I realized yesterday that I haven’t been spending enough time on Unity3D, and the deadline I set for myself to finish the book “Unity Game Development Essentials” is within a week. Thus today was primarily a Unity3d day. And for a good 5-6 hours, I was learning how to code in javascripts within the game engine.

Although I’ve done programming before as I started university as a computer science major, it still wasn’t an easy task even though I was simply following the examples in the book and trying to understand them. It’s been a long time since I had to think in this particular way, especially after being brainwashed in business school with the language of money. I was also reminded today how frustrating debugging could be.

Nonetheless, I am 65% done through the book and with a few more days like this, I should be able to finish it on schedule. And then start my next studying material “Blender for Dummies“.

For the machine business, I had to spend some time this morning fixing a DNS/nameserver issue for the developer. I’ve worked with many contractors in different regions, and I have to say the current vendor leaves quite a bit to be desired. If I weren’t technical at all, this project would probably be delayed a lot more. Just got an email that they are working on putting the site on our server tonight. Hopefully I’ll be able to see it tomorrow when I wake up.

For the book, good news is that I’ve found a few people who are interested in reading the book and give me some feedback. However the bad news is that sales has been really slow in the past week – the slowest since it became available on Amazon. Let’s hope more copies get sold soon to restore my confidence…

Finally, I’ve started thinking about the “core” meanings of these projects as I started reading “Made to Stick“, a good book with lots of practical advice on how to make your ideas “sticky”. I only have very rough ideas and they are not ready to be shown to the world, but having these core meanings for these projects will help me focus and prioritize tasks.

Tomorrow will be mostly Unity3D again. It’s a luxury to be a student again.

Got an amazing game idea? See how we can build it for you at Studio Pepwuper.

My book has been available on Amazon since the end of January. I have finally started doing some marketing on it. The first thing I did was to re-design the website. It took me about 10 days to get the new site up and running. I’ve also started twittering and told all my friends to check out the website.

I woke up at 3am last night and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I turn on the new Mac I got a few days ago. (On a side note, having this new Mac has increased my productivity by 100X) A friend of mine told me that her friend just published a book in Taiwan, and volunteered to make an introduction to me to see if I can market this book in Taiwan. She emailed him right away and within a few hours had spoken to him on the phone. Basic conclusion: I should have the book translated 80%+ before approaching the publishers, and there’s a yearly book conference in the beginning of year where I can talk to all the major publishers in Taiwan.

I also turned on Google Adwords today to see if it’ll help with the book sales. Although I know what Google Adwords does and had some experience with it before, I still feel quite clueless on how to make it effective. So far I am not seeing a lot of traffic coming in, but I’ll give it a week to see if it’s working and tweak accordingly. I’ve also sent out a few emails asking friends if they know people who are interested in reading my book, and posted online to find people who can give me some feedback on the book.

I had been working on the book for the entire week and did not get to work on the other two projects as much as I hoped to. I am still aiming to finish the Unity3D book by the end of this month, so I will be spending most of my time next week doing that. In the mean time, the website for the machine business is still behind and the developer is having problem transferring the site to our server. I will need to work with him tomorrow to get it resolved.

Oh one last thing that I did today – making this blog. I am typing this on the bed next to my lovely wife, and I will try to keep writing every night before I go to sleep.

That’s it for now today. Tomorrow will be a Unity day. I need to finish it soon so I can start the next book on Blender.

Got an amazing game idea? See how we can build it for you at Studio Pepwuper.

Last Monday was officially my last day at my previous company – one of the largest consumer electronics companies in the world. I am on my own now. No more paychecks at the end of month. I’ve given up a six-figure salary so that I can try to be more than what I was before. I’ve studied entrepreneurship extensively in business school and read all the information you can find online about startups. And I’ve decided it’s my turn to make it happen now.

And the beginning isn’t pretty. Not having consistent income is no fun. And I am thinking about my 3 projects 24/7. I have been waking up in the middle of the night everyday for the past month thinking about book sales, delayed website development, marketing, finding the teams…etc. There are a million things to think about, to decide, and to act on. I always feel that I am running out of time and things are not progressing fast enough.

That’s why I decided to start this blog – to keep a record of what I’ve accomplished everyday so that I know I am heading in the right direction. It’s a way for me to give myself positive feedback, and to share my experience with people who are in the same boat. Let’s hope this is beneficial to me and to those who’s stumbled upon this blog.

Got an amazing game idea? See how we can build it for you at Studio Pepwuper.