Let's try something new

I just registered with Flattr, a sort of microdonation service. I got an invitation for it once that I didn't use until now. I don't know, maybe it's not invite only anymore. Short explanation of what it is... You deposit a bit of money to Flattr, and tell Flattr to take a bit of that money each month as your monthly Flattr amount. Whenever you see a Flattr button on someone's site, you can click it to give the owner a slice of that monthly sum that you set aside. Every click during that month will give a slice, but at the same time making the slices smaller - the total sum will never exceed the monthly amount that you set aside (the actual money won't be transferred until the end of the month). By depositing some money, you can put Flattr buttons on your own items (blog posts, stuff like that). An interesting and easy way to give some love to the things you like without the risk of losing control of how much you give.

So anyhow, I just hope I did this right. I followed some tutorial, pasted some code here and there, and here we are. Suddenly there are Flattr buttons next to each post title. Hopefully they're all unique and not all the same button... I guess time will tell.

I'm dead tired. Looking forward to not setting my alarm and just sleep because it feels like I need it. Tomorrow I have work to do (I'm trying to make a minigame work in the Kanji project) and the upcoming week will probably be quite intense. School gaining momentum, new projects starting up, trying to conclude some overdue things in the Kanji project, preparing the messy apartment before my best friend arrives next weekend. It feels like I have it under control though.

Looking forward to start playing with Unity more on top of everything. Oh, and play more Minecraft (which incidentally was my very first Flattr)!

EDIT: Crap, it seems they are all the same button, and that they only work on the main page - otherwise they're inactive. I get that, since I added the main page as a "thing" on Flattr, but I have no idea how to fix that. I could add all posts manually to Flattr which would probably make the individual pages' buttons work, but that would still not change the fact that the main page showing a summary of the blog will show an other Flattr button on each post. It won't make any difference for me nor anyone who decides to Flattr me, but it's comfusing.

Dusted off the old blog

A redesign of the blog with brighter colors, and a whole lot of spam comments removed. I guess you could say I put out the old duster and cleaned the place up a bit. Before you read any of my older posts and say to yourself "hey, how can he claim to be any good at interface design with light gray text against white background" or something - my previous blog theme was mostly black, and I just don't care to change all my old posts and fix their coloring.

I'm currently working with Kanji Academy still - an e-learning application that teaches Japanese Kanji symbols. I only have two more months to go, and truth be told I'm quite looking forward for it to end. While it started out fine, it has turned into a strange grind of perpetual changes and updates and on top of it all Flash and ActionScript 3 is simply not... good. I honestly hate how it makes the simplest of things a bitch to do.

I'm also currently studying book-keeping and business planning. Over the years I've come to realize what I am and what I'm not, and cannot really see myself working in a bigger company - at least not yet. It's not that I think I couldn't pull it off, I just feel like I wouldn't be comfortable doing it for any extended period of time. I have a different way of thinking and quickly feel frustrated when people gets stuck in a "this is the way it's always been" mentality, and I'd rather try doing things my way for a while.

I do have other projects "in the pipe" so to speak because regardless of what I do I need money to live and survive, but more of those things as they progress.

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On another note; I really wish to promote this Indie title: Minecraft

It's a game about running about in a randomly generated world, mining, building things, exploring, landscaping, and trying to survive the monster filled nights. Beautiful, kicks AAA-titles in the face, and I've probably spent close to 100 hours playing it so far. Also, it is the scariest game I've played in years next to Silent Hill 2. It's so extremely spot on and is one of those games that would NEVER be planned, produced and released by any conventional larger game company - it's just so different from today's usual games in every aspect.