You asked for it

I know that about 100 people come to molecularjig.com per week, and I know that immune defense gets downloaded a lot on itch.io. However, I’m pretty sure nobody is reading my blog posts! Additionally, I really kind of hate writing blog posts which, quite predictably, has caused me to write fewer and fewer over the years…

A couple things have changed like now I’m an academic now, and I collaborate on playful/digital/game based communication tool with experts in a wide range of fields. So I’m learning new things about chemistry for example and this is a good place for me to store them.

The biggest change is that I’ve reached that purple hat stage of a woman’s life. All you women know what I mean. There was a meme (decades ago, before the internet even) … Google it! Anyway, what I mean to say is, I’m used to not saying what I think out loud and I’m just going to start doing it.

Finally, tonight I listened to the What Is Life podcast by Chris and Jinny and the topic was Anti-Perfectionism. Mike Choi. Mike said he started taking musical requests on twitch as a way of fighting against his perfectionist tendencies. He suggested, and I totally love the idea, that we should find little exercises to do to combat all of the various professional or personality flaws we have. Like for example if you feel you are an imposter, then perhaps you start blogging everyday and being a big old know it all.

So there you have it. Every day I’m going to spit out some little bit about what I’m doing. For example, this evening I started architecting the unity project I’m working on. I’m creating a simulation of acids and bases in water and building a game around this little sim. I finally sat down today and thought about what kind of calculations I’m going to need to do. In particular, I’m wondering how many water molecules am I going to need to simulate? So today I looked up what exactly is the formula for pH, it was so simple of course I had no face that I remembered it appropriately. All I want to say tonight is that I found a really nice website that really explains science and math really nicely. I mean it’s written for adults and it’s written succinctly and clearly. The website is thoughtco.com. it’s ideal for somebody who’s like say a game designer and needs to look up the formula for pH. Or some kind of legal principle or social science idea you get the idea.

So if you’re into science communication, or you love reading about science my tip for today is thoughtco.com.

Now I’m going to start playing the Unnamed Goose game, because I’m really up to date with my game playing! I just died playing the longing and I really need something uplifting!

Posted in Game Design and Development

4 comments on “You asked for it
  1. Baytars says:

    Good to hear from you again after a long while, Melanie. Sound like you are building a chemical reaction game, right? There’s a good database that provide you with the biological formulae – Reactome. It will be fun traveling through the cell and making reactions!

    • Melanie says:

      Thanks! I will check out Reactome. Have you heard of a game engine called Construct3? It isn’t free but it might be what you are looking for.

      • Baytars says:

        Thanks for your recommendation. If you have a good game mechanism you can code with any programming language. I am currently looking for more of a good game mechanism and less of a suitable game engine. I can’t have players hanging around the cell and doing nothing but errands of biochemical synthesis.
        Looking at the metabolic pathway map on http://www.metabolic-pathway.com/fullMap.html, you can view the metabolic pathway as a complex railway system where Tricarboxylic Acid Cycle is the transportation hub of all kind. It may be fun traveling from “station” to “station” and see the reactions taking place outside the “window”. This is part of the mechanism I can think of.

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