Writing Career Bingo

Christie Yant made an awesome writer’s career bingo sheet – a spreadsheet with her writing goals colored in when they were achieved.

I’ve long had a list of writing goals, but I like the idea of representing them visually. Although a spreadsheet has a certain practicality, I wanted something a bit fancier.  I aim to conquer the stars, not just spreadsheet cells.

I built a windows command line tool that reads an XML file that has the details of all my goals. For each goal I’ve finished, I earn a planet.

I have a lot of goals (technically some of them are programming and photo-related goals). The program will automatically split the goals into separate images if needed.

I’d been meaning to do some experimenting with Gimp (image editing program), so I tried out a couple of tutorials.

http://www.maketecheasier.com/create-space-scenes-in-gimp/2010/03/09

http://mygimptutorial.com/the-ultimate-gimp-planet-tutorial

I made the star field background and some of the planets. (If Samuel L Jackson can have a purple lightsaber, there is no reason I can’t have a purple planet). The other planets I rendered using Genetica Viewer and a free icon pack.
Each time I accomplish the goal I’ll run the program again and keep a snapshot of how my attempts to colonise the galaxy are progressing.