J2D3

What is this? Why?

Ok, so since I decided to go ahead and start blogging, not really knowing about what I would blog, I signed up for delicious and dig and stumbled upon some rather inspirational inspirational blogs, such as this one: zenhabits.net. I would refer you to a specific post but I read so many and there are like 50 other “self-improvement” productivity oriented blogs. I know that websurfing productivity blogs at 4am is strikingly similar to watching get-rich-quick infomericals at 4am… nonetheless I woke up this morning covered in a sticky film of inspiration that won’t rinse away.

What I’ve decided to do here is make this site, J2D3, my personal blog.

After all, J2D3 is my personal company and was started as a roundabout way toward becoming, well, a real estate developer. Which I’m currently not at all. I am a weirdly dissatisfied computer programmer with an academic background in architecture. I’m sure I’ll get into all that later.

Right now I want to make something clear. This blog is *mostly* for me, not so much for you, dear reader. You can read it, obviously, and I hope you gain something from it, or that maybe it sparks a conversation between us or among you, me, and the other readers, should they exist. This blog isn’t here to impress anyone, or drive tremendous traffic, or sell anyone anything. So you might be wondering, why have a public blog? First, it will give me a forum to establish my goals and projects, research and refine my strategies, and evaluate them *in public*. If I were to simply promise myself that I will write down my goals, keep a diary, etc., there is very little chance that I would follow through. The public nature of a blog will strengthen my resolve to develop good habits and routines and stick with them. Even if no one is reading it, just knowing that someone *could* read it will inspire all sorts of motivating guilt juices to get me back on track. It’s like setting myself up with a life-workout partner who will continually hold me to task.

Following my inspiring websurfing episode last night, I slept well and actually rode my bike to the gym for the first time in - I don’t know - nearly a year? I most of my laundry and put most of it away. I settled a long-outstanding debt with a friend and had a lovely ramen noodle dinner downtown. It was a great Sunday really, and now I’m tired at an appropriate hour, so I’m gonna hit the hay.

Here’s what you and I can expect in the near future at j2d3.com:

1. Some kind of minimalist design. I know I’m still using the default wp template.

2. Some outlining of the Billboard House idea, with some preliminary design sketches. I’ve mentioned it once here, but it is my #1 long term goal (to build and live in it), and that’s final. No other harebrained schemes may take precedence. I’ve been dwelling on my idea of modern dwelling since 2004, and it’s time to get serious.

3. SternHalma as a downloadable package with full multi-human player support. SternHalma is an open source implementation of the board game commonly known to Americans as Chinese Checkers. My brother and I wrote it. The computer players are pretty hard to beat unless you really focus. With a few changes I can make it so that anyone with a wp blog (or a server with php/mysql support) can install SternHalma on their own site in two minutes.

Hopefully there will be much more than that as I get comfortable with blogging and make it a part of my daily routine. I’m excited about this. If you’ve read this far then you might be excited, too, but if you have and if you are, um, that’s pretty weird. Go to sleep, you freak.