Yes You May 2024
April 21, 2024 – Pre-Planning!
Okay, I know it’s not May yet. But I have a lot of “pre-planning” to do in regards to my Yes You May event and figured I’d just wrap it into my thread.
I’ll be doing something similar that I had attempted in 2023, which kinda didn’t go very well. I always tend to have a lot of goals with way bigger Mind’s-Eye than capability (like bigger eyes than stomach concept!). So I’m going to pare it down a bit.
In my 2021 post, I talked about a lot of ideas I had and then chose from those my “official” projects I’d work on. But I’m coming into this YYM 2024 with a very specific goal in mind, especially knowing I need to take all the “omgs, I want to do this and this and this….” off the table and really just pare down to some (hopefully!) manageable goals.
For my Yes You May 2024, I’ll be working on two goals, with Number 1 being the absolute primary and priority:
OFFICIAL YES YOU MAY LIST
1. Unreal Engine 5 – Delving into Unreal Engine 5 and really taking in the dashboard and program functions.
- Look for a course that uses the Mac version of Unreal in their lessons.
- If I can’t find a Mac version, going through an Udemy course that I already have and make a list of the key commands translated on a Mac.
- Practice simple stuff.
2. Account Organization – Begin organizing all my email, google, youtube, etc accounts.
- I have too many of these with information scattered across them, that often don’t match where they should be.
- Going through these, using the spreadsheets I’ve already created to organize and track what’s what and where, move things over, etc. Condense a bit?!
- Delete unneeded accounts.
That’s it. And Unreal takes the primary spot here. I really struggle with this (staying focused) and game creation is something I really REALLY want to do. The organization is really important too, because it is often hindering me in doing the things I want to do and more smoothly with flow. It’s always a struggle to run into, “I can’t find this.” or it’s all so overwhelming that I just freeze solid and collapse and go play video games for 8 hours.
Right now there’s an issue where the top part of my menu jumps are covered a bit by my nav bar. I’m still working on this issue, so in the meantime, you’ll have to scroll up just a little after each jump to get to the beginning of the section. *grumbles* Also, the square bullets are supposed to be circles but I haven’t figured out for the life of me how to get them to switch. So, just pretend they are nice lovely little circular dots.
Here you can just jump to the different Project Sections!
Overview!
Here is basic overview of Yes You May. What is it?!
Yes You May is an event in the Puttyverse (a community of multipotentialites) that lasts the entire month of May. We multipotentialites have a lot on our plates, a lot of equally competing interests, and often things we really would like to get into get shoved to the wayside. Yes You May is the month where we pick something that we’ve been wanting to do and say YES! to it. We have check-in huddles, check-in forum threads, there’s cheerleading accountability, all throughout the month as we engage these fun projects that we’ve been wanting to say Yes to for a long time. Let the Yeses and the Yes Anding begin!
Unreal Engine!
Here you can just jump through the Unreal section.
Unreal Engine 5 Overview of Project
Overview and Status – Scope and beginnings.
I love video games. I love thinking about them, reading about them (both casual informative and academic research), and playing them. I think they have the potential to tap into often misunderstood aspects of human capabilities, and allow for, like other realms of art, more depth, creativity, and engagement. They have a lot of benefits, and yes, they do have their downsides as well (like anything in extremes).
I have always wanted to create games, although I’m not the best at “design”, either in websites or graphics or probably, despite the vast amount of games that I have played, video games. There has been a slow sea-change happening in the industry where there are very easily accessible education and tools that have allowed for the small creator to swarm the scene in drove. These aren’t AAA game studios (developers/publishers) but often one to small team developers that have “some idea” and more and more don’t need the programming chops to actually complete a whole game. The ability to wear A LOT of hats is important though, as an individual has to be designer, art, graphics, animator, sound, writer, development (which also has a bunch of areas), quality checks, marketing, distribution, all in one.
But again, we now have a vast array of educational options online, both free and paid. There are plenty of tutorials (whether or not they are any good or not might be the question) you can find for free on Youtube on any given game engine, on programming, on all aspects of development. There are many game engines out there, from the smaller like Game Salad to build 2D games to open source with GoDot Engine to the two top engines in the industry, Unreal Engine (by Epic Games) and Unity (by Unity Technologies). And even the top engines are trying to make it easier for (mostly) non-programmers to create with their platforms.
I chose Unreal Engine because the graphics and built-in library of assets is amazing, because I got a chance to play with Blueprints which seemed like a form of mindmapping in regards to development. I am very visual and kinesthetic and I need to have something I can “SEE” to help me out in the process. I have an “in” for the educators’ UE community having met Epic folks at the awesome Games for Change festival a few years ago.
But, it has a very high learning curve. I mean, this IS an engine used by many of the top game studios, so of course it’s going to be super robust. And for the most part that I’ve seen, learning to use it is by creating something with it. Application! But the dashboard needs A LOT of practice to really get into your system as “third- or fourth-nature” if not very competent and at ease using it.
I have an Udemy class, although may be for 5.0.3 while UE5 just recently released 5.4, and it teaches the Windows version of it, but I think I can muddle along and make sure to make a list of commands for the Mac and any changes for 5.4. I had gone through about a third of it before wandering off (ADHD). You make a little game in the class, which I have expanded on in sketches thus far, wanting to make a bit more complicated one for my husband, branching off the basic simple one. So, starting that course over again and working on learning the Dashboard is my main Yes You May.
Back To Unreal Project Menu
Back To Main Project Menu
Updates on the Unreal Engine Project
Prior to May Start:
I spent the prior 10 days doing research to see if I could find a list of key commands for the Mac version (even messaged the Udemy instructor and he pointed me to where I can find all the listings of key commands, which is very useful), looking for “in-person online” courses in Unreal (there may be some at Mesa Community College in San Diego but not sure if they are “online” or “in-person online” meetings), bought some game assets (although in the meantime since those purchases, UE went from 5.3 to 5.4 and some may no longer work for the newer version if I start with that one, but I’m not sure how this works either. At least the crazy rooster warrior I got for Marty’s game is 5.4) and I also noted there seemed to be Window icon only on some of the assets. Oops? Does that mean I can’t use it on my UE engine Mac version? I still don’t know the answer to this. I pulled up a browser window with my usual mass amount of tabs, all ready to go with the UE 5.4 documentation open, Epic’s Unreal forums, the Udemy course, and other references and resources.
The “game goal”.
I want to make a practice game but not just the basic simple game made in the class (well, it will start with that). I want to make an actual game for
Here is the sketch of the game map with a few notes, thus far. The main central room with the gap is the basic game, and it has just ballooned from there:
(Click image for larger version.)
Abvofeld the Destroyer is the name of a D&D character Marty had some up with. He wanted to make a one-shot where the players would go to a festival/competition and compete with absurdist jokes and the prize would be a talking chicken named Abvofeld the Destroyer who would basically crack puns and garble on in a surrealist fashion. So he’s the “boss” at the end of the room.
I have things mapped out (essentially) but I don’t really have each room settled yet in terms of what I want to do, in regards to what happens IN them. I do want the rooms to unlock in succession, and that they get more and more complex and awesome in graphics. Marty once made me a little Zork like game where I had to solve puzzles based on what I knew about him or things I liked, and I think I might follow something similar. One room maybe he’ll have to do something like meditation to pass through, maybe something with dogs, maybe when he meets Abvofeld and they fight, he won’t be able to make a dent and will have to hug him instead. Dunno yet.
May 1 to 10:
GRRR!!! I wrote a whole bunch and my damn thing didn’t save! So typing this out again… probably less content now though!
So far, I haven’t really gotten much done. Ran into the same issue once I started the Udemy course that the command keys didn’t fit. Even the list that the author of the course pointed me to in the actual program itself doesn’t completely work, like the “full screen” option which seems kind of important when you’re trying to play through the level you’ve created or are trying to a larger screen to see. So then I wandered off in frustration.
I have all this command lists printed out but still struggling. Then my mom came to visit for several days and everything halts during that period, then I have to take several full days to catch up on the things that when on hold that weren’t Unreal Engine and never got to UE in that time period again. Well, I did manage to install 5.4 and clean out all the old projects (just testers from a long time ago) to start afresh. Finally got a chance to sit down for a bit May 11th.
Oh, one thing I did do during this time period was starting to play a game called Biomutant, developed by a small studio called Experiment 101 (possibly this is their only game), and has since been acquired by THQ Nordic. It’s a fairly simply designed RPG (at least when compared up against something like Baldur’s Gate 3 or Skyrim) and hits all the main points of an RPG these days, almost to the point of cramming too much into one game: avatar creation/modification, basic classes, leveling system, basic main quests and side quests, basic storyline, collection of things, crafting system, combat armor and weapons including creation and upgrading systems, large map, fast-travel that you have to discover to unlock, a narrator with some strange garbled dialogue that’s translated through a side-kick, mounts, combat maneuvers/combos, simple puzzles to solve, factions… so much so that it does seem quite crowded with “look, all the things an RPG is in one game!!!” A lot of the quests seem like make-work, filling in for the thin storyline, and become a bit repetitive, the puzzles you find are super simple, the combat is eventually quite repetitive and button mashing. But all in all, it is a good game to study game design in regards to what to do and not do, and gave me plenty of ideas to add or not add to my little practice game I want to expand. Although… the game did eventually become less of a game-as-study and more of a game-as-distraction and I played A LOT of it. So, that’s something to keep an eye on!
May 11:
Finally got some time to sit down and work on the course a bit. Getting through “Section 1: Getting Started”, which included an overview of making an Epic account, downloading and installing (all of which I’ve done before), an overview of Projects, Levels, and Actors, which I had seen before a long time ago, so that was easy to go through. I started a bit on the next Section but only got one lesson into it. Will work more on it tomorrow.
I also had to order a second mouse pad since I am not a big keyboard for shortcuts but rather take the long (and slow) way around with the mouse. But that means I need to use my second bluetooth mouse for my laptop (which is the only computer I have in the house that can run UE5) while watching the course on my desktop. And I need a mouse for that. So, it should come by Monday but for now using my singular mouse pad for the laptop, as the desktop mouse seems generally fine on the surface it’s on (just not super smooth movement).
May 12:
Ok, started with “Section 2: The Level Editor” and while I had made it through this section and to the third section focusing on Actors, I was pretty lost right away. I have a tendency to jump WAY ahead in my head, straight from idea to finished product, which completely ignores the actual fucking work involved. And then my already “sensitive to energy loss” system reacts pretty severely by shutting me down and I will often “vagal out”, taking a pretty big, what we in the “biz” call, a Vagal Dive. You know, those times when your system is pretty overwhelmed by something… overwhelming, or triggering in some way, and suddenly you can’t keep your eyes open and you’re snoozing, drooling on your keyboard, rug, whatever. My Parts and I are trying to work on this but it’s kinda difficult when they don’t want to play ball. Or play at all. Nope, Play is off the menu, thank you very much.
I did make it through Lesson 2.6 (first of the second session), “Level Editor Overview”, which was an overview of all the little tabs and “windows” within the Level Editor itself (there’s a lot going on there).
Then “2.7 – Select Editing Mode”, which covered the different “editing modes” but only focused really on the “Select Editing Mode” which allows you to add actors to the level and some brief tips on how to do so involving different ways to do so. Talked a lot about the “Place Actors” panel. Ugh. There are a lot of ways to do the same thing in the Editor, which I guess is a good thing if one’s brain doesn’t operate a certain way (like with keyboard shortcuts!) but can use a different method. But it’s hard to know without really digging further which will be appropriate for my weirdo brain. And I think there’s more detail later as we get into the little game creation parts.
On to “2.8 – Viewport I – Navigating Within the Viewport” – This was about how to move about inside the viewport, which is where the actual visual editing is happening. The graphical interface, I guess you could say. The whole editor looks like this:
The “Viewport” is the big graphical window where you can move stuff around and such. It allows you to “see” what you’re actually manipulating. The chairs and such are just “starter content” that comes with with program, so you can mess around with learning how to move stuff, scale it, change colors, etc. The little icons are things like “player start”, or the light source and what direction it’s shining towards, etc.
“2.8 – Viewport I – Navigating Within the Viewport” was literally just about learning how to move about inside this window, and of course, there were three different ways to do so (well, maybe 2.5). Using the mouse and using the keyboard. And then there were some particular methods of using both that had to do with controls used in the program Maya (an animation program often used to build 3D things for UE). Again, I’m not a big keyboard person, so the mouse is probably the way I’ll go. But it definitely takes some practice.
I pretty much started realizing that I needed to make my own list of commands because I was marking up the lists I had printed out in a way that I eventually couldn’t even read them. Plus my method will hopefully make more sense to my weirdo brain. Plus when I type things out, sometimes I remember them better. And… it’s just going to take doing it over and over to get used to it. Or… I know you can make your own keybindings, I wonder if you can change the mouse navigation buttons as well. There are a lot of weird angles, zooms and directionals for each mouse button. Practice… ugh.
I got partway through “2.9 – Viewport II – Moving, Rotating, and Scaling” when I realized I wasn’t paying attention. So many things around just moving actors (objects) in space, resizing them, etc. Plus really needing to probably take notes! I started up my spreadsheet for my version of commands.
And as odd as this sounds, I need to cut my nails down. I don’t know how people type with really long nails! I’m old style of swinging my fingers forward close to the keys and long nails catch on the edges. So, filing!
May 13:
Not much today, doing other stuff. Waited for my cool new mousepad to arrive:
May 15:
Still struggling with this whole thing. I ran across this video and watch this guy struggle in basically the same way I’ve been struggling. Or at least the main parts of getting really distracted by assets and such, rather than just knuckling down and doing the tutorial that he had. He managed to create a sort of something by the end of his time. But yeah, you gotta just sit down and pretty much do nothing else. He did list a bunch of the resources that he had tried out, so maybe I’ll take a look at them to see if they make better sense than the one I have. One I recognize off the bat, I’ve seen it around, but have never really dug into it. It’s 5 hours long on YouTube, and I rather like the class format on Udemy with broken up lessons, so not sure how I’d feel about watching a big video like that. But can’t hurt to have several options.
May 15 to 21:
So, you can see this is a big block of time and for my Unreal work, I was pretty much solely focused on this stupid issue I was having with “moving” actors. I started noticing some issues with the arrows and little grid box used for moving stuff around on the various axis points. The instructor’s arrows and box seemed fat and huge to me, while mine are pencil thin and barely visible. I spent A WHOLE DAMN WEEK trying to figure out how to fix this. Pouring over the Internets, asking the instructor, posting in the Unreal forums. The only thing possible was making the arrows longer. But the box didn’t change and there’s lines and dots in there I need to be able to grab. Plus my cursor turns into this tiny little fist to “grab”. Plus making the transform tool larger (which, again, only did the arrows on the Move and the Scale tools), actually made the Rotate widget GINORMOUS. Which is extra crazy making because it’s obvious that you CAN change the size of the tool widget, but apparently not for the other two tools in the set of three. GRRRRRR.
So, those two other widgets are almost unusable. And it’s very VERY frustrating. And it’s not just me, other questions out there on the Internets and the Unreal forums… no answers. Sigh. (I promise it’s way smaller on my screen than in this screen grab).
Tutorial Transform Move Tool
My Transform Move Tool
May 22:
But finally I figured I just had to plow ahead. So I sat down and got through “2.9 – Viewport II – Moving, Rotating, and Scaling”. Finally. It’s still a struggle, but at least for now, I can move a chair! Then on to “2.10 – Viewport III – Snapping” to learn how to snap an actor to a platform, another actor and a grid. And OF COURSE, I run into another issue… Where the hell is the “End” key on a Mac keyboard?! ARRRRGGGGH! Christ I am so tired of this….
However, I did find that Navigation around the viewport might possibly be easier without the separate mouse and seems to function better with the trackpad? Although then I’m not sure about the various commands that involve a mouse button and a keyboard key. And I kinda don’t know where a “middle mouse button/wheel” would be on a trackpad. Sigh. This has been a non-stop fight all the way. Along with my just wandering off to play a video game instead.
May 24 to 26:
KublaCon! Was away for KublCon, a big gaming convention down in the “South Bay” (Burlingame, near the SFO airport).
We were in some really great games, including a really interesting one called “Stealing Stories for the Devil“, which was unlike any sort of form I’d played before in an RPG. You play “Liars” who have the ability to alter reality by lying to it. Three types of Liars dealing with people, material objects, and past events. Say you have a locked door you need to get through (it’s a very heist based type game); you could lie to a guard and convince them they were supposed to give you the key, you could like to the lock itself and make it more brittle or old, you could like to the past making it so the guard forgot to fully lock the door. You come up with the scenario (where you’re heisting the object) together as a group. We came up with the “key” needing to be pulled out of this improbability zone (they are all over the planet) in order to basically turn it off, and where it was. Ours was in Japan, in a bullet train (shinkasen), that was the event space for a giant anime convention and the key was the first edition of “Samurai Teenage OK!” (all this made up). Then you run through the scenario with each crux of parts being a roll and a “lie”. You can work together to succeed. You can solutionize if rolls go sideways. With the improbability zone, people cosplaying and pokemon and all sorts were actually becoming real and it was wild and crazy. I had the idea to Lie to the past to have someone make a mistake stocking the alcohol bar with some sort of upper, and managed to roll double 10s (two d10s) which is essentially a perfect roll. Which meant that I ended up pretty much dosing the entire train with LSD. It was fabulous, bonkers, and the GM was really good. Definitely one to try again!
May 27:
So, back to it. Finished “2.10 – Viewport III – Snapping” even though I never found out what the “End” key was, nor when I looked in my settings that the key commands they gave me, did not work. GAH. But they had other options possible, even though they are much clumsier than just a key command.
Also finished “2.11 – Viewport IV – Different Ways to View Your Level”, which was just that, different types of views, like with or without the lighting, or just seeing the static meshes that everything is made up, etc.
May 30:
Life just really takes over. So many other things to do that I, well, really need to do. That always seem to take precedence. Plus my super distraction ability. Super powers!
Today I blew through the next few about the Content Browser, since I remembered more in this area. The Content Browser is basically where assets (library of stuff you can use) are found.
- 2.12 – Content Browser I – Overview and Finding Content: An overview of the Content Browser window, how to navigate around the folders and subfolders, how to make “collections” which are really cool ways to group and track assets by basically making an alias of the assets into an easy folder.
- 2.13 – Content Browser II – Adding, Importing, and Saving: This one was super short (just under 4 minutes). How to add new stuff, import and export into the editor and into other projects. I wanted to learn how to add something in from the Epic Marketplace (I got a cool demon warrior rooster character actor for Marty’s thing) but it didn’t cover that. So I didn’t get to try it. But HOPEFULLY, that’s an easy thing to do especially knowing how to import stuff now. Famous last words with this whole thing though…..
- 2.14 – Content Browser II – The Settings Menu: This just went through different settings for the Content Browser so you can choose what to see or not see.
- 2.15 – Content Browser IV – Content Browser Windows: This talked about how you can have multiple windows and how to find an asset globally (rather than looking inside a particular folder inside the Content Browser “drawer”). Of course I ran into another key command issue, “Control + P”. I do have a Control key but this wasn’t working. So I looked it up in the preferences list and it said “Command + P”, which did work. Huh, so Alt = Option, and maybe Control commands should be using Command?? Will have to see if this continues to be the trend. Again, not exactly having good faith here.
Then on to the next set, still in Section 2. Most of these last few were going through different options and settings.
- 2.16 – Details Panel I – Details Panel Interface: Basically going over the various information offerings that the Details Panel has. This is direct data and information on a selected actor. Stuff like its location, rotation and scale in X, Y, Z coordinates, and a bunch of data that makes absolutely no sense to me. And as a beginner, I would hope I never really need…. *gurgle*
- 2.17 – Details Panel II – The Transform Category: Like with the Transform Widget Tools (Move, Rotation, Scale), this can be done by changing the actual coordinate numbers for actors. Which apparently is far more “precise” than just using the mouse to drag the actor about the screen. This could be very tiny changes in these appearances. Honestly, this was a little bit confusing to me. However, there was a section about “mobility” in regards to static mesh actors that was interesting. If you turn on “movable”, you could have an actor that would be beholden to the physics engine. Ie, if you had a block that you could shoot and it would bounce around. If you turned off that setting, even with the physics turned on, the block wouldn’t move.
- 2.18 – Outliner: The Outliner is basically a big-ass list of all the actors in your level. You can search them, group them, rename them, all sorts of stuff. Basically an “outline” of what’s in the level and how to find it and organize them in a way that’s more useful than a ginormous list (if you have a ton of actors in one level or not).
Thus ends Section 2: The Level Editor. Whew. And as usual, “deadlines” are always what lights a fire under my ass. Except the fact that this time I’m pretty “behind” on my course. Not really going to catch up to where I would have wanted to be, which is with at least some of the demo game created.
And of course, now I have a “Zoom Movie” with our friends in SF, watching Mad Max: Fury Road in order to prepare to see the new Furiosa movie on Saturday. I’m supposed to be running a workshop on Saturday but as of yet, no one has signed up. So maybe the afternoon will be free. I will likely proceed with this project after “Yes You May”, and continue to report here.
Starting Section 3: Actors. Every time I think of “actor”, I think of the characters you plop in a game and run around as. But remember, an “Actor” in Unreal is pretty much anything you place in a level. This can be everything from the ground to furniture to characters that run around to the lights to atmosphere (like clouds or fog) to the player starting place.
- 3.19 – Static Meshes: Static meshes are basically 3D models of an object. If you were to strip off the “skin” of a meshed actor, it would just look like a bunch of connect-the-dots lines in a vague shape of whatever you were putting in. Static meshes don’t really animate, they are basically… static. If you want to animate, you use a “skeletal mesh” which apparently has parts of the mesh which could be made to move (animated). I had asked the creator of the demon chicken if the beak moved (having no idea about this stuff) and he said the jawbone could be made to animate. Hence, I would guess that character assets is a skeletal mesh? There was also a lot of information about how physics affect an actor and how different settings do different things. I admit my brain died a little on that part.
- 3.20 – Brushes: Meshes apparently are more complex and more efficient for memory and performances. But one could use Brushes for prototyping a level out. Kinda like 3D storyboarding, I guess. I was a bit confused by this lecture. But I gather you could make hollow shapes (a room with a doorway). However, I don’t know if these would be replaced with meshes or not? There was a lot of information in this one too, that made my brain melt. Especially around stairs and the various settings you can change for them.
- 3.21 – Materials: You can think of Materials as a “skin” you put on an actor to make it look like something particular. Mossy ground, or metallic sheen, or cobblestone, for example. There are textures, which are made up of separate images and smooshed together. I learned how to change the scaling of a material, like say a brick wall material, to make the bricks change size or stay the same no matter how you scale the actor. I was a bit confused, but I think he was saying it’s much easier to do this with a Brush than a Mesh.
- 3.22 – Lights: Lights are just another “actor” you put into the level. Apparently the Light Actor itself is basically an icon that generates the light. It’s not the object itself in the level. Ie, it’s not actual “flashlight” or “lamp” actor, that would be a mesh you’d plop down, and the Light Actor gets attached to that to generate the actual light. There are five types of Light Actors which detail different kinds, shapes, or directions of light, and plenty of ways you can change them.
Well, that’s it for me tonight. And pretty much for the month. I’ll need to update the second part of my project (which I barely did anything on), along with any overview conclusions.
Conclusion of the Unreal Engine 5 Project
Conclusion – How did it go, what happened, final results.
Well, I definitely struggled quite a bit with this project this month. It was a constant running into issues around using the program itself in terms of key commands, trying to translate from Windows to Mac, and even when learning where to find those key settings already set up for Mac, that they sometimes wouldn’t work. Plus my very high distractibility, and getting too sucked into the Biomutant game at times didn’t help much at all. And of course, I think I got more done in the last 24 hours than I did in the entire month. But that is also pretty much me in a nutshell. I seem to need those looming and hard deadlines to really focus and knuckle down.
But I also remembered more than I thought I did. Or at least the Content Browser stuff. Some of the deeper settings of how physics and the fine-tuning of coordinates work made my brains melt but I think I’m leaning too much into that as “I must know that NOW!”
Here are some screenshots of the “final” tester thing I was working on, learning how to move chairs and put on materials to change the surface. You can click on the picture to see a larger version.
Final “Tester” Bit, Full View
Final “Tester” Bit, Close View
Account Organization!
Here you can just jump through the Account Organization section.
- Account Organization Overview
- Account Organization Updates
- Conclusion to the Account Organization Project
Account Organization Overview of Project
Overview and Status – Scope and beginnings.
I have gotten to the point that my many Many MANY email accounts are also somehow attached to Google accounts and drives, Youtube accounts. I have thousands (I don’t even want to count) of unreal emails, newsletters, marketing emails across these, with too many accounts at who knows how many websites. I have stuff in those Google drives, uploaded videos on Youtube channels, but scattered seemingly randomly. I’ve lost access to at least one Drive that I haven’t been able to get back into (despite having the email and giving it a phone number to send a code too) and I don’t want that to happen again.
So I really need to go through these, try and make sure I have access to all the ones I can get into and create recovery options, sort, move, organize, and condense information, and start deleting things I don’t need anymore. I do eventually want to start moving all my yahoo emails over to my website hosted email accounts and get rid of Yahoo almost entirely. And part of that email project will be unsubscribing from newsletters, deleting those accounts on the vast Internets, and deleting emails themselves. Condensing stuff.
Updates on the Account Organization Project
Prior to May Start:
I’ve created a bunch of spreadsheets to track the various Yahoo email accounts and website hosted email accounts with a folder/sub-folder structure to track all the various emails, to track the Google Drives and what’s in them, the Youtube channels and what’s posted there. This gives me a better overview of what’s where and how to start approaching sorting the information, and what’s been deleted and fixed already.
May 1-13:
Not much going on with this particular project. It’s not the primary, so it’s not a huge hit to my sense of “success”. Although I do realize that I am super overwhelmed when I look at this. There is so much to do. And I often get very confused by where to start and I’m constantly flitting around trying to do this or that one and I can’t focus and so then I’m all over the place.
Conclusion of the Account Organization Project
Conclusion – How did it go, what happened, final results.
Wells, I didn’t get very far with this one. It wasn’t high priority in any case. Even though it’s sort of a thing that really REALLY needs to happen. Emails are up in the thousands of “Unreads” and probably are never going to be read, but I always get into this, “How do I know that’s true?” But, it kinda doesn’t matter, because I won’t be able to determine that until I go through them. A lot of them are “ads” anyway, after you sign up for that freebie…. well, inundation. It’s sort of another reason why I am loathe to market with newsletters. Although, I could just do newsletters. Hell, Marty does maybe one a month, if that. And it’s about depression and anxiety, his thoughts, and that’s it. I suppose I could do that. Maybe. Ugh.
Back To Account Organization Project Menu
Back To Main Project Menu
Overall Yes You May Conclusion!
Conclusion to overall event – How did the whole thing go?
Well, I think the main thing for me was that at least I got started on the Unreal Engine 5 project again. It’s super hard for me to focus on stuff as I have many things going on constantly. Granted, I kinda fell off the Unreal project after YYM ended. But at least it was a refresher. And I still want to be able to do it. Again, the focus thing is much more difficult to get through. ADHD loves all the juicy stuff, but is hell in trying to get any of those awesome things done. And it loves structure. I do far better when I have some structure around me, basically telling me what I need to be doing, and to sit down and do it. So these big accountability events I do pretty well with because of the general structure around me. Although I did get kinda sucked in by the Biomutant game and had a hard time pulling away from that and that wasted maybe half the month for the time I was supposed to be putting into the UE5 time.
For the Account Organization, since that was back-burner kind of stuff, I’m not too disappointed in the progress (or lack of) there. I knew I’d probably not get to a lot of that stuff. And I didn’t. But again, that’s ok. Maybe I need to take a smaller “bits and pieces” approach to the project. Like just one account/email folder a day.
Overall, I’m glad to have started up working with the Unreal Engine again. It would be great to figure out a way to approach the learning in smaller bites, like with the Account Organization. Something to mull on!
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