Running Time: The Man in the High Castle

Specifically, season 1, episodes 1 and 2.  The introductory episode runs 61 minutes, while the second brings you back to even with 59.  I watched "The New World," episode 1, in two runs on the same day; 30 minutes in the morning, wanted to see the rest enough to watch during another three mile run late that afternoon.  Episode 2, "Sunrise," was also a two-run view, but it was forty minutes in the first run and just a two mile finisher the next day.

(I also watched Episode 3 while sitting on the couch one night this week.  The whole series doesn't have to be viewed from a treadmill.)

I'm loving this.  I've been a big fan of Philip K. Dick for years, and The Man in the High Castle was one of my favorite of his novels.  Despite that, I'm pretty certain this is going to be one of those rare occasions where I find the film better than the written story.  Sacrilege, I know, but it happens.  Face it, Bladerunner was a much better film (and comprehensible story) than Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was a book. 

The quick synopsis: it's 1962 and the Allies did not win World War Two.  The Pacific States of America are occupied by Japan, the eastern seaboard is under control of the Reich, and a thin band of mountain and desert states in between are an uneasily free Neutral Zone.  Although people have settled somewhat into a new way of life, tension is already mounting between Germany and Japan, with heavy foreboding that Hitler's death will result in new conflict as Germany completes its quest for global dominance. 

Add in an American resistance network and you've got a great background for very compelling stories, not the least of which is the Man himself.  The Man in the High Castle is a semi-mythic figure who's distributing film -- newsreel footage which shows an alternate history of the Allies winning the war. 

It's not the same story as the Philip K. Dick novel.  IMDB's message board is full of purists and trolls bitching about how different the story is, or nitpicking the least essential details in an effort to show off to the one or two other people who care.  (It's called "film adaptation," kiddos.)  So far it's a great show, though, and pleasantly surprising from a production point of view; I didn't know Amazon Studios had this good of filmmaking in them.  Go figure.

Running Time: Across the Pacific

First full movie I've watched while running.  Obviously I'm running on the treadmill, because who wants to carry a 55" screen with them on a job outside?  In the past I've always listened to music while running and if I'm on the treadmill I'll try to find something on TV that can distract me visually, but I realized I was putting too much time into looking for the right kind of movie for visual only, and since I'm most often running in the morning there are no hockey or football games on.

I'm a very devoted Bogart fan and I hadn't yet watched cross The Pacific o I took in the full hour and forty minutes in three running sessions, two 30 minute runs and a forty.  Since I do longer runs at 6 mph, you can do the math and figure out that it's a 10 mile movie.

Let's start with the irony, because I love irony: though the vast majority of the film takes place on a boat, they never actually go across the Pacific.  The boat sets sail from Halifax, travels down the Atlantic coast, and the story ends just shy of the Panama Canal.  Yeah.  No Pacific at all.

But wait!  Perhaps "across the Pacific" refers to the imminent threat of Japanese invasion?  The story takes place shortly before the attack on Pearl Harbor (Bogart film, remember?  It has to be set somewhere around WWII) and the boat upon which Bogie, Sydney Greenstreet and Mary Astor are sailing is a Japanese cargo boat with limited passenger space.  In fact, it's pretty much limited to just enough passengers for this story.

Across the Pacific doesn't have the emotional depth of Casablanca, but it definitely has a bit deeper/more complex story than the typical Bogart movie.  Not that the plot is complex as, say, The Usual Suspects or L.A. Confidential.  Again, it's a Bogart/John Huston movie; there's no such thing as a subplot.  It's more that the backstories for the characters have a bit of depth that's more common in more recent movies.  Also, this is one of the better mysteries among my Bogart collection -- rather than the "will he or won't he?" question of Casablanca (the greatest film ever made) you spend a great deal of the movie trying to figure out exactly what happened in Rick's (Bogart) background and whether Alberta (Astor) is just along for the ride or if there's more going on with her.

The dialogue's as witty as ever.  Huston and Bogart always seem to have great dialogue written no matter who they enlist to scribe.  Likewise, Bogie and Mary Astor are fantastic together.  Their fun interchanges are Bogie at his best, and she's right on par with him. 

Sydney Greenstreet's character, Dr. Lorenz, is also interesting from an historical point of view.  On the one hand, Dr. Lorenz is one of the earliest film characters I'm aware of who professes an adopted identity with a significantly different culture (the Japanese).  On the other hand, while describing the beauty of some of the Japanese traditions and way of life he simultaneously manages to expose unabashed racism through condescending general comments, such as, "they make excellent servants." 

1942.  Take the historical context and move along.

It's an excellent movie.  I'd place it in the top tier of Bogart films, not one of the many Bogie filler material you find in the rest of the catalog.  Next time you're on a ten mile run you should give it a try.

Cheesey Chicken and Shrimp Soup

No, I don't plan on sharing recipes on a regular basis.  However, I'm very proud of myself.  This is the first time that I've significantly altered a recipe to the point where I feel like I made my own.  Other than making sushi.  I've been making my own weird sushi combinations for years.

Ingredients

5 oz chicken
2.5 oz shrimp
2 T butter
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped bell pepper
A lot of garlic powder
1 tsp ground cumin
4 cups chicken broth stock
8 oz light cream cheese
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
5 oz chicken
2.5 oz shrimp

Directions

1. Pre-cook the chicken and the shrimp. The original recipe has you cooking these in the broth, but I was splitting these between multiple people in different food formats, so pre-cooking was easier. That's also why I ended up with 5 ounces of chicken.
2. Cut the chicken and shrimp both to 1/4" to 1/2" chunks and set aside.
3. Melt the butter in a large sauce pan, medium heat. By large I mean, "Everything's going to be in here by the time we're done, so make it big."
4. Toss the onions in and let them cook a bit.
5. Add the garlic powder, the bell peppers, and the cumin. Then add more garlic powder. Stir all of this stuff for about five minutes, adding more garlic powder until your entire downstairs smells like sautéed garlic. Yum.
6. Stir in the chicken broth. Add some salt and pepper if you like, or possibly more garlic. Oh, yeah. Bring it to a boil, then reduce the heat and let the whole thing simmer.
7. Add the chicken and shrimp. Since I already cooked these I didn't have to wait for them to cook now. If you didn't cook them already, you need to let them cook. Guessing about 10 minutes for the chicken to cook thoroughly. I can't stand the thought of raw chicken, so I regularly take pieces out and cut them in half to check for thorough cooking. Then, when you're eating later, it seems like you have more chicken.
8. Add the cream cheese chunks. It'll start to melt, but breaks up even better if you stir it with a whisk. I know, the whisk is really a pain in the ass to clean correctly, but it's the right tool for the job. Deal with it.
9. Add the cheddar cheese. Keep stirring. You want the cream cheese to break up and everything to mix together nicely.
10. Serve. I divided it into fourths, since according to my counting that gives me serving sizes of 500 calories and 3g of carbs. Also, that was just the right amount to fit in one of my dinner bowls. Go figure.

Nutrition Info

I think I got this right, but there's certainly some variance online about the calories and carbs in each item, so there's room for some error…

Best Laid Plans...

I thought I'd take a day off from running today.  Since I finally decided back in September that I was tired of being overweight (really, truly, completely tired of it this time.  Really.) I've been doing two things: keto diet and getting cardio exercise at least five of every seven days.  (That's right.  A perfect five out of seven.) 

Normally I alternate running: HIIT one day versus a steady pace the next, trying to keep my heart rate in a particular zone.  I also alternate between the treadmill, the track at the gym, and the great outdoors.  Every once in a while I take a day off just to give my knees and feet a break, make sure everything's still functioning the way it should.  Today was going to be one of those days, but by round two (i.e., 15:15 CST, when the second round of football games starts) I was feeling seriously sluggish, and eventually I did this:

That's the second quarter of the Giants-Packers game, minus the first minute I missed while finding my Zune.  (Probably seemed like a lot longer for Eli Manning, especially while he watched Timmons run 58 yards after picking him off at the goal line.)

So, yeah.  Planned zero miles, ran four.  When I say I have a plan, I mean I have a hand drawn roadmap.  And when I say I have a roadmap, I mean I have a route in mind.  And when I say I have a route in mind, I actually just have a destination, and that destination was probably a whim that seemed like a good idea at the time.  But at least I'm going somewhere, and the Giants lost.  Double score!

Organized Resistance

One of the guys at the Fort Worth Library Panther Lab Maker Space recently showed off a very cool method of storing the resistors in his electronics supplies.  He uses a sewing kit with an array of small, individual boxes which close securely, one box for each size resistor(For the uninitiated, those plastic boxes with "configurable" compartments are terrible for electronic parts.  The walls are never flush to the bottom of the box, so whenever you pick it up stuff slides beneath walls and gets all mixed up.)

I scoured the sewing stores nearby but couldn't find the same organizer.  Merry picked up some clearance fabric, but that wasn't really in the success criteria for the mission.  I did find those storage systems on Amazon but they were over $50.  I didn't want to pay that and wait two days for shipping when I could design my own solution and, well, wait two days for it to print.

I had these plastic test tubes (okay, they're pin holders, but "test tube" sounds more technical) and decided to build a rack that could organize them.  First step was a single rack, modeled in OpenSCAD.  Couple of key criteria: first, the seat at the bottom and the collar slightly above needed to hold the tube in place when turned vertically, yet the collar has to be low enough that the tube can tilt and be extracted even when there's a row above.  Second, I needed enough space for my fat fingers to get hold of these things.  And third, I want to be able to connect any number of holders to accommodate whatever size box I find for them.

I did make a 5-holder version once I was happy with the single.  It's pretty easy in OpenSCAD; there's a module for a single holder.  Call that module five times with a few translate tatements and you're good to go.

The connector holes are 2mm diameter, so the knobs on the connector straps are slightly smaller -- 9.25mm at the base and 9mm at the tip.  (The width of the strap is also a pressure fit, since the recess is 10mm wide and the strap itself is 10mm wide.  Yeah, probably should have made the strap just a tad more narrow, but hey -- it pressure fits.)

Next step, of course, is to find or print a box to carry these in, or perhaps print something to mount them on the wall in the electronics lab/office/game room.

Here's the Thingiverse link for anyone interested in printing their own.

It's Not The Heat...

I used to keep eight or ten of my 3D printer filament reels on the pipe framework I built around the table, partly because it's convenient to have them handy there and partly because I think it looks cool.  However, this summer I read a number of pretty convincing arguments regarding how quickly filament can suck trace moisture out of the air.  This can cause problems with inconsistent filament feed while printing, so I decided to try a different storage route. 

Underneath the table I know have some large plastic bins -- each one cost about $6 and can hold ten spools.  That leaves just enough room for one of those nifty water absorption thingies; they cost a couple of bucks each, you put them in a humid area such as a laundry room or North Carolina, and they draw the moisture out of the air via these magical pellets that you shouldn't eat. 

I really didn't expect to have a whole lot of moisture in a plastic box in my office, so I was pretty surprised when I checked one of the absorption things after four months.  Shook the container and heard the slosh slosh slosh -- more water than pellets in there.  Go figure.  If that much humidity was available inside the bin, apparently my totally exposed filament reels have been sucking up a lot of water previously.

As long as I'm posting pictures of the table, I'll point out that it was the first major improvement made to my printer.  Yeah, everyone else likes to replace the motors and bearings with some super-high efficiency versions they stole from ARGUS or swap out the nozzles for premium heads they made by melting down Wolverine's bones, but the table is without a doubt the best upgrade I've made.  When I first bought the printer I had it sitting on a card table and the entire table would sway during printing.  Building a solid table with 4x4's for legs took care of that, plus provided a platform for those 1/2" pipes to hold the reels.  But now that I've decided to keep the filament dry, I'll have to find something else worthwhile for the scaffolding.

The Most Useful Thing...

There are quite a few standard questions you get asked when people find out you do 3D printing.  The most frequent is probably "Could you 3D print a gun?"  (The answer is yes, of course you can, but the follow up is no, I have no interest in doing so.)  I think the second most common is, "Did you see the video about that guy who built the massive 3D printer and made a cement castle for his daughters?"  Yes.  I did see that video.  That guy's cool.  And he built his own ginormous 3D printer which extrudes cement.  I successfully assembled a daybed from IKEA on the first try, so I'd say we're even.

One of the most insightful questions I get asked is, "What's the most useful thing you'd 3D printed?"  That's a good question.  It's really fun printing models of D&D creatures, jungle gyms for my praying mantises, or a new emblem for the front of my Canyonero, but useful -- that's getting into territory which makes the printer more than a toy.

I can think of a few truly useful things I've printed.  The E*nable hands come to mind, of course.  For someone without a hand, a 3D printed hand is pretty, well, handy.  Lego Minecraft daylight sensors and redstone lanterns. They're mostly décor, but do serve a purpose and were good practice for more complex electronics projects.  Business card boxes, playing card boxes, and special occasion heart boxes, all very practical. 

But here's the object that gets everyday use.  Every single day.  Almost 24/7, as a matter of fact: the glow in the dark robe hook. 

It's one of the very first things I modeled myself.  If you're thinking that the rudimentary shape was a product of being new to 3D modeling and that I've gotten better over time, you're half right.  I'm no better at elegant visual design now than I was four years ago, nor thirty years ago, for that matter.  Apparently graphic art is not a skill that just develops naturally with age.  But that's ok, because this hook has function.  Two functions, in fact.  It holds my bathrobe conveniently close to my bed, and it glows in the dark.  Enough of the hook shows that I can find my robe in the middle of the night, and I can easily hang it back up again without turning on a lamp. 

And there you have it.  I've capitalized on decades of electronic development by producing a hook upon which I can hang my clothing and locate it in the dark.  You're welcome, Technology.

Octalysis, Suicide, and Ready Player One

I'm about 75% of the way through Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, which is a fantastic read, whether you're interested in gamification, 80's culture, cyberpunk, or just outright enjoyable storytelling.  Quick background: the year is 2044 and Earth is a shambles.  Most people spend a huge portion of their time in the OASIS, a virtual reality simulation that has essentially replaced Internet.  For many people, OASIS has almost replaced reality.

The crux of the story is a competition: be the first to solve a series of puzzles and unlock the hidden gates and you'll inherit the billions of dollars estate left by OASIS creator James Halliday.  A megacorporation which wants to own the OASIS has an army of players (referred to as "Sixers") using all manner of nefarious methods to win the contest and claim OASIS for itself.  They'll even murder the real-life contestants to stay ahead. 

The traditional players, many of whom grew up in the virtual environment, are referred to as "gunters."  Though they all enter the contest with a primary goal of winning the money (CD4: Ownership) they quickly develop an even higher purpose: protect the prize from the Sixers and keep the OASIS free.  (CD1: Epic Meaning.)  It's the old story of "don't sell out to The Man" magnified a million times, and with the twist that The Man is willing to cheat, steal and kill to win.

What fascinated me at this point in the book is the depth to which the main character (and he's not alone) has become immersed in his Epic Meaning attachment.  In fact, by the 75% mark (damn you, Amazon, for not having page numbers) Parzival's motivation seems to have dropped CD4 almost entirely.  How can you tell?  In a moment of doubt he realizes it's possible that the Sixers could win.  He methodically plans his suicide in case that's how the contest ends.

Sure, it's fiction, but it's certainly not a fiction-only scenario.  It's a very believable portrayal of the sense that "my epic calling was so profound that I simply can't exist without it."  Using Octalysis as a framework, the significant thing here is that the investment in Epic Meaning is so great that loss of it overcomes Avoidance of death, which is generally a very strong motivator.

There are some obvious non-fiction applications here.  Suicide prevention comes to mind immediately.  A suicidal person is clearly "missing" a natural occurrence of our CD8; avoidance of death is almost always reflexive in human beings.  This makes me wonder if a suicide hotline or a therapist could benefit from understanding Octalysis.  Whether it's a crisis situation or something a bit more relaxed, Octalysis might help understand the person more thoroughly and quickly.  As in Ready Player One did the patient lose a core motivator that was so strong, nothing else seems to matter?  Does she totally lack CD1 motivators?  (Is having some kind of CD1 motivation a prerequisite for wanting to live?)  Is it possible to mitigate the suicidal tendencies by bolstering a range of other motivators? 

I expect that counselors and hot line volunteers do quite a bit along that last line naturally, but here I'm differentiating by considering a conscious application of Octalysis and potentially implementing specific Game Techniques.  I'd love to see that in action; it would certainly be one of the best uses of Octalysis I can imagine.

Dragon Wings: Printing with PLA and PVA

Fun note: I've been reading Ready Player One and updating my Minecraft web page, so I've had to correct "PVP" into "PVA" about five times in this blog…

Though PVA filament offers some great opportunities to manage some 3D printing situations, I just don't see a lot of discussion about it.  I'm guessing that's because to really get the most use out of PVA you need to have a dual extruder printer.  I don't know what the numbers actually are on single versus dual, but my gut feel is that only about 10% to 15% of us 3D printing hobbyists have duals. 

Personally, I think PVA and other "utility" filaments are an excellent motivation for having a dual extruder printer, not to mention the obvious plus of being able to print two colors of PLA or ABS at the same time.

PVA filament has two very useful properties.  First, it bonds with PLA as if it actually is PLA itself.  Second, it's water soluble. 

Last year I wanted to print this beautiful copper dragon model that someone had introduced on Reddit.  The model was already in pieces rather than a single print, and each wing was a separate piece.  The challenge I ran into immediately was that it was hard to orient the wings in such a way that I could get a nice, smooth print.  The ideal method would be to orient them vertically, but this was an extremely tenuous way to print.  No flat base to adhere to the print bed.  Adding even the lightest support made the wings look terrible once the support was removed, and I never think that sanding and filing looks as good as just getting a good print in the first place.

So, I decided to try the PVA method.  Using OpenSCAD I created a very simple block of plastic around the wing.  Exported that block as one model and the wing as a second.  In Simplify3D I told the Dreamer to print the block in PVA and the wing with a nice copper PVA. 

As you can see in the pic, I really overdid it on the amount of PVA -- I could have made that block significant smaller and still gotten the same support I needed, but…live, learn, refine.  Didn't matter.  Once the print was done I dropped it in a bowl of water, and within two hours that block of PVA was gone and I was left with a very nicely printed dragon wing.

One other hindsight note, along with a warning.  I should have divided the print into two processes with one stopping at the max height of the PVA.  The second process would have finished the wing and allowed the PVA extruder to cool back down to room temp.  That top half of the wing took about an hour to print, and because I only used one process, I had non-moving PVA filament cooking in a 185C extruder.  Not good, and probably led to the demise of that nozzle about two months later.

Copper dragon with banana for scale.

Minimal support...fail!

Wing embedded in PLA block.

(For the uninitiated, another characteristic of PVA is that it is NOT a "heat it up to 240C to solve all problems" type of filament.  If you heat it beyond 200C it actually solidifies and will destroy your nozzle.  Read up carefully on how to use PVA correctly before you try it.)

Other applications?  How about creating a single-print hinge, where the empty space between the pin and barrel are initially printed in PVA and rinsed out?  There are other specialty filaments to consider, too, such as NinjaFlex.  Though I haven't tried it yet, I've considered using NinjaFlex in one extruder and PLA in another to create a flexible joint between two objects without having to print separate pieces and snap them together.  Also, there are no electrically conductive PLA filaments available.  They've still got plenty of room for improvement, but imagine the possibilities of printing your own circuit boards with regular PLA in one extruder and conductive in the other.  Arduino/Raspberry Pi hobbyists, eat your heart out.

And, of course, there's always the standby of multi-color printing.  After all, who doesn't like their name on everything they make?

Gaming My Team, Part 1: Context and Launch

For quick reference, this is a project inspired by Yu-kai Chou's book, Actionable Gamification.  For a bit longer reference, go get yourself a copy of Actionable Gamification and read it for yourself.  Trust me, it's well worth the time.

Though most of the book focuses on consumer and marketing applications of Octalysis, Yu-kai talks a lot about gamification of workplaces and clearly has an even greater passion for gamification of life.  I think his observations about the way companies typically try to motivate employees are very insightful.  I'm going to build a gamification strategy using his Yu-kai's techniques and try to improve my team's performance as a team and individuals, as well as each person's enjoyment of his or her work.

My first step will be using the Octalysis Strategy Dashboard to develop an overall plan.  (But if you're going to take my advice and learn about Octalysis yourself, don't start with that link.  Go instead to the official Start Here, and/or pick up a copy of Actionable Gamification.  And incidentally, though I've quickly become an avid student, I'm just that -- Mr. Chou doesn't know me and I'm not a sales representative.  Now that I've given the context for my project, I won't keep telling you to buy his book.)

Here are some background bullets about my team:

• There will be at least 6 team members involved.

• Each individual is 30 to 50 years old.

• Each one has worked in a corporate environment for at least five years, and they'll all been with our company for at least five years.

• Their work has a very technical focus, and each person is a specialist in a technical discipline.

• The team is part of a larger organization (about 75 people) who all work together to the benefit of internal stakeholders in a company of ~100,000 people.

I've written a set of interview questions to gain some insight in formulating the strategy, but more on that later.

Today I'm focused on some general principles I'm considering for the exercise:

1. It must be clear to the participants that this game has no impact on performance reviews, financial rewards, etc.  It's not an HR-sponsored exercise, so I'll have to explicitly specify that rewards in the game are not directly related to performance reviews.

2. Despite General Principle #1, the desired actions and outcomes of the game should be aligned with desired actions in our day to day work.

3. The win-state is not an accumulation of more "points" than the other participants.  Though I haven't finalized my Strategy Dashboard, a key characteristic of the win-state is that each individual will have developed more intrinsic motivation than pay checks and avoidance of job loss when performing daily work.

4. As this is a team, not a workgroup, the game should include investment in other people's success.

5. If any team member feels uncomfortable with the "game," he/she must have the ability to opt out.

More to come, including the development of my Strategy Dashboard and some thoughts on Miracle League Baseball.

Dual Extruder Dice

Quick example (and test blog) demonstrating one of my favorite things about my FlashForge Dreamer: dual extrusion. 

A dual extrusion printer, as you've probably guessed, has two extruders.  This means you can run two filaments through the same print without having to pause the print and change the filament.  Consider these dice -- since the printer lays down plastic in .2mm layers, if I wanted to print the dice with a single extruder printer I'd have to pause on almost every single layer, change the filament, and resume printing. 

Personalized dice for a Reddit Gifts match.

Keep in mind that a filament change means moving the extruder head away from the print, heating it up to 240 C, feeding the new filament while flushing the own, then lowering the temperature back to ~180 C before resuming the print.  That's a lot of time, a lot of unnecessary heating and cooling of the extruder nozzles, and a lot of wasted filament.

That's 75 filament changes.  Yikes.  There are a couple of ways you can minimize that pain or get around it.  First, if you had a bunch of dice to print you could produce ten or twenty at once; that would get you more print time for every filament swap.  (But still, 75 filament changes!)  You could also leave the pips or numbers as voids, either painting them in after printing or using a 3D pen to fill in the blanks. 

I do enough multi-filament printing that I'd much rather just have the dual extruder printer, of course.  And, as I'll show in a future blog, the dual extruder also provides solutions for some tricky printing scenarios. 

Gamifying My Daily Run

I have a rule about running: I don't run without music.  Unlike bicycling, running for the sake of running holds no pleasure for me.  If my headphones are broken or Spotify won't work and I don't have a handy MP3 player, I'm not running.  I'm talking about running for exercise, of course. I will run without music if I'm being chased by a bear, an ex-Nazi dentist, or the giant incarnation of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.  Though in the case of the latter I'd probably be part of a montage and thus, there would be music.

This practice began long before I grew interested in Octalysis, but it was an obvious subject for analysis once I read Yu-kai Chou's Actionable Gamification.  (The first time.)   The primary Core Drivers motivating my running are pretty obvious: I run so that I'll be healthier and look better.  Looking fit is the easy one; CD#5: Social Influence.  I think being healthier is most commonly CD#8: Avoidance (hopefully avoidance of young death) but I also like to think of it as being somewhat on the White Hat side of CD#4: Ownership.  I.e., I wish to possess a long life.  With White Hat's propensity for driving long-term results, I feel that viewing the motivation through the CD#4 lens rather than CD#8 might be a better choice. 

(That little theory alone tempts me to sign up for Premium option on yukaichou.com, since I'd like to know what Yuk-kai thinks of that concept and might be able to ask him during office hours.  But I'm digressing here.)

Now that I'm well in the habit of running I also run for the challenge: I used to struggle to run one mile without feeling like I'd collapse.  Then it was two, then three.  I constantly have that urge to "be able to run just a little bit more," despite not feeling like I ENJOY running.   (Incidentally, I feel this way about eating spinach, too.)  As soon as I feel like I've hit a comfort level with one distance, I'm pushing for the next.  CD#2: Accomplishment.

But here's what I think is the really fun part of the game.  Remember the music I mentioned?  I almost always use a Spotify play list when I run, and that list contains some of my favorite songs.  As a rule, I don't listen to them any time other than when I'm running.  Aha!  CD#6: Scarcity.  Also, I vary my route every single day.  Why?  Because I use a Microsoft Band to track my running, and it buzzes my wrist at every mile.  I don't want to know exactly where it's going to happen because then I'll be training my body to hit only the immediate goal, not the stretch goals.  Variation of the route, CD#7: Unpredictability.

I realize these are both Black Hat motivations, but I don’t see any problem with that.  The desired action here is not to make me run for an extra three hours on any given day, the goal is to make each run a bit more enjoyable, so that tomorrow I'll feel like I want to run again.  The short term Black Hat motivators do that pretty well.

There are a few more elements to this game.  My Spotify play list tends to include only songs with a title or theme related to running.  Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run, Starship's Run Away, Bon Jovi's Runaway, etc.  Michael Jackson with Don't Stop is making an appearance this week, too.  (And I admit, The Village People somehow snuck in there with Macho Man.)  Since I try to regulate my pace such that my heart rate stays in a particular zone, I also look for songs with a beat to match my stride.  (Saga's On The Loose was the first of these.  A live version, great guitar solo.)  These little mechanics around compiling the song list are quite fun to me and I'll actually muse about other songs to add while I'm running.  CD#3: Empowerment of Creativity. 

And let's hit one last motivator while I'm at it.  I like to share my playlists with other runners and see theirs, which is very obviously CD#5.

There you have it, my first attempt at some Octalysis Core Drive analysis.  Not a game design, of course, and I didn't even touch on actual Game Techniques, but it was certainly a fun and worthwhile exercise.  Thanks Yu-kai!