Tag Archives: TIC

Today I choose to work on competitive book club (TIC00071g)

The PolyBlog
November 3 2020

The name of the book club is not really competitive book club, but it’s a bit of a “in joke” for the members. Last year, I created a PolyWogg Reading Challenge where I had a “bingo” card for some friends to have a low-pressure book club to read different categories of books and “fill” spots on the bingo card for different genres or themes. It was okay, but it wasn’t that compelling, and people just tended to do their own thing.

For 2020, people suggested some changes to the reading challenge, including:

  • More monthly “categories” with a few specific ideas about themes (we added Indigenous for example);
  • Some flexibility within the month with a bit of nudging; and,
  • They want badges.

I kept wanting to say, “We don’t need no stinkin’ badges”, but as moderator of the small but mighty band of intrepid readers, that seemed discouraging. However, I wasn’t sure how to do them, what they would be for, or if anyone would care, even when they were asking for them (the desire for badges prompted the joke that we were turning it into competitive book club). Some months I have struggled to stay on top of the monthly totals and award the badges. A few months it was close to the middle of the month before I wrapped up the totals for the month. In short, there were times this year with the isolation where I just wasn’t feeling it.

It isn’t that I wasn’t spending time on my computer and couldn’t get to it; I just wasn’t enjoying it that much. Back in July, I had an idea and it turned out to be really terrible…for me. The way the monthly badges work is that I generally offer them four categories of books for the month:

A. A few specific books from the theme for the month (I pick them, but I take suggestions too);
B. A secondary category, generally open-ended as to what they might want to read in that genre;
C. A catch-all “Readers Choice” for anything else they read; and,
D. A challenge book for the month.

They can get 1 of 5 badges depending on how “hard” the choices are…1 book of their choice, 1 named book, 2 books of their choice, 2 named books, or 3+ books or the challenge book.

My idea for August and September was that you could double-count across the months. So, for instance, if you read a mystery in one month for the theme, you could also count it as a reader’s choice the next month. I wouldn’t double the totals but I would let books count against more than one badge across months. And then I compounded it by offering the same deal for October…books in any of the three months could be used to win badges in the other two months. It was a complicated nightmare to work out and track.

Today I choose to work on the competitive book club by totaling up all the results for the three months. 91 books read in total (without double-counting) by the group, all the badges awarded, everything caught up and reset for November. In addition, I have a plan for December that had me go back and make a list of all the books people have read for the year. I wish I had been keeping track from the beginning, would have been a lot easier. It took some time, but as I said, I’m all caught up.

What choices did you make today?

Today I choose to restart trivia by email (TIC00070g)

The PolyBlog
November 2 2020

I’ve mentioned previously that back in the day, 1998-2005 to be precise, I ran an online trivia game by email. I would send out the questions Monday to Friday, people around the world would play, and they’d send me answers back by the end of the week. I’d mark everything, total up the scores, and post the answers and results each Sunday night. Then Monday morning, I’d start all over again.

It was, in some ways, the ultimate in choice. A reality that I chose to create surely out of stubbornness, determination, and time. Sometimes it overwhelmed me. And to be clear, we’re not talking an automated process with hundreds or thousands of players, it was just me sending email out to about 70-100 players depending on the week/month/year.

But I did it. Why? Because I wanted to. I liked running the game, coming up with questions. As I’ve blogged in recent weeks, I would love to put it on my website and run it again. The problem is simply one of time. I don’t have the time to devote to running an open game, and I’ve never really liked automated games that much. I’ve considered maybe someday creating an app to do it, but for now, I’m fine with what I have. Which is an option to put things on my website, a quiz page here or there.

Yet for fun, as part of a workplace charitable campaign, I relaunched email by trivia for three weeks. I only have about 15 players so far, easily managed, with the only wrinkle being that it has to be entirely bilingual for both language and content. PolyWogg Trivia rides again. And today was the first day.

Today I choose to relaunch a form of PolyWogg Trivia by email.

What choices did you make today?

Today I choose to restart writing about choice (TIC00069g)

The PolyBlog
November 1 2020

A few weeks ago, I called it “quits” on blogging daily about choices, my “today I choose” series. I felt that I had reached a good point where I was more aware of my conscious choices each day, a state of awareness where I could perhaps instead write once a week about various choices. Hoping, in part, that by writing once a week, my choices might seem more significant. That somewhere in a week, I would have made some, I don’t know, “larger” choice. Something worthy of a blog post.

Instead, I feel like Dory from Finding Nemo. I need to just keep swimming. Because for the last few weeks, I’ve been drowning.

I know the signs. I eat more crap food. I stay up late watching TV. I try to get by on several hours sleep so that when I do go to bed, I’m too tired to have my mind swirl around wondering “what if” or “what about” things that are bothering me. Some people choose booze or drugs to drown out the inner voice, I use TV, junk food, and sleep deprivation. It numbs me to the point where when I go to bed, I crash.

Last night was the “fall back” timeframe for daylight savings time, and I was binge-watching Lost. I had forgotten about the timeshift, so when my computer reset my clock back at 2:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m., I thought I had misjudged the time. When I went to bed at 5:00 a.m., for no good reason at all, Jacob was already awake. Me? I was well into my second wind and didn’t feel tired at all. I just went to bed because I knew I needed to sometime.

But honestly? It is just me self-sabotaging myself, putting myself down as far as I can go on the energy level, driving myself to create a challenge to overcome. A false sense of success that is reminiscent of all-nighters in high school and university. Cramming at the last minute after weeks of procrastination.

When I’m super tired, I run on about 70% energy reserves for the day. 70% efficient, or 70% of “normal” I guess. I can still function, I get my work done, but it isn’t exactly “living”. It’s more like surviving. There’s probably some metaphor in there about isolation, setbacks, watching Lost, Covid, etc.

I’ve got about 1000 things to do in November, things that NEED to get done. And I’ve been wallowing, procrastinating, avoiding. I’d like to say today, November 1st, I did something productive to overcome my inertia, but honestly, I didn’t, not really.

My main choice today, after sleeping in quite late after being up way too late, were first and foremost to have Andrea cut my hair and for me to cut Jacob’s. We’ve been debating, or rather I’ve been debating, whether people in salons have likely progressed far enough for it to be safe, given that we are officially in a high-risk household. We have eliminated almost all vectors in and out, so is this one that is REALLY worth risking? We had some decent options, and if we were medium-risk, I suspect I would have gone for it. But we’re not, and I didn’t. I just didn’t feel comfortable going for it. I feel like I made Jacob paranoid enough too that he wasn’t in favour, but there’s no way to know either way. I didn’t feel like it was an acceptable risk, so we did the home thing again.

Equally, Jacob and Andrea made a stab at normalcy yesterday. Even though we weren’t doing Hallowe’en for either going out or giving out candies, Jacob and Andrea wanted to do a pumpkin carving. I just assumed we wouldn’t bother, and so I had made zero effort to even plan for it as a possibility. But Saturday came, and we went to the one we always go to and picked up two pumpkins. Today, Jacob and Andrea did the scooping, and then we took a design that Jacob hand-drew of an outline of a penguin and he and I then carved it. The other was a bit soft and we just wrote on it. Pretty simple, and Jacob could do more of the carving this year than usual.

Later, I opted for pizza for dinner and let Jacob choose Pizza Hut, as he likes to do. To be honest, it was more opting for him to choose, than Pizza Hut, just wanting him to make a choice and enjoy the power of doing so. He is always so happy to choose it. And then we just sat and watched two episodes of Knight Rider from Season 01. I find it amusing that he talks to the TV while the episode is unfolding. Like he’s telling them what to do or not. I know in part that it is his anxiety playing out, and talking it out lets him release some of it, but I find it amusing. At least, I do so far.

I then binged the rest of S04 tonight of Lost, and I’m headed to bed.

While all of those choices had their conscious components, I realized that the daily posting was keeping me grounded and giving me some momentum. I need it again, particularly this month. I probably can’t keep it up every day but at least I’ll be able to do it some or hopefully most days. I need to do it to stay sane.

Today I choose to restart blogging about my conscious daily choices.

Today I choose to change how I write about choice (TIC00068f)

The PolyBlog
October 2 2020

So, I am on iteration “f” of my series of posts about the choices I make each day, having broken my “Seinfeld” chain on five previous occasions to go from a through b, c, d and e to get to f. And overall, I’m on 68 days of noting how I’m doing on making conscious choices.

Yet I find myself struggling to find a topic some nights. Often I had a good day, I did make choices, but in some cases it might have been the same choice I made last week that is starting to be part of my routine. Or it was all relatively simple choices, and not really worthy of a post.

A couple of those “breaks” in series were more technical in nature, where I was unable to post for a few days and so I “broke” the chain. I didn’t break the chain of choices, I just broke the chain of writing about it.

And so, I think I’m going to step back from daily blogs about the choices. It met part of its goal, to make me conscious of my decisions, and things are working well. But I think I’m going to switch the series from TIC to “This week I chose” (TWIC, I guess).

The real trick for me though is to see if only writing about it weekly means I stop keeping track so that maybe 9 days from now when I do the first TWIC post, I may not remember what I did during the week. So I’ll have to keep track in a little notebook by the computer. And then pick one of them to write about in detail for the TWIC posts.

Today I choose to change how I write about choice. What choices are you making today?

Today I choose to play with Kahoot (TIC00067f)

The PolyBlog
October 2 2020

For those reading the post yesterday about my love of trivia, you already know that I am helping out with a trivia game for our Charitable Campaign at work. The exact FORMAT of that trivia game is still to be determined.

I have a few options, and a number of variables that complicate the game. First and foremost, it has to be fully bilingual. We’re a bilingual workforce, anglophone and francophone players may both want to play, and I need to have a game (*) available they both (*) can play. I put asterisks in that sentence because one of the variables is that I could simply run a game in English for anglophones and a separate game in French for francophones.

Second, since we can’t do the game in-person, I need an online option. That basically divides itself into three options:

  • By email like I used to do — people would get the questions by email, they could respond, and I would score them…heck I think I even still have the scoring spreadsheet that helped me format things!;
  • On a website — I can run it like an online quiz, people click on the link, go through the questions, it totals up their answers, and sends me the results;
  • Live — I can use something like Kahoot to run the game live, people get the questions while looking at a screen, tap to choose their answer, and voila, scores are counted immediately.

The first two are easy, free and totally adjustable for time. Anyone can play as long as they have a computer link AND they can do it anytime of the day. I can also make it completely bilingual, no problem.

The last one is the preferred option as I can have people chatting while we do it, all good. Much more social, great. There’s a small cost involved, sure, but not exorbitant.

The bigger challenge is the degree of bilingualism. The apps are almost all American and while I can make all the questions bilingual, the transition screens and menus are NOT. So for example, in between Q1 and Q2, when it is giving the scores, it says “Poly takes the lead!” or “Jane253 has answered 1 in a row!”. At the end, when giving results, it’s automated, and it will say “Poly got 3/10 right in 90s Music”. It’s not egregious, those prompts being all in English, but it’s not ideal either.

Free and fully bilingual but not as social vs. small cost and social but not fully bilingual. Decisions, decisions. I’ll talk to some French executives at work and see what they advise, see if it is “good enough”. I can do a separate “social” one for just francophones, preferably with a different host than ME hurting their ears, but I can’t edit the app.

I also wish it wasn’t a separate computer, but there is no way to avoid it, not really. You still need a tool to do the trivia scoring and entry and one that is hosting the video. They’re not integrated, so it is either two computers or at least two apps running at the same time.

I also started going down the rabbit hole of choosing a trivia plugin for my site before I managed to stop myself. The to-do list for my site is already long enough. I do want it SOMETIME, just not sure NOW is the right time to do that. Sure would be sweet though, given the number of people in lockdown looking for some activities to do online occasionally.

Today I choose to play with Kahoot.

What choices are you making today?