CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

Last week was a short ‘week’ for me, as I’ve rearranged how I do things regarding weeks. I count the first week of a month as being from the 1st of that month to the first Saturday after that date, inclusive. The last week of a month is from the Sunday before the end of the month to the last day of the month, inclusive. This means my first week of December was exactly two days long. Friday was a very disrupted day with me dealing with a last-minute school issue, and then putting out small administrative fires as I re-tooled what I need to build into the schedule at the start of each month. Also, I got paid for my writing, which was a very nice curve ball, but still threw me as it’s still a bit of a novelty, albeit one which I’m working towards making a normal thing in the future. Saturday I had scheduled the start-of-month tasks. The biggest one of these was uploading everything that had been published over the last 12 months to the Australian National Library, which is a legal

I know, I really should be doing these on the day I find them, so you don't get swamped with ninety million pogo posts when you're looking for writing posts. I'll try to be better. Anyway, the gym scenery changed earlier this week, and I discovered that the special attack bar for your pokemon had totally disappeared! Okay, not. It had just moved - to the bottom of the screen. If you look closely, you'll also see the faded out button just above it. That's the special attack for my magneton. When the bar fills, and the attack is available, the button glow and you can tap it as you battle. And, finally, if your pokemon gets multiples of its special attack, the bar splits into however many attacks your pokemon gets with its special attack, and you can see how full each bar is. I really like this development. The circle glows as soon as the first attack is ready to go, but each tap only uses up one attack, provided the attack is ready. For the curiou

Shortly after the Hoenn pokemon started appearing, today, my son noticed a new icon on the scanner. It was a little cloud just above the pokefinder bar in the bottom right corner - see? It's pretty cool - especially if you tap it, to get the next screen. See? A pokeweather app! I've no idea how that is going to affect gym battles, but it's a good indication of what you'll find when you're out walking. Or, if you prefer fire and grass pokemon...

Early walking, because the family is busy, today, and I didn't know what walk-time I would get - and I was pleased to see this come up on the screen. And I crossed my fingers, as I took my first steps out the door, that this was Niantic's way of letting us know the Hoenn release would be really soon. I even crossed my toes that it would be this morning... but I knew that was wishful thinking. There was another new thing on the scanner, as well. This raid had two monster-heads above the gym - and I had no idea what it might mean, or even if it's just a glitch. I feel like a kid at Christmas in an ooh-what's-that kinda way, so I figure I'll go poke it and see if it rattles. It didn't look much different from close up, either. (And, yes, of course I caught that rattata... I just haven't looked to see if it's tiny, yet.) Hatching these two guys in quick succession should have provided some clue as to what was about to happen:

A little while back, I was out walking with my son, and we noticed that one of the gyms we had pokemon in was under attack. So, I said: "Well, we can't feed the pokemon remotely any more, so we'll just have to walk over there and take it back when they're done." And he said: "Actually..." And that's what led to this post. Apparently, you can feed your pokemon in a gym, when you're not there - and you can feed other people's pokemon, too. Here's how it works: You have to have a pokemon in the gym. Go to your pokemon bag, and select your pokemon by tapping on it - you can tell which ones are in the gym by the golden marker beside them. When you select the pokemon, you will be taken to a screen showing your pokemon. As you can see, it looks a little different to the page showing  a pokemon not in a gym. This one has a picture of the gym, its name, and a little heart with wifi waves coming off the top. it also has a green