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The Journals of Doc Surge is the personal blog of Chris Billows. This blog’s purpose is to explore ideas and concepts through the discipline of writing as an exercise to further personal understanding.

Check out more about me, some of my thoughts on Games and Hockey.

Jan 08

Talent, Engineering, Art, and Culture

January 08, 2022 by Chris Billows in Hobby Heedings, Mental Mischief, Playstates Theory 0 comments tags: Components of Human Nature, Comprehensive Analysis, Defining Life
I’ve made a resolution to start learning how to code. I’m only a few hours into it and must say it is enjoyable. There is something magical about making things work on the screen based on your code. Learning how to code is definately a skill that will take time to develop. I’d never say that I have a natural talent to code though I find some of the concepts fascinating which creates enthusiasm and drive to learn more. This got me thinking about where talent is different from skill and where skill relates to art and engineering. With me being the kind of person who loves working with conceptual models, I’ve create a speculative Talent-to-Culture model to illustrate how skills, talent, art, and culture all are related:   Talent derives from natural ability or drive, and Talent may lead to skill, and Skill requires tool usage, and Tool usage comes from engineering, and Engineering comes from knowledge or science, and Knowledge comes from concepts, and Concepts comes from culture, and Culture comes from society   This model can be inverted, but because I’m focusing on skill development for myself, I started at the skill (top) end of the model. […]
Jan 01

New Year’s View in 2022

January 01, 2022 by Chris Billows in Business Beller, Hobby Heedings 0 comments tags: Awareness / Understanding, Blogging, Business Development
Happy New Year for 2022! Here is a quick review about what I’ve been up to for the past year and where I’m headed in 2022. As I’ve already impelemented in 2021: Promaginy is now my vintage web game website. Cybersideline added a couple of projects with Fandomnaut and Yertunes. Gamenigma was originally going to be my new coding project but then I was able to figure out a way to incorporate lots of my ideas into Heropath. In fact, I experienced a huge synthesis of ideas back in October 2021 which was really exciting and fun. Heropath will be the cumulation of ideas found in Playstates, Tales of Strange Cyberworlds, my passion for crossovers, and many other things. After writing and thinking for many years, a path forward has revealed itself! This is exciting for me because I’ll be moving away from writing and attempt to travel this new pathway through coding. While I will still be updating this blog infrequently, most of my writing on play and games will be moving over to the Heropath’s blog. I’ll be linking to that blog as patterns emerge. So you can expect infrequent coding updates via Heropath and other web projects. […]
Oct 11

Levelling Skill Development

October 11, 2021 by Chris Billows in Business Beller, Hobby Heedings 1 comments tags: Business Development, Change of Mind, Personal Resolve, Self Analysis
I’m a conceptual thinker and because of such I can get caught up into ideas and concepts and believe that understanding something is the same thing as doing something. Such ignorance is typical of thinking types. So I’ve made a resolution to start taking up coding to 1) fix/build my own websites, 2) build my own video games I’ve avoided developing these skills because I’ve always felt I didn’t have the time, but I’ve matured enough in my self-awareness that I need to stop with the self-limiting thinking – the scarcity mentality that plagues so many of us – and just be open to possibilities. The self-limiting thinking that I don’t have enough time to fit it all in is poisonous to getting started. I’m now okay if I don’t finish or accomplish anything since I am going to approach this skill learning with a beginner mind and just enjoy the journey. I’m going to track my skill development, not put any pressure on myself to learn a certain amount of skill by an arbitrary date, and try to find the way of combining intention with spontaneity. Starting today I am going to make a resolution to practice this. Today […]
Sep 04

Everything Counts at Death

September 04, 2021 by Chris Billows in Republic of Bloggers 0 comments tags: Defining Life, Human Condition, Meaning of Life
An open letter to Chris Bateman responding to his blog-letter Every Cause of Death Matters at Only A Game as part of the Republic of Bloggers. Feel welcome to provide your own input via the Comments.     Dear Chris, I want to commend you for taking on a topic that is wholly lacking in our sensationalism-driven, hyper-sensitive COVID-19 fixation thanks to our modern media. You elaborated eloquently about how we don’t have a rational relationship with reporting on the causes of death and this leaves us poorer and more vulnerable to false information. I could not agree more. I’m believe you exaggerated your position to in order to make your point and in doing so lost some of the nuance that I feel compelled to address. You alluded to it in your statement: This principle does not mean that we are wrong to care about some causes of death more than others – on the contrary, it would be reckless to replace it with a principle that ‘every cause of death matters equally‘. I’ve known you long enough to recognize you are pitching a position with the hope that somebody will engage with it and so I will happily […]
Aug 01

Play Motifs – VERSION 3.0 (AUG/21)

August 01, 2021 by Chris Billows in Playstates Theory 1 comments tags: Game Philosophy, Games Analysis, Playstates
I am re-calibrating my definitions as I evolve in my understanding of Play and Video Games. I am introducing the definition of Play Motifs as a replacement for the Playstates term. For the past four plus years I’ve worked on elaborating on my Playstates theory and as it evolved out of Gamestories I have found the need to evolve out of Playstates. Because it is really a continuation and renaming, I am carrying on the Version Numbering to Version 3.0 from previous Versions 2.0 and 1.0. I was originally going to produce a number of free guides called Playstates and analyze the different aspects of making a video game. My plan is still do that but do it in a new project that I plan to launch next year. I will be writing down my thoughts in a diary-themed analysis that will look at Video Game graphics, animation, music, and alchemy (the changeable nature of video games). It was during this rethinking that I realized that Playstates is too narrow when it comes to discussing video games. So Playstates will be redefined to be all aspects about video game development while the five specific Playstates that I’ve identified will now […]
Jul 03

High-Stakes Recreation & Playstates

July 03, 2021 by Chris Billows in Playstates Theory 0 comments tags: Playstates
In a previous blog post Playful Work & Serious Leisure I shared a matrix of Work-Leisure that outlined eight different states of being when it came to Work & Leisure. Being a theoretical person, I thought it would be enjoyable to combine that matrix with my concept of Playstates, particularly how it should be possible to find each of the five Playstates in the realm of Recreation. This would also further validate my Playstates theory, being able to find it in other concepts. Recreation is the socially sanctioned use of leisure time. It is those activities that society wants us to do when we are not working and tends to entail some kind of personal development or challenge. But as I do this thought experiment I saw that playful activities such as Puzzles, Playgrounds, and Games can be taken very seriously and can become high-stakes. Here is my Matrix with the emphasis being placed on Recreation. Recreation is a range of activities that combine Leisure and Seriousness.  *Recreation*   Leisure   Fun     |     Serious —- + —- Playful     |     Grind   Work   Inspired It is conceptually easy to link up Seriousness […]
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