The Silights instrumentality project

I’ve decided that working during the day as a corporate drone is not enough self-punishment. To address this, I’m going to take on several side-projects, which I will work on in my spare time.

The real purpose of these side-projects is to try to expand and develop my skills and experience in more innovate pursuits, with an ultimate aim of working in a more innovative industry in the future.

The five projects I’ve decided on are:

1. Silights re-design. In fairness, Silights does not have a design, so ‘re-design’ is somewhat of a misnomer. My goal is to draw-up several ideas, decide on an interesting and unique look for my blog and implement it. This probably sounds pretty basic to most people, but as I have never done anything like this before, it will be a challenge for me.

2. Weekly post about casual games and iPhone apps. This idea came about because I really enjoy playing casual games and ‘collecting’ iPhone apps, but I want to develop more of a critical eye about what works and what doesn’t. To force myself to be more critical, I’m going to try to provide a weekly commentary on the games and apps I’ve come across and am playing/using.

3. Make t-shirts. I’ve talked for years about making my own t-shirts, but have never actually done anything - but this is about to change. Once I move apartments (in the next few months), I’m going to pick-up a screen printing kit and print a few different t-shirt designs. I already have some ideas for prints and I’ve looking forward to seeing how they turn out. I envisage the first few attempts will be total disasters. I’ll make sure I take lots of photos, so you can all have a good laugh from the comfort of your browser windows.

4. Make an iPhone app. Similar to 2, my goal here is to draw up several ideas for iPhone apps and make them. I do not expect to make any commercially viable apps (though that would be nice), I just want to prove to myself that I can do it.

5. Make a simple computer game. I’m going to dream up, design, develop and create a simple 2D computer game. This project is the most ambitious because my programme skills are terrible (currently the only programming I do is designing excel macros in visual basic), but I also think it will be the most rewarding.

To force myself to be disciplined about recording my progress and for your entertainment, I will be posting a development diary for each of my projects. Don’t get too excited, as I have a somewhat onerous day job, I’m anticipating a long development time for these projects.