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The Hero of Time sacrifices sleep for the hope of treasure. Spoilers for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time:

The Hero of Time calms restless souls. Spoilers for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time:

Coronavirus We start this challenge with a public information broadcast. The COVID-19 pandemic has already caused over 22,000 deaths, there are almost 500,000 confirmed cases, and it is growing exponentially. For selected countries, I'm going to post the growth-rate, for the previous seven days, and a four week projection of that growth rate. I'll update the numbers each Monday of the challenge. Daily growth rate Why is the growth rate so important? It tells us where we're going. Changes in the growth rate also tell us where we are on the sigmoid curve of the pandemic. Unless there's a steady decline in the growth rate, then we know we're still in the middle of this. As explained on the Sciencing web site, the seven day growth rate can be calculated with the equation g = 7th root of (C2/C1) where C2 is the number of cases yesterday, and C1 is the number of cases 7 days prior. It's the 7th root because we're dealing with a period of 7 days. For instance, the number of confirmed cases worldwide, yesterday, was 468,868. Seven days prior, on the 18th, it was 218,358. g = 7th root of (468.868/218,358). This gives us 1.115. Seven-day growth rates | Region | Cases growth rate | Deaths growth rate | |--------------+-------------------+--------------------| | World | 1.115 | 1.131 | | Italy | 1.111 | 1.141 | | US | 1.331 | 1.318 | | UK | 1.204 | 1.239 | | Netherlands | 1.177 | 1.296 | | South Africa | 1.295 | 0.0 | Projections You can get a prediction of the numbers at some point in the future by using the equation C1 = C0 x g^n where C0 is the number of cases (or deaths) at day zero (I'll use yesterday's numbers), g is the growth rate, and n is the number of days after C0 that you want to predict. | Region | Cases as of yesterday | Cases after 1 week | Cases after 4 weeks | |--------------+-----------------------+--------------------+---------------------| | World | 468,868 | 1,004,557 | 9,879,771 | | Italy | 74,386 | 155,414 | 1,417,375 | | US | 66,117 | 489,282 | 198,289.032 | | UK | 9,667 | 35,455 | 1,749,175 | | Netherlands | 6,431 | 20,124 | 616,622 | | South Africa | 709 | 4,331 | 986,733 | | Region | Deaths as of yesterday | Deaths after 1 week | Deaths after 4 weeks | |--------------+------------------------+---------------------+----------------------| | World | 21,209 | 50,206 | 665,998 | | Italy | 7,503 | 18,890 | 301,462 | | US | 947 | 6,543 | 2,157,652 | | UK | 465 | 2,084 | 187,693 | | Netherlands | 357 | 2,192 | 507,701 | | South Africa | 0 | 0 | 0 | I haven't bothered with a 12-week projection because the numbers just become silly. Bear in mind that the 'Cases' mentioned here are only confirmed cases. A rough estimate is that 10 times as many are infected as have been confirmed. You can see that, at current growth rates, COVID-19 would sweep through the whole US population well within 4 weeks. You can also see that the US has the potential drastically to increase world-wide figures. Conclusion It's right that governments have compared this to wartime. This disease has already caused too many deaths and will cause a heartbreaking number more. There is only one way to change its course, and that is to reduce those growth rates. That will happen in one of two ways. Either the population will become saturated with infections, and the virus will find it more difficult to find an uninfected host, or all of us have less contact and the virus is presented with fewer uninfected hosts. You might have the disease and you wouldn't know it for about a week. You can see from the above figures just how much difference a week makes. I'll leave you with the following graphic: Stay at home and save a life.

The Hero of Time learns Zelda's Lullaby... and descends to the grave. Spoilers for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time:

Most of Zero Week has been taken up by New Year. I'm not very prepared for the new Challenge, but I feel as if I should get my thread started. My previous challenge went quite well so I'm going to continue along the same lines. I'm going to do four quests because that feels about right. Quest 1: write more Flash Fiction In the Great Deku Tree, I wrote Flash Fiction with a word-count limit of 500 words. However, I've discovered, when submitting those stories for publication, that most markets define Flash Fiction as up to 1,000 words. That will become my new word-count limit and should give me the freedom to be a little more descriptive. I still want to write one story a week. However, I don't yet have new story ideas. I may define some ideas according to themes given by Flash Fiction competitions. I'm thinking about entering a week-long competition. All this means that week one may be given over to writing down ideas, but it will depend how much work I can do on this beforehand. Quest 2: complete at least half of the Blender 2.8 Fundamentals official video series This is the course I decided upon during my previous challenge and forms part of my epic quest to write 3D games. The series is 42 videos long and I hope to do at least one video per week day. Quest 3: increase the weight of my dumbbells to 10kg each If I can do this I'll then have to go out and buy more weights because this is all that came with the dumbbells. Quest 4: reduce the 'rest' periods of my interval training to 30 seconds I currently do 10 minutes of interval training on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This involves sprinting (on the spot, in front of Wii Fit U) for 30 seconds followed by jogging for 90 seconds. I repeat this until the 10 minutes are up. Tonight, I plan to reduce the jogging periods to 60 seconds. I'd like to reduce the jogging periods to 30 seconds by the end of this Challenge. If I can also increase the length of the interval training to 20 minutes, that will be a bonus.

Spoilers for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: After discovering that I took on too much in my previous Challenge, I'm going to limit myself to two quests. Also, this reflects the fact that Christmas preparations and holidays are likely to make the available time even shorter. I didn't level-up in the previous Challenge so I'm treating this one as a boss-battle. My two quests are related to writing and game-development. Quest 1: submit the previous Challenge's Flash Fiction stories for publication In the previous Challenge, I wrote five Flash Fiction short stories (one per week). In this Challenge, I'll submit them for publication. The current plan is to submit a couple of them to competitions and the rest to on-line publications. Note that the title of this quest is not to be published. I have no direct control over that. All I can do is submit them for scrutiny and that is a challenge in itself. Quest 2: find a good (free) on-line course to learn Blender and start the course One of my epic quests is to develop 3D games. I'll be using Godot for the game development itself but creating the 3D models in Blender. I've learnt the basics of Blender before but I always forget again when I haven't used it in a while. This time 'round I plan to make lots of notes. Also, there have been some usability changes with version 2.8 so I think this is a good time to start again. I plan to use Blender with a graphics/drawing tablet and that may present its own challenges. Zero Week There are a couple of things I'd like to do in preparation for those two quests: edit some of the stories - I want to change the primary tense of one of the stories (present to past) and fix some issues that were caught in proof-reading take the computer I built during the previous Challenge and make it my main machine - this will involve tidying up some internal cables for airflow, transferring a hard disc and DVD drive, and configure software to match my old set-up. Secondary (fitness-related) quests I'm trying to resist the urge to add more quests to this Challenge but I can't quite manage it. However, these fitness quests should be relatively easy to achieve and I'll work the XP rewards so that they're not required in order to level-up. Get to level 7 in the NF diet My wife and I are currently at level 5 of the NF diet. However, I think that, already, we fulfil the requirements of level 6. Getting to level 7 should happen during the course of this Challenge. Add another kilogram to my dumbbells for strength training I'm planning to do this on Monday, anyway. I don't do weight-training as such. The dumbbells are there only to make my normal exercises harder. Then again, I should probably read the Strength Training 101...

^^ Minor spoilers for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time ^^ About me Despite the above, I am not a boy but a man in his 40s. A man who works from home and wants to see if his dream of becoming an author might just become reality; a man who wants to find a way to increase his inadequate income; a man who doesn't want the deteriorating health that comes a desk-job; a man who wants to see if his dream of becoming a game-developer might just become a reality (is there any Earthly reason I should not succeed at both this and becoming an author?) Epic quests Become a published author (not just one story or book) (I haven't published any yet) Increase my income to a comfortable amount Reach level 7 on the NF Diet and stay there Make a 3D game that people would want to play Challenge quests Write one Flash Fiction story per week of the Challenge Identify a repetitive work task and automate Get my wife's and my BMI to the ideal level, make sure that the Waistline app data has the carbs for all the food we eat, and start counting carbs Check studies into cholesterol (in relation to health risks) on both sides of the argument Put together the best computer I can from parts I've recently been donated Notes This is my second challenge. You can find my Level 1 challenge in Kokiri Forest. In my Level 1 challenge I completed a short story, that had been languishing for years, and submitted it to a couple of on-line competitions. This is the first time I've attempted to have my creative writing published and I want to continue that momentum. In this challenge I want to write stories in a much shorter space of time, in part to convince myself that I can. My current plan is to leave submitting these stories until the next challenge but this could be revised. I'm going to link to any useful resources I find during this process for any other aspiring authors out there. Automating work tasks enables me to spend more time creating (technical) products that can generate more revenue. With diet and exercise, I have actually dropped below my ideal BMI (despite the fact that I still have a bit of a belly). I'm now in the rather awkward position of trying to put on a bit of weight while my wife is trying to lose some. We are currently using the Waistline Android app to count calories. I want to move on to using it only to count carbs. However, there are some foods I've added manually and I need to check that I've filled in the carb details for all of them. Somewhere in here we also need to cut out pasta (we're working our way through the last pasta in the house). My wife is worried about cholesterol from the NF diet, especially as she's had a stent fitted in the past. I'm pretty good at research (although I'm not a doctor) so I want to find the best available information on the matter. Both CQ3 and CQ4 are part of EQ3. A friend has recently given me parts (cases, motherboards, processors, graphics cards, RAM...) from three computers that he's since upgraded. Two of them were pretty powerful. If I want to do any serious game development I'll need the power that these parts can provide. My job in this challenge will be to find the combination that's most suitable and put them in the same package. There's a bit of a thrill to this given that I haven't done it in ten years. In Kokiri Forest I completed a running quest as part of a half-marathon Epic Quest. However, having completed the Challenge Planning Worksheet for this challenge, that EQ did't quite make it here. I do plan to keep improving my running performance (it will feature in my Interval Training tonight) and that may well find its way into a future Challenge.

Borrowing (stealing) Marmadukian's format. Thanks for the inspiration. About me I'm in my 40s and I work from home as a partner in a business that doesn't really bring in enough money to make ends meet. I was a skinny kid but put on weight when I got married (because my wife's such a damn good cook). I've struggled to keep that weight in check (because she's still a damn good cook); however, I've been making progress recently with the help of Wii Fit U, the NF bodyweight strength training routine, and the NF diet (we're on Level 2). I love the work I do, even if it doesn't bring in enough money, but I've also always dreamt of being an author (and an astronaut, but that may be beyond even NF's help). Epic quests Publish a best-selling novel complete a half-marathon have a business that is mostly automated but generates a good income every month Challenge quests Submit a short story to a writing competition complete the island running circuit in Wii Fit U start work on time n days of the working week for each week n of the challenge Notes on the Challenge quests I've already partially written the story; this will get me to finish it and summon the Triforce of Courage to actually send it off and have someone read it (and give their opinion) I started my journey to NF with Wii Fit U and I still use it for fitness gamification I work from home and it can be difficult to find the motivation or enthusiasm to start the tasks that pay so little.