What I'm Into: Livre

I've been trying to keep a "gratitude journal" for a while now. Bear with me, before things get too new-agey and pukey - there appears to be a scientific basis for the idea that writing down a couple of things that make you happy every day can significantly increase happiness levels.

This is the same technique James Altucher's been advocating for years in his Daily Practice as "Exercising the Gratitude Muscle". It's recently taken over your Instagram and Facebook feeds as the #100HappyDays project - which challenges folks to share a daily picture of something that makes them happy 100 days in a row, effectively combining research about mood and habit-forming in a social-media friendly hashtag package. 

Pre-hashtag, I had already started keeping notes about things I was grateful for in a OneNote. I appreciate the concept behind #100HappyDays, but I put so much of myself online (and see myself skewed through the lens of sharing) that this was one thing I wanted to keep real, and keep private.

Performing happiness for an audience is pretty much the definition of everybody's Facebook page ever. And I knew sharing my "gratitude practice" would devolve into humblebragging, self-deprecation and omitting the most personal entries - the repetitive, the embarrassing, the confidential work triumphs. If I was going to honestly record what makes me happy, it would have to be warts and all.  

So I did. And it did improve my mood, but it didn't stick. I love OneNote and will be quick to tell you it is the BEST APP but the format just wasn't right for journalling - dating the entries got unwieldy and the format wasn't enjoyable to review.

Then over Christmas an ex-colleague in Tokyo recommended Livre - an iOS-only app by Japanese developer nagisa-inc.jp, with very good localization (despite their frequent misspelling of "calendar"). It's gorgeous, simple and very private - although it does feature options to share posts to Line, Twitter or Facebook if desired. 

I've been using it religiously since Jan 1st and am finding it a fantastic place to store those "reject" photos that don't make it to Instagram - bad quality shots that still make me happy, food pics that would annoy followers, multiple selfies with loved ones sporting different expressions. The app has a really nice compression algorithm to keep file sizes small so it can serve as a decent chronological photo album: 

It's also possible to tag days with locations and little emoticons, which gives you an interesting monthly view. Say for example you want to record how often you travel, exercise, or overdrink:

And unlike OneNote, reviewing the past becomes a really pleasant, usable experience. Which is fascinating, because this is where the patterns start to emerge. 

Reviewing your gratitude journal isn't part of any of the documented mood research, but for a data nerd like me this has been an unexpectedly critical feature. If you write down what makes you happy every day, over time, trends become obvious. And these trends are in many ways the most interesting part.

Say you spend a lot of time at work, and your career ranks high on your priorities stack-rank. Of course I'm not talking about myself here :) 

But say the things that routinely seem to have the biggest impact on your happiness, that you're most grateful for, have nothing to do with career at all. Well, the PM in me can not ignore the empirical evidence that on the life satisfaction index, you may be better off recalibrating your priorities. Or at least investing time in other areas to get more happiness "bang for buck".

My own happiness trends over the past few months are surprisingly consistent:

- Gracie doing considerate things like cooking for me or cleaning up

- Good food/drink

- Being able to communicate or spend time with my friends, family & colleagues 

A helpful, caring partner. Human interaction and the good health of loved ones. It's really all about people. And gluttony. Maybe that's not a surprise at all.

What I'm Into: Friends' Kickstarters

Crowd-funding waxes and wanes in public mythology. The drama around Double Fine's first Kickstarter run with the $1M raised in 24 hours seems like so long ago now. I remember everyone crying from the rooftops how crowd-funding would democratize development and change the world. Then a few years later, the moaning - handfuls of high-profile failures and a myriad of slipped dates, with Double Fine like the cherry on top coming in tremendously over-budget and over-deadline just like any other AAA project.

There was a period of saturation, with everyone and their dog asking for money, and then a period of ambivalence as indie creators and punters alike realized crowd campaigns were not a universal salve or automatic ticket to funding.

I don't have any data to support this feeling (there's your first bullshit flag) but it seems to me that crowd-funding is only now reaching a period of maturity - fewer copycat or on-the-fly campaigns, more infrastructure for manufacturing and delivery - and that's pretty cool.

I've backed 2 campaigns in the last month that I want to share, both games, both by friends/acquaintances, and both fully funded within the first few days:

Dreaming Spires

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/949153718/dreaming-spires

Jeremy's Oxford-themed board game is rich in history, characters and a gorgeously scholastic aesthetic. They say "write what you know" and as Jez is an Oxford alum and consummate board game geek, Dreaming Spires most certainly comes from an authentic (and well-researched!) place. It also looks fun to play - strategically building a college up from the medieval era, attracting scholars and competing in historical Oxford events? I can get into that!

Everyone who knows me as game developer also knows "I hate games" - especially board games, which I perceive as a hindrance of social gatherings. I'm decidedly a single-player gamer. At parties I prefer to, you know, talk about shit and drink alcohol.

Jez has often assured me you can do both while playing board games, as has Gracie, but I've never quite been sold. However, Dreaming Spires appeals to me in a way other games haven't due to the solid biographical emphasis on characters. I can get attached to characters. They are the heart of storytelling for me. I may not be interested in leading a faceless army or civilization but I want to attract Oscar Wilde to my college, damn it!

Also interesting about this project is that it's being run in partnership with board game publisher Game Salute, veterans of the Kickstarter business. To me this is a fascinating signal of the maturity of the crowd-funding platform - indies working with publisher support for logistics, especially in a physical goods space like board games, just makes sense.

Night In The Woods

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1307515311/night-in-the-woods

From Alec Holowka of the venerable Indie House back home in Vancouver comes an adventure game that I actually want to play. Plus, it is beautiful.

Everyone seems to be into adventure games nostalgia. For many years I thought I was too - until I realized most people's nostalgia, adventures and fantasies didn't match mine. I crave new game worlds where I can explore aimlessly, with deep characterization to immerse myself in. I don't give a shit about puzzles or normal "game stuff" which is perhaps why I enjoyed Sworcery so profoundly while none of my gamer mates rated it. I love it when the mundane aspects of life are reflected in alternate universes. I am one of those people who relished every moment of waiting for the bus to my forklift job in the original Shenmue for Dreamcast.

So Night In The Woods looks well up my alley. In some ways it reminds me of Cheap Thrills the webcomic - except with mystery. I'm really drawn to all of the character concepts and designs, the world aesthetic, and the fact that the main character is female and that her femaleness seems to be of absolutely zero consequence. (That she looks like a punk cat and is therefore totally unsexualized may help on this front.) Also, I love things that are darkly, hopelessly sarcastic and I love to play bass and break stuff.

There is a lot for me to potentially love about Night In The Woods. But even if the game doesn't turn out precisely how I'm envisioning it, I'm happy I can do my small part to support some artists I respect to create work of their own imagining. And maybe that's the real point of crowd-funding in the end.

Have you backed anything recently?

What I'm Into: Lash Extensions Lifehack

Bit of a girly post here. Let's talk eyelashes. 

I've got a complex about my natural lashes. They are short, mousy brown and generally unremarkable. It wouldn't bother me half as much if my partner, a big hairy Brummie, didn't have the same freaking genetic disorder as Elizabeth Taylor which gives him two rows of gorgeously long black lashes. What a waste.

So to make up for my lacklustre lashline, and generally being a lazy cow with no time to do makeup properly, I've been faking it since 2009. 

I started out with individual Duralash bunches:

Many women start with the temporary caterpillar strip falsies for special occasions, but those intimidated the fuck out of tomboy little me at first. Not to mention they defeat my whole purpose of extreme laziness - so inspired by this Kingdom of Style post I reached straight for the permanent glue.

I wore them on and off through my last two years of uni, although they are fussy to apply and while fine in the winter, seemed to just melt off my face in the summer months. I finally gave up the grudge when I realized they were taking so long to stick on each week it was hardly worth the time saved on mascara daily. That, and they look completely ridiculous up close:

I had my first real set of salon extensions done when I was working in Tokyo. Everybody gets everything done in Tokyo, and I was spending a lot of my free time enjoying the aircon and practising my Japanese with the gals at Nail Bee Roppongi, so it seemed the logical thing to do. Although describing what lash curve I wanted in Japanese not to mention explaining that one of the girls had glued my eye together was a bit of a challenge.

That first set worked out ok:

Unlike strips or bunches, real extensions sit 1:1 on your natural lashes, have no seams and last until the real lash grows out. I was hooked.

For the past year I've been getting mine done every 5-6 weeks at Lash Lab on Brick Lane and they fucking rule. It's £50 a pop and my eyes look like this without makeup:

A colleague of mine did some extensive market research on character designs for a fashion game last year, trying to find out what art style appealed most to girls and women and what type of aspirational images they identified with. She found that women reacted most favourably across the board to characters with thick black upper lash lines - we intuitively love that shit.

Nowadays I'll pop falsies on top of my extensions for a special do, inspired by HRH Nicki Minaj from who I learned you can wear multiple rows: 

Excessive? Perhaps. But I've got Gracie's fluttering genetic mutations to live up to.

What I'm Into: Pinterest "Crap I Like To Eat"

So after that takeaway blip a while back we're back to cooking at home 4-5 nights a week. It's not easy. As a foodie, living in London, there are far too many temptations to eat out.

I say that like "oh you fancy, huh", but the number of new restaurants we try each month is tiny. The list of places I want to eat at grows much faster than I can knock items off it. Most of the time when we eat out or order in it's a case of sheer exhaustion or boredom.

The thing is, home-cooked meals are almost always way better tasting than takeaway (let alone cheaper). Yet somehow, when I'm feeling tired or apathetic it's hard to remember how awesome my own cooking is. Which is why I got inspired by this blog post and the idea of making a "Crap I Like To Eat" list - to reference in precisely such moments of weakness.

So I thought this was a perfect opportunity to finally use the Pinterest account I started 2 years ago and never pinned anything to.

Feel free to tell me I am doing it wrong. I get the feeling I'm totally doing it wrong. Pinterest seems to be a place to keep pics of sexy, aspirational food porn - more along the lines of "things I'd cook in my fantasy life where I'm an organic hipster Martha Stewart" rather than "things I have cooked loads of times for weeknight dinnerz". Speaking of things I've cooked loads of times for weeknight dinnerz, the above pic is one of our regular standbys - soba, eggs, asparagus and prosciutto, 5 minutes, easy.

I don't particularly care if I'm doing it wrong though. I've been misusing social media for my own needs ever since I started using Twitpic then Tumblr as an Instagram a few years before Instagram existed.

With that in mind here is our regular dinner food board - all tried and tested recipes in the Gracie Herst household. Though we do tend to put our own spin on them, as neither of us are into following recipes and we're both obsessed with adding chilis to everything.

It's not strictly dinner either as I've put a few of my favourite puddings in there. I have a mad sweet tooth, but I also take after my mum and often bake as a self-soothing project. Usually late at night. The jam tarts are a go-to.

I'm interested to see how this evolves and if I keep using it. This summer we are really into making South-Asian wraps and pancakes, from summer rolls to ssambap and banh xeo to pa jeon.

Do you have a "Crap I Like To Eat List"? What is on it? Are you a Pinterest food pornographer? Please share!

What I'm Into: Muscle Rescue Neck & Shoulder Cream

Found this in Boots earlier today - the better smelling cousin of the serious Deep Heat range of muscle creams. 

To be honest, they had me at rosemary. I am a rosemary fiend - eating it, smelling it, and apparently rubbing it on my neck. Jo Malone put out a £40 Rosemary and Rose scented charity candle a few months ago and I ordered it within seconds (no regrets). Rosemary is supposed to be incredible for stress relief. Not sure how robust herbal remedies are, but working in software development across distributed teams on pre-launch hardware you'll try any stress-buster you can find.

Like most sedentary computer workers I have neck issues. Neck issues that make every masseuse, physio or esthetician I've ever been to recoil in horror at the ropey knots beneath my skin, issues that make me want to take a meat tenderizer to my shoulders.

These issues are somewhat exacerbated by headbanging - good thing I am all grown up and don't do that anymore. But on this rainy Monday after Sunday night's Iron Maiden concert at the O2, I found myself in Boots desperate for some relief.

Lucky I found this, as it really does what it says on the tin. A doddle to apply, nice and warm and deep soothing, with no nasty icy-hot smell. It definitely saved my day today. Gonna keep this sucker in my desk drawer I think.