A Game A Month

Since posting about Crayon Physics the other day, I found out that the game is available in prototype, and is currently being expanded to a suped up version called Crayon Physics Deluxe. An hour ago, my son and I downloaded it and went nuts on it. Now, as always, I've got 15 tabs open with information about either the game or the developer. One thing I found that was interesting to me was an interview with the developer, Petri Purho, in which he explains a year-long experiment of his to "create a new game every month." Crayon Physics came out of the project, and the immense popularity of the game led him to expand the prototype (what he now calls the original) into Crayon Physics Deluxe, which has many more levels and better physics. Reading the interview, I was reminded of my days as a poet in which I also set out experiments like these. For one summer, I wrote a new poem every day, for instance, largely inspired by William Stafford who basically wrote a new poem every day of his life. The idea is that inspiration is really not a sufficient support for the life of a poet. It requires commitment, devotion, routine, practice and mainly just brute force. You've got to squeeze those poems out of you. I think the same should apply to my scientific work, though I've been disappointed this new semester with my inability to balance family life, teaching and the existing research projects. But I am going to make such a goal for 2008. My goal is to have 6 working drafts of papers by December 31, 2008. That's one new paper every two months. We will see if that is indeed attainable. The ones I have right now will not count (the three chapters from teh dissertation), but I will count the paper I have on methamphetamine since it's not currently in written form. But all the others will need to go from idea to implementation to results to writeup in 12 months time.