Rainbow Fiction

* Signed up for Coursera Plus, completed 52 courses and 10 specializations so far, with the grades between 90%-100%. Tech courses (AI, C++, Full stack development), creative courses (Music theory, music production, guitar, Ableton, Procreate) and even specifically game dev courses (Pixel Art for game development, Game design in Unity). I used to hate Unity, but now it starts to make sense.

* Released 3 games + 1 demo for the Unity course assignments (on my separate itch.io acc), I especially like how the 2D pixel art puzzle platformer turned out.

* Completed several music compositions, one even with lyrics, and I'm confidently using Ableton for my game soundtracks, though just mix & matching clips so far.

* Creatively reimagined some of Coursera programming assignments, such as the Used Spaceships Emporium (managed by anthropomorphic cats) full stack web app instead of boring Car Dealership, and Somniware Flora, a dream plant shop, instead of a boring Plants Nursery shop.

* Set up a daily journal in Obsidian, and wrote the AI-powered script that analyzes the last 3 weeks and sends me a motivational/encouraging email with suggested TODOs every morning. It can use different LLMs, I find Claude produces the best output. ChatGPT and Gemini are reasonably good but well behind.

* Wrote a script to upload the said journal to Google Docs as one file (it updates the doc with new content without reuploading from scratch), to be used in Google NotebookLM (to avoid the limitation of 50 files for free account ;) But NotebookLM doesn't have an API yet, so its use for my purposes is quite limited.

* Attended a language exchange event IRL, where I talked in Japanese with fellow self-learners. The conversation was basically a train wreck because everyone was a beginner, and no native speakers (there were for other languages) but it was incredibly fun, and boosted my motivation to the sky :) (But I didn't attend any more events like this because now I worry that it would be not as good...)

* Reached level 38 of Japanese on Duolingo. Completed Wagotabi, a fantastic Japanese-learning game (but now they have released new content so I'm playing again).

* Wrote a full stack photo browser app (Express/React/Electron) which shows photos from Tom's old phone in a convenient way with location info, and redirects to Google Maps (with street view) to show these exact locations.

* Set up Tom's computer as my creative workstation, with an external USB SSD, so I can run heavy stuff like Unity, Ableton and Photoshop without slowing the computer to a crawl. Getting more confident with Windows Terminal.

* Discovering the perks of Apple ecosystem (iPhone and iPad so far), OMG this is something... different! (Now I see why Tom appreciated it.) iPad with the keyboard is so much more convenient than the Android tablet. Everything is so slick and responsive and reliable, although a few apps don't work the way I'm used to because of Apple security.

* Reached level 73 in Pokemon Go. Currently 113km out of 200 for the walking challenge for level 74.

* Completed and posted a prompt table bingo challenge with 25 Pokemon-themed poems.