I’ve been terrible at trying to keep time as of late. I don’t know how or why, but it’s gotten to the point where I can’t really do anything without removing all distractions. It feels like I’ve become something of an environment-induced ADD sufferer. It might be that if I’m not at work, I’m at home waiting for the time to sleep before my next shift. Might be just that my internal bodyclock is a little messed up and I lose track of time. Either way, I need to do something about it.

I’ve found a technique called ‘Pomodoro’, which is the Italian for tomato. It’s essentially find a task that will take 25 minutes or more to complete, and do it in blocks of 25 minutes, with 5 minutes between each block. Thus, your work is split into 30 minute blocks, which are manageable. The technique recommends that after every four Pomodoros that you take a longer break, perhaps half an hour, so your mind is tuned to working in bursts of concentration before trying to extend that concentration over longer periods. And I think it’s worth giving it a try. I threw Pomodroido on my phone, and set it off. I’ve set the application to override the screen turning off when idle while it’s working, so I don’t have to distract myself with the phone to navigate to the app and figure out how long I have left. I’ve not really tested the theory out yet, but I’m hoping it gets me to enjoy the time I have to myself (which is a lot right now), and learn to channel myself into things that need to be done.

On an unrelated topic, Aion is going Free to Play soon. GameForge has picked up the rights to publish it in Europe, and have removed the subscription entirely. They’re also elevating all the accounts that have been playing up until they take over to Veterans. Now there’s a few things that really need to be mentioned. If you don’t pay for the Gold level, your siege rewards are less than what they are now, and your instance timers are limited to as much as two weeks. Some people are saying that they will have to pay if they want to enjoy the game at any pace. But the way I look at it is ‘Do you take the game seriously right now?’. If you do, you pay. If not, don’t worry about it, you can just chill, make some money, then pay for some Gold time when you want to run a lot of instances all packed together, for example when you’re off from work/school for a week.

I’m looking forward to the change to be honest. Aion has become something of a stale product under NCSoft West as a subscription title. They ran with the ball for over two years, but now it’s easy to see that they are recycling events from Korea and the Community Managers are either merged into Co-Ordinator duties or non-existent at all now (as I found out a few days ago, to my genuine surprise). I’m far from blowing the GameForge bugle, but they have made every move possible that could be done to set the right tone for their changing of the guard. Their CM ‘BlackVelvet’ has really made the right impression with the community, engaging with us on our own fansite as well as (attempting to, despite the Aion Login scripts being big-time buggy) posting on the Aion Official Forums. They’re also continuing the Veteran Rewards to month 28 after they take over, despite how NCSoft is ending them on Feb 25th regardless of how far along the months you are. I’m eager to see what they do with it. A dedicated team over a small area (Europe, in comparison to West) with people that have the fresh enthusiasm for the game that we did in September ’09 sounds like it will do really well. Of course, we have Goldsellers now making fresh accounts since they will gain Veteran status along with us if they pay for a month, but that’s a minor inconvenience that will fix itself since it will no longer be ‘everybody pays’.

In relation to Aion going Free to Play, I’ve thrown my hat in the ring to help with a podcast like I did with the Daevacast. I originally thought that I would just reboot it but thinking about it, ‘the blog that never was’ aka Atreian.com would be the perfect place to start this. It’s new, it’s fresh, it’s less letters and a term used in-game. I honestly don’t know if it’ll get off the ground, or if it’ll have endorsement from GameForge, but it’s worth another try. I’ve been speaking to the people I need to on that last point, and they’ve thrown some good ideas at me. Interviews was one I would jump at the chance to do anyway, but Vidcasts? So long as I don’t have to show my mug all the time I’m up for that.

Things have calmed down a bit RL, which is just what I needed. Starting my driving lessons again on Wednesday. I really need to pass my practical test by the end of June, otherwise I have to re-take my theory. And at that point, it would be just as worth it to go straight onto my CBT and come back to driving later. I do have an incentive though: I’ve built up some money to make it possible to work on my licence without having to worry about money. But the sooner I pass, the more I have left over for a moped/bike.

And that’s a Pomodoro done. I really wrote all that in 25 minutes?