It’s 7:18 am, and I’m awakened by the softest and silkiest fur I’ve ever felt – on my face. A handful of seconds later, “…Meow?”

Our little calico-tabby, Kiwi, is the self-proclaimed timekeeper of the house, and her main (and possibly only) duty is to inform me of when it’s time for breakfast. She’s much more lenient regarding dinner, but every morning at 7:15, she’ll come to my side of the bed and meow until I get up to feed her and her sister. Today she deviated from her pattern, and although the change was slight, I found it very interesting. Instead of standing on the floor or sitting on the nightstand, she placed herself on the edge of the bed with her chest fur up against my face. After waiting several seconds, she meowed a single time. Combined with the extra 3 minutes of sleep she graced me with, this was the most gentile wakeup call she’s ever given, and I can’t help but wonder if it was intentional.

Our cats never cease to amaze me. These tiny little lives that share our home with us, many would simply view as “the cats,” and while this is technically accurate it really is inadequate. I don’t think that either Kiwi or Mochi would refer to us as “the humans,” so I like to pay them the same courtesy. They came into our home about a year and a half ago, and it’s been fascinating to watch their personalities develop. Since I lost my sweetheart Taiko and then our little Minky, I’ll admit that my heart had hardened a bit, and these two newcomers felt much more like ‘just cats’ than any previous pets I’ve had. It was not long, however, before they broke down my walls and claimed their rightful role as “the kids.”

Kiwi has always been the more outgoing, confident, and assertive of the two, but only when she feels completely in control of her situation. Whenever ‘strangers’ are visiting or she’s out at the vet, she acts like a completely different cat: shy, timid, extremely cautious, and ready to bolt at the slightest anything. On the other hand, when she’s relaxed, she’ll fly around the house with reckless abandon, climb to the highest vantage points available, and leap after toys with complete disregard for her – or any one else’s – safety. She adores attention, but only on her terms. She’ll purr louder than a jet engine while smashing her face into your hand, but if she doesn’t want to be touched, nothing can stop her from running away and keeping just out of reach.

Mochi is a lap cat. She’s roughly 3 pounds bigger than Kiwi, and is totally content to lie around the house all day, cuddle in a lap, or flop belly-up in the middle of the floor staring at you until you come over and pet her tummy. Like her sister, she loves to play, but rarely is the one to initiate it. She’ll join in when she sees Kiwi having fun, but Kiwi is the one who sobs incessantly about how nobody loves her until one of us gives in and gets the feather toy out of the closet. Mochi is shy about everything but food (without fail she pushes her sister out of the way of whichever dish is filled first), but there is once again a role reversal when in unfamiliar situations. If company comes over, Mochi is the first to investigate and say hello, and at the vet she’s the first to creep out of her carrier to see what’s going on.

I love to sit and watch them interact with each other, with their world, and with us. Someday I want to make them an outdoor enclosure to run around in, and I can’t wait to see what they do in it. They’ve enriched our lives so much that I can’t imagine our house without them, and I want to do whatever I can to return the favor.

October 31, 2010 | Random Tangents | 1 Comment

Yesterday Jason and I got FitBits, and after running around with mine for a while, I got an idea for a game. Inspired somewhat by the game/gtd app, Epic Win*, it would use your real life activities to help you progress through the game.

It would be a turn-based RPG style game that connected with a pedometer to determine how far you could travel: you walk X steps in real life, translating to N steps in the game. While playing the game, you can run around, do quests, and kill monsters; but after you’ve used up all your steps, you’ve got to put the game down until you build up more.

It wouldn’t be a game you played while exercising, and I think it’s important to make that distinction. We have more than enough real time streams of distraction (twitter, email, etc.), so this game would not sporadically interrupt your life by demanding attention. Instead, your daily activities build up in-game ‘credit’ which you can then use at your discretion. You could take a ten minute walk and play for a short burst, or save up a week’s worth of steps to play for an extended time on the weekend.

Unless the game is created for a mobile device with a built in pedometer (I’d rather it be a Mac/PC game), I envision it connecting to one of several online fitness accounts, such as FitBit‘s or Nike+. This way, it would be more likely to encourage real fitness, rather than just spawning new and creative ways to ‘cheat’ pedometer steps… such taping it to the front of a washing machine, or clipping it to your cat.

Things to think about:

• More ways to integrate gameplay with fitness level.
• Character stats being affected by daily activity, instead of by exp from killing monsters. Lightly active vs. fairly active vs. very active: the number of steps stay constant, but stats could increase at a variable rate.
• Ratio of real steps to game steps. 1:1? 2:1? 1:2? Would ultimately need to be determined via beta-testing.
• Saving. No save points (à la FFX), but would it be free saving anywhere on the world map or real time saving which would prevent ‘rebooting’ to reallocate steps.
• Is there an API to pull data from FitBit or Nike+? (Probably not.) What similarities do these two have in the data they collect? Ideally the game could connect to one of several account types.
• Single- or multi-player? I predict multi-player being too difficult to coordinate, but could friends’ data potentially determine party members’ stats?

What do you think? Given an engaging storyline, would you play a game like this?

Update! FitBit has an API now!

*I have not played Epic Win, but I’m in love with the concept, and am patiently waiting until it gets ported to WebOS… but that’s another story entirely. :)

October 3, 2010 | Concept Ideas | 3 Comments

Hey, look at that! I’ve got my website up and running! Here you’ll find my random thoughts and musings, projects I’m working on with their various stages of incompletion, the MINIness that tends to consume my life, and eventually a shop where I’ll be selling some of the crafty things that I put together! Woo!

‘Til then, I hope you enjoy your stay, and feel free to drop me a line or follow me on twitter! :)

August 7, 2010 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment