was able to see more.

    And we also ended up chatting with some really nice strangers that were also out to look at the sky, so while I just kept clicking the record button on the camera while getting colder and colder, the company completely made up for it.

    

    May 12, 2024, 12:52 (UTC)

11. I did some minor leather crafting to build myself a big roll-up dice tray for my solo RPG sessions. It has since also come in handy during the one or other board game session.

    Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

    I wanted a bigger dice tray. Had some leather and snap buttons on hand. I'm not sure if this qualifies as #LeatherWorking but it definitely qualifies as gaming related #crafting, so even while I'm under the weather (hence no climbing pictures today) I got something made 😊

    Edit: I should add that this approach to a dice tray is not my idea and there are plenty of these out there to buy. I just didn't want to buy something I had everything on hand to make myself as I enjoy making.

    

    May 17, 2024, 15:34 (UTC)

12. I went to GPN22 with my buddy Romses and five Datenzwerge. We had a great time there chatting with old and new friends, and getting more grey hair due to WiFi issues with the gnomes and DECT issues 😂

    

13. My book binding experiments escalated and I bound a 400 page book 😬

    Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

    My custom hardcover edition of Across a Thousand Dead Worlds #atdw is finished! 🎉

    Created the case earlier today, then glued in the textblock. While that was in the press I fetched the vinyl cutter and created a basic cover and spine print, using the same fonts that are also used in the book.

    It's not fully square, and trying to back it yesterday also caused some steps in the rounding, but I'm still very happy with the result! 😊

    Will probably still add a dust jacket, but for now it's done!

    

    June 23, 2024, 12:11 (UTC)

14. I went to EuroPython to Prague, had some amazing chats with people there, enjoyed a bunch of very tasty non-alcoholic cocktails, had a lovely time at the social event, and also experienced my first flight-cancellation and rebooking on my return trip 😅

    Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

    Good morning #EuroPython! The sleep was good, the self test was negative, the breakfast was delicious, now @timothy and I are ready for day two of talks and chats!

    

    July 11, 2024, 06:42 (UTC)

15. After a very stressful time at work thanks to some stats manipulation by some bad players (that btw still has me get very angry whenever I think about it) I had a very relaxing and resetting two week vacation with my partner at the north sea, filled with e-bike rides, walks through the wadden sea, our very first stint at a “Hochseilgarten” (climbing garden) and also playing through Fort Solis, Little Hope and House of Ashes together during the evenings 😄 I also treated myself to a new camera body for this occasion, a Lumix G91, allowing the G70 to stay in webcam mode for good now.

    

16. While there I also blogged about my EDC 2024. For which I then promptly sewed a new custom pouch once I was back at home.

    Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

    Went down the #myog rabbit hole recently as my bought #edc pouch was annoying me.

    Even though my chronic vertigo is currently making me nauseous, I decided to try to distract myself from that and sewed a first version of a pouch.

    Outside is some black 600D cordura, inside red ripstop nylon for contrast, and two stripes of 50mm stretch band turned into two pockets on one side and three on the other to help with organisation. The zipper is a red ykk aqua guard.

    

    August 20, 2024, 20:52 (UTC)

17. During September I participated in FediJam and created Cloud Shepherd, a cozy puzzle game in which you herd clouds over fields to make it rain. I did all the programming, graphics and sound effects (yes, also the dog and the sheep) myself - and I won the gamejam! And as this was my first time doing pixelart, it gave me some courage…

    

18. … so throughout October I partook in the #hartoween art challenge and did a pixelart painting for every day - albeit admittedly some of them a few days later due to other committments and illness, but all 31 of them in October!

    

19. For that I also figured out how to make transparent GIFs more easily shareable on social media as I also was creating timelapses of my drawings and wanted to share them with a proper checkerboard background.

20. Also in October, I went to MRMCD24 together with my partner and my buddy Romses, and of course a whole army of Datenzwerge. We deployed 8 of them this time and it was a huge success.

21. During that time I also played through my personal Game of the Year 2024, Animal Well!

    Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

    Can't help myself, I'm absolutely in awe at the art style of #AnimalWell.

    That mix of highlights, scan lines and glow, plus all these details... So much to discover on every single screen, and yet the pallette still *feels* subtle.

    I have to admit, I got drawn to that game by its graphics first and foremost, but gameplay is a ton of fun too. A puzzle platformer with a beautiful atmosphere. Can recommend!

    

    October 11, 2024, 19:22 (UTC)

22. In November the 2024 edition of our hotsauce got finished. As every year we planted the chillies around February and then took care of them throughout most of the year. Sadly, the yield this time around wasn’t as great and we had to add some store bought chillies into the mix. I think the sauce still came out great though after five weeks of fermentation. Alas, I can’t taste it myself - no heat tolerance 😅

    Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

    And now they are labelled 😊

    

    November 3, 2024, 13:37 (UTC)

23. After one too many quality issues with my Blue Yeti, I upgraded my office audio setup and got myself a Shure MV7+ and a Vocaster Two audio interface. And since then I’m finally happy when hearing my own voice in a recording 😄

24. As my final work project of the year, I did some - successful! - refactoring experiments on OctoPrint that unlocked some things I’ll work on in early 2025, and I’m really looking forward to that 😊

And there you have it. My personal list of good stuff that I did or experienced in 2024! Probably missing plenty of things, but that’s all that I could think of now off the top of my head and with the help of my Mastodon account and my picture gallery 😄 Let’s see what cool stuff I’ll manage to list for 2025!

The other day I was taking care of a fresh mosquito bite with the heat-it that’s part of my EDC (“everyday carry”), and that reminded me that I’d been meaning to do a quick write-up about my EDC for ages.

On top of my keys (with some meds and my second factor tokens) and my phone (currently a Pixel 6a) I usually carry a little pouch with me as pictured above.

Unpacking it fully, it looks like this:

So what is all this stuff? Here we go:

1. a full miniature RPG dice set (you never know when you need to roll on something)
2. 64GB USB stick (mostly empty for impromptu file transfers, but also something to watch in case I have to entertain myself in a hotel or something)
3. Troika Liliput pen (ballpoint pen, ruler, stylus, screwdriver)
4. small pill tube with painkillers (I tend to get weather related headaches)
5. Leatherman Squirt PS4
6. small rechargeable LED flashlight (white light, red light & UV, plus emergency flashing)
7. small lighter (I don’t smoke, I just prefer to have a fire and emergency light source on me)
8. 3d printed emergency whistle
9. small refreshment towel (in case I need to wash my hands but can’t)
10. hygiene baggy & tampon (in case I misjudge my cycle or need to help someone else who misjudged theirs)
11. two glucose sweets (always good to have something on hand for myself or others)
12. meds against motion sickness (which I sadly suffer from greatly, especially in cars I’m not driving myself)
13. short USB-C to USB-A cable for charging my phone, plus a SIM tool
14. USB-C heat-it (little gadget I can plug into my phone and control from an app that helps with mosquito bites through heat - consider it a really portable form of the popular bite-away wand)
15. (not pictured) a key for a safe

And that’s it with regards to my EDC! I’m currently thinking about sewing a custom pouch, as the store bought one I currently use could really use better zippers and a slightly different internal organisation, but that’s a future project.

I’ll do my best to also add a post about my portable solder kit soon 😁 In the meantime, feel free to get in touch on Mastodon for questions or comments!

edit I forgot to label the USB stick earlier, this has now been fixed.

I’m on day 4 of my desperately needed summer vacation¹, and twice already I got pinged on my personal social media accounts about OctoPrint related stuff. This happens on every vacation that I take, and during shorter breaks like weekends or just after hours as well, so much so that I’ve pinned a post about it to my Mastodon account (that now also cross references this very blog post):

Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

Friendly reminder: This is my private Mastodon account which I also want to be able to read after work, during the weekends & other time off without getting dragged back into work 😉

See also: https://foosel.net/blog/2024-07-25-on-the-importance-of-time-off/

Thus, if you have any OctoPrint 🐙 related mentions, please direct them at @octoprint.

For support, get in touch on the forum or check out the Discord server, see https://help.octoprint.org

Respect my right to have a life beyond OctoPrint, thank you 😊

October 28, 2022, 11:17 (UTC)

Contrary to what many people seem to think 😉 I indeed have a life beyond OctoPrint, and actually a lot of stuff I’m interested in beyond 3d printing (shocking, I know!). Yet a lot of people out there think that as an Open Source maintainer I’m available for anything concerning my project(s) 24/7. Even if OctoPrint wasn’t the incredibly stressful and intense, albeit amazing job it is, this wouldn’t be the case for me.

Even if we love what we do, we need rest. Our brains need a chance to get out of the usual daily routine and we need to get some dopamine boosts from a change of rhythm. Stuff that got learned, stuff that caused harm, stuff that needed a lot of thinking, all of that needs time to get processed. That’s why we (shouldn’t) work the whole day, that’s why we (should) have weekends, and that’s why we also (should) have vacations where we do something else than what we do day to day for a living.

What I learned from several close calls with full blown burn-out over the past ~12 years of maintaining OctoPrint is that taking regular restful breaks is probably one of the most important things, maybe even the most important thing, I can do for the long term health of both myself and my projects. That’s why not getting dragged back into work in general and OctoPrint specifically during my off times is a boundary that I will always defend hard².

And that’s what I can only recommend to anyone - maintainer or not. You have a right to restful breaks. And you cannot be at the peak of your performance if you are close to or already burnt out. Stand up for your time off! Fuck hustle culture!

As hinted at to be my plan in my post about my first proper gamedev experience back in April, I recently took part in my first ever gamejam, Go Godot Jam 4, and during that built a game called “Pew Pew Pew: Danger Zone!”. The jam required all submissions to be built in Godot Engine, which was one of the reasons I chose it - I just recently got my feet wet in game development with Godot 4 and wanted to get some more practice in. Since my partner was otherwise committed, I entered as a solo dev.

In this post I want to share a bit of a devlog and some insights into that experience, to add more background to the Mastodon thread I maintained throughout.

Apologies in advance, this is going to be a long one, but there are also a ton of pictures and videos to break up the text a bit 😉

Development

The submission phase (so the time I had for developing and submitting a game fitting the theme) was 9 days long, from Friday, May 5th at 22:00 UTC to Sunday, May 14th at 22:00 UTC. Since the start wasn’t until midnight in my timezone and after yet another intense work week I was quite exhausted on that Friday evening, I didn’t stay up for the theme announcement. So it wasn’t before the morning of Satuday May 6th for me to learn about the theme LESS IS MORE, right after waking up.

Saturday, May 6th: Let’s go!

During my morning routine I got an idea on what game to create¹: A little shoot-em-up (shmup) with minimalistic graphics, slightly bullet hell-ish, where the only way to upgrade your weapon and shoot more bullets was to lose health. The challenge would be balancing health vs damage output, possibly even dodging health pickups to stay at a higher bullet output with the risk of dying.

After breakfast I sat down to sketch out this idea a bit further.

The originally plan was to have the player be a triangle pointing upwards, and several enemy types also based on geometric shapes. The player would have three hit points and thus three different bullet emitter configurations. I jotted down some ideas for collectable power-ups (a shield, health, little shooting satellites, homing missiles), did some initial UI sketches and also laid out a rough plan for the interactive tutorial I wanted to include, by already leaving myself a plan B in case I wouldn’t have enough time to implement it. Not written down in my notes but already quite clear in my head was the plan to have the game have 2-3 levels and a final boss to defeat, which felt like a good scope for the time I had available.

The plan was to spend most of the time until maybe Wednesday implementing controls, enemies, bullets and the basic game loop, and then spending the rest of the time on the tutorial, levels and boss, plus of course testing and publishing on itch.io.

Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

#GoGodotJam4 started at midnight. The theme is "Less is more" and I intend to participate! Got an idea that should work I hope, so let the coding commence!

May 6, 2023, 10:47 (UTC)

Then I sat down and got to work.

My first task was getting a player scene created and basic 2d movement controls implemented. After that I quickly created a player asset, two enemy assets and some bullets in Inkscape, basing my color choices on the ENDESGA 64 color palette, and started looking into automatic bullet emitters and bullet patterns for the enemies, and straight shooting for the player. I also implemented the logic for the player to lose health when colliding with the enemies’ bullets and consequently shooting more bullets, and for the enemies to lose health and dying when colliding with the player’s bullets.

All of that took me the better part of Saturday, but by the time evening got around I had a very basic prototype with bullet emitters and patterns on the (still static) enemies and some basic shooting logic on the player. There was no sound yet, no game juice, nothing like that, but it was a start!

Sunday, May 7th: Let’s add some game juice!

Sunday began with a trip to a doc to get my sixth COVID shot². After that I sat down again in front of the laptop to implement as much as I could before the by now customary post-vaccination-headache would start haunting me.

It turned out to be a quite busy day, as I implemented:

• screen scrolling and movement limits for the player to always stay on screen
• player death and respawning at the bottom of the screen, with a short period of invincibility right after respawning indicated by some fading in and out
• screenshake and an explosion particle effect when destroying an enemy or the player
• some basic sound effects for shooting and the explosions, whipped up in gdfxr
• a simple shadow effect for the player and enemies to simulate height (really just the same sprite with a modulate color applied and offset by a few pixels)

I also did some research on what music to put in and came across some amazing tracks by David KBD. I was not yet fully set on which tracks to use precisely, but I was sure I had found a match (and was right!).

I was quite happy with that kind of progress and went to sleep with a good feeling, despite dreading the next day a bit due to the expected side effects of the vaccination.

Monday, May 8th: It’s got a name!

But when I woke up on Monday morning, I happily realized that this time I had gotten away with just a bit of a headache and some tiredness, but nothing more. Alas, that still didn’t allow me to continue to work on the game - it was a regular work day after all! And so I had to wait until the evening to continue. I was able to implement some pluggable enemy behaviour (for now only following the player at an offset, but with an underlying code structure that would allow to quickly implement other behaviours as well) and also a first version of the HUD with health bar, damage output bar, life counter and score display. Also, I whipped up a background graphic in Inkscape and put that in as well. But most importantly I came up with a name for my creation: Pew Pew Pew: Danger Zone!

Tuesday, May 9th: Pickups!

Just as Monday, Tuesday would also be a slower day with regards to progress on the game - working on OctoPrint all day didn’t leave much time and energy in the evenings to make huge steps forward³, but I got some more stuff done nevertheless and was able to add various pickups to the game:

• a health pickup that would recover one hit point for the player (which of course would reduce the damage output),
• a shield pickup that would protect the player from bullet damage for a few seconds,
• point pickups and
• a pickup that would add a little drone circling around the player which for now did nothing but in the future I wanted to have shoot homing missiles at the closest enemy

Almost all of that would of course see further fine tuning during the next few days, but it was a good start on the pickups.

Wednesday, May 10th: Refactoring & doubting myself!

Wednesday was the worse day of the jam for me. Work was tough, I was really out of energy in the evening, and the time that I did have after work was spent on refactoring the bullet emitters on the enemies so that I could also use them for the player and setting up some more bullet patterns, during which I also managed to introduce a hilarious bug that doubled all of the emitted bullets, making the game incredibly hard.

That was also the day I spent a lot of time on trying to get the drone to work and failing miserably - the homing missiles just didn’t feel right, a circular pattern I tried as an alternative felt even worse, and all in all it simply was not coming together. I knew I still didn’t have a single level, the drone idea was failing and I was thinking I’d have to pull it, and things just still didn’t feel very fun. All in all, I was starting to seriously doubt whether I’d be able to submit something to the jam that I could be proud of. I went to bed quite frustrated and in doubt with myself.

Thursday, May 11th: Menus, bombs, game over!

Thursday was a way better day however! I woke up very early, and when I realized I could no longer sleep got up and went through my morning routine. I was still thinking a lot about the drone and how to fix it, when suddenly a shower thought struck. I’d implement another pickup, a little bomb that you’d be able to trigger with a button press and which would then damage all enemies in its radius for a large amount of points and eradicate all bullets and pickups.

I finished my routine, sat down in front of the computer and started working on that - even before work! It was around 7am and I figured I should be able to get that implemented in the 2-2.5h before I had to start working on OctoPrint, and it turns out I indeed managed to pull that off! I created a small effect to indicate the damage radius of the bomb that would get attached to the player when the bomb was picked up, and a small animation that would make this light up and vanish when the bomb was set off via the Shift key, together with a new sound effect. And doing that was fun! I was starting to feel optimistic again and started on my work day.

I finished that a bit earlier than usual because I had accumulated some overtime the past few weeks and got back into working on PPP:DZ. I fixed the homing missiles on the drone - they were not perfect, but they were finally homing! I also created a title graphic, the game’s menu, a pause menu, a game over and a winning screen, some pickup indicators for the HUD, made level switching work, and changed some things about the pickups - the drone would now time out, the shield would track damage and be able to protect from 10 damage points. I think this was also the day I had the idea to give the player a bit of gravity for pulling in pickups, and that also made things finally feel way nicer!

It was an incredibly productive day, and I knew I’d be able to fully concentrate on the game for all of Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I set myself the goal to finish a first level by the end of the next day, add two more levels and a boss fight on Saturday, and do nothing but testing and bug fixing for all of Sunday.

I went to bed feeling like I might actually be able to pull this off after all!

Friday, May 12th: We’ve got a first level!

After starting the day with a climbing session at the bouldering gym and some chatting with my buddies, I returned home, jumped into the shower and immediately got another idea for the game⁴: Modulating the bullet speed based on health, increasing their speed the less health you still have, leading to a more frantic feeling and also even more damage output.

As soon as I was done with the morning routine I sat back down in front of the laptop and looked into implementing that. It turned out to be surprisingly easy to do, and when I fired up the game for the first time and took some damage on purpose I actually loudly shouted “F*CK YEAH!” because it made the game feel so much better!

I spent the rest of the day implementing the first level - creating a bunch of enemies and made them follow the player, move in a pattern across the screen or just stay statically in place and shoot away, fine tuning placement and playing through it again and again and again until I was happy with the feeling of things. In the process, I also found and fixed a sheer ton of bugs and minor or major annoyances, including a couple of game breaking race conditions 😬

Somewhere during that day, I also set up the game on itch.io, wrote a little description, created some preview images and made sure the web export was running fine. At this point the page was still set to private, but thanks to the shareable secret link I was already able to send it to a few friends for testing, which is what I did.

I think around this time I must also have added the highscore mechanism, incl. persistence, which to my happy surprise also worked without any issues in the web export.

By the end of the day, I was exhausted, but happy with the progress, right on time, and looking forward to the next day!

Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

Current state: exhausted, but level 1 designed through and implemented :D Only needs some more fine tuning! Also fixed a ton of issues I found during play testing, even some game breaking race conditions 😲

Fun addition: firing interval now inversely scales with health too - the closer to the death, the faster you fire. "Less health, more bullets" indeed.

Quite happy with the progress once again! Nothing planned the next two days but working on and finishing this 💪

May 12, 2023, 21:43 (UTC)

Saturday, May 13th: Content done!

I woke up to some amazing feedback from a buddy and implemented that right away:

• the pickup gravity was a bit too aggressive and constantly yeeted things out of the screen, so I toned that down a bit and that help a lot
• the drone was feeling too weak, so I increased its shot frequency
• there was still an issue that the level end screen would not stop you from continuing to move around and shoot behind it - that required a bit more work, but was on the TODO list already anyhow

Next task on the plan for the day was implementing two more levels and a boss! Since the boss definitely was the higher risk and higher impact, I tackled that one first, and created a big circle enemy chock full of hit points and with a shield powered by satellites rotating around it that would also shoot at the player. Admittedly that the shield was powered by these satellites was a bit of a hidden feature - shooting one down would temporarily remove the shield, only for it to return, until all satellites were taken out. It seems not many players might have caught on to that though 😅

I threw it into its dedicated level and added a boss health bar to the HUD.

Around afternoon I posted a sneak peak of the boss on Mastodon:

Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

👀

May 13, 2023, 16:40 (UTC)

I then went on to create two more levels, which turned out to be surprisingly fast - I was able to reuse some of the enemy movement patterns and also could quickly implement some more ideas I had, thanks to the pluggable behaviours and Godot’s animations.

The music selection was finalized as well: “Screams in the Distance” (as loop) from DavidKBD’s Eternity Pack for the title screen, “Spiral of Plasma” for the levels and “Synth Kobra” for the boss fight, both from DavidKBD’s Interstellar Pack.⁵

Doing test play after test play while developing I came to the conclusion that the boss encounter still needed a certain “oompf!” and added a warning animation with an alert sound, which together with the music choice imho really helped to set the right tone for a boss fight.

After some more testing and fine tuning I decided to go public with the game, in the hopes to get some more feedback from a wider audience before the final day, published the itch.io page and posted a link to it on Mastodon:

Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

Okay! As of now all the content I wanted to create for "Pew Pew Pew: Danger Zone!" has been created 🥰

For the rest of today and all of tomorrow the plan is testing, testing, testing, improving some things a bit and ironing out any kinks I find.

I'm beyond proud that I so far actually did manage to pull this off the way I planned it, for my first jam ever. Feels amazing. 😄

https://foosel.itch.io/pew-pew-pew-danger-zone

#GoGodotJam4 #GoGodotJam #gamedev #gamejam

May 13, 2023, 18:22 (UTC)

At this point I also submitted it to the jam, knowing full well that it was not yet done, but also that I’d still be able to upload new builds and update the page itself until the deadline. I figured I’d rather have an old build submitted than miss the deadline altogether due to some unforeseen circumstances.

Then I continued testing and fixing stuff until I was too tired to do go on and went to bed.

Sunday, May 14th: Day of the Deadline!

I woke up to some more feedback, one point of which would turn out to be the most common one during the rating phase as well: the enemy bullets were too hard to see. I tried changing their color to red like the enemies themselves, and that helped, but made the game look a bit too monochrome. So I decided to see if switching to a darker background would help, and it did indeed.

Things were still not perfect, but it was the final day, I still had to implement a tutorial screen, do some more testing, fine tune some sound effects and finally do several more testing runs - I really didn’t have time for big experiments anymore to make the bullets more visible. And to be honest, I didn’t consider trying to completely avoid the enemy bullets the goal of the game anyhow, given getting hit was the only way to improve your damage output and there was some short period of invincibility after taking a hit, so sudden death scenarios shouldn’t be that big of a concern either.

Thus, I put “further research how to increase visibility of enemy bullets” on the “post jam” task list and after redoing all the screenshots and going over all game items to make sure they still were visible too (the shield pickup needed some changes here), I tackled the tutorial. I had said goodbye to the idea of a tutorial level a long time ago already, and almost scratched the tutorial screen as well, but figured it would be better to have some hints in game. I created some key graphics to visualize the controls and put together a basic “how to play” one-pager that could be selected in the main menu. I also added a very basic keyboard control summary to the bottom of the screen right at the start of the first level, that would slowly fade out.

What then followed were a couple more hours of final testing, and once I could no longer find anything crucial that needed to be fixed, I decided to call it done, did a final upload and announced on Mastodon that I was done:

Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

With the latest update that adds some final polishing (and after making another run through to make sure everything looks ok), I'm calling a wrap on "Pew Pew Pew: Danger Zone!" and my first #gamejam

Wow, what an experience. Woke up last Saturday to the theme, thought about it during my morning routine, came up with an idea & put down a plan that felt doable in the available time. And - to my absolute surprise - this plan worked out! Beyond proud! 😊

https://foosel.itch.io/pew-pew-pew-danger-zone

May 14, 2023, 14:54 (UTC)

And if you want to see what the game looked like at the time of submission, here’s a playthrough of the first level:

and another one of the boss fight:

Feedback & lessons learned

After the submission phase ended, what came next was the rating phase. Everyone who had submitted a game during the jam and of course the organizers themselves could now rate the submissions in five categories. Quoting from the jam page:

1. Technical - Does the game work? Does the game show off the engine? Does it do anything particularly impressive? Is it feature rich?
2. Artistic - Is it pretty? Are the sound and visuals effective and fitting? Is the style coherent to the gameplay? Are the text boxes legible?
3. Design - Does the game teach you how to play it? Do the mechanics make sense?
4. Gameplay - Is it fun? Does the difficulty scale? Are there accessibility options? Have I played the same game before or is it innovative?
5. Theme - Does the game fit the theme? Is it surface level or is the theme at the core of the game?

It took me a while to wrap my head around these categories and get a good feeling for how to rate games in them, but after a couple games played and rated I got into a good groove. Meanwhile I started receiving comments and feedback from other participants and a recurring theme there was: “the enemy bullets are hard to see” 😅

Lesson learned: I should at least have given myself a timebox on that last day, to try out some more things to make the bullets more visible. I’m still not sure if I would have found a solution that would have worked well, but some more timeboxed experimenting might have helped. But then, it was the final day of my first ever jam, and I was a bit anxious to get everything done in time, so I guess I can forgive myself for not having done that.

Other than that the feedback was very positive, and when it even got streamed by one of the judges I was happy to see that they seemed to really enjoy it and gave me some great ratings as well! Many people said it was fun, enjoyed the intensity, and gave amazing suggestions on how to improve it further.

I also got into some nice discussions about gamedev in general with other participants (and made at least one new friend 👋😊).

So, while horribly anxiety inducing whenever I saw a new notification pop up on itch.io, the rating phase was also a lot of fun, I learned a lot from it and got a ton of helpful feedback!

And I hope I did my part in making it a similarily positive experience for the others as well, by giving them constructive feedback on their games too. I tried to play and rate as many games as possible, and while I didn’t manage to play all of them (there were almost 200 submissions!), I did play and rate 42 games in the end, which was almost double of the ratings that I received. Next time I’ll try to do more!

Final results & the future of PPP:DZ

Rating ended late on May 25th, but the results would not be announced until a final event stream that got scheduled for late on May 27th.

In the end, I made 21st place overall in the jam, and even #9 in gameplay, which was an outcome that I absolutely did not expect on my first ever gamejame participation and only my second gamedev experience! When I saw the results, I was absolutely floored! Based on what I had seen from others during the jam, I was hoping I’d made it in the Top 100 (out of almost 200 submissions), and would have already been happy with a placement in the Top 50. That I almost made it into the Top 20 and even managed to secure a place in the Top 10 of the Gameplay category was beyond my wildest dreams!

But even before this amazing outcome I had already decided that I wanted to continue working on the game. I found myself playing it again and again on my Steamdeck, trying to improve on my highscore, and that made me think that I had indeed something fun here that I could build on.

Gina Häußge (@foosel@chaos.social)

Y'all, that is still just such an amazing feeling...

And I really enjoy playing this game that I built, so much so that I'm thinking to build up on this concept further and ideas are starting to float around in my head 🤔

We'll see 😁

Btw, I've put the Linux export up on the itch.io page, so if you want to play it on the deck too, download, in desktop mode add as non-steam game, return to game mode, enjoy ^^ Left analog stick to move, A to shoot, X to trigger the bomb.

May 14, 2023, 21:25 (UTC)

So - I won’t let myself get nailed down on “when” here (day job, balance, etc), but my plan is to take this concept and develop it further into a full game. I already have a couple of ideas on how to do that, and I’m looking forward to working on them.

And what about future gamejam participations? I’m hooked now and plan to participate next in the GMTK Game Jam 2023 in July. That will be probably be a solo effort again, and way more intense given that I’ll have to take a game from idea to finished product in 48 hours, but I’m looking forward to the challenge!

Play the game!

If you want to play the game, you can find it on itch.io here:

And I’ve also thrown up the sources on GitHub: foosel/pew-pew-pew-danger-zone⁶. Just a word of warning on those: I’m by no means an expert in Godot Engine, and a gamedev newbiew, and I was developing under heavy time constraints. I might have done some horrible things, please don’t hold them against me 😅