Welcome to The Brain Dump, a series where my archive of brain farts are cataloged and then flushed for the amusement of no one and the benefit of my mind colon.

For 5 years I’ve kept a notepad on my phone, and every time I come up with an idea for a project, be it something artistic, practical, or otherwise, I wrote it down. Sometimes I would post several a day for a week; other times I’d go over a month without coming up with anything. The full list is several hundred items long at this point. It would take several lifetimes to complete each project, and many of them need significant fleshing out to be understood.

In this series, I will attempt to organize these brain dumps and write a paragraph or two about the most interesting ones. This is a significant janitorial undertaking and the toilet is likely to clog multiple times along the way.

Section 1: Essays & Articles

This is the most straightforward section. This is a massive list of things I would write if I had time. Long before I joined DFO, I had been writing in a private blog just for me called The Task Bin, so maybe the largest category of brain dumps I’ve had are ideas for essays and articles. Here’s the raw list:

• If I had to choose between exploring task bin topics or playing video/board/card games, which wins and why?
• Why I stopped watching TV shows in favor of NLSS crew content
• Takeaways from the values/vote with your wallet conversations with Bob
• The Power of Now and why I am pissed at ST for ‘outpacing’ me
• Try making a bucket list, see how long it gets
• Explore whether or not I even know what I want to do in life anymore. Short term yes, long term
• maybe, career path not really
• What it’s like to have made it back to Denver and being post-nostalgia
• Describe being nostalgic for the present
• What I retained from my undergraduate coursework
• Final thoughts on Mistborn, Demon Cycle, and other fiction I read this year
• Thinking of excess bodyweight as debt, calories as dollars
• Why it’s almost more fun to acquire games than to play them
• Pokemon go and the importance of blending digital and natural worlds
• Airports are a celebration of diversity. Out at least a showcase for it.
• Pratchett, Wilder, and satire
• Movie reviews that are just a list of seminonsequitors that are still related to the movie. Actor, genre, similar movie, two words description, etc
• Prepare interview questions and story promos for interviews with Dad
• Year-end post on Blogin: what did I try, how far did I get, what did I finish, and what did I learn? And what’s next?
• All the new programs I’ve touched lately: emulators, gamemaker, rpg maker, ardour(?) music, billquick, audition, obs, midi, smartsheet, Reddit…
• Top ten Reddit finds so far
• Dream about visiting ancient Rome, and how I would survive
• Write about the experience of working on a factorio map with NJB
• Show off NJB CD reviews
• Reaction to Jon Bois’ 17776
• Thoughts on how automation should work
• Work on selling the bassoon. How to make that project post-worthy?
• Thoughts on management, efficiency, elegant solutions and the business of improvement
• Enjoying the alchemy of bartending
• Thinking about how people end up living in super rural homes, but who aren’t farmers
• The packrat tradition and American consumerism through the millennial generation’s lens
• why thoughts and projects are worth exploring
• How has the connotative definition of legacy changed in the digital age?
• What makes a career attractive, and how long can the attraction last? How is a career like a marriage?
• The oddness of being a millenial who got married young, and the concept of the starter marriage
• What makes a goal important enough to justify the sacrifice and years of time commitment needed to achieve it?
• The TaskBin and why it failed
• Jerry Mander Games
• 10 Years of watching the same streamer every day – Northernlion and how streaming, not podcasting, is my generation’s radioVisual Design Ideas
• Describe the tascalendar
• Can I name every movie and show I’ve ever finished?
• My Weird Resume

Section 2: Book Ideas

This section is similar to the above, but the scope of the idea is too large for a single essay or article. I’ve started a couple of these and want to flesh them out.

• The Companion – self-education: start outlining!
• Essay collection where each chapter is from one city I’ve lived in
• Essay collection where each chapter is one video game obsession, told in context of its time
• Essay collection sectioned by which pet I had at the time
• Essay collection where each chapter is one burned CD a friend has made me – might be too many….34?
• Oops I’m Diabetic! or, how I finally filed for divorce from food
• Parenting columns I would have written if I had been able to have kids
• Track my tastes in music, food, movies, etc. through time
• the WalMart cookbook
• Take another look at short stories as a medium for my own fiction ideas – I can create good plot lines but struggle to put meat on the bones
• What about a series of short stories about a food critic who talks about eccentric characters in the restaurants he visits instead of about the food

Section 3: Video Games & Board Games

I’ve been designing board games for years. Some of them are finished and I’ll write up a thing about those ones as part of this series. Far more common though are ideas for games that I want to make but would need to learn another skill or dedicate a chunk of time and money to get them rolling.

Video Games

• Sweet Spot Football Management – a PFC-style football team manager game that stakes the middle ground between PFC and Front Office Football
• Idea for FE rom hack – game begins with a party or gathering and you walk around talking to all possible party members. You can tell them to join you but you can only take a certain number. This way you start with your desired but restricted party and don’t have to worry about recruiting anybody except maybe some stage bosses – Fire Emblem Ultra
• Five Rings Online
• Heroscape Online
• Mage Wars Online
• Pixel Art
• Princess Maker’ but for a supervillain
• Travel agent simulator

Board Games

• Game where you curry favor with Cardinals to try and become Pope
• Game of politics where you buy and sell favors
• A game where you buy the loyalty of your opponents’ underlings in an attempt to remove them from power.
• Game called power generation where armies of metal bands fight each other with awesome music magic. My lead guitarist has plus 2 to shredding, and he blows a guy’s arm off with his riff
• force awakens beginner storytelling game
• Photosynthesis by blue orange
• Mech warrior
• Rick and Morty deck building game
• Legend of the 5 rings (look for digital cards)
• Exit/Unlock escape room games
• Ryan Laukat’s Near and Far storytelling game
• Breaking Out prison break board game – What ways can you escape? What kinds of rules are there? What actions can characters and guards take? What kinds of items are there and what do they do? Maybe remove items to simplify, instead have equipment in decks and build character like munchkin
• 40Kemet
• Heroscape Customs
• HS:GO
• The Power Generation
• Tricks of the Trade – Enron Game
• Game Concept Generator
• Breaking Out
• Tilled
• That game where you play as a clothing designer, kind of like project runway
• Settlement game inspired by driving east of DIA, with corn fields next to sunflowers and poorly paved roads but a great view, right on the outskirts of a big city
• MOBA city-builder tabletop game that uses huge pieces and is played on a full-size table
• decision-maker for WWII, decide through time how to act in three theatres of the war

Section 4: Sports Stuff

Yeah yeah, I could’ve put these in the Essays & Articles section. But that thing is long as hell and technically I could write an essay or article about basically anything on this entire list. Instead of clumping these in with that section, they’ll live here. There’s just gonna be some overlap here an there, ok?

Football

It’s no secret I’m a big NFL fan. I’d made and overseen production on a lot of football content. Surprisingly there aren’t a ton of entries here, but some of them sound pretty interesting.

• Futuristic nfl with microchipped balls tracked electronically to show throw speed, whether or not touchdowns or 1st downs are achieved, monitor ball pressure, et cetera. all-22 footage replaced by vr enabled practice fields – coaches watch the footage as it plays out around them.
• What I learned about underdog stories by watching Trevor Siemian
• Sports memories – my history with sports and how I started watching football
• The ManningCast: MST3k, but football games this time
• Shitposting: A History
• Stupid Rule Changes
• Inside the Memer’s Studio
• How to Watch Football for Dummies
• power ranking blurbs, but fucked up

Olympics

If I could only choose category of media to consume for the rest of my life, it would be Olympics coverage. Similar to why I fell in love with the NFL, the stories that the Olympics generate are so human, deep, and unexpected. I’ve got a lot to say about the Olympics, to the point where I used to write a column called The Olympic Hangover; many of the entries below were intended to be developed for that series.

• Why I like the summer Olympics so much more than the winter Olympics
• Bruce Jenner an example of an Olympian who survived a “scandal”
• Simone Biles & Mental Fortitude (multiple ways: choosing not to continue performing at olympics, composure under pressure on and off the mat, etc)
• Lily King – grace in defeat
• Tony Hawk at the olympics
• Adam Peaty and legacy
• The Media Totally Sucks – Athletes on a Pedestal
• ROC Men’s Gymnastics – Antony’s Achilles Injury
• Hong Kong and Athletiv vs National Identity
• Surfing the Storm
• Yes, Table Tennis is Cool – Belittled Olympic Sports
• Tokyo 2020 Hype – This Olympics is for Women
• Tokyo 2020 Yipes – The Covid Story….
• Culture Clash – Titmus’ Trainer Humps Glass
• Tom Daley is Gay
• The Opening Ceremony is for Drones
• The Post-Hero Era
• Women’s Road Cycling’s Lone Wolf – Austria’s Anna Kiesenhofer Goes Her Own Way
• Weird Olympics – Nope, There’s Never Been A Normal One
• Olympics and Nationalism
• World Record Progressions – High Jump, Javelin, Mens 4/100 Relay
• Usain Bolt and Olympic Integrity
• No False Moves – Olympic Scandals and the Impossibility of Redemption
• Politics in the Olympic Games Part 1 – People =/= Countries
• Changing the Sport Part 1 – Phelps’ Rio Silver and What it Represents

Section 5: Education & Research

Most kids want to be firefighters, police officers, movie stars, or veterinarians when they’re little. I wanted to write a parenting column in a magazine. This evolved into a whole wacky fractal of interest in psychology, early childhood development, personality research, and educational philosophy. These entries are the result of that 25 year passion. Some of these have been started and I’m certain I’ll end up digging into a few during this series.

Education

• Tutorialize my brainstorming exercises
• Revisit my scheduling methodologies and tutorialize them
• The business of improvement
• My personal rulebook for life (basic rules, action, success, decision making, values, ideals, desires, feelings and how they’re related
• Formalize the JLF rules
  1. First thing’s first, one step at a time
  2. Two sets of eyes on everything
  3. Categorize, Prioritize, Realize
  4. Consistency + Predictability = Reliability + Trust
  5. Everything Happens For a Reason (determinism)
• Why I still think digital homeschooling can work and how my opinion changed after covid

Research

• Research results – Learning about Learning
• Research ‘tutorial’ tutorials
• Study the design, layout, and writing style of textbooks (for the companion)
• Research big clipper guards online and maybe custom guards too
• how hard to brand and patent?
• The Effect of No Child Left Behind on Teaching Styles – finish project
• Explain and find more examples of analogs like nails:wood::staples:paper

The Personality Project

• Write down everything I can remember that my sister and I discussed in Austin
• Cognitive Psychology vs the role of emotion in personality development
• Rescue and brush up my high school critical development period research and thoughts

Section 6: Movies, TV, Stage/Screenplays, Musicals, Music, and Visual Art

Hell of a section title but it’ll save us from having a dozen sections or more. I’ve dipped my toe into an unreasonable number of creative pursuits. I founded and ran a film company, spent years in a community theater, made music with different bands at different times in my life, and though I’ve never been good at it, I’ve always wanted to develop more skill as a visual artist.

Movies & TV

• CrashCourse-style YT series for making good educators, audience is young parents interested in homeschooling. Animated instead of on camera? Or make a set and use the Canon? First episode would be expectation-setting and impress upon the audience the importance and seriousness of education, “beware ye who enter here” kind of message/tone, but also “you CAN do this if you are committed”
• Political show called Cato for Congress? William Cato (R) is a misfit politician who rails against the modern Tammany Hall while running for Congressional office in Colorado – anti-hero, viewers get excited when he makes a moral decision instead of the politically advantageous one. Like a more marketable John McCain?
• Como Community Film
  • The First 3 Movies
  • Doing Commercials
  • Promo Videos
    • Dirty Kanza Profile
  • Tony’s Movies
  • The End of the Experiment

Stage/Screenplays, Musicals

• Growing Home
• The New Guy
• History of the Bible Part 1
• History of the Bible Part 2
• How It Ended
• Murder Mystery on the WNL Express

Music

• Composing with SH
• Sibelius
• ADHD Beatboxing and learning Garage Band
• Singing for 11 Hours, the Rock Band Marathon
• Writing music with David
• Performing in languages I don’t speak
• My sister and her fling with Post Malone
• Writing songs for fake bands – Liquid Proximity, Denny and the Rabble Rousers
• Writing a song called baby’s back on board
• Project playlist, the song matrix, and the synergy machine
• Pair retro game footage with rap/r&b tracks
• why I don’t listen to music anymore
• what it was like to play 11 instruments
• why BNL is my favorite band
• my live concert uniform
• why I dance at weddings

Visual Art

• Plot map for Enderverse
• Infographic about shareholder negative feedback loop
• Put together an outline for biography interview questions, structure, and procedure
• Obama eating ice cream, if I’ve still got the photos.
• Visual history of junk food
• Explore and show off Denver’s neighborhoods and suburbs with a series of graphics
• Use the contour of the Rocky Mountains for a graphic or project
• Study the BJ’s Brewhouse beer labels and try to emulate them
• Define my sense of style in a visual way, from clothes to architecture to art – vision board?
• Attempt to create ‘decision game’ flowcharts
• Weight loss tracking project with timeline and graph of effort vs. reward (with projection)
• NLSS – The Movie castings
• Stupid Watergate media package

Section 7: SLN Stuff

Once upon the time I wrote for a Canadian college’s indie gaming and culture e-zine. No, I’m not Canadian, and no I didn’t go to their school. They needed content and if it isn’t alarmingly clear at this point, my brain vomits topics for content creation. I wrote articles for them about games and culture, and then wrote some specific game reviews. If there’s room for it someday, I want to take a bunch of these and turn them into a larger Thing, like a collection but regurgitated into something more creative and entertaining. The reason they’re here is because I started keeping my ‘brain dump’ notepad as a way to capture ideas for what I wanted to write on SLN. That being the case, these are the oldest entries I have.

Gaming Culture

• SLN Archives – Which Controller Reigns Supreme?
• SLN Archives – Where Did Our Peripherals Go?
• SLN Archives – What Happened, Wii U?
• SLN Archives – Good/Bad/Ugly: TV and Movie Games
• SLN Archives – The Perfect Gaming Space
• SLN Archives – The Joy of Open Worlds
• SLN Archives – Spotlight on Steam Indie Titles
• SLN Archives – Speedrunners
• SLN Archives – The State of Simulator Games
• SLN Archives – Say Goodbye, Nintendo WiFi (March 2014)
• SLN Archives – Project Zomboid
• SLN Archives – Pimp My Desk
• SLN Archives – Let’s Talk Next Gen Shooters (Xbox One/PS4 Launch)
• SLN Archives – Hidden Treasure: 5 Games With Amazing Price Tags
• SLN Archives – Gamer Bars
• SLN Archives – Kerbal Space Program
• SLN Archives – FTL
• SLN Archives – Can Budget Make the Difference?
• SLN Archives – Attending a Midnight Release
• SLN Archives – Art Style vs Cutting-Edge Graphics
• SLN Archives – Are You a Binge Gamer?

Game Reviews

• Rehab Review – Reigns
• Rehab Review – Okhlos
• Rehab Review – Knights of Pen and Paper
• Rehab Review – Lord Mayor

Section 8: Travel

I’ve traveled a little bit, and moved house A LOT (21 times). I also really enjoy coming up with vacation or travel ideas and planning them out.

• The Japan Trip I’ve been planning for 5 years
• Map out all my major road trips and places I’ve lived/stayed for info graphic
• Make a cool trip planning tool
• The Amazing Race Vacation I Planned
• Oxford semester vs OpenArchive Program

Section 9: DIY (Home, Automotive, And Misc)

I’ve never been good with tools, but I’ve wanted to be! These are project ideas centered around what I’m most interested in doing with my hands.

Home

• Cyber cabin design plan!
• How hard would it be to make my own tools and screws, etc?
• Brainstorm cyber cabin features
• tiny house vs. 3 car garage framed for expansion vs. motorhome/rv

Automotive

• How do you build a custom car?Talk about the cars? ACD Festival?
• Develop ACD digital project – reach out to Levine for photos and schematics?
• Best cars for first time restorers or DIY mechanics?
• Post about how working on cars is like working on computers

Misc

• Make a piece of furniture, a pair of shoes, custom headphones
• Designing my own suit
• 3D resin printing & founding the 3D printing club in college

If You Just Read All That, I’m Sorry – Now, What’s Next?

Yeah, I know it’s a lot. But it’s only about 20% of the entries in the brain dumps from the last five years so I’m happy to have it this pared down. 

Now that I’ve categorized the ideas pretty well, I can see that some of them are going to mesh well into compound projects, while some might need to be stand-alone mini-projects. It should be noted that I have no idea what the regular schedule will be yet, but there are a few ways I want to move forward with this series:

Best-Of Boil-Downs

Some entries in this series will be cherry-picked ideas from this list or from new additions to my brain dump notepad. I’ll pick a small handful of entries, write a paragraph or two explaining the idea and showing anything I might have started, and move to the next thing. I think this would be pretty entertaining to write and to read, and might help me identify items for the next aspect of this series:

Individual Projects – Progress Mini-Series

At some point I’ll latch on to a single idea and want to take it all the way to the finish line. When that happens, I’ll post a mini-series on my progress and experience trying to finish the project. Since some of these will undoubtedly have long timelines, these mini-series updates may be scattered randomly on the calendar in between boil-downs.

Finished Project Look-Back Diaries

Of the entries I listed here, I’ve finished about 10% of them. That said, I never documented my process for any of them as I worked on them. I’ve got a decent memory and plenty of working documentation on almost everything I’ve completed, so I want to generate these look-back diary entries for at least a few projects.

Fresh, Steamy Brain Dumps

I stopped adding to my brain dump notepad during week 5 of this year’s NFL season because I was focusing on writing my Power Rankings Blurbs for r/NFL. I’m almost done with that series now, and I’m finally over my bout of covid, so it’s time for me to pick this practice back up. Either monthly or quarterly, I’ll post the fresh brain dump entries as updates to this series.

A Shoehorned Conclusion

If you actually read that whole thing, thank you, I’m sorry, and what ideas were the most interesting to you? I’m really curious what other people think of all this because I’ve never showed it to anybody except for the final products that got published. Do you have lists like this? Am I a lunatic for holding onto all these ideas?

Working this series will be the largest scale endeavor I’ve embarked on since the mid 2010’s, and I’m looking forward to it. Fingers crossed that there’s interest out there to see it done, because writing this plan up was my equivalent of jumping out of an airplane without a parachute.

Later,

~A_D