Episode 110: Choose Your Own Adventure, from Imaginary Worlds

The plum tree in my backyard is blooming.

I'm new to recognizing
The timing on these things, but--

February 28 seems early.

Thin branches reach toward the sky,
Diagonal lines covered in clusters of buds,
opening flowers, pale signs of life,
I find myself looking at it all day.

Maybe the flowers are a sign of the climate apocalypse, but--

They are a sign of plums and honey bees, too.

Communicating as a remote worker:
The Basecamp Guide to Internal Communication

Pandemic prep:
Past Time to Tell the Public: “It Will Probably Go Pandemic, and We Should All Prepare Now”, by Ian M. Mackay (tl;dr: Buy extra prescription drugs, stop touching your face all the time)

There have been two opportunities that, at this time last year, I said: Tara, you're doing this in 2020. 

One is a local performance festival called Hear Here, where I'd be writing poetry & making a soundscape in collaboration with a choreographer I don't know yet. The other is Creative Capital, only a massive and very influential award of $50,000 for weird art. 

Hey, pals!

Here's where I'm speaking, showing up or otherwise spreading the Pantheon/open source love this year:

Feb 7-9 | WordCamp Phoenix | Attending!

Feb 28-Mar 1 | WordCamp Miami | Speaking on command line basics!

On companion planting:
Top Ten Companion Plants

Watching:
RuPaul's Drag Race
The X-Files
Breaking Bad

Cry$tal Warrior Ke$ha, by Porpentine

With Those We Love Alive, by Porpentine

You can really fall down a rabbit hole here. Once you start noticing where a choice could happen, you start seeing choices everywhere.  "The reader could choose this pronoun.  This color. This timing."  It's exhausting and it's important to trim those decision trees early and often.  

Today I did a one-day writing retreat, and in the spirit of my DIY artist retreat zine (ugh it pains me that there is LITERALLY NOTHING ON THE INTERNET I can link there), here's how it went: 

As I've dug into this Twine experience I'm building (tentatively titled The Neighborhood, by the way), I've realized there's an entire world of people focused on interactive fiction (IF).  

Of course there is, in retrospect.  Every internet rabbit-hole is fully populated. 

I kept bumping into some jargon, and specifically discussions of parser vs. choice-based games.  Time to research!